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Saturday May 1st
Documentary and shor film from Mathias Gokalp
At the Alliance Française, 618 SW 8th Strett, Miami
Documentaries made by Mathias Gokalp.

10:30 am: Short film and documentary made in Japan
“I am Japanese” "Je suis japonais" (25')
Short film "Hosts in Tokyo" (21')
Synopsis: Hosts in Tokyo: A club for toy boys, light years away from the T’ang-style geisha costumes. Its young managing director, himself a former «host», who has adopted Lemmy Caution’s formula of “Cigarettes, whisky et p’tites pépées”, and teenage girls learning Western dances after their initiation to the tea ceremony and flower-arranging. Je suis japonais explores the shaping of man and the illusion of freedom that adorns it, where the focus is on the similarities rather than differences between civilisations. Wherever you are, in France or the Empire of the Rising Sun, no one does without cultural models, no subject is without a framework, no man without training. Je suis japonais takes us into a Japan at the antipodes of Barthes’ Empire of Signs, a Japan where we discover – while France is at the height of its identity crisis – that the Japanese are French. (Yann Lardeau)
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Monday May 3rd
Israeli Evening
At The Alliance Française, 618 SW 8th Strett, Miami
In collaboration with the Israeli Consulate of Miami

5.00 pm: La Petite Jérusalem by Karin Albou (94' - 2005)
Synopsis: In a Paris suburb nicknamed Little Jerusalem, a family of Sephardic Orthodox immigrants shares a low-income apartment. Beautiful, teenaged Laura (Fanny Valette) distances herself from her family's religion and her own burgeoning desire by devoting every waking moment to intellectual discipline and secular philosophy. Mathilde (Elsa Zylberstein, That Day), Laura's married older sister, worries that strict observance of the Torah's marital codes has driven her husband Ariel (Bruno Todeschini, Code Unknown) into the bed of another. When Laura falls under the spell of Djamel, a handsome Muslim journalist, and Mathilde discovers that her worst fears are true, the two very different sisters find themselves in very similar crises.
"I won't be a slave to my senses," says the rigorously rational Laura. But as her sexual awakening consumes her, Laura risks rejection from her own community and harm at the hands of anti-Semitic street gangs. At the same time, Mathilde struggles to reconcile her traditional responsibilities to her husband with moral law, personal modesty, and physical desire. A film of graceful delicacy and luminous sensuality, La Petite Jérusalem subtly depicts the personal journeys taken by two modern women raised in an ancient faith.

7.00 pm: Cocktail

8.00 pm: Jaffa by Keren Yedaya (106' - 2009)      More
Synopsis: Mali (Ivgy) is the taken-for-granted member of the Wolf family, as her father Reuven (Moni Moshonov) and mother Osnat (Ronit Elkabetz) give all their attention to her brother Meir (RoyAssaf). Lazy, sullen and resentful, Meir is a walking argument keen to disagree with everyone and quick to temper. While Reuven worries about keeping his garage in profit and how his son will possibly learn enough to run the family business, Meir antagonizes everyone, especially the Arabs who work for his father. The object of most of his aggression is a young Arab named Tawfig (Mahmoud Shalaby), who works hard while Meir shirks and is respectful to both his own father and Reuven. What nobody knows is that not only are Mali and Tawfig in love and planning to run off to get married, but Mali is pregnant. Tawfig's hourlong absence from work making their travel arrangements sparks a violent reaction from Meir, who is hungover after being kicked out of the family home and sleeping in the garage. The conflict leads to violence and that sets the course for the subsequent events.
$15 at the door.