Singer/songwriter Jennifer Gasoi, seen here in a promotional shot for her new book, was back in her hometown last month. (photo by Philove)
Jennifer Gasoi’s new book, Blue and Red Make Purple, is both a hardcover children’s book and a CD collection. It was released to immediate acclaim, winning the 2016 Parents’ Choice Gold Award and a National Parenting Product Award.
Jennifer Gasoi’s new book, Blue and Red Make Purple, has already won awards.
Illustrated by Steve Adams, Gasoi’s songbook has a vintage feel with a touch of Chagall. It is vibrant and surreal, full of movement, as a group of animals get up to all sorts of musical capers. “I love the illustrations for this book,” Gasoi told the Independent. “I feel that Steve accurately depicted the joy, love and depth of my songs. He offers a brilliant visual representation of the music.”
Gasoi has local roots and, 15 years ago, she was performing at Rossini’s jazz bar in Kitsilano. She studied music at Capilano University’s jazz program and took part in community choir events around town before she decided it was time for a change and moved to Montreal. There, she taught music to young children and parents. Her debut album, Songs for You (2004), garnered awards and nominations, as did her second CD, Throw a Penny in the Wishing Well (2012).
Among the honors for her second recording was a 2014 Grammy Award for best children’s recording. An unusual compilation, the CD introduces children to a wide range of genres, including bluegrass, calypso and klezmer.
“Winning a Grammy was a life highlight,” said Gasoi. “It was something I had been dreaming of since I started my music career – and having Cyndi Lauper present the award was pure gold.”
Gasoi’s lyrics are deceptively simple. The song “Happy” from Wishing Well, for example, starts gently in a voice that sounds as natural as exhaling, were it not for the jaunty, syncopated piano accompaniment. This brief “ditty,” as she calls it, is written for children but models a spirit of resilience and self-acceptance that could be a mantra for any age. A chorus of “I feel happy” follows lines such as, “When I jump, when I fly, when I feel, when I cry.” Likewise, this song teaches generosity and compassion: “When I laugh, when I live the life I want to live, when I take a little less than I give. I feel happy….” And, “When I dance the way I want to dance. When I step out of the box and take a chance, I feel happy….”
Gasoi’s voice brims with a mix of confidence, mischief and kindness. Asked if she’s aware of this last quality, she laughed, “I do hear that. I hear that I’m soothing. Even when I was in jazz clubs and I’d be thinking, ‘I’m rocking this, I’m digging it!’ people would come up and say, ‘I’m so relaxed right now!’”
As an artist, Gasoi is working to a plan. Her goal is to reach children deeply, authentically, as both an educator and a musician. This drive has long been apparent, said singer Christie Grace, Gasoi’s contemporary at Capilano. “She was always extremely self-disciplined.”
“I have a soul connection with children,” said Gasoi. “I see their light and their beauty. I pray that, through my music, I can inspire them to tune into what they feel, what they love, what they are good at.”
With an eye to the greater good, the singer wants her music to motivate children to be active and empowered citizens working for “a world that is based on peace, compassion and love.”
Gasoi also recognizes that dialogue is part of any educational experience. The adults may be the ones who have laid out the agenda, but the lesson goes both ways. She speaks of the rich education she gained during the 15 years she honed her voice and performance style “teaching music in daycares and community centres, a lot of mom and baby groups.”
Asked about what keeps her motivated, Gasoi describes a visit to an inner city school in Montreal. “I performed my songs to the most enthusiastic audience I’d ever seen,” she said. “The kids were beaming with excitement. They knew all the songs.”
In a population that doesn’t usually have a chance to attend concerts, the experience was all the more poignant. The singer described the group as “jubilant and receptive.”
“One of the teachers told me that one of her students, a boy with autism, had never sat still for more than five minutes during any other concert,” said Gasoi. “During this show, he was engaged for the full hour. It’s moments like these that keep me going.”
Singer/songwriter Jennifer Gasoi with one of her fans, Joel Harrington, the writer’s youngest son. (photo by Shula Klinger)
On stage at the Vancouver Writers Fest last month, Gasoi was utterly in her element. She addressed the audience of hundreds as if it were an intimate group of a few children, gathered around her knees. Her experience as an educator was apparent, as she asked questions and engaged the crowd in conversations, responding to the children as they called out answers and praising them for their unexpected gems. In the middle of “Little Blue Car Trip,” she asked the audience for another form of transportation. The first answer fired back, “Camel!” got a laugh from audience and band alike.
Gasoi’s band members – Jody Proznick (double bass), Joel Fountain (percussion/vocals), Chris Gestrin (piano/melodica) and Ralph Shaw (banjo) – are no less engaging. Shaw doubles as the Purple Man from the song of the same name, leaping across the stage to the strains of this energetic, multi-genred song, which culminates in a fiery rendition of “Hava Nagila.”
There’s nothing like a hometown reception for a returning artist and this show was no exception. “This week was absolute magic. Vancouver welcomed me with open arms!” said Gasoi, who continues to deliver songs packed with rhymes, wordplay and colorful imagery.
“I am constantly amazed by kids,” she said. “They are so pure, honest, innocent and in touch with their instincts. I see their potential and I am doing everything in my power to support them.”
Shula Klingeris an author, illustrator and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at niftyscissors.com.
Chef Michael Solomonov samples the wonders of the Levinsky Market in Tel Aviv. (photo from israelicuisinefilm.com)
The 28th Vancouver Jewish Film Festival starts next week. New this year is an all-ages weekend of films at Rothstein Theatre, which follows the Nov. 3-10 festival screenings at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Not new is the diverse selection of thought-provoking offerings.
With the festival opener, In Search of Israeli Cuisine, foodies will get their fix and then some. Guided by Michael Solomonov, the chef-owner of Philadelphia’s Zahav restaurant, the viewer is taken on a global food tour all within the confines of the tiny state of Israel.
Is there even an Israeli cuisine, the film asks. Yes, says food writer Janna Gur. “It’s perhaps a nascent cuisine, a baby cuisine, but a very precocious baby,” she says.
Israeli cuisine, Solomonov says, is made up of “traditions that were brought here and also that were born here.” He asks one market vendor how long he has had a spice shop. The reply: “Four hundred years.”
The food of Israel mirrors the history of the country, particularly its economy. In the years after independence, cuisine was defined by economical, modest recipes that incorporated the agricultural resources of the new state. In the 1980s, when the economy boomed, Israelis traveled more and wanted at home the kinds of flavors they found abroad.
Philosophically, Israeli food developed alongside the new identity the people were creating for themselves and their country. People were ashamed of the past and embarrassed by the foods of their parents. Israel’s “new Jew” was supposed to leave sad history behind and create a new post-galut civilization.
“In Israel, when you say Polish cooking, it’s another way of saying bland, boring, guilt-ridden kind of food,” says Gur.
Yet, the effort to abandon the past was both successful and, thankfully, unsuccessful. Tradition, in fact, integrates change through adaptive cookery. The centrality of Shabbat has defined Jewish and, therefore, Israeli cuisine, because of the necessity of developing recipes that can cook slowly for up to 16 hours. And, even though most Israelis are not religiously observant, Shabbat can still be a sacred family experience. One person explains that watching American TV, where families gather twice a year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, seems foreign, because every Jewish mother wants her daughters and sons with her every Shabbat.
