Arts & Culture – Page 129

Exploration of identity

Ira Hoffecker’s Berlin Identities is at Zack Gallery until July 3. (photo from Ira Hoffecker)

Rarely does the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery at the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver present exclusively a non-Jewish artist. This month, however, the gallery features Ira Hoffecker’s solo exhibit Berlin Identities.

Born and raised in Germany, the horrible history of Nazism and the Holocaust are part of Hoffecker’s identity, the identity she explores in this exhibition and in the entirety of her art. She looks at the Holocaust from the perspective of a German born after the Second World War.

“Germany is rich in history. There are so many layers,” she said in an interview with the Independent. “But the history of WWII and Nazism is different. The previous generations – my parents and grandparents – didn’t want to talk about it. My mother was a child during the war, and all she and her parents wanted after the war was to forget. But we can’t forget. We can’t deny our responsibility. For years after the war, there was a leaden blanket over the Holocaust, over what Germany did. But you can only move on if you accept the past, even such a horrible past as the Holocaust. It’s easy to say: it wasn’t me, I wasn’t born yet, but it’s our heritage. We have to accept our guilt, to acknowledge it, before we can start to heal as a society.”

That’s what her art is about: trying to understand and accept the painful enormity of the Holocaust and the guilt Germany carries, trying to discover her own definition of self underneath those national memories.

Another theme in her art, intertwined with the first, has to do with urban identities. “My paintings are informed by the different identities cities assume over time,” she explained. “History transforms cities, changes the urban space.”

All of the paintings in Hoffecker’s current show reflect her search for personal and urban identities. They are interpretations of maps: colorful, stylized and multilayered.

The layers represent the passing of time, as demonstrated by several paintings of Scheunenviertel, the former Jewish quarter in Berlin. “Before the Nazis came to power, over 150,000 Jews lived there. By the end of the war, none remained,” said Hoffecker.

Accordingly, the main layer denotes what the district looked like right after the war, while the overlaying layer, mounted on Plexiglas, corresponds with the map as it is currently. “The layers are a metaphor – of forgetting, of suppressing the past,” she explained. “Of the inevitable change.”

Two of the paintings look even scarier. One is covered by steel mesh, like a concentration camp fence. Another is concealed under torn tissue paper, where only fragments of the original map are visible, the rest is hidden – perhaps by those who don’t wish to remember. However, “we must remember,” the artist insists, and she tries to stir the memories by her imagery.

As is true for geographical maps, color and geometry play huge roles in Hoffecker’s creations.

“I’m fascinated by colors and I love maps,” she said. “As a child, my favorite book was an atlas. I like studying maps. I have a huge collection at home. My husband calls me a human GPS. I never have trouble navigating in any city, but only cities. I’m an urban person; I don’t do well in the wild.”

With her love for maps, it’s not surprising that she likes traveling. “Every city I ever visited has its own identity, its own atmosphere. I have been in many: all over Europe, India, Egypt, Peru. I’ve moved 26 times, but I hope I’ve stopped at last. I live in Victoria now and I don’t intend to move again.”

Her road from Germany to Vancouver Island was somewhat out of the ordinary.

“I always liked art, but when I lived in Germany, I worked in marketing and publicity for the movie industry,” she said. “Then, my husband and I had our own movie marketing company in Hamburg. Fifteen years ago, we came to Vancouver Island for a vacation. My children were young. We rented a mobile home and traveled together. We loved British Columbia, but the movie producers kept calling us, even though we were on vacation. They could call in the middle of the night, and I thought, What am I doing in this rat race? We needed a change.”

In 2004, they acted on the need for change and moved to Canada, settling in Victoria. “My children went to school there, and I went to school, too,” she said. “I decided to follow my old dream and change careers. I wanted to become an artist. Since we moved to Canada, I’ve been a student of the arts, but the career change is not easy or fast. It’s like a circus salto mortale, almost a free fall. It’s scary.”

But she hasn’t let the fear stop her. She has become an internationally known artist. In the last few years, she has participated in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Canada, England and Germany. She is studying for her master’s degree, and her paintings have started gaining recognition in artistic circles and among private collectors.

“I’ve sold over 170 paintings,” she said. “Recently, I was nominated, together with 53 other artists, for the British John Moore Painting Prize 2016. Our paintings will be shown within the Liverpool Biennal. They were selected from over 4,000 submissions.”

Another big change is coming soon for Hoffecker.

“We are not Canadian citizens yet,” she said. “Until a couple years ago, Germany didn’t accept dual citizenship, and I couldn’t give up my German citizenship either; I’m German. Now that it is possible to have dual citizenship, my family will receive our Canadian citizenship. It will happen on July 1st, on Canada Day.”

Berlin Identities will be on display at the Zack until July 3.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Living Jewishly in isolation

It was a life-changing day for Sei Mang Khong Sai, a 35-year-old man from Sazal, India. Inside the mud and bamboo hut on stilts with him were community leaders, his family and guests. They chanted tribal prayers to the beat of a lap drummer.

In this village, hours away from any major city, they were preparing for the barhote, the bris. Sei Mang was about to enter the covenant. In an area of warfare, poverty and drug-running, he was seeking Judaism’s deeper connection to a peaceable life.

Before the ceremony was complete, however, he was to be given his Jewish name. The honor was spontaneously given to visiting stranger Bryan Schwartz, from Oakland, Calif. The first thing that came into Schwartz’s head was Menashe, and so Menashe it was.

A kippah was placed on Menashe’s head, the hut’s doors were thrown open and the assembled outside were informed of the new name, to cheers of “siman tov!” and “mazal tov!”

As the history is told, seven Jewish couples were shipwrecked off the Konkan coast in India, south of Bombay, some 2,000 years ago, the progenitors of today’s Bnei Israel of India’s Maharashtra province.

“It was a pretty astonishing moment for me that brought home both the commonality, the amount that we share even in the most diverse corners of the world, and also how different some Jewish lives are from the one that I have,” said Schwartz, a civil rights attorney.

