#ami shavit

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

"The Zone of Interest" (2023): response to a terrible movie review

I don't usually do media criticism, but this "review" of "The Zone of Interest" (2023) has irked me since reading it in March. You'll excuse me whilst I rant about it a bit, ok?

Director Jonathan Glazer’s acclaimed movie “The Zone of Interest” recently won two Oscars — for best international feature film and for sound. Steven Spielberg has declared it to be the best Holocaust film since his own “Schindler’s List” came out in 1993. In his Oscar acceptance speech, Glazer, who is himself Jewish, invoked the Holocaust to criticize Israel’s military actions in Gaza. His speech drew some praise but also criticism from the Jewish community — including from the movie’s executive producer, Danny Cohen. But in some important respects, the film is even more troubling than Glazer’s speech.

Got it. This isn't really about the movie. It's about the fact that Jonathan Glazer dared to criticize the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Gaza. The author of this piece, this hit piece, is Peter Rutland. He's a professor of some sort at "Wesleyan University." As far as I can tell, he's never written a movie review before. He has written some other op-eds for CNN, including at least one acknowledging grievances on both sides of the Gaza conflict. That's actually a more measured statement than you'll see from most pundits these days, so the one-sidedness of this movie review is just confounding.

Let's continue:

The film documents the mundane life of the family of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss (played by Christian Friedel) and his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), while the atrocities themselves are kept out of sight behind the concentration camp wall. It was inspired by the 2014 novel “The Zone of Interest” by Martin Amis, the enfant terrible of English letters whose works use satire as a vehicle for reveling in money, sex and power. What the satiric movie “Saltburn” does for the English upper class, “The Zone of Interest” is doing for National Socialism. While the evil of Nazism is an abstraction in the movie, out of sight and out of mind, viewers are invited to identify with the daily life of the family Höss. The lush images of the film convey an idyllic family life, with an immaculately clean house and bountiful garden. The Nazis loved their children and their pets. They played the piano.

The audience is not being "invited to identify with" the Höss family. We are being invited to pierce through their self-deception. Their existence is not "idyllic." Herr Höss is cheating on his wife. Frau Höss is brittle and mean. The children (the boys at least) are traumatized. The family has material wealth, including a "lush" garden and "immaculately clean house," but that's produced on the backs of slave labor. These are fairly obvious points. Frau Höss's mother understood (which is why she snuck out in the middle of the night), but this is apparently too obscure for Rutland to grasp.

Glazer has explained that his goal was to show that the perpetrators of the Holocaust were not monsters but humans, just like us. It could have happened anywhere: to anyone, by anyone. Viewers are invited to consider that as we go about our mundane lives, evil is taking place somewhere behind a wall, which we chose not to look over.

Yes! That's the point! Atrocities aren't committed by monsters. They're committed by people. Actual people.

But the whole idea of making a Nazi pastoral film is historically misleading and frankly offensive. As Israeli film critic Avner Shavit has pointed out, Glazer has managed to make a film about the Holocaust in which we never see any Jews.

First of all, "the idea of making a Nazi pastoral film" might indeed be "frankly offensive," but art has no obligation to make you feel good about anything. Good art challenges you and forces you to consider strange perspectives. Sometimes it might offend you! Second, why is "the idea of making a Nazi pastoral film" "historically misleading?" The Nazi government had an entire government ministry dedicated to pumping out propaganda, including pastoral films.

The second point (that "Glazer has managed to make a film about the Holocaust in which we never see any Jews") is just boring and tendentious. Peter Rutland, people have multiple senses. No, we don't see any Jews. We hear them. Their suffering is ever present. The film was praised for its sound design, which included and highlighted the horrors being inflicted upon the Jews. Apart from that, yes, Peter Rutland, you actually could make a Holocaust movie without any Jews in it. (Has Peter Rutland seen "Conspiracy" (2001)?) That's called art.