Also unlike in most of North America, the film illustrates mouth-wateringly that a vegetarian in Israel can eat like royalty with endless options.
Politics also intervenes. During the Oslo peace process, Palestinian restaurants flourished in Israel. “Food makes peace,” says an Arab-Israeli chef. But there are also accusations of cultural appropriation.
“They often accuse us of stealing it,” chef Erez Komarovsky says of Israeli cuisine. But food knows no borders, he contends. “Food is not political. Food is what is grown on this land by the people who are living in it. If they are called Palestinians or Israelis, I don’t care. I don’t think the tomato cares.”
“Israeli salad is actually Arabic salad,” Gur admits. “What makes it Israeli is the way we use it.” That means eating it three meals a day and, for instance, stuffing it in pita with schnitzel.
The evidence about what defines Israeli cuisine is not entirely conclusive. Though Komarovsky claims to know.
“The essence of the Israeli taste is lemon juice, olive oil and the liquids from the vegetables,” he says. “And this is the taste that you miss after two or three days when you go abroad.”
– PJ
Liberation after the Holocaust was not unalloyed joy. It was complex, emotional terrain that involved coming to terms with the reality of the extent of the destruction of European Jewish civilization, individual family members and entire communities. This mix of emotions is clearly shown in Magnus Gertten’s documentary Every Face Has a Name.
Hinda Jakubowicz stepping off the ferry in Malmö on April 28, 1945. (photo from everyfacehasaname.com)
Gertten took a film that was shot of arrivals to Malmo, Sweden, on April 28, 1945, and obtained the list of 1,948 passengers who arrived that day. Then he set out to put names to faces.
Elsie Ragusin was an Italian-American New York girl visiting her grandparents in Italy when the war began and they could not return home. When the Nazis occupied Italy, she and her father were arrested as spies and she became, as she says, the only American girl in Auschwitz.
She looks at her face on the film and says: “There, I’m thinking: ‘Can this be true?’” The smiling people handing out food seemed unreal to her. No one had smiled at them in the camps.
Gertten, a Swede, was moved to make the film when he saw parallels with the faces in footage of refugees arriving in Europe today. “Who are they?” he asks.
Fredzia Marmur, now of Toronto, sees herself on film, at age 9, wearing the same cloth coat she wore when her family left the Lodz ghetto. “There I am again,” she says of a little girl beaming into the camera.
The other women in the screen were together with her in Ravensbruck and, while Marmur admits she didn’t know what was happening, she took a cue from those around her. “I saw that everybody seemed happy, so I decided to be happy too,” she says.
Siblings Bernhard Kempler and Anita Lobel, 8 and 10 in 1995, try to reconstruct their thoughts at the time. Bernhard survived dressed as a girl and the pair stuck together, avoiding all others through their time in hiding and at Ravensbruck.
“It looks to me like I’m somewhere between happy and frightened,” says Bernhard. “A mixture of hope, a mixture of relief, a mixture of ‘Can I trust this?’ and some fear.”
He recalls his reunion with his parents. He was in hospital and the staff gathered around to watch what they expected to be a joyful scene. It wasn’t. His response, he recalls of meeting his parents after years of separation was, “Who are these people?” He suspects his parents wondered, “Who is this child?”
“I didn’t know who I was for a long time after that,” he says.
The film intersperses images from 1945 with those of present-day refugees arriving (some alive, some dead) in Sicily. A small but disturbing 1945 scene is ostensibly happy – women receiving clothes in Sweden – but the camera shows their nakedness, as if, even on liberation, their right to privacy was not granted.
People couldn’t always tell who they were seeing in the film. Judith Popinsky recognized four of the five young women who formed her surrogate family in Auschwitz after their families were murdered on arrival there. Only after some self-convincing did she determine that the fifth woman must be her.
“You encountered so many nameless faces throughout that period in time,” she says. “No one remembers them anymore. They lived anonymously. They were buried anonymously. At least now some of them have their names restored.”
– PJ
In One Rock Three Religions, the rock in question represents the city of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount – which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif – is the literal rock, where the two historical Jewish temples existed and where al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock now stand. The film captures the glory of diversity and the tragedy of division that coexist in the holy city.
Divisibility in a political sense has been mooted several times. The 1947 Partition Resolution saw a Jerusalem under international governance. The city was divided, from 1948 until 1967, with East Jerusalem under Jordanian occupation and West Jerusalem in Israel. However, Kanan Makiya, author of The Rock, insists that, from a human standpoint, it cannot be separated. “How do you cut a rock?” he asks. “Jerusalem belongs to more than one faith. No one person, no one faith can claim it.”
When the Temple Mount was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, some soldiers raised an Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock. Gen. Moshe Dayan ordered it taken down and handed the keys to the Wakf, the Muslim religious authority. This was both a symbolic and a practical decision, particularly in contrast with the exclusion experienced from 1948 to 1967, when Jews were forbidden from the holiest Jewish sites.
The documentary focuses on the contending claims and assertions of rights. The founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council says he has not seen Jerusalem because he will not stop at checkpoints and be searched “by soldiers that I consider occupiers.”
Some religious Jews say that, because the Temple existed where al-Aqsa Mosque now stands, they should be able to pray there as well as at the Western Wall. A Palestinian diplomat calls this a provocation.
Former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold contends that Palestinian and other Arab leaders frequently incite their followers with allegations that Israel is attempting to undermine or destroy the mosque and its environs. And the film features the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations repeating the incendiary falsehood that the Jews are trying to build the Third Temple in the place of the Dome of the Rock. Some Muslims are quoted denying any Jewish connection to the location.
This sort of denial, recently codified by UNESCO in a resolution that erases Jewish and Christian historical ties to the holy site, is evidence that strength through diversity in a place of such importance is often more wishful thinking than reality.
– PJ
AKA Nadia is far more complex and compelling than you might first assume. (photo from 2teamproductions.com)
When you read the sentence-long review of AKA Nadia on some sites – “A happily married mother of two seems to have the perfect life, until her hidden past comes to light” – you make a few assumptions. Namely, that the two-hour film is a fairly fast-moving tale of deception and drama. The opening scenes, in which a host of events happens, back this up: lively protagonist Nadia (Netta Shpigelman), a young Arab girl, graduates school in Jerusalem and secretly marries her lover, a PLO activist; they move to England where, fairly quickly, he’s caught by the authorities and she’s left alone, branded a terrorist and with no easy way of returning to Israel.
It’s not until half an hour in that the movie reveals its style – thoughtful and slow-moving, far more complex and compelling than you might first assume. When we were first introduced to Nadia, it was in East Jerusalem in 1987. We’re now reacquainted with her 20 years later, in the city’s west. Having fled England, thanks to a young Jewish woman’s passport, she’s completely (and secretly) rebuilt her life, as a Jew called Maya. And this is where the movie focuses the bulk of its time, perhaps too much time, on her new roles: successful dance choreographer, mother of two and wife to a Jewish official at the Ministry of Justice.