Sei Mang’s story and many others – from Schwartz’s travels to 30 countries and more than 100 villages – are chronicled in Schwartz’s recent book, Scattered Among the Nations: Photographs and Stories of the World’s Most Isolated Jewish Communities, which he put together with Jay Saul and Sandy Carter.

Scattered Among the Nations is the culmination of a 15-year journey that began in 1999 when Schwartz was a law student and was planning a spring break trip to North Africa. He stumbled upon a listing for Jews in the index of his Lonely Planet guidebook, including historical descriptions of the island of Djerba in the Mediterranean off the coast of Tunisia. Jews there claim not only to have in their possession the oldest Torah, but a past extending directly to ancestors fleeing the destruction of the Second Temple. It is believed that some high priests – kohanim – found refuge on the island, bringing with them one of the gates of the Temple, which they later buried. Legend has it, a synagogue, which still stands today, was built overtop the burial site. Schwartz learned there were 15 synagogues on the island.

“I’m reading all of this and I’m just blown away that there is this place that is so fascinating, and a story that is so colorful and beautiful, and that I have never heard of it,” he told the Independent. “I decided there must be places like this all around the world that I could visit and, as a writer and photographer, capture some of it and share it with other Jewish people.”

Prior to embarking on this ambitious quest, he contacted some communities by fax and mail and connected with global Jewish outreach centre Kulanu, which has ties to Jews in far-off corners. He also researched the “lost” communities, reading Hillel Halkin’s book on the Bnei Menashe, Across the Sabbath River, and Tudor Parfitt’s The Lost Tribes of Israel and Journey to the Vanished City, about the Lemba tribe of southern Africa, who maintain Jewish practices and share kohanic DNA. He took special note of the 1999 documentary film by Simcha Jacobovici, Quest for the Lost Tribes of Israel.

“Some of these communities exist in places so geographically and culturally distant from other Jews that they must struggle daily to maintain the religion of their ancestors,” he said.

Scattered Among the Nations contains more than 500 color photographs. Over the course of two years, Schwartz’s articles and talks have gained attention globally in the media, learning institutions, houses of worship and Jewish museums.

“I wanted to show the full diversity of the Jewish world,” he said. In Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana, for example, Jews don’t know how they got there – perhaps an ancient Israelite exile or Ethiopian Jewish traders. But what’s certain is that the community of 200, who call themselves the House of Israel, is dedicated to living a Jewish life.

“They embrace Judaism with such love. They have this tiny Torah that somebody delivered to the community,” said Schwartz. “And then, to return home and to see in my synagogue the wall of Torahs in the ark … Torahs draped in silver and velvet, and realize how very fortunate we are to have the kind of resources that we have.”

An “extraordinary part of the journey,” said Schwartz, was showing up, not knowing a single soul, “and just by virtue of this Jewish faith that was shared, that I would be treated like a long lost cousin and brought in, and I could stay with a family for Shabbat or for a whole week or for several weeks, and nothing be asked of me at all, other than to join them.”

In fact, he said, even members of economically disadvantaged communities offered him the best room in the house in which to stay, three meals a day and touring.

In Ghana, for instance, he stayed in Joseph Arma’s house – one of the wealthier community members – where only one room had electricity. The home had an outhouse.

Arma’s nephew was staying with them, but Arma kept referring to him as his son. Confused, Schwartz asked for clarification. It was explained that the tradition is that people who have kinship with one another can be called son – and that its what this American visitor would soon be called, as well. “That’s how it is here in Africa,” he was told.

“This is how I was treated in a lot of communities, like I was the son of the community and as much a part of the family as anyone else,” he said.

Meanwhile, more than 100 people of the Shona Jewish community convene each Shabbat morning at their synagogue outside Rusape, Zimbabwe. It is there they sing original Afro-Jewish melodies, gospel-style, in Hebrew, Shona and English.

The Ebo Jews in Nigeria, on the other hand, consist of several thousand members.

In each locale, their practices are recognizably Jewish, though continued observance of said practices often requires outside assistance.

The Inca Jews in Peru, as they identify themselves, have struggled to maintain the traditions.

“They don’t have teachers, they don’t have clergy, they don’t have books and the resources to buy kosher foods that they want for holidays,” Schwartz said. They are by necessity vegetarian, he explained – not by choice, but due to the fact that kosher meat is unavailable.

This is one of the many reasons that it wasn’t enough for Schwartz to simply publish his book and hope that these communities would be able to continue practising Judaism despite their lack of resources. Instead, he has also launched Scattered Among the Nations, Inc., a nonprofit organization that is designed, among other things, to assist isolated Jewish communities in gaining the recognition and resources to meet their needs. The organization, for example, has helped the Inca Jews buy kosher meat for Pesach and the High Holidays.

A number of communities – including the Inca Jews – don’t have kosher Torahs and, at one point, the community in northeastern India had to use a toy Torah, the kind bar mitzvah kids are given, said Schwartz. After reading an article about this situation, septuagenarian Chicagoan Sam Pfeffer stepped up to the plate, offering to purchase a Torah. But it’s not as though the scroll could be mailed or couriered. To avoid the reams of red tape, the only route was to deliver it personally. And so it was that this community, for the first time in perhaps several hundred years, leined from a fresh, new Torah.

“Nothing in the world could have meant more to them,” said Schwartz. “In northeastern India, you know, there is just not enough hope. Economically there, life is a struggle and to get to Shabbat really is a salvation every week.”

Whole communities – including the Bnei Menashe and Inca Jews – have expressed a strong desire to make aliyah in order to live fuller Jewish lives. But they haven’t necessarily been met with the warmest of receptions.

“It felt to me like an injustice that this [Inca] community has been actively and deliberately practising Judaism for decades, and really struggle to gain attention from the outside Jewish world. They’re fighting to get the attention of the [rabbinical authorities], to practise and make aliyah,” said Schwartz. “That was a fight that felt like … social justice that I engage in my law practice as well. Some of what I have seen … has felt like discrimination to me, and I think it’s something we need to confront and address.”

