Arts & Culture – Page 63

Lucky to do what she loves

Stacy Lederman’s “past present future” is one of the works she will be sharing at the Eastside Culture Crawl this month.

Despite the pandemic, the Eastside Culture Crawl is not only back this year, but it’s offering “an expanded celebration of the creative resilience of the Eastside Arts District’s visual arts community.” The annual free event will take place over two weekends, Nov. 12-15 and Nov. 19-22, with the opportunity to view the artwork online, as well as schedule an appointment to join a limited in-person visit to the studios of your choice.

Participating artists in the Crawl include many Jewish community members, such as Miriam Aroeste, Suzy Birstein, Olga Campbell, Lori Goldberg, Lynna Goldhar Smith, Karly Leipsic, Stacy Lederman, Shevy Levy, Rebekah McGurran (Hive Printing), Lauren Morris, Ideet Sharon and Zohar. The Jewish Independent has featured several of these artists over the years. Lederman is a first-time Crawl participant.

“I was born in Vancouver and grew up in Tsawwassen. I have lived in Vancouver since I was 17 and also spent one year in San Diego,” Lederman told the Independent by way of introduction. “Obviously, things are different now with travel, but I used to spend a lot of time in New York and spent extended periods of time visiting in the summers. Exploring and being able to immerse myself in such a vibrant, energetic city was what led me to my career in art.”

Lederman has a background in corporate sales and fashion. She said she stopped working outside the home when her children were born.

“I started art lessons after a summer in New York, with the intention of having a hobby for myself and trying something completely new,” she said. “My ‘ah-ha’ moment came slowly, after a few years of learning, when I realized that friends were asking where I bought the art in my home. I would say, ‘Oh, I made that. You can have it if you like.’ After a few times, I realized that I could do this as a career, as people seemed to like my work.

“My first meeting with a gallery, I was offered to do a show and I thought that was amazing and unexpected, so let’s see where this goes. I am so grateful the show was a success and, with this, my full-time art career began. Although I had been involved in creative industries before, such as fashion, starting art lessons in 2014 was my first time giving it a try. I feel so lucky to be able to do what I love and feel like it came to me organically because it was really what I was meant to pursue.”

photo - Stacy Lederman — Stacy Lederman *(photo from Eastside Culture Crawl)*

Lederman has had several solo shows and exhibits since. She works in mixed media, which, she said, allows her “to be creative without expectation of perfection.

“I wouldn’t work well as a literal painter, as I would get lost in the perfection and most likely never finish a piece,” she explained. “Mixed media allows me to feel confident as an artist and make pieces that reflect a moment or feeling. Sometimes, it’s a lyric in a song, or a bit of graffiti, or an image I see on the street or in a magazine that inspires me to create. Blending different mediums allows me to use my inspiration when it comes and evolve the piece organically instead of worrying about the outcome. I can draw on all areas of creativity, from photography, painting, texture, abstract and collage, to create works that are meaningful and tell a story or spark a conversation. Also, my brain is always firing and so different mediums allow me to use different techniques, so I can always find a way to create and grow as a mostly self-taught artist.”

As for her interest in urban settings, she said she often features them in her work, “because, generally, big cities feed my soul. I love to be in nature and have calm moments, but there is something about the vibrancy of a big city, the potential of excitement, and taking a moment to slow down within the chaos and see all the unexpected and overlooked beauty. This environment fuels my creative spirit.”

And her creativity extends to the naming of her works, which doesn’t always seem to match up with what is depicted.

“The names of my pieces either reflect the meaning behind how the idea for the piece came to me, or a detail within it, if I am doing a series and just letting it flow naturally,” she said. “Sometimes, a work of mine comes from a moment or specific image and so then I will then choose a name that reflects the inspiration. Other times, I will get lost in the process of a series and a certain detail will catch my eye and start to dictate the direction of the piece – in that case, I would use the detail, or a representation of the details, as the name. Occasionally, there is a meaning within the numbers and/or letters I use that appear random but they are always intentional. It isn’t often but, occasionally, I will use the deeper meaning that isn’t obvious within the piece and I explain that to the person who purchases it.”

