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and searching of the American expatriate
writers of the 1920s.
He was born in Silver Spring, Md.,
studied at the Yeshiva of Greater
Washington and after graduating at 17,
headed for Israel and enrolled at the
national religious Yeshiva Shialvim.
After a stint as a congressional intern
in Washington, the wandering spirit
struck again. For the next two years he
lived in Paris, London, Prague, Cairo,
Calcutta, Bangkok, Saigon and Hanoi,
doing odd jobs as a waiter, bartender,
party promoter and street performer.

he Holy Land says the
movie's writer/director
Eitan Gorlin, "shows the
underbelly of real life in
Jerusalem after the tourists and
Orthodox families go to sleep."
The film, which has already won
remarkable recognition in America for
a debut feature by a complete
unknown, packs a great deal more into
its 96 minutes.
On the slender storyline of a
young, sheltered yeshivah stu-
dent who falls in love with an
even younger Russian prosti-
tute, The Holy Land ranges
across the Israeli landscape of
the late 1990s, with its fervent-
ly Orthodox Jews, religious
Zionist settlers, Arab collabora-
tors and terrorists, and Russian
and American immigrants.
The film's protagonist is
Mendy, studying at a yeshiva in
B'nai B'rak, who finds it increas-
ingly hard to keep his thoughts . Oren Rehany (Mendy) and Tchelet Semel
(Sasha) star in "The Holy Land"
off women and sex. One of his
rabbis advises him to "get it out
He interrupted his global tramping for
of his system" by visiting a prostitute.
Mendy takes off for Jerusalem and at a three-year stay in Israel, during which
he served as a gunner in an Israeli army
a strip club meets Sasha, a 19-year-old
tank unit, and met the real-life Mike,
prostitute from Ukraine. The inexperi-
who hired him as a bartender. (Mike's
enced Mendy falls hard for the hooker,
while vaguely hoping to "save" her, and Place subsequently moved to Tel Aviv,
where it was damaged in a bombing by
in turn is introduced by her to Mike's
two British-born Arab terrorists in April.)
Place.
Returning again to the United States,
The seedy pub in eastern Jerusalem
Gorlin wrote three scripts and a novella,
is run by Mike, a big, blustery
titled Mike's Place, &Jerusalem Diary,
American former war photographer,
which became the basis of the movie.
whose joint is a combination of Rick's
At the end of 1999, he had raised
Cafe, in a postmodern Casablanca and
enough private money — he won't say
the cantina in Star Wars.
how much — to return to Israel and for
The pull of Mendy's religious life
one solid year he worked 20 hours a day,
grows stronger as his new secular expe-
seven days a week, to cast and shoot The
riences and relationships become more
Holy Land
complex and disturbing. The resolu-
In the principal roles he cast two
tion of this internal conflict in the
sabras, 23-year-old Oren Rehary as
movie's last minutes adds the ultimate
Mendy and 19-year-old Tchelet Semel
shocker to the iconoclastic film.
as Sasha, with American actor Saul Stein
Since The Holy Land represents such
portraying
Mike.
a singular, largely autobiographical,
Once the film was in the can, nobody
vision, Gorlin's own background serves
wanted to screen it.
as a useful program guide.
"We were turned down by every
At 34, Gorlin's life has moved between
Jewish film festival in the United
the religious and worldly poles and has
States and by the Jerusalem Festival
encompassed the bohemian restlessness