Likewise, in a 45-minute discussion of the film by the cast and crew at the Cannes Film Festival in May, the question of Jews never came up. Instead, producer James Wilson talked about how white racism and colonialism were driven by beliefs “that were very similar to the ideas that were propagated by National Socialism in the 1930s.” An audience member saw connections to the “Don’t say gay” law in Florida.

This point has nothing to do with the movie. Peter Rutland, pedant, is just upset about the statements made during one press conference. Again, this is not a movie review. It's a hit piece.

But the Holocaust happened to the Jews, at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators, and its specificity should not be diluted into a general meditation on the banality of evil.

The Holocaust happened to the Jews. This is not disputed. This movie does not make light of that fact. But Peter Rutland continues, "its specificity should not be diluted into a general meditation on the banality of evil." Why not? No, really. Why not?

Peter Rutland is once again demonstrating that he's angry about Glazer. Instead of complaining directly about Glazer, he's bitching about a movie he clearly doesn't understand. I'm actually questioning whether he understands art at all. The Holocaust "should not be diluted into a general meditation" on things. Really? "Schindler's List" (1993) is a movie about the Holocaust and a meditation on the nature of evil. No movie needs Peter Rutland's permission to be about multiple things at once.

The movie’s conceit is not a particularly clever or original take on history. The fact that the guards had happy moments during their time at the camp was vividly revealed by the photo album of deputy commander Karl-Friedrich Höcker that was donated to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007.

I don't really care for Peter Rutland's thoughts on what's "clever or original." He sounds like a bore and, as explained above, barely seems to understand the nature of art.

Glazer is echoing elements of the “banality of evil” argument laid out in Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” In his 1961 trial, Adolf Eichmann’s defense was that he was just a bureaucrat carrying out orders. But Arendt was wrong. Due to the release of long-hidden tapes that started to become available in the 2010s that the Nazi official made while in exile in Argentina, we now know that Eichman, the chief logistics officer of the Holocaust, was an ideological zealot deeply committed to National Socialism.

Peter Rutland misspelled Eichmann's name. Ha ha.

For some time scholars have studied “banal nationalism”: the expression of national identity in everyday life. But there was nothing banal about the Holocaust. Indeed, the film implies that Höss was just doing his job. But Höss was not just a bored bureaucrat and family man. He was a fanatical Nazi who had joined the party in 1922 and was sent to jail for participating in a political assassination the following year.

What even is the point of these two paragraphs? Peter Rutland realizes that isn't actually Höss on the screen, right? This is a work of fiction. Moreover, this doesn't diminish the point that people committed the Holocaust. People like, yes, Höss. They weren't literal monsters. They were men and women with jobs and families and pets. I went to a museum in Erfurt, Germany, where they built the furnaces for the death camps. They were designed by engineers, built by workers of various types, and then delivered by truck or train by drivers. That's the "banality of evil": regular people mindlessly and unquestioningly performing all the little necessary acts that it takes to produce industrial-scale evil.

People need to be reminded that this capacity for evil can exist inside them. We can't just assume that this evil will never emerge, hope for the best that we can keep it inside. It's always going to be a struggle to control this side of our nature.

“The Zone of Interest” is rather tedious as a film. It barely has a plot, and the conversations and daily routines are repetitious. Several scenes will leave viewers confused, such as the one where Höss finds a jawbone while fishing in the river and drags his kids out of the water. I would not have known what was happening except I had previously read in a review that there are supposedly human remains being dumped in the river.

Peter Rutland's article is rather tedious as a movie review, because it's not a movie review. This man does not understand film.

Likewise, the local girl going out at night to leave food for the camp inmates (based on a true story) will have mystified most of the audience. The scene will have pleased the Polish authorities who helped to produce the film, since it portrays the Poles as helping the Jews. Yes, some Poles did heroically help Jews. But some joined in pogroms, or betrayed Jews in hiding to the Germans. These grim facts have been documented by historian Jan Gross, provoking intense controversy in Poland. No sign of that in this film.

