Hampshire College

“The Dark and the Surreal: Israeli Writer and Filmmaker Etgar Keret”
April 8 at 5:30 p.m.
LOCATION: National Yiddish Book Center

Hampshire College invites the public to hear Israeli writer and filmmaker Etgar Keret on April 8 at 5:30 p.m. He will speak at the National Yiddish Book Center in an event sponsored by the Posen Project for the Study of Secular Jewish History and Culture at Hampshire College.

Born in Tel Aviv in 1967, Keret is hailed as the voice of young Israel and one of its most radical and extraordinary writers. He is internationally acclaimed for his short stories.

Keret’s books are bestsellers in Israel and have been published in 22 languages. His books include The Girl on the Fridge (2008), Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God (2004), Missing Kissinger (2007), and Gaza Blues (2004). In France, Kneller’s Happy Campers is listed as one of Fnac’s 200 books of the decade. The Nimrod Flip-Out was published in Francis Ford Coppola`s magazine, Zoetrope, in 2004.

Keret has received the Book Publishers Association’s Platinum Prize several times, has been awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize, and the Ministry of Culture’s Cinema Prize. More than 40 short movies have been based on his stories, one of which won the American MTV Prize in 1998.

As a filmmaker, Keret is the writer of several feature screenplays, including Skin Deep (1996), which won First Prize at several international film festivals and was awarded the Israeli Oscar. Wrist Cutters, featuring Tom Waits, was released in August 2007. Jellyfish, his first movie as a director along with his wife Shira Geffen, won the coveted Camera d’Or prize for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival 2007. The animated feature film $9.99, based on several of Keret’s stories, marries the tradition of Jewish self-flagellating humor with uncanny absurdity. The film shows miracles coexisting with the mundane, and offers a beguiling view of what hope looks like in a hauntingly fragmented world.

Keret currently teaches at Ben-Gurion University.

For more information, contact Professor Rachel Rubinstein at rrHACU@hampshire.edu.