Israeli cinema was long an embarrassment. Cheap sex comic melodramas were the norm in the 1960s and 1970s. Called "bourekas films" – the Israeli equivalent of spaghetti Westerns – they dealt with ethnic stereotypes of European and Middle Eastern Jews.
“In the 1970s, Israeli audiences began to abandon home-grown cinema. First were the intellectual scholars, and then the rest of the population followed suit. By the 1980s, the situation was so bad that only a few thousand people were watching Israeli movies. It was rare for a local film to be successful in Israel; and no Israeli films were shown abroad.”
Sick of those bad quality movies, a group of Israeli moviemakers created an Israeli national movie fund in 1979, hopefully named the "Israeli Fund to Encourage Quality Films.”
Then Minister of Education and Culture formed a governmental committee to examine the matter. The decision was to establish a new national, independent film school, partially funded by the government.
That was in the summer of 1989. Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School was founded.
“At our school, we weren’t going to ask how to make a good movie, but rather how to reach the viewer – how to fill the air with electricity; how to make Israeli film sexy; and how to move the viewer to tears, laughter, excitement, tension.”
Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel Film and Television School saved Israel’s film industry and propelled it to international acclaim.
In the 1990s, Israeli cinema came of age in many ways. The expanded population and economy, along with a less defensive, insular perspective of Israeli society, have contributed to an explosion in both the quantity and quality of films.
Since then, Israel has emerged as a surprising powerhouse in the foreign film industry. Giving the fact that Israel has been nominated for more Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film than any other country in the Middle East.
However, many Israelis stopped going to domestic films at the time of the bourekas movies, and continue reflexively to avoid local productions. Others see all films as ambassadors, and thus want them to represent Israel in the best light possible.
it's an indication to the renaissance of Israeli cinema, which has grown from a fledgling industry with poor cinematography and low box office sales to a darling of world film festivals. That's in spite – or perhaps because – of the country's troubled international reputation, due to its lengthy conflict with the Arab world.