This is a ludicrous complaint. Did Peter Rutland run this by anyone before sending it to CNN? Did any editor at CNN suggest that maybe a movie doesn't have to address every single historical point that could be possibly be raised about a particular time period? This is a tightly-constructed movie about a specific set of characters, but now he wants it to suddenly expand in scope to address how some Poles were collaborators of the Holocaust. Does Peter Rutland raise this same complaint about every movie he sees? Did he watch "Schindler's List" and seethe that it didn't include information about Polish collaborators? Did he watch the beginning of "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) and rage that it didn't focus enough on the brave Canadian soldiers fighting on Juno beach? I doubt it. He just wants to whine about this movie because he disagrees with some statements by Glazer.

There is a long history of fascination with the aesthetics of the Third Reich, as in the films of Leni Riefenstahl. Back in 1975, Susan Sontag wrote a perceptive essay condemning the fetishization of Nazi paraphernalia. “The Zone of Interest” will certainly appeal to those who admire the aesthetics of Nazism: the striking uniforms, the distinctive “fashy” (short for fascist) haircuts, the nice animals. It will also appeal to people who like gardening.

This movie is a meditation on character and memory, but Peter Rutland repeatedly demonstrates that he doesn't understand that. He collapses everything to a mere celebration of aesthetics, because, based on everything he's written, he only comprehends the surface details of what he's seeing on the screen, and even that comprehension is clouded by his personal animosity toward Glazer.

But viewers who want insights into the tragic history of the Holocaust should look elsewhere.

This is a pathetic. Peter Rutland offers no insights into this movie. This is a political op-ed disguised (poorly, I might add), as a "movie review." Both the author and CNN should be ashamed for publishing this piece of shit.

[garudabluffs]

As one apartheid was dismantled in South Africa, another was erected in Palestine.

This Israel has no future in the Middle East

Opinion by Marwan Bishara  NOV.24,2023

"Then came the October 7 attack – a rude wake-up call reminding Israel that its colonial enterprise is neither tenable nor sustainable, that it could not lock in two million people and throw away the key, that it must address the root causes of the conflict with the Palestinians, namely their dispossession, occupation and siege."

" Israel can no longer use its fanciful theological claims to justify its violent racist practices. God does not sanction the slaughter of innocent children. And nor should Israel’s American and Western patrons."

+ "

Long before the war on Gaza, a leading Israeli journalist, Ari Shavit, predicted the demise of Israel “as we know it”, if it continued on the same destructive path. And last week, Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s Shin Bet secret service, warned that the government’s war and territorial expansion will lead to “the end of Israel” as we know it. Both have written books warning Israel about the dark future ahead if it continues its occupation.

Like all other violent intruders, from the ancient crusaders to the modern-day colonial powers, this last colonial entity, Israel, as we know it, is destined to vanish, regardless of how much Palestinian, Arab and Israeli blood it sheds.

The Gaza war may turn out to be the beginning of the end, but not for Palestine. Just as apartheid South Africa’s bloody supremacist regime imploded, so will Israel’s, sooner or later."

READ MORE This Israel has no future in the Middle East (msn.com)

[eildotcom]

Dick's Picks: A rare private press LP from Ami Shavit

Dick’s Picks: A rare private press LP from Ami Shavit

In an Alpha Mood by Ami Shavit is a jaw-droppingly rare 1977 Israeli limited edition private-press 5-track vinyl LP on the black Amis label, part music, part brain experiment, the music ‘stimulated by the theory and practice of biofeedback’ designed torelax you by engaging with the Alpha brain waves.

