jerusalem: Telefilm Canada may have yanked its travel grant for Canadian filmmakers invited to last month’s Jerusalem Film Festival, but that did not stop director/ coproducer Ric Esther Bienstock from traveling to the Holy Land with her film Ms. Conceptions in tow.

The documentary, which received top ratings on cbc’s Witness program, was well received at the festival. Bienstock hopes to land a licence agreement with an Israeli broadcaster or distributor.

Jeremy Podeswa’s feature film Eclipse and Clement Virgo’s Rude also screened at the festival. The trip was worth the expense with opening night ceremonies held outdoors in a natural amphitheater just outside the walls of the old city, where festival director Lia van Leer heralded the event’s 12th year with fireworks and trumpets.

Although the Jerusalem festival does not attract international distributors or buyers, the growth of Jewish and Israeli film festivals in cities around the world (Toronto has its own two-year-old Jewish Film Festival) has created a new wave of festival programmers from Stockholm, London, San Francisco, Washington and Boston, according to Amy Kronish, the Jerusalem Cinemateque’s curator of Jewish and Israeli films.

The programmers did not leave disappointed. Israeli cinema has stabilized and matured, and there was a dramatic surge of new production this year. ‘It’s generally felt that Israeli film is becoming a cultural art,’ says Kronish. ‘It is less obsessed with politics and more involved with normal issues about family and sexuality,’ she adds.

This certainly describes the two films that tied for first prize this year – director Eli Cohen’s Under the Domim Tree and Savi Gabizon’s Love Sick. KM