During his 12-day visit to the Bay Area that ended last week, Ido Haar never checked out Fisherman’s Wharf or drove down Lombard Street. He was too busy spending time in the dark.
As the San Francisco Film Society’s first artist-in-residence, Haar sat in movie theaters screening films (mostly his own), mentoring and teaching master classes. The experience allowed him to share his knowledge of cinema and expose film students to the Israeli take on Middle East politics.
Haar, 37, whose 2006 documentary “9 Star Hotel” is about Palestinians who sneak into Israel in search of employment, learned a lot as well.
“Many students see behind the conflict and see the universal issues in the film. They talk about the similarities with what happens at the Mexican border. I always see the Israeli relevancy of [my] film. They helped me see a wider picture and learn about what happens here.”
The artist-in-residence program is presented in partnership with the Jacob Burns Film Center with support from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Haar was chosen because of his work in the field of feature documentaries.
In addition to “9 Star Hotel,” that includes his 2004 debut film, “Melting Siberia,” which traces his mother’s quest to reunite with the Russian father who abandoned the family shortly before she was born. Haar also has done extensive work as a film editor, most notably on the Israeli version of the hit HBO series “In Treatment.”
“I was always interested in documentaries,’” says the graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. “I could tell stories about what was all around me, and I didn’t need a crew of 100. I felt more loose and able to try things.”
While in the Bay Area, Haar also visited the Jewish Community High School of the Bay in San Francisco. He says he found the students there “very intelligent. They were very interested in the situation in Israel, and wanted to know more about Israeli policies.”
He is something of a lay expert when it comes to Israel’s border policies with the West Bank.
For “9 Star Hotel” (which played at the S.F. Jewish Film Festival four years ago), he follows the hardscrabble lives of Palestinian day laborers, who work in construction by day building a Modi’in hotel, hide in improvised shacks at night, and constantly dodge cops and border patrols.
Filmed before the completion of Israel’s separation barrier, it’s a sympathetic portrait of the Arab working poor who want little more than to provide for their families.
“In the film there is criticism of the Israeli policy toward illegal Palestinian workers,” Haar says. “In many ways it’s a policy of one eye open, one eye closed. On one hand we chase those people and do not allow them to get inside Israel. On the other hand, we need them to build our houses, so it’s very complicated. Of course it’s political, but just say the name ‘Palestine’ and it becomes political.”
Financed by a government-sponsored film board, Haar says he was never told what to put in or take out of his film, adding that Israeli audiences are “open to hearing different views about what’s going on in Israel, even if it’s not something that shows Israel in the most positive way.”
Haar also learned during his Bay Area visit how much harder a road American documentary filmmakers must climb, compared with their Israeli counterparts.
“I’m proud that my film was funded by the Israeli government. Here it’s very different. I hear a lot about how hard it is to raise money for documentary films.”
The Tel Aviv resident says he was influenced early on by filmmakers such as Woody Allen and Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini.
Haar recently completed editing a documentary for director Jonathan Demme that follows the life of one New Orleans woman post–Hurricane Katrina. It will air on PBS later this year. As for his own work, he is in production on a film about military recruiting around the world.
Judging from Haar’s earlier work, chances are this next film will raise troubling questions about the methodology of the draft and recruitment. That’s just how he rolls.
“Our role, especially documentary filmmakers, is to [examine] things we are disturbed by. When you live in Israel, it’s hard not to be involved in everything that goes on around [you].”