EK News

Freeland - every Friday midnight at Tel Aviv Cinematheque

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:13:02 GMT

פרילנד - סרטו של גור בנטביץ' - כל שישי בחצות בסינמטק

לא קשור ישירות לאתגר, אבל אם לא תדע - איך תבוא
סצינה מתוך הסרט
סצינת סקס
לחימום יוקרן "עובר ושב". סרט קצר, אך דחוס

Аудио: рассказы Этгар Керет

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:38:38 GMT

Audio: 2 stories by Etgar Keret in Russian

Разбить поросенка (Breaking the pig)
Лето 76-го (The summer of '76)

Representatives of Etgar Keret worldwide

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 07:02:23 GMT

Booking and representation

For Booking of Speaking Engagements in North America:

Ofer Ziv at Blue Flower Arts
oferblueflowerarts.com
Tel: 917-463-3629
www.blueflowerarts.com

For film, telvesion and theater rights, or booking of speaking engagments anywhere else:

Gal Canetti
Kneller Artist Agency
169 Hayarkon Street
Office no. 420
63453 Tel-Aviv
Israel
galkneller.co.il
Tel: +972-3-5232242, ext. 27
Fax: +972-3-5272784
www.kneller.co.il

Audio: Story by Keret on "This American Life" podcast episode 393

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:21:42 GMT

Audio: Story by Keret on "This American Life" podcast

Once again, a never before published story is available in audio thanks to Ira Glass.
In Episode 393 of his show "This American Life", around 52:00, Actor Matt Malloy reads Keret's new story "The Man Who Knew What I Was About To Say"

Audio/video: Ira Glass (This American Life) and Etgar Keret, NY Public Library event, October 28

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:59:08 GMT

Live event: Ira Glass and Etgar Keret - Is Reality Overrated?

In a New York Public Library's Live from the NYPL event, "This American Life" host Ira Glass talks with writer Etgar Keret about his short fiction and films, runaway piggy banks, bus drivers and other, lesser gods.

Around 31:00, Keret reads a never-published-before story about telling a story at gun point.

Event details | Listen (Flash player) | Download (MP3)

New: Video

Australian Sunday Morning Herald about Keret and $9.99

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 03:27:14 GMT

Australian Sunday Morning Herald: Writer plots pathways into puzzle of Israeli life

When Keret presented Jellyfish at Yale University, six Jews in the audience walked out halfway through the screening, screaming that he was an anti-Zionist, self-hating Israeli. Their gripe was a scene in the film that showed a couple that kept having to change from one sleazy Tel Aviv hotel to another. "They thought I was presenting Israel as a shitty country with shitty hotels so no tourists would come here and yelled out that it was no wonder I got French financing for the film because the French hate Jews."

The reverse was true in Italy, where the film was strongly criticised for being anti-Palestinian because it portrayed a Palestinian director who did a bad job of directing a Shakespeare play.

A new Uzi-related story about the hidden costs of nightmare maintenance

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:14:51 GMT

Requiem for a Dream - Tablet Magazine

"That makes sense," I told Uzi. "But what do I do to make sure that that nightmare doesn't come back, see a psychologist?"
"That won't do you any good," he interrupted. "... What you need isn't a bunch of lies from a Ph.D. in clinical psych.
You need a real solution: a nest-egg in a foreign bank account. ..."

Fairfield County Weekly (Connecticut): short review of "$9.99"

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:44:17 GMT

Fairfield County Weekly's Ann Lewinson

Etgar Keret, with "Jellyfish" and "Wristcutters: A Love Story", is fast becoming a favored supplier of quirky plots for indie filmmakers. With the imaginative, intertwining stories in "$9.99", it's easy to see why.

"$9.99" hi-rez poster (jpg and pdf)

Sun, 02 Aug 2009 01:49:05 GMT

Download "$9.99" high resolution poster

JPG (1.7MB)

PDF (2.2MB)

Enjoy

$9.99 review at startribune.com (Minneapolis - St. Paul, MN)

Sat, 01 Aug 2009 10:03:20 GMT

Star Tribune's Colin Covert reviews "$9.99"

"$9.99" marries the tradition of Jewish self-flagellating humor with uncanny absurdity. The film shows us miracles coexisting with the mundane, a tone of disorienting everyday oddness that is equal parts "Seinfeld," Kafka and Gumby.

Philadelphia Inquirer's movie critic Steven Rea reviews $9.99

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:56:43 GMT

Phillly.com $9.99 review: Themes of hope, angst, masterfully molded in clay

Using the medium of Wallace and Gromit and Gumby, Israeli filmmaker Tatia Rosenthal turns her clay figures into real people in $9.99, a wise, wistful study of hope and dread

Keret's "Your Man" and "Shooting Tuvia" on WNYC podcast (NPR)

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:11:28 GMT

WNYC - Selected Shorts: Strange But True: Aimee Bender and Etgar Keret (July 26, 2009)

A special evening at Symphony Space celebrated the startling fiction of two young authors, the American Aimee Bender, and the Israeli Etgar Keret.
Drunken Mimi by Aimee Bender, read by Bernadette Quigley
Your Man by Etgar Keret, read by David Rakoff
Shooting Tuvia by Etgar Keret, read by David Rakoff
Death Watch by Aimee Bender read by Bernadette Quigley
[Download MP3] [Listen online]

Peter Hartlaub, SF Chronicle Pop Culture Critic on "$9.99"

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:29:23 GMT

SFGate:

"$9.99" has a broad appeal, but fans of quality low-tech animation are going to be blown away.

