Story of a lunatic with a obsession for digging holes named Blaumilch who escapes from a asylum, steals a pneumatic drill and starts drilling a hole in center of Tel Aviv. Because of beurocratic mess, power fights between Ministry of infrastructure and Tel Aviv Municipality, Municipality sends bulldozers to help (to beat the Ministry with the 'project' on their turf). One Municipality junior official realizes that he the project was started by a lunatic and when he attempts to stop it he gets fired. Great satire on beurocracy. Nominated for Golden Globe for best foreign film.
Subtitles Hebrew / English.
About Efraim Kishon
Author and satirist Ephraim Kishon passed away Saturday, January 29th, at the age
of 80
Kishon, one of Israel's most prolific writers, was born Ferenc Kishont in
Budapest. In World War II he was captured by the Nazis and imprisoned in
concentration camps. In one camp, a German officer lined up Jewish inmates and
shot dead every tenth person, passing him by. Later en route to the Sobibor
death camp, Kishon managed to escape the Nazis.
Kishon immigrated to Israel in 1949, where he changed his name. 'They made a
mistake - they left one satirist alive,' he later said, summing up the
Holocaust period in his book 'The Scapegoat.'
Kishon's first satire published in Israel was 'The Blaumilch Canal' in the
newspaper Davar, later to be adapted into a movie starring Bomba Tzur.
In the 1950s, he started a regular column, 'Khad Gadya,' in Maariv, edited at
the time by a fellow central European, Dr. Azriel Karlibach. Kishon's column,
which quickly became the major source of humor for the young State of Israel,
featured characters that were later to become well-known in Kishon's works.
In the 1960s, the satirist began working in film, writing and directing,
including the famed 'Salah Shabati.' Shabati, the newly-arrived immigrant from
an Arab country, whose common-sense exposes the hypocrisy of the European Jewry
establishment, still offers a fascinating outlook on a young Israel unable to
come to grips with its own multiculturalism.
Another film by Kishon, 'Police Officer Azulai' starring Shaike Offir, won the
Golden Globe award and also won an Oscar nomination in 1971.
The eve of the Six Day War in 1967 marked the peak of Kishon's popularity in
Israel, as he captured with sensitivity and humor the day-to-day atmosphere of
Israel under siege. He did this from the perspective of a Jewish Holocaust
survivor, who was amazed and beguiled to realize that his country had managed
to withstand the Arab threat to destroy him again and again.
During this period, Kishon began publishing in Europe, mainly in Germany. While
his popularity in Israel began to wane in the 1970's, he won growing acclaim in
Germany and German-speaking countries, where he has won literary awards and
secured staggering sales.
According to his son, Kishon viewed his success in Germany as 'a great feeling,
that the children of my hangmen are my admirers.'
Adding to his success in German translation, Kishon became known throughout the
world as a successful author and playwright. His works have been translated
into 37 languages.
Several of his best-known books were reissued in recent years, and a new Kishon
play was released a month ago.
Since the mid-1980s Kishon has been living in two homes, in Tel Aviv and
Switzerland, as he viewed with increasing alienation the new, self-conscious
Israel.
He remained an enthusiastic patriot, however, representing what he believed
Israel should be like: a country loyal to itself, proudly proving to the rest
of the world its right to exist.
Kishon was awarded the Israel Prize for lifetime achievement in 2002 for his
unique contribution to society and the country. The judges panel described
Kishon as 'a beam of light rescued from the fire of the Holocaust, who scaled
the heights of satire in the world.' They also praised Kishon's work for
reflecting Israeli society and effectively rendering the socioeconomic
distress, unemployment, poverty and harsh living conditions of immigrants in
the state's formative years.
Kishon's contribution to projecting a positive image of Israel to the world did
not escape the judges' attention as they commented: 'His prolific, keen-eyed
body of work... draws his many readers abroad closer to Israel.'
In a eulogy on Sunday, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said 'Ephraim Kishon was one
of the giants of Israeli culture, who created an entire cultural world for a country in formation, he created an entire world of culture for the country.'
'Ephraim Kishon died yesterday but his monumental cultural works remain with us and with future generations, thus we will remember him.'
Efraim Kishon.