Lederman both sells her work and donates it. With her art, she has supported such causes as Arts Umbrella Splash, Zajac Ranch, Music Heals, Face of Today and York House School.

“Although I was not raised with the idea of tikkun olam, it has always been important to me to give back and I became very involved and aware of the importance of philanthropic endeavours in university,” she said. “There are so many ways to contribute to the greater good, either with time, money or donations. I am happy to help in whatever way I can and love helping to raise funds for such important and necessary causes. Art can bring joy in many ways – being able to give back to the community is something I am grateful to be able to contribute to and brings me joy as well.”

While she may not have been raised with the concept of tikkun olam, Lederman said, “Jewish culture definitely plays a role in my family’s life. We celebrate the Jewish holidays and have been involved with the community here in Vancouver in many different ways over the years. Two years ago, my children and I traveled to Israel for the first time. It was an incredible experience and I was so inspired in both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that I created a collection based on the experience, energy and imagery from these cities. I felt that Israel was like no other place I have ever visited and the combination of cultures and raw energy inspired me to want to capture the feeling of the country.”

During the Eastside Culture Crawl, Lederman’s studio – Eastside Atelier Building, 14-1310 William St. – will be open for viewing, both virtually and in-person.

“This year has had its share of challenges for us all,” she said, “and I am thrilled to be able to share what I love with local art lovers.”

To see Lederman’s latest collections or schedule a private appointment with her, check out stacylederman.com. For the full schedule and to register for the Crawl, visit culturecrawl.ca. There is also a “sneak peak” of Crawl activities being offered virtually Nov. 2–9, which features a selection of workshops, demonstrations and talks, as well as the annual Moving Art exhibition.

COVID stories and moments

(“Skewed Priorities,” photo by Bob Prosser)

COVID-19 has upended all of our lives in multiple ways. More people work from home. Self-isolation has become customary. Masks are everywhere. The anxiety and fear of infection have spread as widely as the virus itself. To reflect these and other changes, the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery invited Jewish community members – not professional artists but lay people – to share their experiences, thoughts and emotions in both visual and oral formats. The results can be found in the gallery’s current show, What We See: Stories & Moments from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

photo - “Gloves and Masks” by Doris Fiedrich — “Gloves and Masks,” photo by Doris Fiedrich.

The exhibit, which opened Sept. 10, consists of 15 entries. Each entry, submitted by one person, includes a few photos depicting that person’s new reality and a short essay, in which the participant wrote what has touched them most profoundly. As the deadline for the submissions was early July, everything in the show is about the first few months of the pandemic, before we all got more used to it and the new rules of social interaction became the norm.

Participant Sandra Collet presents her impressions through a poem on the meaning of the current crisis: “… A time of loneliness / A time of LIFE … A time of sadness / A time of hope.” Its last line, “Together apart,” encapsulates one of the most significant changes wrought by the pandemic.

Bob Prosser has written about his “ordinary experiences” and contemplates the days ahead: “… my wife sewed masks, we’re growing herbs and vegetables, we have learned to bake bread.… I’m hopeful but pessimistic about the post-COVID future.” One of the most memorable photographs of the whole show is his: the stockpile of toilet paper in his house.

photo - “Owl” by Evan Groberman — “Owl,” photo by Evan Groberman.

For Derry Lubell, the hardest aspect of social distancing is her inability to be with her family, to interact with her grandchildren. Her short essay is almost a lament. She writes, “… one afternoon, I went to their house and stood on the sidewalk. They all came out onto their front porch.… I took these shots of our separation.”

Micah Groberman encountered a different challenge. Before the pandemic, his business was focused on tourism and, like most every other business connected to tourism, it fizzled out due to the global travel and gathering bans. He writes, “… before COVID, I would walk my sons – Evan, 8, and Jonas, 5 – to school and then begin my workday, but suddenly, I became my boys’ teacher.” He admits that he is not too good at math, so he decided to teach his sons about what he knew, instead: photography and nature. His older son’s photographs of wild birds, taken under Groberman’s tutelage and included in the show, prove the father’s talent for teaching. The images are outstanding.

