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Post by The Ultimate Nullifier on Sept 21, 2014 17:30:50 GMT -6
variety.com/2014/film/news/avraham-heffner-veteran-israeli-director-dies-at-79-1201310253/TEL AVIV – Veteran director Avraham Heffner, one of the most enduring presences in the Israeli Film Industry, died on Friday at the age of 79. The Haifa-born helmer, who was honored in 2004 by the Israeli Academy of Film and Television with an Ophir Award for Lifetime Achievement, got his feet wet in the Israeli film industry as a writer and actor. Trained in French literature at the Sorbonne, he made his directorial debut in 1967 by adapting a Simone de Beauvoir story into the short film “Le’at Yoter” (Slow Down), which earned him a Silver Lion for best short at the Venice Film Fest. The film, which critics in Israel point to as marking a new era in Israeli filmmaking, broke away from the shlocky burekas films and Zionist tropes that had filled earlier Israeli films and instead showed a new focus on emotion and fully-fledged characters. He made his first full-length feature, “But Where is Daniel Wax?,” in 1972. That film, which follows an Israeli singer coming home to the Holy Land, is regarded to some as the greatest Israeli film as all time. Heffner also waded into the world of made-for-TV movies, creating in 1988 the television film “Eretz K’tana, Ish Gadol” (Small Country, Big Man), a hard look at the enduring myths of Zionism; and he served for many years as a lecturer and then professor emeritus at the Tel Aviv University School of Film and Television.
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