FLUCHKES

Documentary Film, 54 minutes
Premiere: Docaviv - International Documentary Film Festival 2011, Tel Aviv

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The film Fluchkes follows five intelligent and diverse women aged seventy-eighty-plus, who stage a professional dance show called Gila with choreographer Galit Liss. This is an uncompromising show that challenges a culture that sanctifies youth. The film, as well as the show, looks with open and intelligent eyes at the process of female ageing, and at society's attitude towards it. It is based on the participants' personal experiences. The "Fluchkes" are the loose part of the arms (in Yiddish), one of the most obvious symbols of the female body's ageing, which is usually hidden in shame inside the sleeve, but in the show, as explained at the beginning of the film, it is proudly displayed. The art of dance presents each of the heroines with challenges of body, mind and consciousness, which are not easy at any age but seven times as difficult at their age. In a not-so-simple personal struggle in the face of difficulties, in transitions between tears and laughter, failures and successes, an honest, exciting and intimate portrait of special women who go through a unique and full of life experience unfolds.

The film Fluchkes was first screened at the Docaviv Festival, and later at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and other cinematheques in the country. The film was screened at numerous festivals in Europe, the United States, and China, bought and broadcast by a Canadian broadcast channel. Fluchkes is the first film directed by Ofer Yanov, a film and television photographer who worked with directors such as Yosef Cedar and Asi Dayan. He received the Ophir prize for cinematography for The Arrangement, Beaufort, Baba John.