Paul Steinbok’s photos capture simple, everyday images. In his essay, he expresses sympathy and compassion for those who have suffered from COVID. His own feelings have become more acute, more attuned to the life surrounding him. “This year,” he writes, “I have observed more closely and photographed the ever-changing colours and textures of spring. In addition, I have photographed some situations that have resulted from the COVID restrictions, such as messages of hope, COVID-style birthday parties and exercise classes.”

Tybie Lipetz, the mother of a 4-year-old daughter, writes about the disappointments young children have faced, the school closures and birthday party cancellations. “Life was turned upside down for the kids,” she notes.

photo - “Dog Scarlett” by Fran Goldberg — “Dog Scarlett,” photo by Fran Goldberg.

Despite the drawbacks and dangers of COVID, many entries emphasize the authors’ hope and joy. For example, Fran Goldberg, who belongs to the especially vulnerable age group of 70-plus, has found positivity from her family and her dog. She and her children stay in touch by phone daily. “Instead of talking about what I couldn’t do, we started to focus on what I could,” she writes. “For one thing, I could Zoom with my family.… I have a dog.… She is 13 years old and, on our walks, she still takes the time to ‘smell the roses.’ She and my family have taught me to slow down and appreciate the beauty I see around me.”

photo - “Bouquet” by Kathy Bilinsky — “Bouquet,” photo by Kathy Bilinsky.

Kathy Bilinsky also recognizes the beauty around her, however unexpected, and has captured it with her camera. In her essay, she mentions walking around Granville Island, which she did countless times before the pandemic, and notes how, at the pandemic’s onset, everything looked different, abandoned: “… no vendors, no shoppers, no tourists. It felt surreal…. So many doors that we can’t enter, nor do we want to.”

In her photos of the closed doors of Granville Island, the familiar noisy streets are almost unrecognizable. Who had ever seen those doors in broad daylight without a crowd in front of them?

Another of Bilinsky’s photographs is a bouquet on the asphalt, a gift from her children on Mother’s Day: “… flowers received ‘socially distanced,’ awkwardly tossed on the parking lot floor.… We all just stood and stared at them.”

The 15 participants in this unique show offer stories and moments ranging from eerie to prosaic, from heartwarming to poignant, all contributing to this combined slice of memory of the first few months of the pandemic in Vancouver.

What We See: Stories & Moments from the COVID-19 Pandemic runs until Nov. 10. You can visit the Zack Gallery by appointment or view the show’s digital book at jccgv.com/art-and-culture/gallery.

Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].

Childbearing choice

Michael Scholar Jr. directs Lungs, which is at Studio 16 Nov. 13-22. (photo from Mitch and Murray Productions)

If you’ve not been to the theatre in many months, consider treating yourself to a COVID-19-safe performance of Lungs, opening at Studio 16 in Vancouver Nov. 13, and running to Nov. 22. Michael Scholar Jr. is the Jewish director of the play, which stars real-life married couple Aaron Craven and his wife, Kate Craven, who is also a member of the Jewish community.

Audience numbers will be limited to 25 in this two-actor performance, in which the couple discusses whether or not they should have a child. The discussion takes place over many years and the debate is over whether childbearing is the morally correct choice in a world brimming with overpopulation, hatred, racism and climate change.

“The ideas and issues brought up in this piece really resonate right now in the pandemic, with regards to questions like, Are we taking care of the planet, our neighbours and ourselves?” Scholar told the Independent. “This really resonates with us as artists and, to approach this during the pandemic, seems really timely.”

Lungs was written by Duncan McMillan, a British playwright, and debuted in 2011. Aaron Craven, the co-producer and owner of the Vancouver theatre and film production company Mitch and Murray Productions, determined a two-actor play starring a husband and wife would satisfy COVID-19 safety protocols. With small audiences and barriers between the actors and audience, the show will go on.

Scholar notes that Lungs is a much-loved play to mount not just because of its relevant subject matter, but also because of its production simplicity. “The author’s notes say there’s not to be any costume changes, furniture or set pieces, so 60 scenes happen without any indication as to where and when they are,” he said. “They keep jumping forward in time and it’s up to the audience to figure out where and when they are taking place. So, theatrically, it’s a relatively simple, low-fi production.”

