Draft:Ran Tal

Ran Tal (born 1963) is an Israeli documentary film director whose documentaries focus on Israeli reality through an historic social perspective.

Among the films he created are "1341 Frames of Love and War", "Ehud Barak on War and Peace ", "The Museum ", "The Garden of Eden " and "Children of the Sun".

Tal films were part of the major film festivals in the world, including Berlinale, Telluride, IDFA, Hot Docs, Toronto International Film Festival, and many more. Tal won the Ophir Award, the Jerusalem Film Festival Volgin Award, the Docaviv Film Festival Award, the Forum for the Preservation of Audio Visual award and the Documentary Forum award. Tal also won the Ministry of Culture Cinema Art prize and the Mifal HaPais Landau Award for Stage Art.

Tal is the head of the MFA documentary film program at the Tish Film School, Tel Aviv University, and teaches cinema at the Film Departments at Sapir academic College. He is the founder and editor of Takriv (Close Up)' online magazine for discussion and critique of documentary film (with Anat Even).

Biography and Filmography
Tal grew up in Kibbutz Beit HaShita in Northern Israel. Graduated the Tel Aviv University Department of Film in 1994. In 1996 he directed the short film Skin Deep (Malka Lev Adom) with Etgar Keret. Since then, Tal is focusing on documentaries.

1341 Frames of Love and War (2022) 90 min.
For a year and a half, acclaimed photo-journalist Micha Bar-Am allowed director Ran Tal access to his vast archive of negatives. Composed entirely of images that Bar-Am took over the course of more than fifty years, 1341 FRAMES OF LOVE AND WAR reveals the enormous price that comes with documenting atrocities and wars. Born in Berlin in 1930, Bar-Am found his vocation as a new immigrant in Israel in the early 1950s. His photographs depict images of the struggles of a new nation and its ongoing wars and conflicts, as well as personal images of his family in the most private of moments. The events and wars he tenaciously chased turned into iconic images through his Leica camera. He became a member of the celebrated Magnum collective, co-founded the International Center of Photography in New York with Cornell Capa, and his photographs graced countless covers of the world's major magazines - The New York Times, Time Magazine, Stern, Paris Match and more. At the age of 91, Bar-Am looks at his photographs with new questions, wondering aloud why he photographed, what the photography means, and what happened to the Israeli enterprise. Awards: DocAviv, Israeli Documentary Forum, UK Jewish film festival, Warsaw Jewish film festival, Atlanta Jewish film festival, Center Film Festival.

Ehud Barak on War and Peace (2021) 85 min.
78-year-old Ehud Barak is the controversial former prime minister of Israel, decorated and criticized commander on the battlefield, and one of the leading figures of the Zionist movement. He is also the initiator of Israel's plan to assassinate Yasser Arafat. In this film, Barak observes with disillusioned clarity his own history and the history of the State of Israel. 20 years after the failure of the 2000 Camp David summit, Barak looks back on his life and analyzes the Israeli reality with a critical eye.

The Museum (2017) 74 min.
Housing one of the world's greatest collections of art and antiquities, the Israel Museum poses for its own complex portrait in this elegant observational documentary, revealing its central role in the complicated history of the nation. Sitting high on the brow of a Jerusalem hill directly opposite the Knesset, the sprawling institution—now more than half a century old—contains nearly half a million objects, from the Dead Sea Scrolls to Crusader armor to masterpieces by Rembrandt and Marc Chagall. The Film is wisely constructed as a set of loose encounters with its human inhabitants. We eavesdrop on the curators, museum guards, archaeological conservators, visiting schoolchildren, and even the resident rabbi, who together form a kaleidoscopic picture of the way art, history and national destiny intersect in the galleries. Awards: Toronto JFF, The Israeli Documentary Forum

The Garden of Eden (2012) 74 min.
The story of Gan HaShlosha, better known as Sakhne, one of the largest, most famous and most visited parks in Israel. Director Ran Tal uses unique cinematic means to express the plethora of conflicted elements of the Israeli soul. Through expansive humor, beauty and pain, the film provides its viewers with an original and piercing look at Israeli society in the most unexpected location. Awards: Jerusalem Fim festival, The Israeli Documentary Forum, MiradasDoc festival.

