Big Screen/Small Screen the kind of idealism that has inspired pil- grims and settlers for millennia. But he barely has touched down before reality rips through his reverie. Suspected of coming to work illegally, James is arrested. A jobber named Shimi appears on the scene to bail him out, only to put him to work on a cleaning crew. At first, James wants only to pay off his debt and be released from what amounts to indentured servitude. Shimi's father, Sallah, takes a shine to James, especially after he discovers the novice's exploitable ability to roll double sixes in backgammon games. The old man even com- pares James to the early Zionists. "All he ever thinks about is the Bible and work," Sallah says. But soon enough, James is captured by Israel's consumer culture and reveals entrepreneurial aptitude. He learns from his bosses the key to getting by in Israel today: Don't be a frayer — a pushover. Alexandrowicz, who co-wrote the screenplay, sees his film as an update of the 1964 Israeli classic Sallah Shabati. In that movie — which introduced audiences to the actor Topol — a North African immigrant learns to navigate Israel's Eurocentric bureaucracy. "In my film, 40 years later," Alexandrowicz said, "Sallah is teaching the new, new immigrant to cope with the new, new system." The capitalist system, that is. While fictional, James'Journey sprouted from Alexandrowicz's real-life acquaintance with an African immigrant named James. "He lived in Tel Aviv cleaning houses on a five- year expired tourist visa," Alexandrowicz said. James had worked as a banker in Nigeria before seeking Land Of Dreams And None Filmmaker examines when fantasy and reality of modern Israeli society collide in tragicomic fable of migrant workers. JULIA GOLDMAN New York Jewish Week A land flowing with milk and honey," James, a South African Christian pil- grim, says to a comrade as they take in the sights of Tel Aviv. But the only thing flowing in this scene from James'Journey to Jerusalem — a new film by Ra'anan Alexandrowicz — is commerce. James and his co-worker are looking out over the bustling escalator banks of a multistory shop- ping mall. A humorous tale that treats the issue of Israel's migrant workers at the same time it sati- rizes Israel's role as the "Holy Land," James' Journey runs Friday-Sunday, April 16-18, at the Detroit Film Theatre. The film also will be screened several times as part of this year's Jewish Community Center- sponsored Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival, which runs April 25-May 6. A fiction-feature first for documentary filmmaker Alexandrowicz, it premiered in January at the New York Jewish Film Festival. According to the filmmaker, James'Journey could easily have been set in the United States or Europe. "It's a contemporary film about money and about how money influences us as people, how money influences us as societies, how the princi- ples of economics influence our interactions," South African actor Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe plays the title role in "James' Journey to Jerusalem." Alexandrowicz said in a telephone interview from his home in Tel Aviv. On a deeper level, it's also about how dreams — personal, communal and national — get derailed when they come into friction with reality. "If I tell them back in the village how this place is, they won't believe me," James, winningly played by the South African actor Siyabonga Melongisi Shibe, says in the film. "They'll be mad at me." The young man has good reason to be disillu- sioned. Primed to become the pastor of his fictional village, he arrives at Ben-Gurion Airport filled with Family Dynamics Israeli documentary exposes relationship among siblings with a secret. MICHAEL FOX Special to the Jewish News I n the first-person documen- tary Love Inventory, veteran Israeli filmmaker David Fisher examines the tensions among his adult siblings. This being Israel, Fisher's middle-aged brothers and sister are neurotic, opinionated, ambitious, self-centered and not the least bit camera-shy. The 2001 film, which is always interesting, occasionally compelling but ultimately unsatisfying, airs 11 p.m. Sunday, April 18, on Detroit Public Television-Channel 56 and other PBS stations nationwide. , 4/16 2004 50 After their mother and father die in quick succession, Fisher contrives to unite his siblings around a family mystery. In 1952, with the Fishers resettled in Israel after surviving the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, their firstborn, Sammy, died as an infant. But it seems that Sammy had a twin sister, who disappeared at birth. As the eldest, filmmaker David spearheads the search. Estee, the newly divorced sister who's just returned from Philadelphia, and Gideon, a successful lawyer, are skep- tical but not opposed. Ronel, a top investigative journal- ist, can't be bothered; indeed, he spends the entire film- justifying his emotional isolation (which extends to his own children). The youngest brother is Amnon, an artist, actor and TV personality with some episodes of psychosis in his background and a predilection for drugs. David concentrates much of his energy on Amnon, though one can judge whether he's impelled by protectiveness, guilt or the wish to control. Those are Amnon's acoustic guitar noodlings on the soundtrack. The search for the lost Fisher sister — which leads to little-seen corners of Israeli society such as hospitals, cemeteries and archives — is innate- ly fascinating and raises questions that Fisher isn't particularly interest- ed in answering. Unfortunately, to the filmmaker the search is a MacGuffin — to use Alfred Hitchcock's term for an ele- ment, such as the "government secrets" the spies are after in North by Northwest — that is intended primarily to set the plot in motion. The search itself occupies perhaps 30 minutes of the film, with conversations between David and each sibling filling the other hour. These discussions are often revealing, since Israelis don't hesi- tate to say what they feel without regard to whom it hurts or shocks. Given that national tendency toward frankness, the presence of a camera has little effect on the Fisher clan. That adds an anything-can-hap- pen quality to the viewing, but the side effect is that none of the Fishers comes off as particularly likable. Eighty-five minutes with this family is more than enough.