It’s only to be expected that this pleasant middle-class family life shatters when her past catches up with her. And every aspect of the subsequent relationship breakdown is well-acted and artistically produced. You feel for both husband and wife, and of, course, you’re forced to think of the bigger picture, too – religious identity in Israel and the ramifications of being Jewish versus Arab. Even after the movie ends – which it does a little abruptly – you’ll be left contemplating these issues for days.
– RS
My Home doesn’t shy away from its aim: showing how much minorities in Israel are typecast. It starts by stating that minorities (mostly Muslims, Christians, Bedouins and Druze) make up 20% of the population, but are often viewed by the outside world as all being Arabs who resent the Israeli “occupation” and the Jewish “apartheid state.” To show this is far from the case, the documentary follows the work of four people, one from each of the minority groups listed above.
A scene from My Home, in which Muhamed Kabiya undergoes an ID check in Jerusalem. (photo from ruthfilms.com)
The result is a slightly disjointed, but incredibly interesting portrayal of people who are all different, but united in their bravery. There’s a Greek Orthodox priest and a Lebanese Christian, both promoting integration by “others” into Israeli society. But the two people who really resonate are Wafa Hussein, a Muslim Zionist and school teacher preaching acceptance of all ethnicities, and Mohammad Ka’abiya, an Israeli Bedouin who prepares Bedouin teenagers in his village for Israel Defence Forces service, having served himself.
The latter two have been labeled traitors by their communities because of their activism, but persist in striving for coexistence. And this is an aspect of the documentary that must be applauded – there is no sugar-coating the discrimination minorities face: “as an Arab, you wake up in the morning and tell yourself, ‘I have a lot to deal with today.’” But, the film ultimately is a heartening look at the complexities, both good and bad, of calling Israel “home.”
– RS
For tickets to the festival, visit vjff.org or call 604-266-0245.
Rebecca Shapirois associate editor of vivalifestyleandtravel.com, a travel blogger at thethoughtfultraveller.com and a freelance journalist published in Elle Canada, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and more.
Heart of the City festival participants. (photo by David Cooper)
Community is at the heart of what Ruth Howard, Maggie Winston and Sharon Kravitz do, so it is no wonder they are participating in the Heart of the City Festival, which features more than 100 events at more than 40 locations throughout the Downtown Eastside Oct. 26-Nov. 6.
One of the projects is Realms of Refuge, which Howard (of Toronto’s Jumblies Theatre) describes as “an episode of Jumblies’ Four Lands national tour, which itself grew out of our 2015 west-to-east-coast tour, Train of Thought, for which Vancouver Moving Theatre was a key partner.” VMT is the main presenter of Heart of the City, and Howard has known VMT’s co-founder and artistic director Savannah Walling since 2003.
Realms of Refuge’s “four lands” concern senses, memory, history and dreams, explained Howard. “Over the course of the [two-week] residency, artists and community members create and bring to life these lands, through drawing, miniature models, words, music, movement and conversation. There will be drop-in art-making sessions at the Interurban Gallery (the project’s home-base), as well as some workshops in other locations with community groups and partners…. An open-ended number of people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities can take part in the activities and come to enjoy the evolving artwork.”
Ruth Howard (photo by Liam Coo)
The intent of the project, said Howard, is “to spark thought and conversation and promote curiosity and understanding about the lives and experiences of people living on the same land.
“The ‘evolving gallery’ form, which I first invented and started to play with at Jumblies in 2009, involves setting up the framework for artistic creation in a gallery, studio or other suitable public venue, launching the starting point and facilitating its growth over a period of time. Generally, it starts with visual arts activities and then moves on to include words and simple performance. The idea is, rather than opening a gallery exhibition to be viewed in its finished state … we set the context for something that can’t happen unless diverse people come and take part; the nature and specifics are determined by those participating people, and we celebrate its closing state.”
Howard founded Jumblies in 2001. “I was always seeking ways to combine esthetic and social values and impact, and to blur distinctions between process and product; audience and participant; story and history; ritual and theatre; art and life,” she said.
“In 1990, I encountered the British ‘community play’ form, brought to Canada by writer Dale Hamilton, in a production in the Guelph area called The Spirit of Shivaree. This was for me a life-changing experience: I found a form of art-making that combined epic-scale theatre with wholehearted social inclusion and an astonishing capacity for social change.”
Howard wants to make art in ways “that don’t fit into standard disciplinary delineations,” to collaborate with others who have skills and perspectives she doesn’t, to learn “from people, places and stories that have tended to be left out of our cultural mainstream” and to “bring people together across real and perceived differences and remove restrictive delineations,” such as “youth” or “marginalized people.” She wants to “create an exciting, accepting and nourishing home and creative/social worlds in which my children – and also my friends, family, neighbors, colleagues and co-inhabitors of the land – can grow up and live,” as well as “have quirky ideas large and small and have the freedom to explore, develop and realize them.” She would like for art to be “at the heart of life.”
When asked if Judaism or Jewish culture has influenced her, Howard said, “My mother was a German Jewish refugee, whose immediate family escaped to England in 1938, just after Kristallnacht. Her father was a businessman and excellent amateur violinist, and her mother was a painter, well established in the Hamburg avant-garde arts scene before the war. I was brought up with a strong non-religious Jewish identity. As an adult, I joined a Toronto secular leftist Jewish organization (the United Jewish People’s Order and their summer community, Camp Naivelt), in which community I brought up my three children.
“Altogether my Jewish sensibility is hugely relevant to my life and work,” she said. “I was brought up with art as an essential part of life – both doing it … and witnessing it…. I was also brought up absorbing that it is important never to leave anyone out; not to support, tolerate or ignore separation of people into exclusive groups; always to have space at the table for unexpected guests; to welcome everyone; that ‘never again’ means ‘never for anyone.’”
Through her association with UJPO, Howard “learned to interpret and celebrate Jewish holidays for their social and cultural relevance to struggles of all humanity for survival, freedom and dignity.” She has created an oral history/theatre project with Camp Naivelt and, more recently, adapted a series of Passover seders to include the telling of other vital stories, such as Toronto’s indigenous history.
“When I first heard the word genocide used in relation to the treatment by European settlers of Canada’s indigenous people, I was stopped in my tracks; it was something that I couldn’t put aside…. Since then, I have made it a priority to learn and form relationships so that the work of Jumblies could support First Nations recovery, justice, equity, and new awareness for all of us who live here…. My ongoing artistic preoccupations include inherited memories of and present relationships with eradicated places, and the interplay and relative merits of remembering and forgetting. These themes are woven into the Four Lands/Realms of Refuge project. It isn’t particularly a Jewish project, but it springs from my particular Jewish mind … and the Vancouver iteration, with its focus on places of refuge, happens aptly to take place during Sukkot.”
Jewish culture has also influenced Winston, who grew up in a secular family.
“My upbringing in a family that is very engaged in politics, culture and the arts has definitely influenced who I am and how I approach the world,” said Winston. “I do believe that being culturally Jewish has contributed to my sense of being an advocate for others, of being confident in my ability to ask questions and explore ideas, and in feeling as though I am part of a greater community. Growing up in the United States in a suburb of Baltimore that was pretty white and Christian, I did feel different from my peers even though Baltimore has a huge Jewish population. Enjoying that feeling of differentness has led me to being a creative professional.
