Sound
Jonathan Bar Giora (born July 8, 1962) is an Israeli composer and pianist. Since 2000, Bar Giora has composed over 150 Israeli films, such as Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi, Time of Favor, Queen Shoshana, You only Die Twice and more. He also worked as a composer, arranger and producer with Israeli performers such as Yossi Banai, Miri Mesika, Shalom Chanoch, Meir Banai, Rita, Riki Gal and many others. Between 2011-2015 Bar Giora served as the head of the soundtrack department at the Sapir Academic College, where we continues to teach as a senior lecturer. He also lectures at Beit Berl's film school and at the Maaleh School of Film and Television. At age 16, Bar Giora started playing Jazz in local clubs. All through the 1980s he played jazz and wrote music-related articles for the local press. In 1990 he staged a one man show "I'd be delighted to meet you after the plague", which he wrote, composed and performed (Director: Shlomo Vazana). A secondary character in that show, Michel Clayderlast, became successful when Bar Giora created "Live Elevator Music". A performance-art show debuted at the 1990 Israel Festival, featuring Clayderlast playing 20-second bits of popular music live inside an elevator (20 seconds being the average time elevator users spend inside). In 1991 he staged Erua Mochi, a rock spectacle presenting a new musical style: "Live Acid". The band, led by Bar Giora, played looped music live in an attempt to reduce fears among live musicians, in a time when increasingly popular electronic and sampled music threatened to wipe all their job opportunities. 1992 was dedicated to Jesse's Carnival, a gloomy cabaret show with singer-songwriter Jonathan Licht. In 1993, Bar Giora created a Fringe theatre show named Entebbe- The Musical with Etgar Keret. Bar Giora composed all of the songs and original score, and the show won first prize at Acco Festival of Alternative Israeli Theatre. In 1994 he created "Sea of Blues"' - an evening of bluesy and jazzy covers to middle eastern hits. The rest of the 90s were dedicated to theater music and TV live performances (Musical Director of Ad Eser, a weekly talk show, and many others). In 1999 he wrote the music for Pgisha Le'eiyn Kets, a special CD dedicated to the poetry of Nathan Alterman, read by Israeli actor Yossi Banai. That same year he composed Joseph Cedar's feature film Time of Favor. It was a first in a series of more than 150 movie scores (TV dramas and documentaries included) which were created by Bar Giora since. In 2018 the Tel Aviv, Jerusalem & Haifa Cinematheques held a special tribute to his musical work for films and television. That same year "Helicon Music" released the album "Themes" , the first anthology of music composed by Bar Giora for the movies. It was the first in a series of over 10 soundtrack albums composed by Bar Giora to be released by "Helicon Music" Early in 2020 the Israeli Andalusian Orchestra Ashdod dedicated a concert to Bar Giora's works titled "Soundtrack of the Heart". Early 2021 saw the release of "Sharim Tfilayla" - an album arranged and produced by Bar Giora, starring some of Israel's leading performers, such as Ninet, Shalom Chanoch, Ester Rada, Miri Mesika, Alon Eder and others.

As he turns 50, filmmaker Pini Schatz sets out to explore his life-long obsession with the band Sparks (the brothers Ron and Russell Mael). Pini charts the impact of Sparks on his life while meeting with fellow Sparks fans, among them famous musicians, in Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Rotterdam and NYC. Structured as a personal quest of the filmmaker to prove that Sparks are the coolest underrated band in the history of popular music, this docu-comedy explores the universal themes of growing old and being an outsider, the importance of art in daily life and the power of non-conformism.

The story of one woman's personal battle for acceptance, but also a portrait of a political movement that has forever affected millions of lives in the Middle East.

The story of Israel's "development towns" in a chilling documentary, as never told before: Testimonials and previously sealed transcripts reveal a method, an ideology and a cruel practice of law enforcement and decision makers behind the "population dispersal" policies in the first two decades of independence. The director's family, like others, was taken to Yeruham, a development town in the Negev desert. Their personal stories recount of the price immigrant-families pay and the price still paid by Israeli society, unwilling to deal head-on with those early years and forgotten towns.

