Ari Libsker

Ari Libsker (Hebrew: ארי ליבסקר), born in Haifa, is a young Israeli filmmaker and journalist. He has made several documentaries.

One of his first ones, "Circumcision" (Israel 2004, 30 min, channel 2) dealt with the affection of circumcision on the sex life of Jewish people, connecting it to castration. Channel 2 tried to censor the movie and in the end broad-casted it at a late hour. The movie got a lot of responses and critics. A year later Libsker made "The Home Poem" (Israel 2006, 60 min.) a movie that followed three people, one of them his grandmother and their relation to home. (The name "Home Poem" is in respect to the same titled book by poet Aharon Shabtai).

Daily Libsker is a film tutor and a business journalist for Firma magazine (Globes), the Israeli financial paper.

In the late 1990s he founded, with others the "Free Academy" group. In 2002 he stared as an actor in the short Baboon group film depicting the life of a Tel Avivan Van Gogh. Since 2004 he co-edits Maayan Magazine, a magazine of poetry and ideas, and the film magazine Maarvon. One of their exhibitions was named "I Slept with Ari Libsker" and was held on a roof in Tel Aviv, another one was named "Sharon" on the connection between the wealthy Sharon plain area in Israel and the late PM Ariel Sharon.

In May 2006 Libsker presented a video work called "Magic 2" at the exhibition "Doron" that refers to Doron Sabag, exhibited in the Minshar gallery of Tel Aviv. It dealt with art and workers rights.

In 2007 Libsker worked on a feature documentary film called "Stalags". During the early 1960s in Israel and the Adolf Eichmann trial "Stalags" were pornographic booklet describing masochistic brutal sex relationship between Nazi women wardens and concentration camp prisoners. The film analyzes the reasons behind the phenomenon.

On September 6, 2007 Libsker was interviewed by "The New York Times" on pre-release of his film. He said in part, “I realized that the first Holocaust pictures I saw, as one who grew up here, were of naked women. We were in elementary school. I remember how embarrassed we were.”. [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html] .

External links

* [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html "Israel’s Unexpected Spinoff From a Holocaust Trial"] on Ari Libskers's "Stalags" film, by Isabel Kershner, The New York Times, 6.9.2007.
* [http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/06/africa/israel.php?page=2 New York Times piece in aduio] from "The International Herald Tribune", 6.9.2007.
* [http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/817490.html "Fiction Memory" On Ari Libsker's new film "Stalags"] from Haaretz, 24.1.2007 en icon, he icon [http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/pages/ShArtPE.jhtml?itemNo=817089] .
* [http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/878237.html Magazine story on the Stalags premiere in The Jerusalem Film Festival] July 2007, he icon.
* [http://yes.walla.co.il/?w=2/7801/1206979 Stalags] Hebrew, Complete film from WALLA!YES Israeli portal.
* [http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=%22Ari+Libsker%22 Libsker's Art Videos] at Google video
* [http://www.maarav.org.il/classes/PUItem.php?lang=HEB&id=382&PHPSESSID=f1660ef2be115e6e8f50ce0ffc952f7d "Eat And Drink Before Your Dead-Line"] An article by Ari Libsker he icon.
* [http://www.stalags.com "Stalags"] film by Ari Libsker, 2007.
* [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2372535130226634650 "Circumcision"] film by Ari Libsker, 2004.