“Jewish folklore is a great source of inspiration and I would love to learn more,” she added. “My solo puppet and clown show Just Enough is based on the Yiddish folktale Joseph’s Overcoat, in which something is made from nothing and then passed down through family. In my version, it features a grandmother (a puppet) and her granddaughter (me, as a clown). The grandmother makes a quilt out of her old clothes for her baby granddaughter and, as she grows up, the grandmother cuts and sews it into other things for her until all that is left is a button.
Maggie Winston (photo by Juliana Bedoya)
“As a theatre artist,” she said, “I am drawn to ritual and tradition in many forms. I have always found support for my work in the Jewish community, not only in Vancouver (through the JCC and the Chutzpah! Festival), but in other places around the world. I have started to make a few connections in the Jewish community in Montreal and am excited to see what evolves there.”
Winston only recently moved to Montreal, where her mother and grandparents grew up there. “Every summer of my life has been spent at our family cottage in Morin Heights, Que., just one hour from Montreal,” said Winston.
When she graduated in 2005 with a BA in puppetry performance from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, she wanted to move to Canada and, in the end, chose Vancouver “because I knew I could get to know people in the arts community easily through my relatives. Actually, it was through my aunt that I was originally connected to Terry [Hunter] and Savannah [Walling] of VMT back in 2008 when I got to be involved in We’re All in This Together, a shadow project in the DTES.”
However, “the pang of Montreal called me more and more,” so, this past January, she made the move. “The reason why I’m back in Vancouver right now is because of some other projects I had already planned last year…. Right now, in addition to working for Heart of the City, I’m collaborating on a music and puppetry project with Laura Barron (Instruments of Change), facilitating students in a Vancouver elementary school and then repeating the same project with students at a school in India. We did a similar program two years ago, and had already decided it would happen again this year.”
With Heart of the City, Winston is both an artist liaison, as well as a performer. She’ll be in It’s a Joke! – which has the theme “‘Stand-up for mental health” – with the Assembly, a group she’s been with about four years. “We are a playful and lofty collective of process-oriented, performance-driven, self-identifying women clowns, producing shows two to three times a year,” she said.
“Our performances at Gallery Gachet [on Oct. 28] will feature a few of the regular members of the Assembly doing short solo or duo acts from some of our previous shows,” she said. “In terms of the theme of the event … I can’t speak for stand-up comedy, as I’ve never done that before, but I can say that my mental health has been significantly affected for the better by my experience with clown. I know many other people who are similarly influenced. I hope the audience who attends this evening will get a taste of the deep psychological and spiritual power this art form has.”
Winston was in the festival last year with her solo show Just Enough and she has participated for several years – and will again this year – with Healthy Aging for the Arts, a program at Strathcona Community Centre. The group started in 2005, and it “consists of Cantonese-speaking women between the ages of 70 and 95. Every year, we explore a different style of puppetry with a theme that resonates with the members of the group. Sharon Bayly and myself have been the lead facilitators for the last five years.”
Winston noted that most of the seniors have been together since the beginning. “We all have aged together,” she said, “and I’ve been able to see the direct positive effect that art-making has on the well-being of these women.”
Despite the obvious importance of community in her work, Winston said, “I didn’t know that I was a community-engaged artist until other people started to identify me as such and until I started understanding the language of and paradigms of the art form.”
She said, “I always just did the kind of work that interested me and I got involved in whatever projects I could. I came to Vancouver with the intention of being a professional puppeteer and quickly discovered that, if I wanted to make puppet shows, I had to educate everyone around me, collaborate with artists of other disciplines and be as inclusive as possible…. Community engagement to me is simply sharing what I love to do with others. It’s about creating something together from scratch – from the ideas of those involved in the project…. I was never interested in being a traditional theatre artist, going to auditions, headshots, taking directions without having a say in them; I just wanted to tell stories and perform them creatively. Community engagement became an avenue for doing that.”
Community, in particular the DTES, is a focal point for Kravitz.
Sharon Kravitz (photo by Ken Tabata)
“I felt a connection to the Downtown Eastside and particularly the Carnegie Centre almost immediately upon moving to Vancouver. I volunteered at Carnegie and then, the following year, I proposed a community public art project on the corner of Main and Hastings. My first night in the Carnegie in the winter of 1993 and my first summer on the corner are moments I will never forget. Coming there helped me become more of the person I wanted to be and so it will always have a very special place in my heart.”
Kravitz will come to Heart of the City with We Can’t Afford Poverty, “a participatory project that highlights the widening gap between rich and poor through community-driven art.”
“We will be making several appearances throughout the festival,” she said. “We’ll be co-hosting a print-making workshop with WePress, we’ll be taking part in the documentary night, we’re having an exhibit of kids’ art in the third floor gallery and we’ll be popping up throughout the festival with our mobile video soapbox.”
The arts play countless roles in individual and community health, she said. “The act of making art together and the bonding that happens through that process, the ability individually to respond to external and internal issues creatively helps us feel less powerless. It changes how we think, and it can change how others think.”
For Kravitz, in Judaism, “like all faiths, there is the common belief in how we treat others, and the knowledge that there is something in the world greater than all of us, who and whatever that is to someone. I grew up knowing that we needed to help each other, and it’s why were all here – to make things better for each other.”
Rowan Jang provides an example of the zombie-vampires audiences can expect to encounter in The Zombie Syndrome: Dead in the Water. (photo by Emily Cooper Photography)
Last year, I was one of a group of “specialists” who gathered outside Trout Lake Community Centre to embark on our mission, which related to a downed alien spaceship. While the details of that mission must remain confidential, one aspect can be revealed – it was loads of fun. It was also a great cardio workout, not just because of the running from zombies, but the screaming, both from fear and excitement.
This year, the Virtual Stage is gathering teams (audiences) of 18 on Granville Island every 30 minutes from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. nightly until Oct. 31 to help find Special Forces operative Frank Johnson. As per the mission description, Johnson “was hunting down former government geneticist Mattias Van Cleave when he fell off the radar. Van Cleave, a suspected vampiric psychopath, is believed to be responsible for a string of recent murders, and the sudden appearance of zombie-vampire mutants across the Lower Mainland. The audience must determine Johnson’s whereabouts and ensure his mission to stop Van Cleave is completed at any cost.”
As with the four previous Zombie productions, The Zombie Syndrome: Dead in the Water makes use of the latest technology – this year, it’s Apple’s new location-based iBeacon.
“I am very interested in how emerging technologies can excite live audiences and breathe new life into theatre as an art form,” Virtual Stage artistic director, Zombies series creator and Jewish community member Andy Thompson told the Independent. “I am very narrative-driven as an artist, and the iBeacons have been a delightful tool in the creation of The Zombie Syndrome: Dead in the Water.”
The decision about what technology to use, Thompson said, “involves a process of questioning what is readily accessible and available, not only for myself as a producer, but also for today’s audiences. What is free within smartphones today? What is new and exciting? How can these gadgets drive a story forward? What can people afford? What can our company afford?
