Out for Love...Be Back Shortly

Israeli filmmaker Dan Katzir's first person, voice-over video diary is an episodic and seemingly interminable meditation on the search for love and emotional connection in the midst of social and political turmoil. Freshly sprung from his mandatory hitch in the Israeli army, Katzir takes up a course in filmmaking at the university with a narcissistic vengeance (apparently, he shot this film before taking the units on continuity and editing). He rambles around his Tel Aviv neighborhood, desultorily shooting street scenes, women, student protests on campus, and the aftermath of urban terrorism. He agonizes about the meaning of nationalism, personal commitment, and loneliness. He visits his grandmother and learns the details of the murder of his grandfather at the hands of terrorists years before (the most engrossing and emotionally satisfying sequence in the film), meets a girl named Iris, fumbles the emotional ball on numerous occasions, loses her briefly, and eventually gets his amatory act together. The End. Katzir's confusion and vulnerability, which are rather winning in the first half of the video, begin to wear pretty thin by the end (stop whining already, Dan!). Although this is definitely a cut above many student films, it is still marred by a lack of focus and mired in the type of self-absorption characteristic of many student cinematic forays. A marginal buy for public and academic libraries. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)