We’re not sure if it works or not, but what is sure is that this is a great early Ambient outing…

[tripsfestival]

Trips Festival Playlist for 7/12/17

Trips Festival with Gamma Light

10:01 PM Raymond Scott “Sleepy Time” from Soothing Sounds For Baby (CD, Album, RPM (Electronic)) on Basta

10:05 PM Susie Ibarra “Human Beginnings” from Flower After Flower (CD, Album, Other, 2000) on Tzadik

10:18 PM SPC Singers “Prayer Before Singing” from It's A New World (LP, Album, Other) on Audio Recording

10:21 PM The Sabri Brothers & Ensemble “Dama Dam Mast Qalandar” from Qawwali: Sufi Music From Pakistan (LP, Album, World, 1978) on Nonesuch

10:39 PM Tim Story “The Lure of Silence” from Glass Green (LP, Album, Other, 1978) on Windham Hill

10:44 PM Floating Flower “Johsho Kiryu” from 1st+2nd (CD, Album, World, 2002) on Black Plastic Sound

10:52 PM Mike Batt & Friends “Losing Your Way In The Rain (The Hermit)” from Tarot Suite (LP, Album, Other, 1979) on Epic

10:56 PM Laraaji “Zither Dance” from Flow Goes The Universe (CD, Album, Other, 1992) on Gyroscope

11:00 PM Jai Michael Josefs “I'll Work On Me” from Open Up Your Vision (LP, Album, Other, 1978) on Living Love Publications

11:07 PM Wendel Noble “The Dream Of Lehi” from The Lehi Stone (LP, Album, Spoken Word) on Lehi Enterprises Inc.

11:23 PM Min Xiao-Fen “King Chu Sheds His Armor” from Spring, River, Flower, Moon, Night (CD, Album, World, 1997) on Asphodel

11:33 PM Ancient Future “Zzaj” from Visions of a Peaceful Planet (LP, Album, Other, 1980) on Beauty Records & Tapes

11:41 PM Peter Davison “Glide V” from Glide/Star Gazer (CD, Album, Other) on Higher Octave

11:48 PM T. Viswanathan, L. Shankar, & T Ranganathan “Kriti: Va Velava” from Pallavi: South Indian Flute Music (LP, Album, World, 1973) on Nonesuch

11:55 PM Ami Shavit “Alpha 3” from In Alpha Mood (LP, Album, RPM (Electronic), 1977) on Amis

[rawpurehoneyandhive]

Music Bees Love Ami Shavit was born in 1934 in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. Known as visual artist, his work involves in creating virtual environments with optic and kinetic art, including structures worked by electricity, moving tubular configurations illuminated by colored lights. He published In Alpha Mood in 1977 on Amis records, his own record company, at 500 copies, republished by Finders Keepers Records in 2015 (FKR 077LP) and Neural Oscillations And Alpha Rhythms in 2018 Support - https://www.strangerthanparadiserecords.com/finders-keepers-records-ami-shavit-in-alpha-mood.html #alphamood #amishavit #alpha1 #musicforbees #savethebees #savethehoneybee #savetheplanet #gogreen #love #peace #planetearth #africa (at Tel Aviv-Jaffa) https://www.instagram.com/p/B1_3jmCHqpw/?igshid=yl57p4qbt16e

[hotsalvation]

Brand new release from Finders Keepers and DDS - Ami Shavit, stunning new age synth from 1970s Israel. The real deal! http://ift.tt/1MSq1dx . . #recordstore #recordshop #recordstoreday #vinylcommunity #vinyl #vinylstore #vinyljunkie #vinylshop #vinylcollector #vinylcollective #vinylcollection #vinyligclub #vinyladdict #vinyladdiction #kent #folkestone #seaside . .. #livemusic #music #musicfestival #experimentalmusic #avantgardemusic #minimalism #folkestone #folkestoneart #folkestonecreativequarter http://ift.tt/2DgzKhx

[cordycepsspore]

Ami Shavit - Alpha 2

[one-track-daily]

Ami Shavit Alpha Rhythms 2 (Recording mid-1970′s / released 2018)

From the album: Neural Oscillations and Alpha Rhythms (Dead-Cert Home Entertainment)

[burlveneer-music]

Ami Shavit - Alpha 1 - Finders Keepers Records reissues rare private-press electronic music album In Alpha Mood

'The music of this record was stimulated by the theory and practice of biofeedback. It is aimed to create a calm, relaxed and meditative mood associated with alpha brain waves.’

