Also this issue: Murder Most Fowl -Howard Altman Primary Care Nurses don’t play second fiddle when it comes to your health. -Jenn Carbin Letters to the Editor

April 24-30, 2003

loose canon

Filmmaker on a Mission

by Bruce Schimmel

"I have a reputation as a fighter," says Israeli-born filmmaker Shuli Eshel on the phone from her home in Chicago in advance of coming to Philadelphia this weekend.

I met Shuli Eshel this summer. The diminutive documentary maker is considerably more petite than Michael Moore -- whose work she loves -- but is just as pushy in pursuing her own vision.

"And what makes my juices flow," says Eshel, "is to tell the story of my people. There's a large part of the Jewish experience that no one knows about."

Eshel, several of whose films were created through the prism of feminism, started her career with a 1975 TV documentary in Israel on abortion, which at the time was illegal. Lawmakers were locked in debate as to whether to legalize choice, and as Eshel tells it, they requested a private showing of her film.

Within days, the deadlock was broken, and abortion was legalized. From then on, Eshel says, she was hooked on the power of the documentary.

Since then, Eshel has told Israel's story through the eyes of women trying to stop war -- Israeli and Palestinian women making peace, together. She's also told the story of women who are deeply enmeshed in the machinery of war, in a film about the lives of women serving in the Israeli army.

And now, Eshel is telling her people's story through the broad canvas of artist Nahum Gutman, a beloved Israeli children's illustrator whose witty sketches continue to delight generations of Israelis.

Gutman, who died in 1980, is for many in Israel a monumental cultural hero. In addition to his illustrations, Gutman's paintings, writings and sculpture formed a foundation for a renewed Hebrew culture in modern Israel.

Eshel will showcase Gutman this weekend -- along with a film (made by director Shiri Shachar) about the Israeli pop phenom known simply as Rita.

Eshel is presenting these films, in part, to demonstrate that there's plenty that is alive, beautiful and fun in the war-torn land. Even under a perennial cloud of conflict -- as the film puts it -- people still dream of peace.

Still, Eshel seems always to be the fighter. She's a filmmaker on a mission, unabashed about using the camera as her personal weapon.

For her, a documentary is "telling a story that exists in reality from my point of view.

"Every documentary has a point of view. Every documentary is a political act whose purpose is to change society."

Says Eshel: "I don't believe in objectivity."

Eshel's next project is a film about Jewish women in American sports.