Sally Kram, Adult Education Chair (Photo by Felicia R. Black)
Israel Presents concluded its two-night celebration of Israeli films with a showing of Eytan Fox’s “Cupcakes.” This comedic story of six very different friends who come together to compete in a European song competition entertained an audience of more than 125 viewers at Tikvat Israel.
Friendships develop among neighbors living in the same apartment complex who spontaneously “write” a song together to support one of them who has been abandoned by her husband. In the course of the film, the friends learn about their authentic selves, and remaining true to themselves in the face of demands by their Israeli sponsors.
Eytan Fox was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as saying, “I wanted to make a feel-good movie.” I became a serious filmmaker, and I was at the Berlin Film Festival a couple of years ago, channel-surfing in my hotel room, and I saw that Eurovision was on. I hadn’t known it was happening. I didn’t know who was representing Israel, and I thought: How could this be? And I started thinking about doing a movie about a bunch of neighbors who were good friends and wrote a song together.”
After the film, viewers gathered in the social hall for cupcakes, popcorn, additional noshes and comments about the film from the event’s moderators. The husband and wife team of Eric Zakim, associate professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of Maryland, and Yael Meroz, a native of Tel Aviv with a strong interest in Israeli culture, facilitated the post-film discussion. She attended Tel Aviv University where she wrote her master’s thesis on the rise of Israeli punk music in the 80’s. Ms. Meroz works as a business analyst for the Department of Energy where she steals a few minutes every day to surf Israeli websites and stay current on Israeli slang and pop culture.