Say Amen is a personal documentary film by David Deri, an Orthodox Jew, who reveals his homosexuality to his parents and siblings. David is the youngest of ten siblings in a close-knit Moroccan-Israeli family. While other nine have all extended the family tree by marrying and having children, David, at twenty-nine, still hasn't brought home a girlfriend, which inspires his family's constant nagging. The confessional film follows David as he takes small steps, gathering courage, and hoping to receive acceptance from his family.

A Jewish detective story in the Alps revolving around the former President of the Jewish Community in Tyrol, Ernst Beschinsky. A man with this name dies twice – once in 1969, in Israel, and a second time in 1987, in Innsbruck. This goes unnoticed, at first. In 2010, when a relative in London leaves a house as inheritance, the question arises both in Israel and in Innsbruck: Who was Ernst Beschinsky really? A true story, told by numerous forged documents and many authentic reports.

Aviva, a hard-working hotel cook in the small northern Israeli town of Tiberias, is on the brink of finally fulfilling her lifelong dream. For years she kept her remarkable writing abilities under wraps, until her sister, Anita, introduces her to Oded, an accomplished novelist. Immediately recognizing Aviva's talent, Oded takes her under his wing, promising to help her achieve greatness. But the journey to greatness effects her life and the lives of her family - her unemployed husband, her trouble children, her unstable mother, and primarily her sister, a funny and sensitive woman who have her own dreams. When Aviva discovered that Oded has other plans for her work, her world collapses.

About 5000 women are murdered every year throughout the world in what are called ‘honor killings’. In many cases, it is relatives, even the parents, of the victim who perpetrate these horrific acts of violence in reaction to what they consider a slight on their honor. This cutting documentary meets the victims of this brutal tradition, and explores the widespread attitudes used to justify these killings.

For the first time, filmmaker Nurith Aviv sits down in front of the camera. As the defenders fall out, her unique life story as the first woman cinematographer in Europe turns out to be the key to her own films.
Looking for Moshe Guez is a personal documentary by Avida Livny: “When I was a 10-year old boy a friend invited me to watch a must-see video that his older brother has rented: a horror film that included nude scenes and violent images of rape and of children being murdered – all in Hebrew. After many years I have found out that this film, which transformed my childhood, is considered by some to be the worst Israeli film ever made, that his director has disappeared, and so have the film reels – and that most likely I am the only person who still remembers it. I have decided that I have no choice but to look for Moshe Guez, the director, and find out his long lost film, The Angel was a Devil…”

The year is 1964. Rachel Brener is one of 3 young Mossad agents teem who caught "THE SURGEON OF BIRKENAU" - a Nazi monster who was never brought to trial in Israel. The official reason was that he was shot to death while trying to escape from Israeli captivity in a safe house somewhere in Europe. 30 years after, the well communicated death story of the monster could be questionable, a small article appears in a local unimportant paper in a small town in Ukraine. Surprisingly the Surgeon is ALIVE and is willing to admit his crimes against the human race and especially the Jews. The 3 older x Mossad agents who are in their late 60th became aware to this unfortunate threatening knowledge. The fact was that the "Surgeon" managed to escape from his guards 30 years ago.

The life of Avihao (Morris Cohen), a television personality with an excessively big mouth, is getting more and more complicated: his mother Sarah (Levna Finkelstein) stopped talking, fell into complete silence and his father does not understand why. Aviv (Oshari Cohen), his beloved former student, unexpectedly becomes the leading candidate in the prime ministerial elections even though no one knows what he has to say. He doesn't give interviews, doesn't talk, doesn't give speeches - he just stays silent all the way to victory, a silence that challenges Avihao to the point of risking his career and his family.

A cineastic journey into the world of Naum Kleiman, one of the most important intellectuals in Russia today. Naum Kleiman, an internationally acclaimed Eisenstein specialist, is the director of the „Musey Kino“, Moscow’s museum of cinema. Since 1989, the „Musey Kino“, has shown previously banned classics of world cinema and Soviet films. Many saw the „Musey Kino“, as Moscow ́s most important intellectual forum. In 2005, the Moscow municipality sold the „Musey Kino’s“ building and it became homeless. In October 2014, the Russian Minister of Culture fired Naum Kleiman as director. In protest, his entire team handed in their resignations. Scenes from iconic movies and interviews with Muscovites of different ages and social backgrounds form a documentary film collage which mirrors Russian reality today.