England,
1987, 170 min
Shown in 1988
CREDITS
- dir
-
Victor Schonfeld
- prod
-
Victor Schonfeld, Jenifer Millstone
- scr
-
Victor Schonfeld
- cam
-
Peter Greenhalgh, Amnon Solomon
- source
-
Schonfeld Productions
- premiere
-
U.S. Premiere
OTHER
Interspersed with popular protest music and theater and extracts of old dramatized documentaries, this film chronicles the passionate vitality of contemporary Israeli life. Shattered Dreams focuses on the destruction of Israel’s dreams of building a progressive, egalitarian society and on the current Israeli struggles for social renewal. Israelis from all classes and backgrounds are attuned to the national identity crisis. They were born or immigrated into a society which inculcated them with high ideals and moral values. After chastening events, such as the Lebanon War and the violent conflict in the occupied territories, where do their feelings lead them? To emigrate? To more social anomie in Israel? To peace with the Palestinians? This film chronicles the passionate vitality of contemporary Israeli life. Responding to profoundly disillusioning developments is for Israelis a remarkably enlivening process. Shattered Dreams is a comprehensive and dramatic portrait of contemporary Israel—a fascinating society wrestling with the fateful questions that will determine is future.
—Victor Schonfeld
FACTOID #134
The 1986 San Francisco International’s Discovering Mike Leigh was the director’s first retrospective in the U.S. According to the San Francisco Examiner, Festival Artistic Director Peter Scarlet compared the then-unknown Leigh to Yasujiro Ozu before his work had achieved international recognition; while the latter director had been considered ’too Japanese’ for global audiences, Leigh was considered ’too British.’