After some of the first members of the Inca community made aliyah, an Israeli newspaper wrote editorials suggesting that these Peruvians were just the pawns of an Orthodox establishment trying to use them in the war against the Palestinians, recalled Schwartz. “Which, to me, is an incredibly … bigoted way to look at a group of people, to suggest they were sort of evil-minded, or did not have their own free will to exercise their own passionate conserving of Judaism.

“In fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. The community actually struggled for a long time to gain any recognition for their own very devoted Jewish practice … to the point where they were photocopying pages of the Chumash and sticking it to parchment, to make it a ‘Torah.’ It’s hard for most of us to imagine.”

The Bnei Menashe of Myanmar (Burma) and India only recently gained official recognition as a “lost tribe” from religious authorities.

“It was so fundamental to their identity that they were part of a lost tribe,” said Schwartz, puzzled at the inconsistencies. Why, he wondered, when so many Soviet Jews “were welcomed with open arms in Israel, despite so few devoted in their Jewish practice,” do Bnei Menashe, in contrast, “not have the same reception? I think that’s something that we need to continue to confront as a community.”

It seems that clashes with so-called mainstream Jewish life have become the rule, rather than the exception. In the 1980s and 1990s, for example, Jews in Mexico and Portugal emerged from centuries of isolation, “coming out” for the first time since the Spanish Inquisition, as Schwartz explained. “Now that they no longer are forced to hide their Jewish practice, that they’re not as isolated as they once were, while it is a blessing, it also causes challenges.”

Reconnecting to the Jewish world meant newfound (to them) rabbinical insight that often conflicted with their own traditions, he explained. Portuguese prayers would make way for Hebrew prayers; kashrut meant a whole other list of laws and strictures. The Jewish community in Portugal had been, for hundreds of years, developing secret (to us) Jewish practices, including a Shavuot they referred to as Ascension Wednesday, a gathering in the field to celebrate.

“It was a struggle in the community as to what extent to embrace modern Jewish practice, or to keep going with their … practices that they’ve had for centuries,” said Schwartz. “Suddenly, you’ve come face to face with the entire Jewish world and realized that the way you’re practising is not entirely consistent with the way the other communities are practising and you have to make decisions.”

Schwartz couldn’t help but be affected by the faith of these communities, in light of what would often be harsh circumstances.

“In visiting these communities,” he said, “I realized the struggle that some people have to get to survive every week, and how meaningful it is to really live the whole week, to arrive at Shabbat. It is just inspiring. It made me realize the gift that it is to be Jewish, and it makes me want to pray every day, and be grateful every day, in a way that I certainly wasn’t before.”

Dave Gordon is a Toronto-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in more than a hundred publications around the world. He is the managing editor of landmarkreport.com.

Our national movie history

Making Movie History panelists during DOXA Industry Day at the SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts on May 7, left to right: Michelle van Beusekom, head of the National Film Board of Canada’s English-language production branch, and filmmakers Mort Ransen, Bonnie Sherr Klein and Anne Wheeler. Panel moderator was Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail. (photo by Fortune Hill Photography courtesy of NFB)

When it comes to their own history, Canadians haven’t had a great track record for recording their success stories. So, when Michelle van Beusekom had an opportunity to produce Making Movie History: A Portrait in 61 Parts, an anecdotal history of the National Film Board of Canada, she was thrilled to jump on board. Told through portraits of legendary artists and filmmakers who have worked at the NFB since its establishment in 1939, the free iPad app was released last month at the DOXA Film Festival in Vancouver.

Present at the launch were B.C.-based filmmakers Mort Ransen, Bonnie Sherr Klein and Anne Wheeler, who participated on a May 7 panel with van Beusekom, who is head of the NFB’s English-language production branch. The panel was moderated by Marsha Lederman of the Globe and Mail.

It took five years to make Making Movie History, which consists of 30 profiles in French and 30 in English, and van Beusekom is hoping movie lovers will watch it.

“It delivers a fascinating look at the origins of cinema in Canada and insight into the stories of early founders of cinema craft in this country,” she told the Independent.

The portraits are of individuals who participated in the NFB from the 1940s through the 1980s, with a special focus on the earlier years, when the NFB was founded as a government-funded but independent organization with a vision to primarily create documentaries in the public interest. “It created this space where talented people could practise their art, develop a filmmaking tradition in this country and use this art form in the public interest,” she explained.

Over the course of working on the app, van Beusekom gained a keen appreciation of the role of women at the NFB from early on.

“As young men went overseas to fight in World War Two, it created opportunities for women in secretarial roles, cinematography, camera, editing and directing, and many were recruited to the NFB,” she said. “When people talk about women’s cinema in Canada, they talk about Studio D, which started in 1974. Until now, the 1940s generation of pioneers of women in Canadian cinema has almost been forgotten. I learned about Gudrun Parker, Evelyn Spice Cherry, Jane Marsh Beveridge and Laura Boulton, which was huge for me. These were names we didn’t know much about and it changed our perception of women’s roles in Canadian cinema.”

The intention of the app is not to be a comprehensive overview, but to provide a portrait that ideally captures the spirit of the individuals profiled and the spirit they brought to the organization. One of those individuals is Klein, who came to Canada with her spouse as a conscientious objector and worked at the NFB. One of her projects was Challenge for Change, where she used film to address social problems such as chronic poverty. Klein was also a foundational figure at Studio D, which operated from 1974 through 1996.

She recalls the NFB as “a Mecca for documentary films, the only place in the world with a government-funded but independent filmmaking agency” in 1975, when she became involved. “We were using films to give people a voice, people who hadn’t spoken for themselves before on screen,” she told the Independent.

Newly graduated from Stanford University at the time, Klein remembers that, back then, the only documentaries around were those made by National Geographic. At Studio D, Klein helped make films by, about and for women, training and nurturing filmmakers, including camera and sound women in this country for the first time.

Things have changed since then for women in the industry, but not that much, she said. “Now, it’s superficially better. There are a lot more women in the film world and graduating from film schools and a lot more diversity among those women. But, are women really getting a chance to tell their own stories, as opposed to just being in the workforce and working on the same old stories?”

