I was too tired to write a blog last night so the photos I took yesterday are here. I wanted to show how we shoot car scenes…with the car mounted on a flat bed , the cameras attached in front and the whole is being pulled by another truck. This isn’t the only way to shoot car scenes but a common way, and, in our case, essential because Guy Bedos doesn’t drive. I would take Tulea into the car with me between takes cause she knew I was inside and whimpered when we went past.

Today was the first day all of us shot together. Geraldine has been finishing a film in Spain so this was her first day on our film and it was a delight to work with her and look across the hospital bed at her awakened face, positively shining with spirit. She is an imaginative actor. I was impressed. In the scene, our friend, Claude (Claude Rich), had a mild heart attack and has been taken to a retirement home by his son and we, his pals, come to visit and decide, because we are not happy with what we experience in the home, to help him escape.

It was a long day in a very small, hot room and I am beat. But the scene went well and is full of camaraderie and humor.

It is a beautiful building, pistachio green, like buildings in St Petersburg and it offers rooms for people on welfare. There are 102 people—men and women—living there (mostly women, because women live longer than men in general by 5 1/2 years). The oldest is 108!!! There are also people in their fifties, people with Alzheimer’s. It is very sad to walk through the lounge area. I’m told that tomorrow we will work with a woman who is 102. Maybe I can interview here for my book.

Claude's character is an amateur but fine photographer who likes especially to photograph the prostitutes he frequents. We've put his photos up on the wall.

Waiting to shoot. The room was really hot!

This is the lovely retirement home where Claude has been taken by his son.

I am sad anyway because my dear, sweet friend, Stephen Rivers, died last night of cancer. Stephen was my PR person for a long time —as well as my friend–and traveled all over with me, including to Russia, where I was trying to persuade the government to allow the famous and brave refusnik, Ida Nudel, to go to Israel. He was the one who arranged my meeting with 40 Vietnam veterans in the basement of a church in Waterbury, Conn. We went through a lot together. Life is terminal, but for some it happens too soon.

See you next time.

 So– I wake up this morning to a barrage of emails giving me a link to a web posting that has been widely picked up. It says that Rabbi Hier at the Simon Wiesenthal Center (he and I were friends—I thought) claims I support the destruction of Israel because I signed (along with many other artists, historians, including eight Israelis, mostly filmmakers) a petition protesting the Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to feature a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv. We understand that by doing this the festival has become, whether knowingly or not,  a participant in a cynical PR campaign to improve Israel’s image, make her appear less war-like. The Israeli Consul General said a year ago that Toronto would be the launch site of an extensive “Brand Israel” campaign. Artists and others of us who love Israel do not want art to be used to whitewash the tragedies committed against Palestinians, most recently in last winter’s terrible war in Gaza (1400 Palestinians dead, mostly civilians, many more wounded, and there are documented human rights violations) and the ongoing blockade of Gaza that is deepening a serious humanitarian crisis, wreaking havoc on the lives of innocent people, and preventing reconstruction in the aftermath of the attack.
The letter we signed did not —repeat: DID NOT–call for a boycott of any part of the Toronto Film Festival. In fact, many of the people who signed the letter are showing films there and many of the Israeli filmmakers that go to the festival show films critical of Israel. We protest the use of Tel Aviv to rebrand Israel. We are standing up for integrity of art, not censoring anyone. The letter certainly did not call for the destruction of Israel or call into question the legitimacy of Tel Aviv as a city. But In the year when Gaza happened there shouldn’t be a celebratory spotlight on Tel Aviv.

I have been to Israel many times. The first was in the early 1980s and it was love at first sight…for the country and for its people. I stayed in a Kibbutz with the great Israeli novelist, Amos Oz, and his family. I raised money for a senior center in Haifa, for a girl’s shelter in Jerusalem. I have spoken at the Hebrew University. I traveled into Lebanon with the Israeli army in 1981. I went deep into Russia in the  80s to secretly meet with Soviet Refusenik, Ida Nudel, after which I a national speaking tour in the U. S. to build support for letting Ida go to Israel where she now lives. In other words, I have been intimately involved with Israel over 3 decades. On almost every visit I also went into the West Bank, met with Palestinian artists, visited Palestinian refugee camps, drove through the Israeli settlements that encroach increasingly into Palestinian territory. I have seen suffering on both sides. It is out of love for Israel and all that it promised to be that I protest the use of art (which is meant to search for truth) in this branding campaign. The greatest “re-branding” of Israel would be to celebrate that country’s robust peace movement by allowing aid to be delivered to Gaza and stopping expansion of the settlements. That’s the way to show Israel’s commitment to peace, not a PR campaign. There will be no two-state solution unless this happens.