One of my favorite movie lines is from "Les violons du bal." The protagonist is a filmmaker determined to make a movie about his childhood. Someone asks "But why is your childhood so important to you?" and the protagonist says "Because it's mine."
Matan Yair's attitude is similar. He plays himself in the movie, he wants us to see his relationship with his father (who also plays himself), and he wants us to see not his childhood but his work with disadvantaged students (who mostly play themselves)-- although the movie is scripted and not a strict documentary by any means. The question is whether he manages to make it all interesting to the audience, and the answer is yes, partly because when a teacher walks into a room of problem students you never know what's going to happen and whether he can handle it.
The story goes that while Yair was making this extremely low-budget and personal movie, another movie idea of his got funded-- rather a similar idea-- and it turned into the movie "Scaffolding." "Scaffolding" is a more traditional movie, and a bit easier to watch, because it focuses strongly on one particular student of his (a charismatic fellow who plays himself) and it uses that student, instead of Yair, in the subplot about the father-son relationship. Although "Scaffolding" replaces Yair with an actor, you can see that it was filmed in the same school and the students present the same challenge to the teacher.
Back to "Bagrut." It was finished and released after "Scaffolding," and in a way it looks like a less developed version of the same movie. But it turns out different, and it establishes its own raison d'etre.
The title refers to the Israeli examination that Israeli kids take at the end of high school (if they're even good enough to take it), but it also means "maturity," which is what everyone in the movie is reaching for. In English, the title is "Unseen." The teacher is working with kids who go largely unseen in society, and he's largely unseen himself-- even by them. The surface-level justification of the English-language title is that apparently it's the name of a poetry unit that the kids need to study. But I didn't find that point particularly clear. Why "Unseen" in English when the poetry is in Hebrew?
Matan Yair's attitude is similar. He plays himself in the movie, he wants us to see his relationship with his father (who also plays himself), and he wants us to see not his childhood but his work with disadvantaged students (who mostly play themselves)-- although the movie is scripted and not a strict documentary by any means. The question is whether he manages to make it all interesting to the audience, and the answer is yes, partly because when a teacher walks into a room of problem students you never know what's going to happen and whether he can handle it.
The story goes that while Yair was making this extremely low-budget and personal movie, another movie idea of his got funded-- rather a similar idea-- and it turned into the movie "Scaffolding." "Scaffolding" is a more traditional movie, and a bit easier to watch, because it focuses strongly on one particular student of his (a charismatic fellow who plays himself) and it uses that student, instead of Yair, in the subplot about the father-son relationship. Although "Scaffolding" replaces Yair with an actor, you can see that it was filmed in the same school and the students present the same challenge to the teacher.
Back to "Bagrut." It was finished and released after "Scaffolding," and in a way it looks like a less developed version of the same movie. But it turns out different, and it establishes its own raison d'etre.
The title refers to the Israeli examination that Israeli kids take at the end of high school (if they're even good enough to take it), but it also means "maturity," which is what everyone in the movie is reaching for. In English, the title is "Unseen." The teacher is working with kids who go largely unseen in society, and he's largely unseen himself-- even by them. The surface-level justification of the English-language title is that apparently it's the name of a poetry unit that the kids need to study. But I didn't find that point particularly clear. Why "Unseen" in English when the poetry is in Hebrew?
