Zohar: Mediterranean Blues Movie Review

Zohar: Mediterranean Blues is the sad story of Zohar Arkov, who achieved musical stardom in Israel before his death in 1987 at the age of 32. Its content and structure are similar to 1985's Shout, about Australian rock legend Johnny O'Keefe (who was 43 when he died in 1978), and to Star-dust, Michael Apted's fictional re-creation of the quintessential pop star, circa 1974. Since most filmed biographies of rock stars end with them getting torn up in a wreck or done in by drugs (in this case, it's the latter), the significance of Arkov's pioneering musical contributions is that they laid the groundwork for other Yemenite artists to achieve success on a large scale.

1993 116m/C IS Gabi Amrani, Dafna Dekel, Menahem Einy, Cochava Harari, Shaul Mizrahi; D: Eran Riklis; W: Amir Ben-David, Moshe Zonder; C: Amnon Alait; M: Avihu Medina.