Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie recently interviewed Yaron Shamir the Festival Director for the Haifa International Film Festival. What follows is part of that interview.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Can you tell us a little about the festival?
Yaron Shamir (YS): Haifa is the biggest film festival in Israel. Haifa, which is a special city in the Israeli atmosphere because it’s a city where really all religions coexist in peace. It’s very different from Jerusalem. That’s because in Haifa, there is nothing holy.
(UM): There’s nothing holy?
(YS): Nothing holy. So, people are not killing each other about holy things. This is Haifa. The festival lasts for 10 days. It’s always in the Hebrew holiday of Sukkot.
(UM): What is the selection process like, do programmers make the final decisions?
(YS): No, we have a committee. Some of the decisions I take, but there’s room for other people and other tastes. It cannot be only my taste in the festival. It’d be a very bad [festival] if it was like that. If there is a film that everybody agrees on that’s the easiest. If the film [elicits] split opinions, then sometimes we fight a little bit.
(UM): How do you define a good movie?
(YS): For myself, what I like in the cinema, in art in general, is something that challenges me. Something that I have to climb in order to understand, to figure it out. I don’t like easy films.
[As a festival director] I can [separate my taste], I can see a film is good for the audience [of Haifa]. I think that a good film for the festival is a film that I know will have an audience at the festival. Sometimes things are more hardcore. I know that it’s important to screen them for film, for film history, and to support them, but I know that maybe a small number of people will enjoy the film.
(UM): You mentioned Haifa is a diverse city with different religions living peacefully. Diversity is a hot topic at festivals, can you speak on it for Haifa in programming?
(YS): I think that diversity is very important. But you have to build diversity from the foundations, from the basic of the pyramid. You have to facilitate the industry for people who didn’t have access. But on top, when you get the films, the ideal situation is that you get the film and you don’t know who is behind it. You don’t know if it’s a boy, if it’s a girl, if it’s black or white… It shouldn’t interest you. You only have to see the art. I think that if you are doing biased decisions to make quotas of representation, you are betraying your role as someone who is sitting at the gate.
I see my role as allowing the audience of my festival to watch the best films that are done in a [given] year from around the world. Now, of course, this selection process shouldn’t have any prejudice regarding gender, sexual orientation, race, etcetera. Because then, you are also betraying your role.
You always have to remember that you are someone whom [the festival audience] trusts. They trust you because most of the films in the festival are not commercialized, so they don’t have any trailers/previews, and they don’t have stars. They say, “Okay, we trust you that you brought us a good film.” Now, if I will tell them, no, you look, it’s not such a good film but it talks about, I don’t know, “dogs,” and it’s very important to talk about “dogs.” They are just going to say, “Okay, we are not in class, we want to watch a good film.” But, if “dogs” are not talked about a lot in films, and it is a good film, that’s a plus. Because it’s important to give space to topics, ethnic minorities, and genders that were not represented.
(UM): Suppose that I am a filmmaker, and I give to your festival a very controversial movie on a very controversial topic. For example, I’m making a movie that goes against abortion. Would you program it?
(YS): If it’s art. If it’s not a propaganda film, yes.
(UM): You don’t have any topics you won’t screen?
YS: I will not screen [a film] in the festival that directly asks people to take violent action against somebody [or the] public. I will not screen films that are pure propaganda from either side simply because it’s not interesting. It’s propaganda, it’s not art. But, if somebody who is against abortion [makes] a film which is a work of art, and you will try to expose, to tell the world why through the story of the film, why the abortion is hurting people. Because there are a lot of people in the United States. Not all of them are crazy Trump supporters.
I think that’s everything in being human. Not only a festival director has to be open to listening to other people’s thoughts, and especially other people’s pain. Because if you say, “This is primitive,” in the end, it rebounds, it comes back at you because you don’t give it space now.
The best we can do, or the best I can do in my role, is to try to assess if the film has any artistic value. If it is something that people can look at and will make them think, will make them emotional about something.
(UM): How do you get acquainted with films for your festival?
(YS): Usually it’s very simple. You go to a film festival, you watch films and then you find out who the distributors are and you invite the film.
(UM): What about, for example, indie filmmakers who don’t have any kind of distributor, did you accept or—
(YS): We accept. I can tell you we don’t close the door when we don’t charge a fee for the selection process. From my experience, most of the good films, that are worth considering films, are bought by European distributors. But, of course, there are always surprises.
(UM): How important is a crowd-pleaser?
(YS): I can accept a crowd-pleasing movie. But on the other hand, I want it to be a festival film. I won’t screen Top Gun. There are enough cinemas that will screen Top Gun. You have to give this the festival to art-house cinema.
We screen studio films. We screened Blade Runner 2049. Even opened the festival with it. There are crowd-pleasers which are quality films. It doesn’t have to be always a contradiction between quality and crowd-pleasing. It’s not a necessary contradiction.
(UM): Okay. I just have this question, because of my background from Iran. I know that some Iranian films have been invited to your festival, and at the last minute they decided they cannot be in the competition because of political pressure.
(YS): No. It’s not like that. We love Iranian films in Israel. The Iranian films that we screened were bought by European distributors and they thought they could give us the films without making it difficult for the film directors or producers. Because if they live in Iran, and the film is screened in Israel, it’s very problematic for them. We don’t want to do harm to anybody. But usually, the distributor themselves tell us, “This film, it’s an Iranian film that you can get or you can’t get.” We don’t approach usually directly Iranian filmmakers, especially those who live in Iran.
We never had an Iranian film that agreed to be screened and was pulled out because of political reasons. We had it with other countries. Arab countries, but not with Iran, or Iranian filmmakers.
(UM): Do you have a vision for the festival in the next 10 years?
(YS): My vision is that I want to create a place where people who are lovers of good cinema could come and have the best possibilities to watch the best films in the best atmosphere. Especially after the Corona years, when people didn’t go out. Now there is a number of people who don’t go to the cinema. Commercial cinema is going down all the time. It’s important that people go out for a festive event to watch films on a screen. I think if we will achieve that, then we will be able to enlarge our audiences, that’s enough.
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