Director Dan Wolman occupies a very special place in the annals of Israeli film.
His first film "The dreamer" (shot in 1968), broke new ground in Israeli cinema. Not only was it a departure of courageous and defiant proportions from stereotypical local comedy and formula film, but it contravened the aura of the 1967 Six days' War and it's aftermath, when the country was preoccupied with it's victory over the enemy. "The Dreamer" is a sensitive and complex film that can be characterized as Israel's first "personal" film, one that probes deeply into an individual's psyche and explores his conflict with society. The individual who dares to break with the norm and struggles valiantly with society for self – definition is a theme that carries through Wolman's  work and gives him a unique niche among Israel's film – makers.
In his first two features, "The Dreamer" and "Floch", he deals with the plight of the elderly. In "My Michael" a screen adaptation of Amos Oz's novel, Wolman highlights the dreariness and loneliness in the lives of women. In "Hide and Seek" and later in "Tied Hands" he examines homosexuality.
Wolman's empathy with and compassion for the pain of the weak and the suffering find expression in his "Foreign Sister and "Ben's Biography".

Wolman is noted for films that take strong independent positions. The dilemmas of his characters are revealed with integrity and seriousness of purpose, reflecting the ongoing struggle between the individual and the society in which he lives.
Wolman's often – controversial views made it difficult for him to find monetary backing; nevertheless, his films are finely made, with great attention to detail and décor. His style is classical; he is a master of mise en scene. He creates subtle, poetic effects: he has an eye for a world in a face and a wasteland in a landscape. Through his investigation of mysterious and uncommon, Wolman's films uncover universal truths.

In His Own Way / Uri Klein

More than any other Israeli director, Dan Wolman is our consummate independent filmmaker

A few weeks ago, during the Sukkoth holidays, channel 2 aired director Dan Wolman’s last film: “Spoken with Love” in this case the love of the 67 year-old director for his parents. They’re both impressive medical professionals who are perhaps less physically robust than they were in their prime, but their mind is still as fresh and clear as it was in their youth.

Wolman’s film premiered a few months earlier during the “DocAviv” documentary film festival.,

Since the beginning of this century, for example, Wolman directed three worthy feature films: “Foreign Sister”, “Ben’s Biography” – based on a one-man play which Wolman wrote and performed throughout Israel – and “Tied Hands”. Local critics reacted favorably to the films, and they won numerous awards in other countries.

In fact, more than any other Israeli director, Dan Wolman is our consummate independent filmmaker, whether his films are financed by a government fund or by alternate funding; his independence will be acknowledged by the participants in the special events that will commence today, in cinematheques throughout Israel. These events mark a long overdue celebration of an important Israeli filmmaker.

Heat and Darkness

Wolman, who studied film in New York, belongs to a generation of filmmakers such as Uri Zohar, Abraham Hefner, Yehuda (Judd) Ne’eman, Yitzhak (Tseppel) Yeshurun) and Yigal Borstein, who created their first films in the 1960s, and were influenced by the changes that took place in European and American cinema during those years.

Of this group, Wolman has worked with the greatest consistency, and has created the most films, including feature films, television dramas and documentaries. While it seems sometimes that his colleagues have given up on their ability to create films in this country – Uri Zohar is, of course, a special case in this regard – there has hardly been a moment in the past four decades that Wolman has not been involved in the production of a film, even when his films failed at the box office, or in some cases were never shown on a commercial screen.

There is something mysterious, even inexplicable, in Wolman’s work. He is a filmmaker who chose to focus on old age, even in his youth: his first film, “The Dreamer”, describes the relationship between a young man who works in a nursing home in Safed, and one of the elderly inhabitants of the home. Wolman returned to this subject in his next movie, “Floch” and in a few of his later films, including “The Distance”, in 1994.

That same sense of mystery pervades “Spoken with Love”. In one of the scenes in the film (which is dedicated to his parents), Wolman asks his mother how it could be that although he had a so-called “happy childhood”, the relationship between parents and children in his films are always so fraught with tension, and even border on perversion.

There is no good answer to this question, other than to say that there is a great darkness in Wolman’s films, which usually emerges from the edges of the film, and gradually pervades it completely. The most touching relationship between a mother and son, could perhaps be seen in his latest feature film, “Tied Hands”. But that film told the story of a mother who embarks on a nightly journey in Tel Aviv to find some marijuana for her gay son, who is dying of AIDS. The heat and the darkness blended in the film to create a cruel and heart-wrenching melodrama.

Great Courage

Not only are Wolman’s films in the margins of Israeli cinema, they are also preoccupied with the margins of society: the margins of getting old, the marginality of foreign workers, the margins of a tormented marriage (in “My Michael” from 1975, his most successful and well-known film), and the margins of the male anomaly itself, which Wolman discusses in three of his most bold works.

The first of the three is “Hide and Seek”, from 1980. The film tells the story of a boy in British Palestine who discovers that his private tutor is gay, and is having an affair with an Arab. The second film is “Soldier of the Night”, which filmed for three years and was shown in theatres for a short while in 1984. The movie, a horror film of sorts, tells the story of an Israeli that takes his revenge on Israeli society for rejecting him from its most basic initiation rite: the military service. The third of the films is “Ben’s Biography”, a blend of autobiography and fantasy, which is one of Wolman’s most unusual films. “Ben’s Biography”, more than any other of his films, enhances the feeling that Wolman’s work has a secret to keep, and it is not clear whether the secret is completely revealed even to the filmmaker himself. But be that as it may, the presence of the secret in the center of Wolman’s work enriches his films, and gives them the unique ability to be simultaneously disturbing and deeply touching.

To some extent, Wolman is a total artist. He creates his films with a simplicity and modesty which are deceiving; beyond these qualities there is also a great stubbornness, and above all great courage. Wolman plays a central role in the variety and richness of Israeli cinema from its earliest days. Without him, Israeli film would be weaker, and above all more limited. Now we finally have an opportunity to salute all that Wolman has contributed to local cinema, during his past four impressively creative decades.