My name is Chen, I live in Kidmat Tzvi which is a small settlement in the northern part of Israel, the Golan Heights. My biggest passion is art. Ever since I was a kid I tried my luck in every artistic form of expression I could find: I wrote stories from a very early age, painted my way through elementry school, and learned to play guitar and to sing in middle school. It was in highschool when I found the one thing that I felt combined all of my passions: Cinema. After highschool, I requested to postpone my mandatory military service in order to go to film school. During that 2 year period my passion for cinema grew stronger, I experienced filmaking in all of its complexities and did it with all of the totality it requieres, and finally, I wrote and directed a short comedy film. After I graduated I was enlisted to the Israeli army where I served for 3 years as a Director and Cinematographer for the Israeli Air Force. Recently I finished my mandatory service. I am resting now, back in my parents house in the Golan Heights. I work as a freelance director, cinematographer and editor. I spend much of my time playing guitar, singing , writing songs, poems and ideas for scripts. My dream is to make a feature film one day soon. But for now, my dream is to keep on making enough money forme to rest and enjoy life (maybe its less romantic but those three years in the army were pretty damn exhausting). I want to go to amsterdam. I want to go to have fun, to relax, to enjoy what amsterdam has to offer (not just that one obvious thing... :D ), and to meet new and intresting people.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

I want to experience a place through its people. Meeting new people is exciting and intresting to me. When abroad, Its intresting to me to see someone's livingroom other than some hotelroom. Its authentic, and to me gives much more about the place Im visiting. Aaand... to be honest... saving that hotel money does sound like a great idea! :D.

Interests

• photography
• painting
• jazz
• rock music
• hip-hop music
• film
• playing guitar
• cinematography
• directing
• film editing
• blues music
• photoshop
• lighting

Music, Movies, and Books

Some of my favorite movies:

The Darjeeling Limited
Blade Runner
Apocalypse Now
Pulp Fiction
Taxi Driver
Ghost In the Shell
Inside Llewyn Davis
Trainspotting
No Country for Old Men

Some of my favorite musicians:

Pink Floyd
Don Mclean
Simon and Garfunkel
Wes Montgomery
James Blake
Bon Iver
Kendrick Lamar

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

During the last year of my military service I felt I wanted to make something cinematic. Most of the films we made were boring and instructional. The annual Israeli memorial day for fallen soldiers was approaching. I had an idea to make a short video that would tell the story of a fallen Israeli Air force soldier, and would try to be artistic and emotional. It was hard at first, I had to work hard to convince my commanders it was a good and cruicial idea. After the idea was approved, I went on and wrote the thing. I had just one month before the memorial day. I found myself working without sleep for days, producing, planing. With great help from my talented friends I was able to make it happen. I directed, produced, edited and scored the whole thing by myself. After weeks of very little sleep, very little care for personal hygene, and a lot of arguments with officers who tried very hard to censor and sabotage my efforts, I finally did it. The video was ready, and approved for publication. It was something that was never done before in my unit, and I was very proud with the result. I took part in many productions: short films. commercials, music videos, and so on. But this patricular project is special to me because I felt like I won. I made somthing that's artistic and emotional while confined inside a system that is cold, strict and depressing, a system where people my age, almost never get to express themselves.

https://youtu.be/lMvkfinMK6c

Countries I’ve Visited

Canada, Greece, Poland, Romania, Spain, United States