A Film by Renen Schorr
(Israel, 1987, 101 Minutes, Color, Hebrew, English subtitles)
"… We are being drafted feeling that this is our last summer break, a last summer of sun and sea, a last summer when we are all still together and must make things happen, before it is too late. The time: summer 1970. The place: Tel Aviv."
Drawing autobiographical details, Late Summer Blues looks at a group of seven eighteen-year old kids just before their induction to the army during the time of the War of Attrition at the Suez Canal. This summer holiday will cut short their adolescence and they will be forced to make decisions about more than social acceptance and self-image, indeed decisions of life and death.
During these short and charged weeks they will try, individually and as a group, to dream, to fulfill their ambitions and to change reality by their graduation ceremony show.
The film's four chapters are named for their protagonists. Yossi Tsvillich is the lovable innocent, the c lass' first draftee. Arile Schechres is a budding draft resister who sprays protest slogans in downtown Tel Aviv. Mossi Shoval, a gifted musician, is also medically fit to serve in a combat unit. Serving in the combat unit would block his musical development for the time that he is in uniform. Margo, a diabetic, is medically unfit for service, dreams on being an Israeli Fellini and documents the gang on "super-8" film.
Margo is the in-house historian for the gang. She probes the limits of rebellion in an Israeli reality of "no choice", a reality of intense life on the edge.
AWARDS, FESTIVALS & SCREENNINGS
Won the Silver Menorah Award – for best film, best screenplay and best original score Israel Film Festivals in New York and Los Angeles - prize for Outstanding Film Jerualem Film Festival
Won the Silver Menorah Award – for best film, best screenplay and best original score