Klein noted that nine out of 10 of the last Telefilm Canada (government-funded) films were directed by men. “Women will tell you there’s still a glass ceiling,” she said. “They can only make films up to a certain budget, and they’re not making series, so it’s not great. But the NFB just made a historic commitment for gender equity across the board in all its projects. That commitment sets the bar and challenges other agencies who have lots of money, to do the same.”

According to the Women in View On Screen Report (October 2015), of the 2013-14 fiscal year’s feature-length films by Telefilm Canada, women represented 17% of directors, 22% of writers and 12% of cinematographers credited; in the under $1 million category of film investment, women directors constituted 21%; in the over $1 million category of film investment, women directors constituted four percent. Of the English-language drama TV series between 2012 and 2013, 17 of the 29 series did not have a single woman director on any of their 151 episodes, and not one of the 293 episodes employed a female cinematographer.

The Making Movie History app is available from the iTunes Canada app store, as well as at nfb.ca/makingmoviehistory.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Jerusalem in photographs

The Dome of the Rock in the snow, 1940s. (photo by Moshe (Nicolas) Schwartz / Schwartz Collection, Bitmuna)

photo - Watermelons, undated — Watermelons, undated. *(photo by Elia Kahvedjian)*

Jerusalem is one of the most photographed places in the world. The Camera Man: Women and Men Photograph Jerusalem 1900-1950 exhibition at the Tower of David Museum highlights the unique and complex human and cultural heritage of the city. It also offers, for the first time, a comprehensive look at the photographic work in Jerusalem of Christians, Jews and Muslims between the years 1900 and 1950.

photo - Arab fighters on the walls of the Tower of David — Arab fighters on the walls of the Tower of David. *(photo by Chalil Rissas / The Central Zionist Archives)*

The 34 photographers chosen to be exhibited in The Camera Man lived and worked in Jerusalem during the first half of the 20th century. The photographers come from all different backgrounds – European, Armenian and local, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, men and women. Many photographers recorded the Jerusalem residents of different communities; some were hired by institutions and organizations to photograph various historical events that occurred in the city and some were artists who sought to honor the unique faces of Jerusalem.

What makes this exhibition different from others is that much of the photography that has been displayed before from this time period looks at the young “strong Zionist,” the developing state of Israel, the rural local villages, the posed “Orient,” the “new Tel Aviv.” This exhibition – which includes many photographs that have never been seen before – examines Jerusalem and its colorful mosaic of people, from everyday life to historic events.

photo - The ice cream seller with his bird, 1940s — The ice cream seller with his bird, 1940s. *(photo by Hanna Safieh / Rafi Safieh Collection)*

“The juxtaposition of different viewpoints and spheres of activity, placing works by prominent photographers alongside less well-known names, reveals a hitherto untold chapter in the history of photography in the country and in Jerusalem’s own history,” writes exhibit curator Dr. Shimon Lev.

In the mid-19th century, when Europe began to take an interest in the Orient, Jerusalem witnessed an influx of travelers from England, France and, later, from America. At the same time, a new invention was spreading through Europe – the camera – and the newcomers carted their unwieldy photographic equipment with them. The sight of the squalid city was a bitter disappointment to them and clashed with an imagined idea of the Holy City that had prompted their journey to Jerusalem.

The dissonance between the Jerusalem cherished by the heart and the Jerusalem revealed to the eye, between the heavenly and the earthly Jerusalem, and between the ideal and the mundane Jerusalem, still occupies photographers today. Although cameras are now conveniently small and light and exposure times are shorter, today’s photographer still tries to capture his own personal version of Jerusalem, even if it is only a digital self-portrait in front of the Tower of David.

photo - Jordanian soldier at the destruction of the Hurva Synagogue, 1948 — Jordanian soldier at the destruction of the Hurva Synagogue, 1948. *(photo by Ali Zaarour / Zaarour Family Collection)*

In The Camera Man, there are photographs showing action in the streets of Jerusalem from 1948, as well as portraits taken by local photographers who opened up their own photographic stores, most of them along Jaffa Road near Jaffa Gate and the Tower of David. The stores were called photographic houses or photo studios, although the driving spirit between the revival of the Hebrew language, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858–1922), suggested the term ‘“light-painting houses” in Hebrew.

The photographs comprising The Camera Man were collected from private and public archives. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition includes selected photos from the exhibit, several of which are published for the first time, as well as articles by Lev, Dr. Lavi Shai and artist Meir Appelfeld.

The Camera Man is on display until Dec. 10. For more information, visit tod.org.il/en/exhibition/the-photographers.

– Courtesy of

Nina Simone screens

Jeff Lieberman with Sam Waymon, brother of Nina Simone and longtime band member. (photo from Re-Emerging Films)

It started as an accident,” said Vancouver-born, New York-based filmmaker Jeff Lieberman, describing the evolution of his second documentary film, The Amazing Nina Simone. The documentary has its Canadian première in Vancouver on June 16.

Speaking to the Independent from Fire Island, N.Y., Lieberman said he is a longtime aficionado of this famed American jazz singer, pianist, songwriter and civil rights activist, who passed away in 2003. He grew up listening to Nina Simone’s music and the idea of making a film about her had “always been rolling around in the back of my head, but I never really was quite sure that I could do it or was the right person to do it.”

He continued, “The bigger issue was that I didn’t really know or necessarily understand Nina Simone for a long time and it was only within the last five to eight years that I read both her autobiography and a detailed biography of Nina that helped me understand who she was – but also the amazing backstory of her classical music upbringing, her involvement in civil rights – and realize that there was a much bigger story to tell.”

The impetus for Lieberman to begin work on this passion project arose out of a visit to the southern United States a few years ago. Following a screening of his first documentary film, Re-Emerging: The Jews of Nigeria (which screened at the now-defunct Ridge Theatre in Vancouver in 2012), in Charleston, S.C., Lieberman traveled to Simone’s birth city of Tryon, N.C. He had tracked down a local Simone enthusiast committed to preserving the singer’s memory. He not only guided Lieberman to notable landmarks, such as Simone’s childhood home and a bronze sculpture, but also “basically set up all the interviews for me with people who grew up with Nina. And this was before I had committed to working on the project!”