Gitai in Search of his Carmel (2009) 50min.
Director Amos Gitai is known not only for his thought-provoking films and the global acclaim he has accrued over his thirty years as a filmmaker, but for the unique and unconventional manner in which he shoots his films. For six weeks the film "Gitai in Search of His Carmel" follows the production of his most recent film "Carmel" and provides a fascinating glimpse into Gitai's work process.

Born Again (2008) 50 min.
After surviving a long illness which nearly put an end to his life, author Yoram Kaniuk wrote his book Between Life and Death. The film follows Yoram Kaniuk for six weeks as he tries to recover from the illness.

Children of the Sun (2007) 70 min.
The children of the first Kibbutzim were born in the early 20th century to youthful parents and were destined to become the "New Man". They were educated in an ideological society that aspired to replace the traditional family unit with the collective. The film is a collage comprised of over eighty amateur films and rare footage shot in kibbutzim between 1930-1980. The tapestry of materials from which the film is compiled creates both a very personal and very public portrait, a sort of super-story about one of the most fascinating myths of the Zionist movement in Israel. Awards: Jerusalem Film Festival, Israel Academy, The Israeli Documentary Forum, Warsaw Jewish Film Festival.

My Dream House (2005) 57 min.
Tracking the stories of four families trying to build their "dream house", the movie provides a glimpse into Israel's conflicted history in which everyone was, or has become, a refugee. Through their physical, financial and family difficulties, every family comes to acknowledge that at the heart of their dream lies at least one demolished house. Only by accepting this will they be able to build their true "dream house". Awards: DocAviv.

Non-White Jews (2000) 50 min.
The story of several immigrants from Ethiopia 15 years after coming to Israel.

Prostheses (1999) 30 min.
A freestyle piece centered around the scientific attempt to manufacture replacements for damaged human limbs.

67 Ben Tsvi Road (1998) 46 min.
67 Ben Tsvi Road is the address of the only institute of Forensic Medicine in Israel. 2,500 bodies arrive at the institute every year for inquiry as to the cause of death. Needless to say, the bodies sent for autopsy did not die of natural causes. The violence inherent in Israeli society erupts in practically every scene. And in this regard the institute acts as a cruel mirror, placed in the most unflattering light possible. It is a mirror that is perhaps difficult to look into, but it is impossible all the same not to be mesmerized by the reality it reflects. Awards: Chicago Film festival.

Skin Deep (1996) 35 min
Skin Deep (Malka Lev Adom) is a tragicomedy about a born loser who will do anything to prove that his destiny is wrong. A story of a hopeless romantic who wants to surprise his loved one with a tattoo on his left arm bearing her name, and who ends up by surprising her in bed with another lover. Now he has two options: abandon his belief in an eternal love or find another girl with the same name. Awards: Israeli Film Academy, International Film Festival Cinema Jove, Corto Imola Festival

Merchant of Feelings (1994) 35 min.
A rare portrait of one of the greatest Israeli film directors of the 70's, George Ovadia, just a few years before his death.

The Last Photograph: Ran Tal After Micha Bar-Am. Curator - Dr. Noam Gal. Tel Aviv Museum (2022)
The Last Photograph is a first-of-its-kind exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in which a documentary film is disassembled and re-edited into a multi-channel video installation where viewers can move around freely. The art exhibition as a curatorial form meets the cinematic medium, with the museum offering itself as an experimental platform for a new creative collaboration. In this instance, artist Micha Bar-Am, the father of Israeli photojournalism, opened his archive comprising fifty years of activity to award-winning filmmaker Ran Tal, and the intergenerational encounter spawned a documentary film made up entirely of still photographs that appear consecutively to the sounds of Tal's poignant conversations with Micha and Orna Bar-Am.

Years of Promise and Rejection. Anu - Museum of the Jewish People (2020)
Between the two world wars, a new, multifaceted culture flourished throughout the Jewish world which was, for the most part, of a modern and secular nature. In this new culture Jewish sources converged with the wealth offered by universal culture. It included literature and philosophy, works in diverse fields of art, a variety of languages and an abundant culture of entertainment and recreation. This flurry of activity blossomed, however, in a world where hyper-nationalist and fascist ideologies had begun brewing, spearheaded by the Nazi movement in Germany.

Jewish Time. Anu - Museum of the Jewish People (2016)
Shot for the new wing of the Museum of the Jewish People. Three short films examine modern Jewish prayer and the changing role of the synagogue in the life of the individual and the community.