Williams College to Showcase Israeli Author and Filmmaker's Works03:29PM / Friday, March 13, 2009
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Israeli author, filmmaker, and graphic novelist Etgar Keret will visit Williams College for two days of class visits, workshops, readings, and film screenings.
The series of events will kick off with a screening open to the public of the 2006 film "Wristcutters: A Love Story" at Images Cinema, followed by a Q&A session with Keret, on Tuesday, March 17, at 5:30 p.m. The movie was written by Keret and Goran Dukie and was a favorite at Sundance.
Keret will give a public reading and talk on Wednesday, March 18, at 8 p.m. in Griffin Hall, room 3. He will read from "The Girl of the Frig" and "The Nimrod Flip Out." The reading will be followed by a book signing reception.
Keret has been hailed as "the voice of young Israel and one of its most radical and extraordinary writers." His stories are rarely longer than three or four pages and fuse the banal with the surreal, offering a glimpse of a world that is both funny and sad.
He told the Guardian newspaper, "My stories are very compact. I want them to say the most complex things in the simplest way."
Keret's books are bestsellers in Israel and have been published in 22 languages. His most recent works are "Missing Kissinger," "Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God," and "Gaza Blues."
His latest book, "The Nimrod Flip-Out," is a collection of 32 short stories, capturing life in Israel today.
More than 40 of his short films have been based on his stories. As a filmmaker, Keret is the writer of several feature screenplays, including "Skin Deep," which was awarded the Israeli Oscar. "Jellyfish," his first movie as a director won the coveted Camera d'Or prize for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival 2007.
In Israel, he received the Prime Minister's award for literature and the Ministry of Culture's Cinema Prize.
He is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer Sheva and Tel Aviv University.
The events are sponsored by the Program in Jewish Studies, the Bronfman Committee, and the Wiener Lecture Funds. |
