Jerusalem hotels, restaurants, attractions, tours & events. Helping since 2008

Among Jerusalem's celebrations heralding the beginning of 2011 was a mini film festival on New Years Eve, attended by luminaries of city government and international cinema. At the awards ceremony of The Jerusalem 2111 Film Competition, which challenged movie-makers to create short science fiction-inspired visions of what the Holy City will look like a century from now, fantasy, hi-tech animation techniques and creative visions of bleak and elating urban futures all came together.

Organized by the Jerusalem Cinematheque, the Jerusalem municipal government and the Jerusalem Development Authority, with key assistance from the Association of Planning and Conservation-Jerusalem ("Beit Hamodel"), the contest was judged by top film industry executives specializing in sci-fi and animation, from Britain, Germany, France, Venezuela, the United States and elsewhere. Among the judges was Jon Landau, producer of Avatar and Solaris, who currently serves as the Fox studio's executive vice president of feature production. Also in attendance were city planning-oriented Deputy Mayor Naomi Tsur, Cinametheque founder Lia van Leer, and Jerusalem Film and Television Fund director Yoram Honig.

The winning entry, David Gidali's Secular Quarter #3, which netted the competition's grand prize of $10,000, appears below. Coming in second place was Re-opening, by Paz Edry and Rotem Lehman, about a Jerusalem that has become so contentious that it is shut down until further notice. Rounding out the top three was Last Stand, by Lior Geller and Evan Lesser, which sees aliens invading the city over a backdrop of tensions between its inhabitants.

"Sci-fi has a social nature," Jerusalem Film and Television Fund Director Yoram Honig tells GoJerusalem.com. "People see in it what's not good about today's society, and their visions for the future. Will it be catastrophe or utopia? People who go to the theater don't want to deal with the difficult issues, they want to see heroes overcoming the issues of today."

A prime example of sci-fi's potential to shed light on urban futures is Ridley Scott's 1982 classic Blade Runner, which screened at the event and clearly had a major influence on many of the entries. "Blade Runner is a milestone in sci-fi," Honig opines. "All the films in the festival were either doing something similar or something different, but they were all a reaction to it, because it was the biggest thing done in this realm."

Indeed, the relationship between the filmmaker's imagination, the viewer's experience and the future of Jerusalem is a tricky one, which Honig believes was represented effectively in the contest's winners. Putting Jerusalem 2111 in its year-ending context, "2010 was a good year for film in Jerusalem," Honig reflects. "Two major films, The Human Resource Manager and Internal Grammar, were filmed here, and both are nominated for Ophirs (the Israeli Oscars), and the TV show Asfur takes place in Jerusalem and attracts an audience of 8 million people through VOD. We are hoping to have similar success in 2011."

Honig and others are doing what they can to ensure that more and more film production projects are based in the Holy City in the century ahead. "In Israel's first 60 years of existence, five percent of its films were made in Jerusalem," he notes. "This year, two films made in Jerusalem are Ophir nominees. The Jerusalem 2111 project is helping keep Jerusalem in the conversation. We are trying to put Jerusalem on the map - to have international events such as this competition two or three times a year, to get a buzz going. And with the support of the mayor, we are having lots of meetings in Israel and out of Israel with movers in the field, about investing money and starting grants to develop the movie industry here."