But Lieberman did commit. He threw himself wholeheartedly into a labor of love, “focusing almost exclusively on [the film] over the last year and a half to two years,” he said.

Lieberman conducted more than 80 interviews, 50 of which are included in the film. “I spent a lot of time hunting people down all over the world and often I was fortunate and interviewed them; other times people had long passed,” he recalled. He described the process as “a lot of work, but it was fun work!”

Lieberman’s “fun work,” or research, led to the discovery that “so many different people had different visions of [Nina]. She wasn’t an easy person to sum up … she was so many different things to so many different people. She was soft and docile to some people, fiery and angry to other people, and she was brilliant to some, and crazy to others.”

He added, “Another thing that was fascinating to me was her struggle with civil rights, in terms of how much time and energy and personal safety to devote to the cause. She seemed quite torn in terms of really wanting to contribute to the movement, but … it was tough for her to reconcile where to be and where she was most effective.”

Simone’s impressive musical achievements are well known. Her music transcends genre, encompassing classical, jazz, gospel, pop, folk and spiritual sounds. The legendary musician recorded more than 25 albums; popular, soulful versions of “I Put a Spell on You” and “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” and a 1959 Top 20 hit with “I Loves You, Porgy” from George Gershwin’s 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. Moreover, her politically charged song, “Mississippi Goddam,” was revolutionary. Simone wrote and performed the piece in front of a mainly white audience at Carnegie Hall in 1964 – at the height of the struggle for civil rights in America.

Lieberman identifies “Mississippi Goddam” as one of his favorite Simone songs because she “took the entire United States of America to task on what was going on with segregation and racial injustice and, by name, she called out states and governors and groups of people for not doing enough.” However, he is quick to point out that he has many favorites because “there’s a whole other aspect of Nina Simone which is not controversial or as in your face – it’s beautiful love songs and ballads and haunting, lonely songs. And, lastly, she has songs that are stories that paint pictures of different characters, almost like a play.”

On hand at the Vancouver screening to speak from personal experience about Simone’s musical talent will be local jazz musician and Juno nominee Henry Young. Young met Simone during her three-week stint in 1968 performing at Vancouver’s old Marco Polo Supper Club, the first Chinese smorgasbord restaurant and nightclub in Vancouver’s Chinatown, which hosted the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong fame) and Frank Sinatra, Jr.

Young successfully convinced Simone that he should join her band as guitarist. He reunited with her in New York two months later, only days before Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated. Three days following that historic turning point, Young took the stage with Simone at the Westbury Festival and paid tribute to the civil rights hero with a song written to commemorate the fallen leader.

Young toured with Simone for a few years, performing across Europe and for the King of Morocco. Ultimately, he decided to return home to Vancouver. He will join Lieberman in a post-film Q & A session on June 16 and will perform a musical tribute to Simone with the Henry Young Quartet, featuring Vancouver vocalist Candus Churchill.

Since the release of The Amazing Nina Simone just under a year ago, the film has screened in more than 75 different venues: in France, Denmark, the Netherlands and across the United States in Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Berkeley and Philadelphia. Lieberman recalled a notable screening that occurred in Harlem: a free, outdoor, public screening that also included a performance by Nina’s musician brother, Sam Waymon, and a Nina Simone Dance Party.

Lieberman said there are upcoming screenings of the film in Korea and New Zealand, but he is particularly excited for the Canadian première of his latest film in his hometown. He credits his Jewish upbringing in Vancouver as inspiration for much of his work, commenting that it “has always given me a value of social justice and wanting to try and do something meaningful and impactful with my life.”

He said that his previous film “and this one both touch on diversity and racism, trying to create a more just world, and breaking down barriers to see people for who they really are. I think those are Jewish values that come right from the Torah, but also the community that I was brought up in. So, that always factors into my thought process.”

Re-Emerging Films’ The Amazing Nina Simone screens at Vancouver Playhouse at 7 p.m. on June 16. Tickets are available at amazingnina.com.

Alexis Pavlich is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.

A coming-of-age story

Nolan Fahey plays the title character in Arts Club’s Billy Elliot. (photo by David Cooper)

There are no big surprises in Billy Elliot, no bizarre twists or jaw-dropping turns of events, no mistaken identities or star-crossed lovers. But what you do get is class struggle, a feel-good story and exceptional singing, dancing and acting all with high-octane energy from start to finish.

Given that the musical is based on the 2000 movie of the same name, most people will already know the story. But even if you haven’t seen the film, you’ll likely figure out beforehand that Billy Elliot traces a coming-of-age-dusting-off-the-dirt-of-this-town tale of a young boy wanting to be a dancer. He sees an audition in London as a way out of the coal-mining misery that has made up the lives of his father and brother.

Living in England’s County Durham, 11-year-old Billy stumbles across a ballet class when he’s supposed to be taking boxing lessons. The 50p his father gives him to learn jabs and upper cuts goes instead to Mrs. Wilkinson to teach him pliés and pirouettes.

Meanwhile, his father, brother and neighbors, part of the National Union of Mine Workers, are struggling to make ends meet as they head out on strike protesting the closure of the coal mines during Margaret Thatcher’s reign in the 1980s.

The contrast of the gruff, angry, mob-like miners, the police at the picket lines and the young girls and Billy in their dance outfits illustrates how far apart their worlds are. One of the best dance numbers brings these three groups together to sing “Solidarity,” with the ballet dancers flitting in between the rows of men as they stomp about the stage.

As Billy moves between these two worlds, he has to conceal his desire for dance, for fear of reprisals and embarrassment.

photo - Warren Kimmel, left, Nolan Fahey and Caitriona Murphy in Billy Elliot — Warren Kimmel, left, Nolan Fahey and Caitriona Murphy in Billy Elliot. *(photo by David Cooper)*

When Billy’s father – played by Jewish community member Warren Kimmel – finds out where his son has been spending his afternoons (and his money), he’s furious. Even though Billy’s teacher thinks her young student has a chance to get into the Royal Ballet School, Billy’s family has other plans.