“I am also constantly imagining what the next big thing in technology might be, as well as its potential future societal impact,” he added. “My vision of concern for the future with ‘social media on steroids’ in my musical Broken Sex Doll is one example of this. I am also assessing what exciting new technologies are present today and how they may aid in live storytelling. In the particular instance of this show, the iBeacons roll out narrative content in a very interactive and engaging way as the audience moves from site to site.”
As the audience moves quickly along – both because they are “racing against the clock” and because there are scary things lurking in the dark – the possibility of an accident, miscue or technical glitch is much higher than for a standard production.
“We rehearse as many possibilities as we can,” said Thompson, “but the most important preparation we have is to be ready for anything: the ‘known unknowns,’ as Donald Rumsfeld might say. So far, the audiences have been completely surprising to us in how they navigate the problems we present to them. So, it is fresh and exciting every performance. The personalities of the individual audience members also greatly affect the flow and feel of each show. We did a lot of improvising in the rehearsal process so the actors are very prepared and on their toes.”
One unexpected moment – of which Thompson said “there have been many” – took place during last year’s mission, “when the entire site flooded on our closing performance at Trout Lake. We had about one hour to physically relocate most sites to higher ground, rehearse it in the new areas, and get as many technical elements in place as we could. We managed to pull off a derivative of the show, which was a miracle and a testament to our amazing crew and performers.”
As to what participants can expect this year, Thompson said, “Audiences will be traveling by sea at one point, which we are thrilled about. They will be confronted with a new breed of mutant zombie-vampires that cannot be killed. The iBeacon technical aspect to the show is also a Canadian theatre première, so people will be testing that tech out with their smartphones in a live entertainment environment like they have never done before. And yes, there might be running….”
For mission tickets, visit thevirtualstage.org/zombies. Participants should dress for the weather and moving quickly; the show is rated PG-13.
The first “character” we meet in Marcin Wrona’s coolly fascinating Demon is a yellow bulldozer, rolling menacingly through the empty streets of a Polish village. It’s a harbinger, as well as a metaphor, but of what?
Bulldozers dig, and they bury. Both tasks are central to the plot of Demon, which seizes on the disturbing idea of the dybbuk – a ghost who takes possession of a bridegroom on his wedding day – and reimagines it in the contemporary world. A world, that is, in which the Holocaust is part of our experience – even for those who have buried it in hopes of forgetting.
A Polish-Israeli co-production that is by turns deeply unsettling and absurdly funny, Demon follows the arrival of handsome architect Python (Israeli actor Itay Tiran of Lebanon) from England for the unambiguously happy occasion of his wedding. The groom is Polish, like his lovely bride Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska) and her family, but we have the disquieting feeling from the get-go that he is apart, on his own, an innocent outsider who has (in horror-film tradition) unknowingly ventured into a situation of unimaginable dangers.
Setting to work on the yard behind the decrepit farmhouse that Zaneta’s family owns and has bequeathed to the couple, Python hops on the ominous, aforementioned bulldozer. A noise makes him stop almost immediately, whence he discovers that he has unearthed bones.
So begins Python’s descent from a rational, regular guy to a tormented figure of unreachable despair. Unfortunately, but also comically, his transformation mostly takes place during the marathon rain- and vodka-soaked reception following the wedding ceremony.
Wrona and writer Pawel Maslona freely adapted the latter’s 2008 play, whose title translates as “Adherence” or “Clinging.” The director’s decision to shift the setting to a wedding was clearly inspired by the 1937 Polish-Yiddish film Der Dibek (The Dybbuk), itself adapted from a play by Shimon Ansky.
In the press notes, Demon producer Olga Szymanska says, “We wound up doing a lot of research into the history of the [dybbuk] story, not to mention Jewish-Polish history in general. If you read the studies on the dybbuk, those who became possessed by the spirit find themselves unable to speak. It originated in a very orthodox society of Jews, so it was the idea of this voice that could never have been heard which was longing to be heard.”
Given the clue or two I planted above, and this review’s appearance in a Jewish publication, you will have an idea of the general nature of the long-suppressed secret that the spirit who inhabits Python desperately wants uttered. The specific details are melancholy and enigmatic, and Wrona conveys them with chilling effectiveness. (The viewer is haunted also by the knowledge that Wrona died – reportedly of suicide – at 42, shortly after the film’s world première a year ago.)
It’s always of interest when Polish filmmakers choose to address their country’s past and the spectre of antisemitism, in part because they (and their fellow citizens) have historically been more reluctant to do so than their German and French counterparts. So, Demon provokes memories of Aftermath, the excellent Polish thriller from 2012 that likewise involved the physical excavation of the Jewish past (gravestones, in this case) and also invoked an otherworldly presence.
The kind of movie that lingers in the mind for days afterward, Demon contains any number of images that don’t just stick but demand to be puzzled over further. The more literal-minded viewer, meanwhile, will find plenty to mull in the movie’s slicing comments on present-day Poland.
Demon screens at Vancity Theatre Oct. 28-Nov. 1. In Polish, English and Yiddish with English subtitles, it is rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Author Deborah E. Lipstadt, right, with actor Rachel Weisz, who portrays Lipstadt in the film Denial. (photo by Liam Daniel/Elevation Pictures)
In 1996, Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian and author of Denying the Holocaust, was sued by British Holocaust denier David Irving. Unlike in the United States, British courts put the onus on the defendant to prove they did not libel the plaintiff. But this trial had larger stakes than whether Lipstadt (and her publisher, Penguin Books) were guilty of libeling Irving by characterizing him as a denier of the Holocaust. To media and many in the general public, the case put the Holocaust on trial.
A major motion picture scheduled for release Oct. 7 in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, is a retelling of the events around the trial. The film, Denial, starring Rachael Weisz as Lipstadt, captures the contending forces inside and outside the Jewish community as the trial burst onto the global news cycle.
Lipstadt told the Independent in a telephone interview Sunday that the film focuses emphatically on actual events. Insubstantial details may have been changed – a meeting portrayed as taking place in a restaurant actually took place elsewhere; she didn’t own a dog at the time of the trial – but the substance of the film was subject to absolutely no dramatic or artistic licence.
“Every word that comes out of David Irving’s mouth is exactly as he said it,” Lipstadt offered by way of example. In fact, the film opens with remarks Irving made in Calgary and every statement he makes throughout the film seems intended not to convince but to rub salt in historical wounds.
The film captures Lipstadt’s frustration with the strategy of her British legal team, which refused to allow Lipstadt or survivors of the Holocaust to testify. Lipstadt thought she would be seen as a coward for not speaking in court and, in a poignant scene in the film, she promises a survivor of the Holocaust that the voices of survivors will be heard. Her lawyers stood firm, however. This was not to be a trial about the Holocaust, they insisted, nor was it a trial about Lipstadt. It was about whether Irving was what Lipstadt had said in her book: a denier of the Holocaust.
She sparred with the legal team throughout but, in retrospect, she is completely happy with their strategy.