While there’s no overtly Jewish content, Scholar believes that to be a Jew is to wrestle with G-d and, at the heart of this play, is a wrestling match about childbearing in a morally tenuous moment in time.

For ticketing information, visit mitchandmurrayproductions.com.

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

Arts Club stage opens

Among the theatre performances around town cautiously returning to live venues is the Arts Club’s production of Buffoon, a one-man play being presented at the Granville Island Stage until Dec. 6, and featuring the contributions of two members of the Jewish community, Amir Ofek and Itai Erdal.

Buffoon is the second of three works being put on by the Arts Club this fall. The play has two different actors playing the lead in separate shows at different times, and audience size in the theatre, which can seat 400 people, is limited to a maximum of 50.

“The fall theatre trio will be the first time for audiences to see fully staged and designed shows at the Arts Club since March,” remarked Ofek, the play’s set designer, when he spoke to the Independent before the opening of the play’s run Oct. 22. “Buffoon will be a real visual feast for the audience. Seating arrangements were planned. Actors can only get so close to the audience.

“The set, lighting, costume and sound design surrounding the sole performer will take the audience on a ride into the magical world of circus,” he added.

On working in the time of COVID-19, Ofek mused, “As a designer, we work at a personal level and often have animated meetings. Now, all the conversations had to be done over the phone or, in the case of a socially distanced meeting with director Lois Anderson, in a schoolyard.”

Erdal, the lighting designer, expressed his excitement at being involved with this production, while pointing out that there are unique demands posed during the pandemic. “I am used to coming and going from the theatre. We have to be very careful now. We have to wear masks and only so many people are allowed in at a given time. Working with these safety precautions during the pandemic is a challenge. Having to do it twice with two casts of one is also a challenge,” he told the Independent.

Indo-Canadian playwright Anosh Irani’s Buffoon tells the story of Felix. Born to a circus family who prefer trapezing to parenting, he quickly learns to turn life’s hard knocks into comedy. His longing for family and home is piqued at the tender age of 7, when he falls for an older woman, aged 8 – an event that inspires his journey to becoming a true buffoon.

The show is one part of a full season for both artists. Ofek is also working on Francis Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine for Vancouver Opera. That production had its digital première on Oct. 24.

“I am really happy to be busy now, at a time when theatre and live performance struggle to exist. I hope it is not a farewell burst of fireworks that signals the end of our time,” Ofek said.

Erdal, meanwhile, has recently designed two shows, B for Rumble Theatre and This Crazy Show for Company Vision Selective at the Queer Arts Festival, and is designing the Nov. 12-22 run of The Amaryllis for the Firehall Arts Centre. He has a photo exhibit at Luppolo Brewing, is writing a play, Check Point, for his company, Elbow Theatre, and is teaching an online course for the Musical Stage Company in Toronto.

Ofek and Erdal have collaborated in the past – on Florian Zeller’s The Father, at the Vancity Culture Lab in 2019, and on Joan MacLeod’s The Valley, in 2016 at the Arts Club.

The Arts Club stresses that the performance and rehearsal models for its fall trio of presentations were designed to be as safe as possible for artists, staff and audience members. All shows are being staged in adherence to safety guidelines established by the B.C. government, including the aforementioned cap of 50 patrons per show, staggered admission times and a mandatory mask policy (with the exception of patrons with respiratory or other health concerns). Each show has two rotating casts and crews, who do seven performances each week and rehearse in separate halls.

“Smaller, more intimate shows allow us to be nimbler than we would be with larger productions,” explained Peter Cathie White, the executive director of Arts Club. “This ‘bubble method’ of alternating casts and crews is a brand-new way of producing theatre for the Arts Club, and we hope it will become a model for performances to come.”

Other shows in the Arts Club fall lineup include No Child, to Nov. 8, about an underfunded high school in the Bronx; and the holiday comedy The Twelve Dates of Christmas, running Nov. 19-Jan. 3.

Besides the in-theatre experience, patrons have the option of purchasing tickets to a digital recording of each of the three productions, which is available to view for a limited time.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit artsclub.com.

