THE GARDEN THAT FLOATED AWAY (IDA FINK)
A film by Ruth Walk / Israel 2005
Produced by Yael Perlov
Duration: 54 minutes
Languages: Hebrew, Polish
The film The “Garden that Floated Away” is about Ida Fink, one of Israel's greatest living authors who writes in Polish and has been widely translated. In her clear, distilled language, her books tell about the years of the Holocaust, touching upon its horror yet never relinquishing refinement and beauty. The film is inspired by Ida’s extremely modest way of life. Among other things it covers her moving from the house she has lived in and worked for 45 years into a new neighborhood, a new future - to live with her sister, for the first time after the war, when they wandered and survived together.
Movie Review:
The film “The Garden that Floated Away” is a compilation of rare moments of wisdom and soul in the strength of a character, so much so, that even when she selects a scarf or lipstick, the result on screen is virtually poetic...” Ran Bin Nun / Kol Israel, Reshet B
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CHAPTERS IN MY LIFE (EMUNAH YARON)
A film by Ruth Walk / Israel 2006
Produced by Yael Perlov
Duration: 30 minutes
Languages: Hebrew
In 1970, after the death of her father – Nobel prize-winning author S.Y. Agnon – Emunah Yaron realized that she had been entrusted with a mission: to publish all of her father’s handwritten manuscripts, which had been hidden away. She devoted her life to his oeuvre, publishing 15 volumes, which have since been translated to 38 languages. Only when this work was completed, at the age of 81, did she find the time for her own writing.
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NOT FAR FROM THE CENTER OF TOWN (ORLY CASTEL BLUM)
A film by Ruth Walk / Israel 2007
Produced by Yael Perlov
Duration: 52 minutes
Languages: Hebrew
Orly Castel Blum began to write 2 days after her father’s death. “I was studying cinema. They threw me out of school claiming I was odd. By doing so, they ruined and changed and saved my life. I took it hard. At the age of 23 I was kicked out, I married quickly, gave birth quickly, my father died quickly, and I began to write. It was a refuge from reality.” Today Orly Castel Blum tries to set her aims: stop worrying about money, finish her book, and move to a place with a garden in the heart of the city.
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THINGS HAPPEN (AGI MISHOL)
A film by Ruth Walk / Israel 2008
Produced by Yael Perlov
Duration: 56 minutes
Languages: Hebrew
Orly Castel Blum began to write 2 days after her father’s death. “I was studying cinema. They threw me out of school claiming I was odd. By doing so, they ruined and changed and saved my life. I took it hard. At the age of 23 I was kicked out, I married quickly, gave birth quickly, my father died quickly, and I began to write. It was a refuge from reality.” Today Orly Castel Blum tries to set her aims: stop worrying about money, finish her book, and move to a place with a garden in the heart of the city.
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NO GNOMES WILL APPEAR (SARA SHILO)
A film by Ruth Walk / Israel 2010
Produced by Yael Perlov
Duration: 55 minutes
Languages: Hebrew
“Reality takes shape in my story while I am writing, it guides the story. I am very scattered when I write. My work is “unconscious”. When I try.. ”I have no idea what I’m doing”.. I don’t know more than I know. You’re within something, the characters take you, you don’t know where. And I didn’t know so many things. I wrote letters to the characters “Where are you, where did you go”? The characters guided me.”
Sara Shilo lives in Kfar Vradim. Maalot is right in front of her, where she lived for 16 years. She has four children,. She lives between “below and above”. Below is where the family is, where she loves to be a “homemaker”. Above - the writing. Most of her life she was a kindergarten teacher in Maalot. She didn’t go to university because of an attention deficit disorder. And because of that same disorder, she cannot think in terms of a plot. Instead of writing in sequence she writes in fragments.
Movie Review:
t has been a long time since I saw a film about a writer that conveys with such precision and depth the feeling that writing is life itself as in Ruth Walk's film about the author Sara Shilo. Sara Shilo is, in my opinion, one of the best authors who currently write in Hebrew, and Walk's film wondrously depicts her complexity as a person and a writer. David Grossman