“Absolutely 110%,” she said. “First of all, we won. Second of all, not only did we win, but we got the most damning judgment, one of the most crushing libel judgments against anyone that has ever been issued, certainly in recent years, against anyone in England. [The judgment] calls the man a liar, a falsifier of history, his version of history is mendacious, that no sane, thinking historian could ever doubt the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. In fact, everything we needed. Obviously, the lawyers’ strategy was precisely the right one. It would not have added anything to have me go in on the stand. It would not have added anything to have survivors go on the stand. This wasn’t an emotional excursion to make me feel good that I can stand up there and challenge Irving or could give survivors a modicum of comfort that they could stand and confront him. This was to win a major case and that was what it was about.”
In fact, of the whole experience, which on film appears to be a horribly emotional and wrenching multi-year battle through arcane legalities and unanticipated notoriety, Lipstadt would only change one thing if she could.
“I might have learned to trust the lawyers faster than I learned to trust them,” she said.
The trial and the events around it did not affect her academic career – she was then and is now a professor at Emory University in Atlanta – but it allowed her a bigger stage.
“It gave me a far higher profile than I had before,” she said. “I don’t think it’s changed me, but it’s changed the size of the megaphone I happen to have to speak out on things.”
While Lipstadt was not formally involved in the making of the film, she credits the filmmakers and Weisz, who depicted her, for their willingness to engage her.
“No film will be made if the author of the book is going to be meddling,” she said. “They would never go ahead with that. But the filmmakers were exceptionally generous with wanting my input … passing the script by me, meeting with me, the director coming to Atlanta to meet with me, the screenwriter coming to meet with me, and Rachel Weisz asking for my help … in my spending time with her and hanging out with her and talking with her. Not just about the role, but about myriad things. They gave me far more input than is normally the case.”
When she saw a pre-final cut of the film the first time, it was with a test audience in a multiplex, and it left her “sort of speechless,” she said.
“You can buy your popcorn and your oversized Coca-Cola and go into your reclining chair and there was my story on the screen,” she said. “It was very weird. It was very, very stunning and very, very weird.”
She hopes the film helps people understand that not everything is subject to opinion.
“There are facts,” she said. “There are not two sides to every opinion. Not everything is up for grabs. There are facts, opinions and lies. I could say to you, it’s my opinion that the earth is flat. Well, just because it’s my opinion that the earth is flat doesn’t make it flat. Not all opinions hold water. Some opinions are based in ridiculous, nonfactual … claims.”
She also encountered, particularly in Britain but elsewhere as well, Jewish individuals and groups who believed that by not settling with Irving and instead going to trial, Lipstadt was giving Irving a platform he did not deserve. Similar to the way she came around to see her legal team’s strategy as the right course, Lipstadt believes those who thought she should settle now realize that going to trial was the right course.
“You can’t fight every battle, but there are certain battles you cannot turn away from and certain battles you have to take on,” she said. “There were lots of people who didn’t want me to fight this and I did and I’m glad I did. And I think they are glad I did, too. Lots of those people came around and recognize that we were right and they had been wrong.”
Many people have read an enormous amount of Holocaust literature during their lifetime. The stories are tragic, horrifying, heartbreaking. No matter how many books you read, or films and documentaries you see, you can never come to terms with the fact that such evil exists in the world.
But Dr. Anthony D. Bellen’s book – After Auschwitz: The Unasked Question (Mazo Publishers, 2016) – is different. He is a clinical psychologist specializing in post-traumatic stress disorder, moral resilience and restorative processes. He lives in Israel, is a husband, father and grandfather, and has retired from the Israel Prison Service, where he headed the department of treatment and rehabilitation. He now works with people who have suffered trauma.
The unasked question in the book’s title is: “Do you remember any positive experience from your time in the concentration camp? Was there ever a positive interaction – a brief moment of happiness in the midst of that evil abyss?”
Bellen has chosen six survivor interviews for this book from 56 he conducted with Holocaust survivors in 2004 for his doctoral research study in the department of criminology at Bar Ilan University. The six gave him permission to share their stories, although their names have been changed for privacy.
I don’t think I will ever forget any of these stories. Motti’s moment of happiness occurred on the day of liberation from Theresienstadt, when a Russian soldier stood on a wooden crate and called out in Yiddish: “Has anyone seen my mother?” For Ida, it was finding a friend from her village – Miryam. For Eva, it was finding her hairbrush from home that her brother managed to give her before he was gassed in Majdanek. Reuven’s moment of happiness came in a swimming pool with two friends. Ya’acov’s joy came from meeting the love of his life, Sonya, in a laundry in Brintz. Sarah’s positive memory came from a Christmas in Bromberg, where she and some friends “performed” a song for the SS and later for the inmates of the camp.
These were just miniscule moments of happiness, gone in a flash, but powerfully remembered decades later – and never shared before.
The book concludes with a bibliography and references, as well as the seven questions Bellen asked each interviewee. These remarkable stories may help other people with different traumas find the strength to overcome them. They may even change your perceptions and understanding of your own life.
Dvora Waysmanis a Jerusalem-based author. She can be contacted at dwaysman@gmail.com or through her blog dvorawaysman.com.
Martha and Waitstill Sharp at home in Wellesley, Mass., in 1938. (photo from Sharp Family Archives via pbs.org)
At a time when many Americans embraced isolationism, the leaders of the American Unitarian Association were focused on the refugees clamoring to get out of Czechoslovakia. The AUA impelled Unitarian minister Waitstill Sharp to go with his wife Martha to Europe in 1938, leaving their young children in the care of others, and get as many people out as possible with documents and cunning.
Yad Vashem posthumously acknowledged the Sharps as Righteous Among the Nations in 2006. The couple’s saga, and that of several of the Jews they rescued, is recounted in Artemis Joukowsky and Ken Burns’ feature-length documentary Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, which aired earlier this month on PBS.
For those who have seen a film or three about the various efforts to extricate Jews from the deathtrap of Nazi-occupied Europe, Defying the Nazis breaks no new ground. But there are always new generations who aren’t familiar with the Holocaust or cognizant of the courage of ordinary people who saved friends and neighbors or, in the case of the Sharps, complete strangers.
Joukowsky is the Sharps’ grandson, and the curator and guardian of their legacy. Burns, of course, brings household-name recognition and brand-name confidence to a PBS audience, as well as a uniformly high standard of craft and polish. If his name attracts viewers who otherwise wouldn’t tune in, it’s all for the good.
Defying the Nazis arrives at an especially ugly time when refugees and immigrants are being demonized and conflated with terrorists. Not that xenophobia is a new phenomenon, as Jewish readers are especially aware. But I find the film more valuable and inspiring as a reminder that there are highly moral individuals who will put themselves in mortal danger to do the right thing – even if they have no personal stake or connection to the beneficiaries.
Waitstill Sharp was a trained lawyer while Martha had the self-confidence and determination to attend college in a day and age when some families – including hers – disavowed their daughters for not getting a job to augment the household income. That is to say, the Sharps were adept at thinking on their feet, delivering persuasive and succinct arguments and hiding their emotions. Whether counseling desperate applicants in Prague, raising money in London or Paris (like Waitstill did) or accompanying refugees by train across Germany to a safe border (like Martha and Waitstill did, separately), these were essential skills.
The couple was based in the Czech capital for six treacherous months beginning just before the Nazi invasion in March 1939. They were dispatched again the following summer, this time to Lisbon.