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Nurturing love of storytelling

Toronto-based Dana Fradkin will participate in this year’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program at Vancouver Opera long distance. (photo from Vancouver Opera)

Dana Fradkin is one of six participants chosen for this season’s Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program at Vancouver Opera. The multi-talented stage director has multiple interests and occupations: she is an award-winning writer, actor, filmmaker, producer and opera director.

“As a young director in the opera world, I knew I needed more education before I could truly become the director I wanted to be,” Fradkin told the Independent about her desire to become a resident in the program. “Vancouver Opera is the only young company in the country that has a stage director as part of their program, so when I saw the submission breakdown last year, I applied immediately! I had an interview in Toronto a few months later and then got the news shortly after.

“Coming from a background in classical theatre,” she said, “my understanding of classical theatre repertoire is very strong, as is my understanding of the stage, but I am still lacking in my knowledge of opera repertoire. By being part of the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program, I hope to learn more about numerous different classical operas and develop a deeper understanding of the Fach system (the different vocal ranges). I want to practise my leadership and directorial skills in an educational and safe environment and be ready to think on my toes and adapt to any situation.”

Adaptation was necessary for Fradkin to even participate in the program. Based in Toronto, she originally was planning on moving to Vancouver from October 2020 to May 2021. But then came COVID.

“Initially, I was coming to Vancouver as part of the young company to do scene study work with the young singers and assistant direct all three of the main stage shows,” she explained. “I was very excited about this, as the original season consisted of Carmen, Cosi Fan Tutte and Falstaff, and I was to assist a female director on all three of these shows. Now, the program has changed: it’s only from January to May 2021 and it will consist of smaller scale concerts and scene study evenings, as opposed to large-scale productions. Although I am sad to not be part of these large-scale operas, I am very excited to be at the helm of these concert series and to have the creative freedom of working on something completely new.”

Looking at the wide range of Fradkin’s work – which includes being co-producer of ActionCan Films, which specializes in Canadian action films, and co-founder of Keystone Theatre – it seems that she is compelled to try new things.

“They all definitely feed a different part of me, yet, at the same time, they all feel like part of the same thing,” she said about her varied professions and areas of interest. “I chose this world because I love storytelling and what I find fascinating is pondering how to tell a story best. Is it through music, through word, through physical theatre and comedy or through action? As a writer, I ask, do I want to tell this story through cinema or on the stage? I love all types of stories: comedies, horror, romance, war stories, heartbreak, crime, inspiring stories, etc. And what I ask myself is how do I, as an artist, fit best to tell this specific story? I love acting in theatre, writing for film and directing opera, and usually I find the best discipline for myself to fit that story.

“I find cinema and opera quite similar actually, as they are both a very visual medium and it’s so exciting to bounce between the two. I’m inspired by artists like Atom Egoyan, Julie Taymor and others who use different genres to tell a story, using the different mediums to connect most with the audience.”

Fradkin grew up in the Ottawa Jewish community and it was there that her love of performance and storytelling was ingrained.

“I went to Camp Gesher for 10 summers and was deeply active in that community during my high school years,” she said. “The first large productions I was part of were community musicals put on by the Jewish community theatre company called JCC Theatreworks. Between Grade 10 and Grade 12, I did Peter Pan, Bye Bye Birdie, Babes in Arms and Fame with them. This was my first time performing in front of a live audience and I loved it! Connecting with all these Jewish artists at a young age really taught me about community and collective creation and embracing storytelling through community. Many artists I met at JCC Theatreworks are still working in theatre today and are still dear friends.

“I also love telling Jewish stories, and the mini-series I have been writing and working on for years is a six-part series about my father’s time working with war crimes at the department of justice. He [Arnold Fradkin] was the head prosecutor of the first successful case in Canada of having a Nazi war criminal deported and it’s a story I feel very passionately about sharing with the world. I love when I meet other Jewish artists in the industry, as I always feel an instant connection with them.”