In the end, Billy’s dad has to choose between earning money as a scab in order to send Billy to his audition, or support his brothers on the picket line.

Throughout the play, the scenes shift between the lighthearted dancing and the sombre mood in Billy’s home and on the picket line. With Kimmel front and centre as Billy’s father, his despondent singing is evocative of his performance of the policeman Javert in Les Misérables last year and, indeed, the storyline – and songs – of class struggle in Billy is reminiscent of the same in Les Mis.

On the dancing side, Billy has touches of the studio work and audition of Flashdance and the off-the-wall anger dancing of Footloose, while tap-dancing men in drag bring a bit of humor to the show.

All in all this play flies by. The level of performance of Nolan Fahey as Billy, Caitriona Murphy as the dance teacher Mrs. Wilkinson and Kimmel as the dad, along with a strong cast that can shuffle and slide as well as they croon, makes this a standout production.

Billy Elliot – with music by Elton John and lyrics by Lee Hall – debuted in London’s West End in 2005, garnering critical acclaim, winning four Laurence Olivier Awards in London, followed by 10 Tony Awards in New York.

The work is not John’s first foray into musical theatre. In the 1990s, he and Tim Rice collaborated to produce the soundtrack for The Lion King, for which they won Academy and Tony awards, including best musical. Then, in 2000, they collaborated on Aida, which won them each a Grammy.

Billy Elliot runs at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage until July 10. Tickets can be purchased from artsclub.com. Parents wanting to take their kids should note that the show includes a lot of swearing.

Baila Lazarus is a freelance writer and media trainer in Vancouver. Her consulting work can be seen at phase2coaching.com.

First book of trilogy now out

Michael Seidelman is donating 10% of novel profits this month to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. (photo from Michael Seidelman)

May is Cystic Fibrosis Awareness Month, so author Michael Seidelman will be donating 10% of the profits from this month’s book sales to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to help find a cure.

The connection? The heroine of his Garden of Syn young adult series suffers from CF.

“When I was 10 years old, I watched a TV movie called Alex: The Life of a Child, the true story of an 8-year-old girl who died from CF. Seeing that a child could lose her life so young had a profound impact on me then and continues to do so all these years later,” he explained.

Having his protagonist suffer from CF “could potentially raise awareness about the devastating illness,” he said. “I learned a lot about CF while researching for the book and I’m sure anyone who reads it will as well.”

But, while an integral part of her character and of the plot, CF does not define Syn, though it does offer her challenges most people do not have to face, and has made her more responsible and mature than her years. But so have several other factors.

The first book of the trilogy – No One Dies in the Garden of Syn, which was released last month – introduces us to Syn. Right away, we find out that her parents went missing when she was 5 years old and her aunt has looked after her ever since. In addition to dealing with her illness, Syn has regular teenage problems with friendships, boyfriends and school, and exhibits that brand of cynicism so often found in kids of that age.

“Syn,” she notes. “Short for Synthia. I don’t know why my parents spelled my name with an ‘S’ but if I could ask them anything, that would be my last question. Aunt Ruth tells me it’s likely because I was special and deserving of a unique spelling. I highly doubt that’s it.”

Syn is a formidable and likable hero for whom readers will root. And the constant action will keep readers turning the pages. Along her accidental journey, she must face situations and enemies that are potentially more threatening than her illness.

“Young adult novels are usually geared towards an audience of 12 years and up,” said Seidelman when asked whether he was concerned with how young readers might react. “While it does contain some dark themes, I think kids in that age group are familiar with the topics that are explored. I also think that this book is more appropriate for younger readers than many other books in the young adult category. I probably wouldn’t recommend the Hunger Games or Twilight for a 12-year-old reader. While No One Dies in the Garden of Syn may be a bit scary towards the book’s climax, any kid who is comfortable reading the Harry Potter series should be more than fine reading this.”

His own creative journey was sparked by books he read as a kid.

“My favorite stories growing up were about secrets worlds, like Alice in Wonderland and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Since I was in high school, I had wanted to write my own book about a secret world. It took me many years before I came up with the right story – one that is inspired by the tales of Lewis Carroll, L. Frank Baum and C.S. Lewis, but at the same time is very different and geared towards an older audience.

“The ideas that triggered the story I ended up telling came to me when I immersed myself in nature and let the ideas flow. I jotted down notes for a few months and made many changes to the story and characters before I sat down in April of 2014 and plotted out each chapter in detail. That took about a month and then it took another four months to write the novel. But that was only the beginning, as there were many rewrites and edits that followed.”

No One Dies in the Garden of Syn is Seidelman’s first published novel. But, as much as he enjoyed writing it, he said, it was not an easy task.

“The rewriting and editing process probably took six times the effort that writing the initial manuscript did, if not more,” he said. “Every single word is immensely important, as are continuity and proper tenses. But, for the second book in the Garden of Syn series, which I am currently working on, I think that part of the process will be smoother. Having now done this once, I now know what works and what doesn’t.

“For anyone wishing to self-publish a book,” he advised, “I cannot emphasize enough the importance of paying for a professional editor. You also need a professional-looking cover that will stand out as people really do judge a book by its cover. Having it professionally formatted for the physical copy and ebook readers is also important. With over 3,000 books published every single day, you need to do everything in your power to make yours the best it can possibly be.

“And then, when it is published, your journey has just begun. You need to use every avenue available to let people know about your book and encourage them to read it. The internet offers many wonderful tools to help do this but you really need to put in the time to market it. As I write my second book, at least 25% of my time goes to marketing the first one.”

The next book in the trilogy will be out next year, and the conclusion in 2018. The first novel is available in paperback and as an ebook from online sellers, including via michaelseidelman.com.

A tapestry at the Zack

Valeri Sokolovski’s work forms part of A Tapestry of Cultures, the group art exhibit now on display at the Zack Gallery. (photo by Olga Livshin)

A Tapestry of Cultures opened last week at the Zack Gallery. Run in conjunction with Festival Ha’Rikud, which took place May 12-15, the group show also commemorates the birthday of Israel. As such, I expected it to reflect the blend of cultures that together make the multicultural tapestry of Israeli society, but the exhibit was much more global in scope.