As compelling as the Sharps’ activities were, they were relatively brief in duration. There’s only so much to tell, so the filmmakers augment the rescuers’ point of view with context from Holocaust historian Debórah Dwork and the firsthand recollections of several survivors whom the Sharps aided.
Viewers who are fascinated by the ways in which parental choices affect children will enjoy watching and interpreting the passages with the Sharps’ daughter. Martha Jr. admits to being (understandably) upset when her parents took off for Europe, not once but twice, but she touts the remarkable results they achieved rather than channeling a petulant child.
The Sharps may have alienated their daughter, at least for brief periods of her adolescence. They definitely paid a price in their marriage, which didn’t last a decade after the war.
Defying the Nazis doesn’t address it, but I highly doubt the couple had any regrets about embarking on their life-saving refugee work. Consider Waitstill’s succinct reply when the German-Jewish author Lion Feuchtwanger asked why he was taking such an immense risk to help him: “I don’t like to see guys get pushed around,” Sharp said.
Mark Waldman has been working with neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg for almost two decades, including on their latest book, Words Can Change Your Brain. (photo from Mark Waldman)
According to Dr. Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist at Thomas Jefferson University, and Mark Robert Waldman, communications expert, in their book Words Can Change Your Brain: 12 Conversation Strategies to Build Trust, Resolve Conflict and Increase Intimacy, one “single word has the power to influence the expression of genes that regulate physical and emotional stress.”
Waldman and Newberg have been collaborating for almost two decades, and have written 14 books about relationships and neuroscience. They have also published many neuroscientific papers and journal articles exploring how different forms of spiritual practice and positive thinking affect the brain.
“This particular book was my idea, because I’d been working on a form of dialogue practice going back to about 1993,” said Waldman of Words Can Change Your Brain.
“A very well-known ancient Jewish meditation is to gaze at a candle until you feel that you and the candle become one … so you and the candle become the sense of united fire or energy,” he said. “You can do the same thing by focusing in on your breathing. You immerse yourself in the cool air coming into your nose, the warm air exhaling, feeling the rising and falling of your chest. When your mind wanders, you simply come back to your breathing as a training mechanism for learning how to stay in the present moment.”
All of these mindfulness practices, said Waldman, have been well documented as having many benefits – from helping lower anxiety, physical stress and emotional stress, to equipping people with better control of their emotions and raising their self-awareness and social awareness.
Waldman suggested starting by bringing mindfulness into daily activities, like eating.
“If you were to slow down and pick up a small piece of food, and hold it on your tongue and savor that one piece of food, you would discover all kinds of different flavors and sensations that we’re not normally conscious of,” he explained. “If you apply mindfulness to eating, you end up eating less and enjoying your food more. This has become an activity that’s been integrated into weight-loss programs and programs to help people interrupt eating disorders like bulimia.”
In 1993, Waldman and Newberg began asking themselves questions like how often are we aware of the words we speak, of the feelings behind those words, of how those words affect the person we are speaking to; how often do we take the time to really savor and pay attention to what the other person is saying, their facial expression, their tone of voice?
They started to develop what they dubbed “dialogical meditation,” which eventually morphed into “compassionate communication.”
After more than 20 years of research into what speaking mindfully means, they began working on Words Can Change Your Brain, which includes all their new research findings.
“Some of what we discovered, based on many different types of neuroscientific studies, is that the slower you speak, the more the listener’s comprehension’s increases,” said Waldman. “Their body also relaxes when you speak more slowly. And, with less physical tension, there’s more ability to be socially connected and engaged with the other individual.
“As our research unfolded, we recognized a very important neurological fact – that, consciously, we can only be aware of about seven to 10 words at a time. So, we created what we called a ‘communication game.’ We have people sit down and face each other and we ask them to speak very slowly and briefly, just one sentence. While they are doing so, we want them to experience what those words actually feel like. Then, they pause after speaking one sentence briefly. They pay close attention to the other person’s face and tone of voice while they speak … and you go back and forth like this.
“What we discovered from the very first time we did this experiment in 1993 is that 25% of those in the room, after doing this slow speaking and listening exercise, had tears rolling down their faces.”
Participants in this process were paired with people they did not know and they were not told what to say in their one sentence. The researchers found that, even when they conducted this experiment in a room with 1,500 people, within four to seven minutes, many people found themselves experiencing profound, intimate dialogue.
“They had to let the other person listen deeply to that one sentence and respond,” said Waldman. “So, we were keeping people in the present moment, grounded, not just in the thoughts they had that we are normally trying to turn into words, but to pay attention to the other person’s facial expression and tone of voice.”
Waldman went on to explain that, when it comes to communication, of the seven different elements of effective communication, words are Number 7. Number 1 is facial expression, followed by tone of voice, body language and the emotional or mental state you are in.
“So, the more relaxed you are, the more you’re actually in the present moment, the more the other person can understand what you’re saying, be affected by what you’re saying,” said Waldman.
The research found that, when participants closed their eyes and recalled a pleasant memory, visualized someone they greatly love or an event that brought them great satisfaction, 90% of them had a half-smile on their faces.
Waldman described this as a “Mona Lisa smile that, when other people see it, it triggers the trust centres in the person’s brain. You neurologically trust someone who has this Mona Lisa-like smile.”
Waldman believes that this research lends itself well to teaching managers, salespeople, teachers and those just entering the dating world. “What would happen if you slowed your speaking down and listened more closely, if you maintained that small half-smile on your face?” he asked. “As you speak, you can generate better intimacy and stimulate more collaboration and cooperation.”
Words Can Change Your Brain also documents that one single negative word triggers a dozen different stress neuro-chemicals in the brain, while spoken positive words have very little effect on the brain.
“So, the brain is designed to encode into memory every negative thought, feeling and event that we have, yet it doesn’t really do that with positive experiences,” explained Waldman. “However, if you have a brain that is filled mostly with negative memories, you’ll become chronically anxious and, eventually, chronically depressed.
“When we bring in the research of Barbara Frederickson and learn that, in relationships and in business, if you deliberately increase what she calls, ‘your positivity ratio,’ to five-to-one or to seven-to-one, for every negative thought or feeling you have … if you deliberately generate another five, six or seven positive thoughts or images … that’s how you begin to build a brain filled also with positive memories. You’re creating a form of neurological optimism. And, it turns out, these types of positive mindfulness exercises are some of the best ways to eliminate anxiety [and] depression and build more self-love and self-compassion. If your positivity ratio falls below three-to-one, you can predict very accurately that a relationship is heading toward divorce or that a company is heading toward bankruptcy.”
As Waldman presented their discoveries to the business world, he was reminded that, in this world, almost no one will give you more than 10 to 60 seconds. Most people cannot do a five-minute meditation, he said.
But, Waldman found that, if people download the mindfulness talk on their phone or computer and are willing to take 10 seconds to do one mindful yawn when they hear the alarm ring – simply notice how a yawn feels – there can be benefits.
“We have over 43 documented studies that show that yawning is one of the fastest ways to slow down an overly stressed brain,” said Waldman. “In fact, a dozen yawns or so can temporarily alleviate symptoms of Parkinson’s, epilepsy, migraines, what have you. So, yawning is the fastest way to alleviate mental stress.
