In a gray cafe on Ibn Gvirol Street sits a pair of young filmmakers and a menopausal producer. They look preoccupied. Moments earlier, L., where there was a thing in the art world, slammed them with heavy accusations and echoed criticisms they had heard before: he called the characters “a bunch of losers,” talked about the lack of a plot, as if personally hurt. His voice shook the windows of the small cafe where they were sitting. When he had finished speaking, he got up politely and said goodbye to them.
The producer, worried, brings to the table a few cups of coffee and a cookie. “You have to rewrite,” he says balconies. The rewrite is a code name for a long period of change, waiting and compromise at the end of which you may receive the stamp of the establishment and its financial support. Maybe. But after a few quiet sips of coffee, another idea arises. Maybe we should just go out and take pictures on our own? We would like to say that two weeks later we went out to shoot, but it took about two years from the moment of the decision to the end of the shooting. Two years of rewriting and of cow production of a film without money, in which time is stretched and lacks the glue that will connect the parts.
It’s no secret that we live in an artistically limited period. There is a great lack of originality, creativity, and everyone is afraid all the time. The independence underlying the work is fading with the takeover of huge corporations and corporations in every aspect of our lives, including the world of culture. Economic considerations are consuming the rest of the values and so we have reached an absurd situation where there are more artists than ever, more content than ever (and not by chance they started calling it content instead of art, creation, text) and at the same time, censorship is stronger than ever. Everything is regulated and defined and I agreed, no one is willing to gamble, take a risk. Much of the new content seems replicated, a duplication of duplication of something you’ve seen before. And perhaps worst of all, humans ceased to be the center of the work, and were pushed to the margins as gray markers. In their place, the center of the stage was occupied by Torah agendas and simplistic messages.
Two filmmakers set off. Yair Asher and Itamar Lapid. Photo: Meital Ner
The only way to get rid of all of this is to simply do it on your own. The time has come for more spontaneous, unmediated, unaccompanied audiences or messages. Simply a creative, human outburst, of which man is the center, and the relationships and nuances of which, are its building blocks. We like to think that our film, “How You Let It Happen,” is one of the first swallows to indicate a change for the better. This film is a film that created a community around it, and in return it allowed it to exist. It’s a drama-comedy centered on a pair of brothers looking to get back into each other’s lives and drift into a few intense days in the city together.
When you shoot independently, and the money is limited (and in fact, not so much), it necessarily means that something else is sticking to the pieces. For us, we feel it was the joy of creation, faith, and family that was created around the film. And really, the filming was like one long party during which a movie was also made. Not that everything was improvised and messy – but we realized very early on that our film needed a strong connection between the work environment and the work itself. So when there is a party, we dance, in the two bars, and we create around the filming a world that takes place even outside the camera lens, a world where the boundary between what is being filmed and what is happening is blurred.
A world was created outside the camera as well. From the movie “” How You Let It Happen. “Photo: Daniel Rosenbaum
An interesting creation occurs and is made possible when it is the result of an interesting life, of an erupting emotion. This is also evident in the human connections in the team and in the cast of our actors, who did not want to go home, rallied to help us throughout a whole year of filming, and mostly celebrated with us the life and present during filming. The set actually became a socio-cinematic event.
One day during the photo shoot, we were caught in a serious storm. Branches and shingles flew everywhere, and a heavy flood threatened to destroy the little equipment we had. The world seemed to be trying to tell us something – and it was not positive. While we were fleeing to a hiding place, each sheltered on a piece of equipment, we found refuge in an abandoned stairwell. We decided to end the day of filming, but none of the team and actors left. Soaked, we sat there and talked for long hours, until the storm calmed down. So, we found out that this stairwell is actually a great alternative location. We continued filming and one of our favorite scenes in the movie was born.
A real social event. From the movie “” How You Let It Happen. “Photo: Daniel Rosenbaum
By the way, that does not mean that there was no crazy preparation in advance. The biggest advantage available to those who do it alone is that there is time. You have enough time to plan things, choose the right places, the ones you can draw from, and find the people who are ready to go on this adventure with you.
Doing this kind of thing does not necessarily amount to a “product”. It is not economic by definition, it is not goal-oriented to the outside world. That is why she also has the privilege of looking, to have fun, to be rude, to be unexpected, to be wild, to live. We feel that the world needs more of such creation, especially now, with the socio-economic undermining at the door. It’s time to bring the person back to the center at the expense of the faltering technological vision.
“How did you let this happen” It will be screened at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque starting on July 7. The film is A feature produced with personal funding, created by the pair of filmmakers and cousins Itamar Lapid and Yair Asher. At the center of the plot, a pair of brothers trying to get back into each other’s lives after life has drifted apart.