9 Star Hotel (2007)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 1H 18M
Director : Ido Haar
Synopsis
Slipping through the predawn darkness over highways, through traffic and across the border, Palestinian construction workers go to work clandestinely in Israel every day. Haar's raw, handheld photography follows workers who build their own border shanty community to enter Israel more easily, with no choice but to risk their lives simply to earn a living.
Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.
In 1976, four hijackers take over an Air France airplane en route from Tel Aviv to Paris and force it to land in Entebbe, Uganda. With 248 passengers on board, one of the most daring rescue missions ever is set in motion.
An Israeli counterterrorism soldier with a secretly fabulous ambition to become a Manhattan hairstylist. Zohan's desire runs so deep that he'll do anything -- including faking his own death and going head-to-head with an Arab cab driver -- to make his dreams come true.
Sudan, East Africa, 1980. A team of Israeli Mossad agents plans to rescue and transfer thousands of Ethiopian Jews to Israel. To do so, and to avoid raising suspicions from the inquisitive and ruthless authorities, they establish as a cover a fake diving resort by the Red Sea.
During the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, eleven Israeli athletes are taken hostage and murdered by a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. In retaliation, the Israeli government recruits a group of Mossad agents to track down and execute those responsible for the attack.
Under the rule of King David, Israel is united and prosperous although surrounded by enemies including Egypt and its allies. The aging King David favors his younger son, Solomon, as his successor, but David's elder son Prince Adonijah, a warrior, declares himself King. When David learns of this, he publicly announces Solomon to be his successor. Adonijah and Joab, his general, withdraw in rage. Israel prospers under King Solomon's wise and benevolent rule and is seen as a threat to more tyrannical monarchs in the region. The Pharaoh of Egypt agrees to cede a Red Sea port to the Queen of Sheba in a plot to undermine Solomon's rule. Sheba is to seduce Solomon and introduce Sheban pagan worship into Jerusalem. Meanwhile, Prince Adonijah, now banished, also conspires with Pharaoh and is given an army to defeat Solomon. The film is a highly fictionalized dramatization of events depicted in The Bible -- First Kings chapter 10 and Second Chronicles chapter 9.
In Israel, a joint French-Israeli scientific mission is set to unearth the secrets of the hill of Kiryath-Jearim (or Kiryat Ya’arim), converted to the site of a Catholic convent, where, according to the Bible, the Ark of the Covenant was kept for at least twenty years before being brought to Jerusalem by King David, father of King Solomon, who would eventually build the Holy of Holies inside the First Temple to house it.
When a couple of American young adults fly to Israel to visit the city of Jerusalem, a biblical nightmare falls upon the city.
An account of the reign of Herod the Great, king of Judea under the rule of the Roman Empire, remembered for having ordered, according to the Gospel of Matthew, the murder of all male infants born in Bethlehem at the time of the birth of Jesus, an unproven event that is not mentioned by Titus Flavius Josephus, the main historian of that period.
An American ambassador to Israel tries to bring peace to the Middle East conflict through unconventional methods, but his efforts are hampered at every turn and his personal life threatened.
Eyal, an Israeli Mossad agent, is given the mission to track down and kill the very old Alfred Himmelman, an ex-Nazi officer, who might still be alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide, he befriends his grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister Pia. The two men set out on a tour of the country, during which Axel challenges Eyal's values.
In the first century, after the death of Herod the Great, Judea goes through a long period of turbulence due to the actions of the corrupt Roman governors and the internal struggles, both religious and political, between Jewish factions, events that soon lead to the uprising of the population and a cruel war that lasts several years and causes thousands of deaths, a catastrophe described in detail by the Romanized Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus.
A Canadian doctor finds her sympathies sorely tested while working in the conflict ravaged Palestinian territories.
Two young men, one Israeli and one Palestinian, discover they were accidentally switched at birth.
Haim-Aaron is a bright, ultra-orthodox religious scholar living in Jerusalem. His talents and devotion are envied by all. One evening, following a self-imposed fast, Haim-Aaron collapses and loses consciousness. The paramedics announce his death, but his father takes over resuscitation efforts and, beyond all expectations, Haim-Aaron comes back to life. After the accident, try as he might, Haim-Aaron remains apathetic to his studies. He feels overwhelmed by a sudden awakening of his body and suspects this is God testing him. He wonders if he should stray from the prescribed path and find a way to rekindle his faith... The title means "Rectify" in Hebrew; nevertheless the movie is called Tikkun in the English-speaking world.
A short documentary about urban planning and the harmonisation of old and new building elements in Jerusalem of the 1970's, led by the architect Moshe Safdie.
Can a house be a metaphor for Arab-Jewish relations in Israel? Amos Gitai returns to the house in West Jerusalem he profiled in 1980. He interviews members of the Jewish families who live there, and he talks with the Arab family who lived in the house until 1948. They are now in East Jerusalem and pay a nearly furtive visit to the street in front of their old house. Gitai also interviews Palestinian laborers at work on renovations and excavating an old tunnel to the Holy Mount. What do people think of each other, what do they think of Israel, what do they think of co-existence? Do the current residents know the house's history?
Produced by CBN Documentaries and Biblical Productions, "In Our Hands" tells the story of the Battle of Jerusalem in the Six-Day War through the eyes of the IDF's 55th Paratrooper Brigade
Its main focus is on the plight of the Palestinians which can be seen as the most enduring residue of the modern encounter between the Arabs and the West. Edward Said traces the course of European involvement with the Near East via the Crusades to Napoleon's campaign in Egypt and the French and English entrepreneurs, adventurers and empire builders who came in his wake.