“We ask a person, once an hour, to take 10 seconds to do one mindful yawn…. Take 20 seconds to do one mindful stretch, recall one pleasant memory…. Think about one single word, a value word, that you want to anchor yourself in for the next hour, something like ‘confidence,’ ‘focus’ or ‘calmness.’”
Thinking of Judaism’s role in all of this, Waldman said, “I think, for me, Judaism gave me the framework to question, challenge and think deeply about everything, which is just one of the most thrilling spiritual states I find for myself. I think this is how Judaism has influenced me in the past and continues to guide me in the present.”
Aleks Paunovic, left, and Ben Ratner in scene from the short film Ganjy, which Ratner hopes one day to develop into a feature. (photo from Ben Ratner)
Vancouver Jewish community member Ben Ratner steps back into his acting boots for his latest, ground-shaking film, Ganjy, premièring at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 29-Oct. 14.
Ganjy, directed and written by Ratner, is centred on the character of Ganjy (played by Ratner), a former boxer who is in bad shape, suffering from dementia pugilistica and living in squalor. With the support of his former-boxer friends, he endeavors to survive and lead a dignified life.
A large part of the inspiration for and foundation of Ganjy was Ratner’s encounter and interaction with his hero Muhammad Ali at the screening of the film Facing Ali in 2009, along with Ganjy co-star Aleks Paunovic. They both had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time with Ali and the boxer’s inner circle. “It was just a mind blowing, life-affirming experience for Aleks and I,” said Ratner.
Ganjy was filmed in February 2016, and Ali passed away four months later.
“The topical subject matter of dementia, particularly in sports-related head injuries, and the recent passing of Muhammad Ali makes Ganjy hugely relevant and, in our opinion, very important at this time,” said Ganjy co-producer Tony Pantages. “Of course, when we shot the film, we didn’t know Ali would pass away only months later, as we were in our final post, but we were honored to be able to pay tribute to him with the film.”
Ratner has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to cover the basic costs of filming – all cast and crew took deferred wages – and anything raised over the $15,000 goal will be split between the promotion of the film and entry into notable film festivals, and the Muhammad Ali Parkinson’s Foundation.
“In Ganjy, Ben Ratner’s exquisite performance as the eponymous lead character tenderly but powerfully reminds us of the undeniable side-effects of the boxing trade,” said Pete McCormack, the award-winning writer and director of Facing Ali and I Am Bruce Lee, who saw Ratner’s short film in an advanced screening.
The three co-stars of Ganjy – Paunovic, Zak Santiago and Donny Lucas – are all experienced actors and former amateur boxers. Paunovic plays Marko, who quit boxing, opened a business and became “the Perogie King”; Santiago plays Jorge “El Matador” Zavala; and Lucas plays Cecil Livingston. Ratner also spent time in the amateur ring as a youth, winning gold at the 1981 B.C. Winter Games and competing in the Canadian Junior Championships in 1982. The latter fight led to a concussion at the hands of Howard Grant (a future Olympian), forcing Ratner into retirement.
Ratner thinks that Ganjy will resonate with the Jewish community.
In Ganjy, Ben Ratner plays the title character, who is, among other things, suffering from dementia pugilistica. (photo from Ben Ratner)
“People don’t think of Jews as boxers these days, but, back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were a great many Jewish champs: Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Max Baer, Battling Levinsky; in Canada, we had Sammy Luftspring. These were tough bastards, immigrants living in poverty with no other way to put bread on the table.”
He added that the film is about more than boxing. “It’s about the will of the human spirit to overcome adversity, survive and flourish,” he said. “Who knows that better than Jews?”
Filmed over two long days in a questionable motel in Surrey, the cast and crew, including director of photography Pieter Stathis, assistant director Gordie Macdonald, production designer Josh Plaw and Pantages worked together to bring the film to fruition. In true independent filmmaking style, Ratner and co-star Paunovic spent a night in the motel guarding the equipment and feeding the cockroach, which guest starred in the film.
Ratner said he probably only slept two hours that night: “I had nightmares about skin disease breaking out on my legs.”
Ratner worked with his long-term mentor and acting coach Ivana Chubbuck in preparation for his role as Ganjy. Chubbuck is known for her bestselling book The Power of the Actor and for working with Sylvester Stallone on his ultimately Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated performance in Creed.
“In his touching, yet unsentimental self-directed short film, Ganjy, Ben Ratner gives a performance and directs a piece that is a testament to the human spirit,” said Chubbuck. “No matter how much battering, both emotionally and physically, a human being can withstand, there is a survivor in all of us. Ganjy is this, and more.”
Among Ratner’s many accomplishments are 100-plus film and television credits, as a multiple-award-winning actor, writer, director and producer. As but one example, at the 2013 Leo Awards, Ratner’s Down River won for best director and best feature film screenplay, and the film garnered nine wins and 12 nominations, including best world showcase feature, at the 2014 Soho International Film Festival in New York City.
Ratner has starred in numerous feature films that have played at top festivals worldwide and has had various types of roles on North American TV shows.
“I’m just finishing a fun acting job, a supporting role in a film called Wonder, with Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Mandy Patinkin and Jacob Tremblay, the amazing kid from Room,” said Ratner. “After wearing so many hats on Ganjy, it’s a relief to be a small part of a big film, to just focus on playing my role the best I can and staying out of the way when I’m not called upon to perform.”
Wonder is set for release in April 2017.
Also keeping Ratner busy is his coaching work. He has run his own studio in Vancouver, Haven, for more than 10 years.
“In some ways I am Ganjy,” Ratner said. “I’ve been doing this showbiz thing a long time, about 27 years, and I’ve got banged up along the way. But I’ve got a lot of fight left in me, and there’s no way I’m going down!”
The goal is to eventually develop Ganjy, which runs 14 minutes, into a feature-length film. But the immediate future is focused on the Indiegogo campaign and promoting the film.
“I have been creating my own work since 1990,” said Ratner, “and this is the first time I’ve ever done a crowdsourcing venture. In some ways, I feel uncomfortable asking people for money to fund our film when there are so many people in the world who desperately need help to stay alive. On the other hand, Jews have always understood the importance of art in society, and have made it a priority to create and support it. As Albert Einstein said, ‘creativity is contagious, pass it on.’”
Ganjy screens at VIFF on Oct. 2 and 8, preceding the film Marrying the Family. The full festival schedule and tickets are available at viff.org. To contribute to the fundraising campaign, visit indiegogo.com/projects/ganjy-film.
Alice Howellis a graduate of the University of Otago, New Zealand, with a BA in film and media studies and a BSc in psychology. She has worked in the entertainment industry as a performer for 12 years and, most recently, as a writer and director. She lives in Vancouver, where she counts herself lucky to be one of Ben Ratner’s acting students at Haven Studio.
The unasked question in the book’s title is: “Do you remember any positive experience from your time in the concentration camp? Was there ever a positive interaction – a brief moment of happiness in the midst of that evil abyss?”
After more than 20 years of research into what speaking mindfully means, they began working on Words Can Change Your Brain, which includes all their new research findings.
