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The Band's Visit

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The Band's Visit- Bikur Ha-Tizmoret (original)
Directed byEran Kolirin
Written byEran Kolirin
Produced byEhud Bleiberg
Koby Gal-Raday
Guy Jacoel
Eylon Ratzkovsky
Yossi Uzrad
StarringSaleh Bakri
Ronit Elkabetz
Sasson Gabai
Uri Gavriel
CinematographyShai Goldman
Edited byArik Leibovitch
Music byHabib Shadah
Distributed bySony Classics
Release date
19 May 2007
Running time
87 minutes
CountryIsrael/France/United States
LanguagesArabic, English, Hebrew
Box office$14,555,884 (world)[1]

The Band's Visit (Hebrew: ביקור התזמורת - Bikur Ha-Tizmoret) is a 2007 Israeli film directed by Eran Kolirin.

The Band's Visit was Israel's original Foreign Language Film submission for the 80th Academy Awards, but was rejected by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences because it contained over 50% English dialogue.[2] Thus, Israel sent Beaufort instead; Beaufort was finally included in the five final nominees.[3] 'Band's Visit' won eight Israeli Ophir Prizes awarded by the Israeli Film Academy.[4]

Plot

The Alexandria Ceremonial Police Orchestra, consisting of eight men, arrive in Israel from Egypt. They have been booked by an Arab cultural center in Petah Tiqva, but through a miscommunication (Arabic has no "p" sound, and regularly replaces it with "b"), the band takes a bus to Bet Hatikva, a fictional town in the middle of the Negev Desert.[5] There is no transportation out of the city that day, and there are no hotels for them to spend the night in. The band members dine at a small restaurant where the owner, Dina (Ronit Elkabetz) invites them to stay the night at her apartment, at her friends' apartment, and in the restaurant. That night challenges all of the characters.[6]

Acting

Sasson Gabai's characterization and playing of Tawfiq Zacharya was hailed by the critics, who described him as "an actor of real skill, and an artist capable of the deepest understanding of the human condition."[7] During the Israeli Film Academy Awards Ceremony in September 2007, Saleh Bakri, "the band's handsome young trumpet player"[8] thanked his parents and said, "I want to thank my father, who taught me to love mankind, and my mother, who taught me to bear the burden of life in this country and stand strong," he said.

For her role in the movie, critics described Ronit Elkabetz as "wonderful...a kind-hearted lonely heart refusing to wilt in her desert town".[9] During the Israeli Film Academy Awards Ceremony in September 2007, Elkabetz brought a message of reconciliation and hope, and after taking a bow before the film's director, she said to him, "You reminded us of a thing or two that we have already managed to forget. You showed us what would happen if we would stand before each other, Jews and Arabs and look each other in the eye."[3]

Critical reception

File:The Bands visit Bikur Hatizmoret (2007) a2.JPG
The skating rink scene.

The Band's Visit was well received by critics. Rotten Tomatoes reported that 98% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 108 reviews, and gave it a golden tomato for best foreign film of 2008.[10]

Ray Bennett of The Hollywood Reporter named the film the second best of 2007, [11] V.A. Musetto of the New York Post named it the 8th best film of 2007, [11] and both Ella Taylor of LA Weekly [11] and Associated Press film critic David Germain named it the 9th best film of 2007. [12] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times selected it as one of the 20 best films of 2008.[13]

According to Roger Ebert, "The Band’s Visit has not provided any of the narrative payoffs we might have expected, but has provided something more valuable: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty."[14]

The skating rink scene is considered a highlight of the film:[15] "The band's handsome young trumpet player, Khaled, who idolizes jazz icon Chet Baker, encounters the resident Papi (Shlomi Avraham, he), an Israeli nebbish and accompanies him on a blind date at a roller-skating rink. When the local boy proves too awkward to make any advances to his date, the more experienced Egyptian guides him along, wordlessly, but with eloquent gestures."[8]

Language disqualification

Under the rules of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, more than half the dialogue in a foreign film entry must be in the originating country's own language. However, The Band's Visit, whose Egyptian and Israeli characters communicate mainly in broken English, didn't meet the requirement and was disqualified by the Oscar committee. Even so, Sony Pictures, the film's distributor, entered it in the general Oscar categories of best picture, director, screenplay, actor and actress—none of which came through for the film.

"Nobody in Israel thought about the language problem," said Kolirin, who spent four years making the film. When he heard about the adverse American decision, "I was pissed off for a few days, but I've gotten over it," he said during a visit to Los Angeles.[16]

Release dates

France 19 May 2007 (Cannes)
Israel 13 September 2007
United States 18 November 2007 (St. Louis International Film Festival)
Canada 9 September 2007 (Toronto Film Festival)

Awards and nominations

Wins

Nominations

  • Best Art Direction - Award of the Israeli Film Academy
  • Best Cinematography - Award of the Israeli Film Academy
  • Best Editing - Award of the Israeli Film Academy
  • Best Sound - Award of the Israeli Film Academy
  • Best Supporting Actress - Award of the Israeli Film Academy
  • Best Screenplay - European Film Awards
  • Best Performance by an Actor (Sasson Gabai) - Asia Pacific Screen Awards
  • Grand Prix - Flanders International Film Festival

References

  1. ^ http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=bandsvisit.htm Box Office Mojo. Last Retrieved 24 August 2009.
  2. ^ Israeli film wins country's first two European Academy Awards - Haaretz - Israel News
  3. ^ a b http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3452011,00.html
  4. ^ http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3464872,00.html Ynetnews. Culture. Art&Culture. The Band's Visit' wins Tokyo festival' by Merav Yudilovitch 28 October 2007. Retrieved on 4 August 2009.
  5. ^ [1] Baltimore Sun review
  6. ^ Dargis, Manohla (7 December 2007). "Strangers in a Land That's Not So Strange". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  7. ^ http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0299924/board/nest/128592452%7C IMDb Message Boards. Dracher.
  8. ^ a b http://www.jewishjournal.com/arts/article/film_israels_bands_visit_finally_plays_la_20080208/%7C JewishJournal.com. Film: Israel’s ‘Band’s Visit’ finally plays L.A. By Tom Tugend
  9. ^ Ronit Elkabetz bio
  10. ^ "The Band's Visit - Rotten Tomatoes". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 8 February 2008.
  11. ^ a b c "Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2 January 2008. Retrieved 5 January 2008.
  12. ^ David Germain; Christy Lemire (27 December 2007). "'No Country for Old Men' earns nod from AP critics". Associated Press, via Columbia Daily Tribune. Archived from the original on 3 January 2008. Retrieved 31 December 2007.
  13. ^ Ebert, Roger. "Ebert's Top Movies of 2008". Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 9 November 2013.
  14. ^ Ebert, Roger. "The Band's Visit". Retrieved 9 November 2013.
  15. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1032856/%7C IMDB. Bikur Ha-Tizmoret
  16. ^ http://www.jewishjournal.com/arts/article/film_israels_bands_visit_finally_plays_la_20080208/
  17. ^ abs-cbnnews.com, Cinema One Originals movies dominate 10th Cinemanila award rites

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