With the exception of a few identifiably Israel-focused pieces – mostly photos by Avie Estrin – the rest of the artwork on display could have been created in any country, by an artist from any part of the world.

The Tel Aviv apartment building in Nancy Stern’s photograph wouldn’t be out of place in Vancouver or Prague. The sandals in a large painting by Rina Lederer-Vizer could have been lying on a beach in Spain or hiding under a park bench in San Francisco. The flapper dress from a small piece by Vladimira Fillion Wackenreuther could have been on sale in any fashion store from Moscow to Tokyo.

The exhibition as a whole announces that we all belong to one nation, cosmopolitan in the best sense, regardless of our country of citizenship or our mailing address. We live on the same planet and share similar values.

The theme of music and musicians appears in paintings by several artists in the show. Eternal and borderless, music wanders where it will, crossing barriers, especially now with the internet. Valeri Sokolovski’s images illustrate the concept perfectly. One could encounter his musicians almost anywhere. Their ethnicity is vague, but their passion soars in his paintings. Sokolovski’s musicians play with such intensity, the viewer can almost hear the notes, the syncopated beats and the soulful melodies.

In between his blue players, Karen Hollowell’s trumpeter introduces a much mellower tune, sunny yellow and flowing. The painting has a romantic quality. Her musician is not here on a street corner, but is somewhere else, behind the veil of imagination.

Not so with Iza Radinsky’s dancers. They strive to twirl off the wall and into the room, their skirts flashing, their feet performing to a jolly rhythm. The artist’s brushstrokes are blurry, but the dancers’ joy is crystal clear, and it transmits outside the frame, sprinkling everyone who passes the gallery.

In contrast to Radinsky’s dancers, Lauren Morris’ image is abstract and colorful, echoing the charm of dreams. Colors splash on the canvas in fanciful profusion and the viewer wonders, Is it a choir singing hymns? Is it a flock of birds on a wire, lost in their lofty trills? Or maybe it’s a flowerbed of exotic orchids, each one a song?

Meanwhile, a crowd of musicians populates David Akselrod’s “Gathering.” The painting is almost a metaphor of the show itself, gleeful and whimsical. The musicians are as cheerful and diverse as the artists who gathered for the exhibit’s opening. They play different instruments and have different skin colors, but they congregate in the same place, they mingle and laugh, and they share the delight of their art with each other and with the viewers.

The motif of unity – of all of us sharing, depending on each other – underlies Orly Ashkenazy’s “The Butterfly Effect.”

“It’s about the 12 tribes of Israel,” said the artist. She even inserted the names of the tribes in Hebrew into the painting. They intertwine with each other like a faint pattern of gold arabesques on a butterfly’s wing, a design mirroring real life, underscoring our own interconnections and effects on each other and the world around us.

It is impossible to mention all of the artists participating in the show in one short article, but all their creations complement and enhance one another.

“In my opinion, the calibre of work in this show is particularly high,” said Linda Lando, the gallery director.

A Tapestry of Cultures is on until May 29.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at olgagodim@gmail.com.

Revealing psychiatry

Dr. David Goldbloom (photo by Ksenija Ho)

It was not that long ago that seeing a psychiatrist meant that people saw you as unstable or abnormal in some way. While societal views on many things have broadened, the stigma of mental illness remains. So, how do we go about changing these perceptions? According to Dr. David Goldbloom, a psychiatrist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, this is something achievable in baby steps. And a step he has taken is to publish a book that not only looks at his patients’ experiences, but his own.

Goldbloom originally hails from Montreal.

“I come from a long line of pediatricians. If heredity was going to play any kind of role or environmental influence, you might think I would have ended up in that field.”

But Goldbloom’s father-in-law was Nate Epstein – a well-known figure in Canadian psychiatry. Epstein was formerly the chief of psychiatry at the Jewish General Hospital and, later, the founding chair of the department of psychiatry at McMaster University. “My exposure to him at close range was a formidable influence in terms of my ultimate career decision,” said Goldbloom.

The complexity of psychiatric illness in terms of its biological, psychological, social and cultural aspects, which requires one to think broadly about solutions to sufferers’ problems, drew Goldbloom to the field. And, during his career, he has written many books targeted to medical professionals, but only recently did he choose to write a book explicitly geared to non-professionals.

“It’s a very different kind of writing,” he said. “I would say it’s much tougher than writing a textbook. I wrote it with Dr. Pier Bryden. She and I cooked up the idea together.

“It was driven by a wish that we shared to make psychiatry better understood by the general public – not reducing it to some cartoonish stereotype. People who have mental illness themselves or those who treat them, we always thought there was a measure of curiosity in the general public about what the reality is versus the Hollywood or TV depiction.”

How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psychiatrist uses, as its title says, one week in Goldbloom’s professional life as its narrative framework. While Bryden is also a psychiatrist, she does not feature in the book.

In How Can I Help?, Goldbloom and Bryden explore the world of psychiatry, and talk about how it intersects with Goldbloom’s personal life, as they know that people are curious about how health professionals deal with the inevitable sorrows and joys of working in the field.

The book “contains some very real stories of real patients with their real names used with their real permission,” he said. Other patients described in the book are fictional composites, “masterfully disguised.”

Goldbloom himself is more revealed. “We felt, if these individuals were going to be candid and courageous enough to talk about their own experience, then I had better match them in terms of talking about my own reactions, including my reaction to the very real suicide of one of my patients.”

While Goldbloom said this was not the only time in his 30 years of practice that he has experienced a patient’s death, both he and Bryden felt that this one instance was particularly poignant. They also took the opportunity to write in more general terms about the impact of suicide on physicians.

“One of the other things the book does is use the events of the week to springboard into some of the larger issues within psychiatry,” said Goldbloom. “It’s not just a narrative, but it looks at some of the historical [elements], controversies, stuff like that.

