"Animation is more honest than television".

Where hot Oscar aspirants to learn their craft: the film "Waltz with Bashir" is also a success for the Bezalel art school in Jerusalem. The half-film crew made their final here - and "Animation" is a magic word in Israel.

 

"I want to put things in motion," said Yula Bolanov, 25 Then she laughs a little, a good comment it was because they spoke about their future as Animatorin - and what to do with this craft can be reached.

It is a Thursday during the semester break, the animation students of the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem, will meet in the basement of their school, lead to films and discuss. Some argue engaged with each other, so some sign out front. Everywhere in the room hatch small cartoon figures show: There's one on the backpack, because on the wall, on the table.

What is after university? Yula will be happy to produce animated films. So far, the future looked more than usually animated films from: Here is a promotional movie as a flash sequence for the advertising. But for the students of the Bezalel Art Academy in Jerusalem has been at least in the early hours of this Monday opened a new world. Animation, which is currently a magic word in Israel.

Animation FROM ISRAEL

Photo: Yoav Brill
Video: Yoav Brill

Short Film: Beetle Jook

Short Film: "Nazid Adashim (Lentil Soup)"
Short Film: "The List"
Short Film: "Phantom Pain"

"Waltz with Bashir," an animated film that is, Israel has almost the first Oscar in the history of the country presented. Well, the film was acted as a favorite, had to end but "Departures" from Japan to beat. "Waltz with Bashir" did not come directly from the Bezalel School - but without them there would have been not given him so.

About three years ago hired the professors Yoni Goodman, 32, and Tal Gadon, 35, Bezalel graduates themselves, directly from the school a handful of animators for a curious project: an animated documentary.

Documentary, but painted? That should work? After an exciting project, better than boring advertising movies. Goodman and Gadon brought her into an apartment in Tel Aviv, there were six computers, a shelf with sweets, a soccer table. "Just everything you need," says Gadon.

What is really happening in Lebanon?

"Waltz with Bashir" is the story of a veteran of the first Lebanon war, which tries to recover his memory. It is an animated film, one could also say: a comic. Ari Folman, director and main character in the movie, wants to learn from what he massacres in the Palestinian refugee camps Sabra and Schatila in September 1982 has noticed. And what his role was.

Christian Falangisten then executed a previously unknown number of Palestinians as revenge for the assassination of their leader Bashir Gemayel. With the Israeli army, the Christian militia allies. What the Israeli soldiers knew could never be resolved.

The budget for "Waltz with Bashir" was tiny, the team also. Yoni Goodman expects that: "On an average Disney film 200 animators are working and it will cost around 170 million U.S. dollars. We had 1.7 million." All ten animators came from the Bezalel school or had studied there.

It was clear that this small group for 90 minutes, as a feature film about time, not frame by frame could draw.

Dream and reality in the same language

"I have no idea until today, for example, this scene was built," says Goldwasser Dotan, 24, and shows one of his two big screens. on the screen flickers a scene from "Waltz with Bashir."

VIDEOS ON FILM

Photo: Pandora Film
Video: Film Pandorra

Waltz with Bashir
Trailer and Film Clips

Film clip: Carmis dream
Film clip: beach life at war
Film clip: days before the massacre

The animation Dotan student learns at the Bezalel in the third year. He sits in his room in Jerusalem District Nachlaot hip, before his computer on his knees Zeichenpad. "Yoni Goodman has given us some of the scenes presented in the classroom, but in this setting here, I do not look through." The movements of the characters are too liquid, just with flash programmed to be fully subscribed, but they can not be - "they would have for the movie is not four, but eight years," said Dotan.

The animators had to improvise: as much as possible, they worked in Flash, a computer program for such complicated things like an animated film does not really thought, but rather for a short and simple animations on web pages, for example, advertising in movies. A feature length story in order to program a little, as you would try, with a toothbrush, a Rembrandt nachzumalen.

For the Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe and all the other prizes, the "Waltz with Bashir" won interested Dotan not quite, but animation, that's his thing: "Only with this technique you can dream and reality in the same language to describe, but with this technique you can make films in which you have a figure for just the stress, what they should be. "

And this is still a documentary? "For me animation is honest and true than the image that a camera produces," said Dotan. But the truth speaks "Waltz with Bashir" then? The fact that the Israeli army complicity in the massacre of Sabra and Schatila had, because they are not prevented.

"Not funny, to be a soldier"

David Polonsky, the art director of the film, the BBC said: "I want these young men film which conveys an idea that it is not funny, to be a soldier."

That is "Waltz with Bashir" is no classic anti-war film. He is the documentation of the personal search, to which director Ari Folman goes. Folman was at war and is looking for his trauma. In the same moment it is the history of the State of Israel, since it is always only in the period between the wars can be expected.

At the beginning of the film Ari Folman knows only that he was there, in Lebanon and that he was 19 years old. It begins, according to the comrades of that time to look, he keeps them out pictures: Do you understand me? Am I that? What have we done? What blame me? And you?

The film shows what all Israelis know

Slowly the memories come back in dream images, and flashbacks. "It is precisely the strength of this film that he can be reflective," says Daniella Koffler, 28, Bezalel student in second year. "Sure - the drawn figures are more abstract than real people, they are more ideas than real life. But just so they can have a content much better transport than an actor or a person in an interview. I honestly does not matter whether a Documentation in the classic sense, "she says. "This film shows something that all Israelis know," says Daniella - the military, feel the need to defend itself. And what happens when a society displaces the question of what the permanent state of war in the human causes.

This movie just had to be made, says the fast-Chefanimator of Oscar-winner Yoni Goodman. "Had we not done that, it would have made someone else soon. All the soldiers who were at war, dragging them with him."

Many Bezalel students dare not, films or other art to produce the political, the opinion. "It goes so far, Dotan said," that many of my friends just make films in English. Once something in Hebrew, it is political. I believe that some of it are afraid their own language to use. This movie shows exactly that is what we have to do. "

Each performance is sold out

Jerusalem, Cinematheque, in December 2008. Outside it is dark and cold, on the cinema screen end credits of "Waltz with Bashir." The hall is packed to the rafters. Nobody comes in, nobody speaks. On the ceiling go gently the lamps. A pair of sneaks to the exit, most of them remain seated. Somewhere someone is crying.

The film is already in Israel for months, but still is almost sold out every idea. The film takes the people who presses them into the chair - they sit there and not move anymore. After an animated film.