WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Israel/France, etc, 2008)Wednesday, 25th March 2009Mini Season Presentation - Not part of the main season.
Directed by Ari Folman from his own screenplay. In Colour. Animation by Bridgit Folman Film Gang.
Music: Max Richter. Length: 90 mins. With the voices of interviewees Ori Sivan, Ronny Dayag, Shmuel Frenkel, Professor Zahava Solomon.
Ari Folman’s film from Israel portrays his own real life discovery of repressed memories linked to the war with Lebanon. Animation has rarely been used so powerfully and so seriously.
“Fascinating and often electrifying... extraordinary ****” – The Guardian.
WALTZ WITH BASHIR. Our second programme in the Mini Season brings to Eastbourne the much acclaimed Israeli film Waltz With Bashir and here, despite the fact that this is an animated feature, the writer/director link is even more important because the real-life story told by the film is autobiographical. Waltz With Bashir reveals how the film-maker Ari Folman years after the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 finally came to terms with his own involvement after unknowingly blocking out of his memory much of the detail of his participation in the Lebanon war. Haunted by disturbing dreams and able to talk to friends, journalists and other participants in the war, Folman was at last able to recognise the repression which was part of a condition known as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We hear the voices of those who helped Folman to face the truth at last and this might have been presented as a standard documentary. Instead, following such serious animated films as the classic Animal Farm and the recent Persepolis, Folman chose to present it using animation and in doing so has made an extraordinary film as powerful as any ever created in this medium.