"The Girl on the Fridge" nominated for Shirley Jackson award

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:46:16 GMT

Nominees Announced for the 2009 Shirley Jackson Awards

COLLECTION
A Better Angel, Chris Adrian (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Dangerous Laughter, Steven Millhauser (Knopf)
The Diving Pool, Yoko Ogawa (Picador)
The Girl on the Fridge, Etgar Keret (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)
Just After Sunset, Stephen King (Scribner)Wild Nights!, Joyce Carol Oates (Ecco)

More about the Shirley Jackson awards for "outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror and the dark fantastic" at wikipedia

$9.99 showtimes

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:35:03 GMT

$9.99 show times (click icons to enlarge)

Source: $9.99 site

$9.99 reviews by Washington Times and Boston.com

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 18:01:23 GMT

More $9.99 reviews

Washington Times

"There was some talk at the end of last year about "$9.99" emerging as a dark-horse candidate in the animated-feature category at the Academy Awards. Though that never materialized, such rumors are a testament to the caliber of the film and the subjects it broaches."

The Boston Globe

"The result of [Keret's] screenwriting collaboration with Rosenthal is a movie that entertains and enlightens without being preachy - in fact, most of its beliefs are strenuously ambiguous; that's a key part of the joke."

Time-Out new york interview with Etgar Keret

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:17:12 GMT

Time Out New York interviews Keret about $9.99

... Why are people always looking for easy answers to unanswerable questions?
I think the film isn't about people looking for easy answers as much as it is the fact that people gave up on looking. Because I think that sometimes the yearning and the search is some sort of a meaning. And the difference between the character who wants to order the meaning of life and the other people around him is that you can say he's naive and unrealistic, but he didn't give up. He's obsessed with this question. The other people are already executing their plan Bs and Cs - they've already given up on whatever they once believed in ...

Reviews of $9.99: Entertainment Weekly, Village Voice, NJ.com and NYT

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:04:20 GMT

Here are some USA reviews of $9.99

Entertainment Weekly

The investment is worth it for a movie ticket to an original universe of characters in search of contentment

Village voice

Etgar Keret is sometimes described as Israel's Woody Allen, but this hugely popular humorist is more fanciful and morbid in his evocation of cultural schlemielery. Co-written with Keret, Tatia Rosenthal's stop-motion animation $9.99 adds a measure of creepiness to Keret's dark whimsy.

NJ.com

Rosenthal gives the entire production a lovely, fine-art look, and a real feeling that we're looking at life as it's lived - even if there are angels involved, and everyone is made of modeling clay. How often do you see that even in live-action films?

NY Times

The Israeli writer Etgar Keret possesses an imagination not easily slotted into conventional literary categories. His very short stories might be described as Kafkaesque parables, magic-realist knock-knock jokes or sad kernels of cracked cosmic wisdom. When such vignettes are strung together into a feature — as in “Jellyfish” (2007), which he directed with his wife, Shira Geffen, and now in Tatia Rosenthal’s “$9.99” — they become even more elusive and strange.

Haaretz newspaper sends Etgar Keret to interview Ehud Barak

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:44:27 GMT

Keret interviews Israeli minister of defense Ehud Barak

You know there is a never-ending debate over the question of whether Netanyahu has really changed. What is your opinion?
Barak gave vent to a morose sigh, like those he attached in his speech to the word "opportunity," and then continued with a warm smile, almost heartwarming.
"Tell me," he said, "have you changed?"

Times online recommends Kneller's Happy Campers

Sat, 23 May 2009 12:51:32 GMT

Books: In short - Times Online

"[Kneller's Happy Campers] is like nothing else"

"This American Life" - May 22nd

Wed, 20 May 2009 19:23:39 GMT

Story by Keret on next episode of This American Life - May 22^nd

Actor Matt Malloy reads "Shoes" by Etgar Keret, about a boy who betrays his people with a pair of shoes on the radio show "This American Life".

$9.99 screening at MoMa and Lincoln Center

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 06:15:44 GMT

The Film Society of Lincoln Center Presents - $9.99

March 29th - 7pm, Museum of Modern Art, Titus Theater 1
April 1st - 9pm, Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center

Christopher Bowen's Moving Picture Music

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:13:46 GMT

Christopher Bowen composed the soundtracks for both Jellyfish and $9.99.
His site contains sound-bites from both, and more.

NYTimes: Dinner companions

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 10:05:17 GMT

Keret [among others] recommends a book/food combo to NY Times

The last time I reread Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse-Five" was during the Lebanon war. The other night, in the middle of the Gaza bombing, I was reading it again in a Chinese restaurant here in Tel Aviv. I started laughing and crying, which goes with sweet and sour.

The Albany schedule

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 11:04:20 GMT

Etgar Keret Visits Albany On March 16 , 2009

March 13, 2009
7:30pm, Page Hall, 140 Western Avenue, Albany:
The New York State Writers Institute will show Keret's film "Wristcutters: A Love Story".
March 16, 2009
4pm, Uptown Campus, University at Albany, Campus Center 375:
Keret will read from his fiction, answer questions, and sign copies of his books (both Hebrew and
English versions), available for sale.
6:45pm, Spectrum 8 Theatres, 290 Delaware Avenue, Albany:
Jellyfish: film screening followed by Q & A session with Etgar Keret. (Tickets $8.50. Students
advanced booking discount $6.75).