A comedy based on NBC's "People Are Funny" radio (and later television) program with Art Linkletter with a fictional story of how the program came to be on a national network from its humble beginning at a Nevada radio station. Jack Haley is a producer with only half-rights to the program while Ozzie Nelson and Helen Walker are the radio writers and supply the romance. Rudy Vallee, always able to burlesque himself intentional and, quite often, unintentional, is the owner of the sought-after sponsoring company. Frances Langford, as herself, sings "I'm in the Mood for Love" while the Vagabonds quartet (billed 12th and last) chimes in on "Angeline" and "The Old Square Dance is Back Again."
At the height of Reign of Terror Maximilien Robespierre orchestrates the trial and execution of several of his fellow leading French revolutionaries including Georges Danton.
Produced in 1943 under the guidance of Army Air Force Lieutenant Clark Gable, this film follows a single 8th Air Force B-17 crew from training through a series of missions over Europe.
Letters, Riddles and Writs is a one act opera for television by Michael Nyman broadcast in 1991.
Iskyss is a strong and poetic love story based on Gunvor Galtung Haavik’s double life through 30 years. During the Cold War, she was employed by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and assigned to the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. With the information she had access to in the capacity of her position as interpreter and secretary, she frequently fed the KGB secret information.
A girl has to decide who to marry: a poor country boy or a rich nightclub owner.
Moody, atmospheric ghost story starring Mason as a retired tradesman who purchases an old mansion that has been vacant for 40 years because it is believed to be haunted by the spirit of a young woman who had died there. Unaware of the mansion's reputation, Mason and his wife Mullen move in and hire a young woman, Lockwood, to keep house. Soon after Lockwood's arrival, strange things begin to happen in the household, and it becomes apparent that she is possessed by the spirit of the dead girl, though Mason scoffs at the idea. On death's door and bedridden, Lockwood asks for the same doctor who treated the woman who died 40 years ago. He arrives and treats her. The next morning Lockwood is cured, and it is revealed by the police that the doctor's dead body was found in his carriage hours before the time Mason claims he arrived to see Lockwood. Convinced that not only the ghost of the girl but that of the doctor as well entered his home, Mason finally believes in the supernatural.
A loving couple struggle to fend for themselves in modern day Los Angeles, One a loner and down and out, the other a lonely but hardworking secretary. Eventually, as cracks form in their passionate relationship, they resort to robbing an aging actress for money.
A filmmaker returns to Normandy thirty years after a working on a movie based on a local homicide and tries to find the actors who worked on the project.
This is not merely another film about cinema history; it is a film about the love of cinema, a journey of discovery through over a century of German film history. Ten people working in film today remember their favourite films of yesteryear.
The story of the Dassau family, a family of artists: Frau Dassau is a composer, her husband is a writer, and their children are equally gifted as painters, poets and musicians. But unfortunately, no one wants to invest money in their art. The family is about to starve when Nicole comes up with a marvelous idea: She is going to write the "most scandalous book", the sex memoirs of a teenager. For this, she hides under the pseudonym of Eva. The book becomes an enormous success indeed, but Nicole's parents are decent people, and the public interest in their sluttish daughter begins to bother them. Things begin to get even more unpleasant when Nicole falls in love with an American publisher who'd prefer a virgin…
Four nights in Caracas. A documentary essay about chaos and civilization.
On Christmas Eve, Léa and Juliette, a couple, want to rob a supermarket that Juliette knows is empty of surveillance on this festive evening. But, as much for each of them as for Eric, the vigil who is there after all, nothing will happen as planned. Besides, shortly before leaving him alone, the store manager gave Eric a gun, just in case.
While Douglas Coupland works on a grand art project about Canada, the writer recounts his life and his musings about the various aspects of Canadian identity.
I love Vienna is a social comedy that explores the clash of cultures and values.
Based on a story by Vietnam veteran Paul Staples, the film concerns six American Green Berets, held for 17 years in a Vietnamese POW camp. They are finally released in secret, during a delicate trade-talk session between Vietnam and the United States. Captain Tom Watkins, the ex-prisoners' CO, begins to suspect that government-man Adam Roth, who is in charge of the debriefing, may be pursuing a hidden agenda that will result in the early deaths of Watkins and the five men under his command.
A humorous and satirical comedy, which places a man from the year 2222 one day in the (then) present day life in GDR, East Germany under Communist regime. Using a crystal for mind reading he uncovers some improprieties and moral weaknesses in the "Beautiful future" professed by VEB ("Volkseigener Betrieb" – "State Owned Holdings").
The subject of this historical drama is a splintering Berlin in the years of 1948 and 1949. Played against the backdrop of social upheaval, the characters in the drama come to epitomize the best and worst of each pole of the political sphere. A 17-year-old hoodlum by the name of Gladow works hand-in-glove with a local white-collar criminal to rob and pillage every day and night, defying capture. While he and his gang of thugs are terrorizing the people of Berlin, the Soviets are trying to make the blockade of their region of control impermeable. The future casts long shadows over the drama, as Berlin's problems take the shape of times to come.
KNOW YOUR MUSHROOMS follows uber myco visionaries Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans (two of the more expert and unforgettably mercurial characters in the community) as they lead us on a hunt for the wild mushroom and the deeper cultural experiences attached to the mysterious fungi.