Part outsider electronic album; part physiological experiment; part work of art; this is not your average new age record. You won’t find any cosmic or spiritual connotations between the unsupposing and briefly annotated gatefold covers. This is an accidental new age record. It wasn’t designed to invoke images of far away landscapes or induce meditative states; rather it is the end result of a personally developed meditative technique called Alpha Mood. The brainchild of a reclusive Israeli multimedia artist with a fascination in philosophy, technology and sound by the name of Ami Shavit, In Alpha Mood is the result of a personal and artistic exploration to both overcome a personal trauma and push the boundaries of a fledgling physiological understanding whilst utilising the burgeoning domestic synthesizer technology of the late 60s and early 70s. With an enviable private collection of synthesisrs first started in 1972 during his travels to the US just as they first arrived in music stores and shipped home to Tel Aviv, the professor of both philosophy and art and established kinetic artist was fascinated with art that involved technology. In particular being able to give something mechanical an emotive angle. His early works primarily involved motorised mobiles (he actually installed one in Tel Aviv’s first discoteuque). Seeking to combine his love of electronic music acts like Tangerine Dream and Philip Glass and this new synthesiser technology with his fascination for the relatively new technique of biofeedback – a process in which technology is used to relay information about the body’s functions enabling a change in physiological activity in order to manipulate them. Combined with his understanding of alpha brainwaves (primarily attributed to a function of the brain that deals with relaxation), Ami embarked on an experiment with what he coined Alpha Mood – a state in which the brain is working in relaxation and in which he used music as a means of helping induce his own meditative state. With practically no formal musical training and working in complete isolation of the Tel Aviv music scene – with the exception of allowing cult prog nearly men Zingale and a handful of close friends to use his private studio – over the next two years he recorded hours and hours of experimental improvised music, or “sounds” as he prefers to call it.

[eildotcom]

AMI SHAVIT In Alpha Mood. Jaw-droppingly rare 1977 Israeli limited edition private-press 5-track vinyl LP on the black Amis label, part music, part brain experiment, the music 'stimulated by the theory and practice of biofeedback' designed torelax you by engaging with the Alpha brain waves. We're not sure if it works or not, but what is sure is that this is a great early Ambient outing using some fantastic synths to create an aural landscape to mellow to, all presented in a minimalistscreenprinted gatefold picture sleeve which has been dedicated, dated and signed by Ami [look in the yellow & green portion of the wave]. The reverse states that it is a limited numbered edition of 5000 copies [ours is un-numbered], however sources state that this is a misprint and that the number was actually 500 only, meaning not only is this Tel Aviv's first electronic album, it is also its rarest! The sleeve shows light wear with a small area of paper loss inside the gatefold to the top corner, although this is not especially noticeable; the vinyl has just a few light hairline scuffs leaving it Excellent. Recently re-issued by Finders Keepers, this is a chance to grab a one-owner only original; we won't get one again. Available from https://eil.com/shop/moreinfo.asp?catalogid=738121 #eildotcom #eil #records #vinyl #rarerecords #rarelps #electronica #cratedigging #vinyljunkie #vinylcollection #recordcollection #vinylporn #instavinyl #AMISHAVIT https://www.instagram.com/p/B7o8jskhd49/?igshid=13jskd66lvugp

[rawpurehoneyandhive]

DIY Bee Feeding Box #savethehoneybee #savethebees #diy Credit - Ami Shavit https://boomkat.com/products/yom-kippur-1973 (at Cape Town, Western Cape) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0N08gJnKZV/?igshid=n3zbzl8k2khp

[one-track-daily]

Ami Shavit Alpha 3 (1977)

From the album: In Alpha Mood (Amis Records / Finders Keepers Records)