With Hezbollah rockets halted, Haifa’s cultural scene experiences post-ceasefire boom

After more than a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks — during which time  navigation apps were scrambled to mislead the terror group and the public stayed home, close to their safe rooms and bomb shelters — Haifa’s cultural life is bouncing back.

The Haifa Film Festival, usually held in October, was postponed until the ceasefire with Hezbollah late last year offered a long-awaited respite from the constant rocket fire on the north. Several new exhibits also opened at Haifa’s museums, including one at the Tikotin Museum of Japanese Art and another at the Haifa City Museum in the trendy German Colony.

The film festival, celebrating its 40th year, opened on December 31 and runs through January 11. As usual, it has a roster of international and local films, including Cannes, Venice and Sundance film festival winners.

There are some familiar names from other local film festivals, such as Eran Riklis’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” “The Brutalist,” a “Wicked” singalong, “The Outrun,” “A Real Pain” and the American remake of Sabi Gabizon’s 2017 “Longing,” now starring Richard Gere and Diane Kruger, along with a screening of Gabizon’s original flick.

Other screenings of Israeli films and documentaries included one close to Haifa’s heart, “Technion 10²” by filmmaker Uri Rosenwaks, about the 100 years since the founding and development of the research institution situated on Mount Carmel.

The screening of “Technion 10²” was held in the cozy environs of the Tikotin, which holds the collection of Felix Tikotin, a German Jew who set up the museum in a colonial home not far from the Technion.

Making waves

At the time, in 1956, Tikotin brought in a Japanese professor to set up the museum. Now head curator Etty Glass Gissis, an expert in Japanese art with a doctorate from Tokyo’s Gakushoin University, recently opened the museum’s latest exhibit, “The Wave Effect, From a Japanese to Global Icon.”

Central to the exhibit is the small but mighty woodblock print, “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” from the mid-19th century series “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji” by artist Katsushika Hokusai, part of the Tikotin collection.

The print measures only 26 by 39 centimeters (15.35 by 10.24 inches) but is arguably the most well-known Japanese artwork, and has been described as possibly the most reproduced image in the history of art.

Glass Gissis filled several galleries with a collection of Japanese and Israeli works that each relate to some aspect of the famed stencil, from the giant wave with Mount Fuji in the background to the canoes riding the wave.

“The wave is so cliched and everyone knows it,” said Glass Gissis. “Until now, the print was just hung on the side in the museum but I thought it should be in the middle, with a buzz around it.”

After an initial look at the original print, visitors head to two video works set in the sea, one by Japanese artist Han Ishu, “A Dream to Stop the Waves.”

Han Ishu almost pulled his work from the exhibit two weeks before the opening in protest of Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, and curator Glass Gissis ended up using only one of his two videos in deference to his request.

The exhibit moves on to Japanese household objects, enamel boxes, ceramic dishes, and even canned goods, all featuring images of a wave, and then over to a gentle watery installation by Dana Harel.

One of the Israeli works on the gallery wall is a photograph of waves crashing against the Tel Aviv boardwalk in “Untitled [Wave]” by Gaston Zvi Ickowicz.

Another work is by Keren Benbenisty, in which she recreates just the wave, but with soft, gentle fingerprints.

“The idea of this exhibit isn’t to find everything, but to tell the story of many interpretations of this work,” said Glass Gissis.

In another wing, Mount Fuji reigns, casting its shadow and influence over photographers and artists in different mediums.

The final gallery features two influential canvases by Peru-raised Japanese artist Oscar Oiwa, who seems to take inspiration from Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” in his work “Rescue Boat,” a painting referring to the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami, as well as his 2021 painting “Big Wave,” which addresses the solitude of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The biggest thrill is when people come to the exhibit and look at Hokusai’s wave and say, ‘You see this? This is the original,’ said Glass Gissis. “My goal is to preserve it and make sure it’s seen.”

A driven young nation

Preservation, or the love of something that no longer exists, is one of the themes in “Sussita,” an exhibit at the Haifa City Museum. The exhibit is an ode to the Sussita, an Israeli car that was produced for a brief decade and was first manufactured in Haifa before production was moved to Tirat Carmel.

The exhibit was curated by Yifat Ashkenazi with filmmaker Avi Weissblei, whose 2020 film “Desert Tested” told the history of the Sussita, a car designed with a fiberglass shell.

Ashkenazi delves into the wealth of material that Weissblei gathered for his documentary, including plenty of video clips and original photos of the two businessmen who initially battled over the development of the Sussita, newspaper clippings showing the public’s reaction to the fiberglass car, and other original materials.

The museum staff even built a stripped-down version of a Sussita for the exhibit because the narrow, 19th-century doorways of the museum’s Templar building wouldn’t let the car through.

They also collaborated with local Haifa art students, who came up with various inventions that drew on the pioneering spirit behind the Sussita.

“It’s a super-Israeli exhibit,” said Ashkenazi.

And it’s a Haifa story, with the first Sussita production line located just a few kilometers away from the German Colony museum in what is now a strip of car showrooms and garages.

Best of all, said Ashkenazi, are the visitors who are Sussita collectors and fans, along with those who sent in photos of their Sussita cars and the travels they made in the first and only sabra car.

Weissblei made another short film for the exhibit, featuring some of the Sussita collectors around Israel.

Working on the exhibit offered a break from the hardships and sadness of the last 15 months, said the filmmaker.

“It’s the story of Israel’s pioneering spirit,” said Weissblei. “It made me think positively about the future.”