Aran Patinkin–Film Director
EDUCATION: B.A. - Film: Columbia College, Chicago 1978
Date of Birth - July 22, 1952
Directed over 180 films
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Reviews
(Translated from Hebrew newspapers)
http://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-3103020,00.html
Uzi Veil
Title: "The dress tailor, the belly dancer, life, love".
Subtitle: "Aran Patinkin, director of "the marriage", is the great poet of the Israeli banality".
Excerpts:
"Last Thursday I saw on Channel 1 the first among three documentaries about love made by Aran Patinkin. It was called "The Marriage" and it followed a young couple in the weeks before their wedding…I stood and started clapping my hands. In a magical way this film succeeded…to do what every great art should do: to bring back to every day life its innocent true deep meaning. Patinkin is the great documenter, the great poet of the Israeli banality, the banality of the language, the banality of the manners, of culture, of people and their beliefs. He has a subtle and an accurate sense of humor. He has an examining eye, and a camera sharp as a razor – but never malicious. He will always stand by the side of his interviewees, since eventually he is documenting people – their culture, yes; their language, absolutely; their body language, of course; but more than anything else he is documenting them and lets them be. That’s why they behave in his presence as if there was no camera in the room, that's why he succeeds to show people in their most intimate moments.
And we haven't said a word about his great work "A ring in my thing" that brought the technique of Patinkin to a kind of perfection, because what is more banal than a man who is a 'walking dick' …but as the minutes pass by you start to touch this person, you start to feel his living force, his natural intelligence, and his longing for inner peace, which can never be achieved…
Patinkin is making a really exciting television, the only, if not the first, that penetrates the false cover of "culture" and says something about the difference between our lives, as we perceive them, and our lives as they are in fact. He shoots documentaries that make what every great art should make – touch. Not explain, not summarize, not preach; touch; and he makes it through the detailed and loving documenting of all kinds of the Israeli banality".
Arna Kazin
Title: "Looking for Ziva".
Subtitle: An eccentric genius in his eternal search for a girl he accidentally met 27 years ago one night in Haddera.
Excerpts:
When asked Patinkin says that Abem didn't interest him as an eccentric private case but as a symbolic story. "I think he has a lot of innocence and on the other hand he has many extreme sides which are in each one of us. And in fact this is the power of this sad and wonderful film"…
Yael Israeli
Title: "When ordinary people will see us they will know that they don't have to be afraid of retarded people".
Subtitle:. "When ordinary people will see us they will know that they don't have to be afraid of retarded people", says with a charming plainness a girl in Aran Patinkin film: "Fiddler On The Roof", that follow the rehearsals for the end-of- the-year play in Orim, a school for mentally handicapped children in Givatayim.
Excerpts:
Chava Barak, the mother of one of the pupils acting in "Fiddler On The Roof", made the connection between the director and Orim School. "I was editing then Abem, another film about an eccentric man" Aran Patinkin says half seriously, "and Chava told me 'there's a film you must do'. It seems that people approach me with these subjects because I have a name of 'our correspondent for unusual cases'. In the past I made all kinds of films about blinds, mentally ill, retarded people, you name it'.
- What attracts you?
- It seems that I am an eccentric myself…I have a sister in "Kfar Tikva". This is how it all started.
Naomi Gal
Title: "Macho about love"
Subtitle: Aran Patinkin, the director of "A Ring In My Thing" and the documentary series "A Summer night's Dream", who lives in Kibbutz Neot Semadar in the Arava, checks with himself and with his surroundings the terms love, relationships and living together.
Excerpts:
Patinkin loves his characters, all of them, like a creator that invents them in his imagination. "I go on a 'journey' with a person, it takes a lot of time and energy", he says, and keeps in touch with most of his characters…they are part of his life. For him to make a film does not mean that he's got to judge and take sides. "It is clear to me that I'm a part of the phenomena I describe… and that's why there is no place to criticize…"
Aran Patinkin
Title: "The Legend Of The Lost Tribes".
Subtitle: Tonight in Channel 2 the first chapter of "The Legend Of The Lost Tribes" will be screened. The 13 chapters deal with different and sometimes eccentric communities around the world who believe that they are connected to the ten Lost Tribes of Israel whose destiny is unknown. Aran Patinkin, the director of the series, writes about the fascinating encounters.
Excerpts:
"The idea to make the series came up while I was filming "Operation Moses", that brought the Ethiopians Jews to Israel. Somebody from the Jewish Agency whispered to me that the phenomenon is much wider…We saw that what unites the world today is what Hollywood produces, even In the remotest places you can find mobile phones and visa cards. In fact there is no more third world. The same things trouble all human beings, no matter whether they live in Beijing, Africa, Jamaica, or the jungles of Peru…the whole series tries to make more flexible our perception of the Bible and Judaism, to teach us to accept people, concepts and beliefs without pre-judging them. In one of the communities I filmed I asked why is the Bible missing and I got the answer: 'the dog ate it'. It sounds ridiculous, but why…we believe our fantasies wholeheartedly and at the same time we are convinced that other's fantasies are false. The true test is whether we can open our minds and our hearts…"
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