“Whereas most people think of a psychiatric practice as being set in a secluded, private office, with somebody coming in Tuesdays at four to talk about themselves in a manner interminable, the reality of acute psychiatric care in a modern hospital is very different.”

According to Goldbloom, possibly the first thing a reader might be struck by is the variety of different settings in which they find him. He consults in his office, of course, but also through videoconferencing to reach distant areas, in emergency rooms and acute care units, as well as out in the community.

Readers will be able to learn of the varied roles psychiatrists in Canada play, and Goldbloom hopes the book will highlight the breadth of experiences – the professionals’ as well as the patients’.

When asked if another book project is on his radar, Goldbloom said, “I have to wait and see how the first book does. It’s encouraging that it was on the bestseller list, within a week of its publication, in the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star … but, you know, it’s early days yet.”

How Can I Help? is available in most major bookstores, as well online via Amazon and Indigo.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Outside play is vital for kids

As children, most of us at least once created a space of our own built of cushions, sheets, cardboard, branches, tables, almost anything – a space of our own that mimicked the house in which or near which it was built. This is a cross-cultural phenomenon that serves to help children establish their identities, according to David Sobel.

Sobel is a faculty member in the education department at Antioch University in New England. The author of Children’s Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood, he teaches conceptual development in science education, a course called the Ecology of Imagination Childhood.

“I’m teaching upcoming teachers in a master’s program, so folks with undergrad degrees, most of whom have done other stuff and are coming back,” he said. “The first thing that is interesting [about kids building their own spaces] is that this is a fairly cross-cultural phenomenon. Not necessarily all children do it, but a lot of children do it in different cultures and settings around the world. They tend to do it between the ages of 6 and 12, therefore, it suggests this is some sort of genetically determined behavior that serves some kind of survival value.”

According to Sobel, there are a couple of different goals achieved through this practice. One is that they are creating another world or a home away from home. Young kids will do this inside the house. As they get to the ages of 5, 6 or 7, they start to do it outside, but near the house.

book cover - Children’s Special Places: Exploring the Role of Forts, Dens and Bush Houses in Middle Childhood “They will gradually do it further away from the house, as a home they’ve created rather than that their parents have created, and it’s a way for them to establish themselves as unique individuals out in the world,” he said. “So, it has the function of identity creation … a special place or den, as a chrysalis out of which a butterfly will emerge. The butterfly is the self of the child that will emerge around the ages of 12 or 13.”

Sobel believes the behavior is instinctual, not a culturally transmitted one, though he admitted he has not yet unequivocally eliminated cultural influence as a variable in the cases he has observed. The behavior, Sobel thinks, is a mechanism to increase bonding with the natural or physical world.

“The theoretical model of Joseph Chilton Pearce, who wrote about the magical child, says that children are moving around [age] 6 or 7 from the family matrix, from being bound and held in the family, to moving out to the earth matrix, the physical world matrix,” he explained. “Kids are establishing a relationship with the natural world. It’s becoming a safe place for them, a source of energy, from the perspective of developing a healthy relationship with the natural world, eventually an environmental citizenship. Creating a home in the world that’s often made of natural materials gives them a sense of safety in a place that can feel a little scary or dangerous.”

Sobel contends that, in many cases, kids are discouraged from creating this sort of space or are not given access to the appropriate materials to do so, making it into less of a phenomenon and more of a function of parental and cultural permission or restriction.

“It’s good for parents to recognize it as a healthy behavior,” he said. “So, if kids show the impulse, it’s good to encourage it rather than discourage it. Also, in the natural play areas, there’s the theory of loose parts, which essentially says that what children want in a play landscape is a variety of loose parts or pieces that they can disassemble and assemble to create their own places.

“It’s great for parents to provide loose parts or for city parks to provide loose parts, so kids can construct things – branches, sand, stone and cardboard boxes – to encourage the creation of kid places.”

Sobel understands the hesitation of parents and public stewards to provide such tools, seeing them as accidents waiting to happen, but he thinks it is appropriate to allow a moderate amount of risk while also eliminating the most dangerous hazards.

“You want to encourage safe tool use,” he said. “So, if kids are going to be using pocket knives, make sure they know how to use them correctly, and you take them away when they don’t abide by those rules. With my son, as an example, when he was 7 or 8, I came home and found little fire scars on the concrete floor in the barn, which is our garage. He was interested in building little fires. In the barn, this was not a good idea, so I constructed a fire ring for him and made him a fire kit with matches and appropriate things. I told him he could build fires if he wanted to, but only here … that he has to respect the impulse, but also limit [it] … giving it some structure.”

Sobel suggested reading children’s literature that includes stories about the creation of such spaces as a great way to lead to positive building behavior.

He added that, while the impulse is fine indoors at the beginning, it eventually wants to be outdoors. When doing it outdoors, he advised becoming aware of the city’s zoning laws, as there will be areas in which the construction of subsidiary or outlying sheds, buildings or forts is not permitted. Another modern-day complication, he added, is “the digitalization of kids lives.” The time “not just for fort building, but any kind of natural play experiences outside, is getting eroded because of the lure of digital entertainment. But also, parents feel like digital entertainment is safer than the woods or exploring the neighborhood.

“With all this digitalization, kids are less likely to have an interior sense of balance, they are more overweight and they are having more vision problems as a function of not exercising certain kinds of motor development in their eyes,” he said. “The sedentary lifestyle is unhealthy for children.

“Place creation is part and parcel with having kids with more physically active lifestyles. It’s important for kids to understand the motor diversity of outdoor natural play, as opposed to just having them involved in a sport, which tends to limit motor skills to certain kinds of behaviors.”

According to Sobel, there is a vein of Jewish theology that can be drawn upon which supports nurturing our relationship with the natural world. He is helping organize a conference of Jewish early childhood programs in the New York area, where topics such as nature preschools and forest kindergartens for the Jewish early childhood community will be discussed.

He also said that there is a vibrant nature-based education community in Victoria and Vancouver, giving the example of educator Dr. Enid Elliot at Camosun College in Victoria.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.