Fradkin is joined in this season’s Yulanda M. Faris program by Toronto soprano Jonelle Sills; Cranbrook, B.C., native and mezzo-soprano Amanda Weatherall; tenor Ian Cleary, originally from Chatham, Ont.; Vancouver baritone Luka Kawabata; and Vancouver-based pianist Amy Seulky Lee. The program director is Leslie Dala, who will be part of the Chutzpah! Festival this year – as pianist in choreographer Idan Cohen’s Hourglass, danced by Racheal Prince and Brandon Lee Alley. (See the next issue of the Independent, Nov. 13.)

“I’m very excited and thrilled to be part of the 2021 Vancouver Opera season and I can’t wait to share our work with the community,” said Fradkin, adding a wish that many of us have – “May we all be able to meet and play in person soon.”

For more on the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program and Vancouver Opera, visit vancouveropera.ca.

Salomé CD launched

Over the last three decades, poet and performer Adeena Karasick and composer and trumpeter Frank London have each transformed the worlds of poetry and music with work that is sensual and political, steeped in Jewish mysticism, exploding notions of high and low culture. Their first collaboration together, Salomé: Woman of Valor, the debut recording of London’s NuJu Music label, was released on Oct. 15.

Karasick and London’s Salomé takes its inspiration from the historical figure, who has become typecast as a lurid femme fatale, especially via Oscar Wilde’s play and Richard Strauss’s opera, which depict Salomé as the seductress who danced the infamous “Dance of the Seven Veils” for her stepfather Herod and had John the Baptist beheaded.

“Salomé: Woman of Valor addresses the social and political necessity to speak the unspoken, resist outdated notions of identity and ethnicity. It critiques a received narrative, historically accepted as truth, and opens up a space where difference and otherness can be celebrated,” said Karasick and London in the press release about the launch.

Karasick’s libretto explores, exalts and reclaims the figure of Salomé in a feminist light to reveal an apocryphal figure who refuses to be locked into a world of subjugation and misrepresentation. London’s Salomé score is drawn from many musical traditions – klezmer, bhangra, Arabic and jazz, with a big nod to Miles Davis’ electric work and to trumpet innovator Jon Hassell.

Featured on the recording are Punjabi percussion virtuoso Deep Singh and Middle-Eastern jazz electronica guru Shai Bachar, with guest appearances by actor, director and ubu god Tony Torn and singer Manu Narayan.

Salomé: Woman of Valor is the culmination of seven years work. Karasick’s text was published in 2017 in English and Italian, and sections have been published in Bengali, Arabic, Czech and Malayalam. In 2018, Salomé: Woman of Valor was performed internationally. For an article published prior to the Vancouver show, see jewishindependent.ca/salomes-rightful-place.

Salomé: Woman of Valor can be heard and bought at AppleMusic, BandCamp or Amazon.

Shoah survivor offers a warning

Judy Weissenberg Cohen, at the age of 92, recently published her memoir, Cry in Unison. (photo from Riddle Films)

On erev Yom Kippur, in a Nazi concentration camp, a group of Hungarian Jewish women and girls prevailed upon two comparatively sympathetic kapos to obtain a lone candle and a single siddur.

Judy Weissenberg Cohen, a Toronto woman who, at the age of 92, recently published her memoir, was one of those girls.

“In this place, where we felt that instead of asking for forgiveness from God, God should be asking for forgiveness from us, we all wanted to gather around the woman with the lit candle and siddur,” she said during a virtual book launch Sept. 14. “She began to recite the Kol Nidre very slowly so we could repeat the words if we wanted to, but we didn’t. Instead, all the women burst out in a cry in unison. Our prayer was the sound of this incredible cry of hundreds of women. I have never heard, before or since then, such a heart-rending sound. Something was happening to us. It was as if our hearts were bursting. Even though no one really believed the prayer would change our situation, that God would suddenly intervene – we weren’t that naïve – the opportunity to cry out and remember together reminded us of our former lives, alleviating utter misery even for the shortest while. In some inexplicable way, it seemed to give us comfort. Even today, many decades later, every time I go to Kol Nidre services, I can’t shake the memory of that sound. This is the Kol Nidre I always remember.”

Cohen’s book, Cry in Unison, was published by the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program. Cohen’s is the 113th memoir published by the program. The books are offered to schools and universities across Canada at no cost, providing educators with an accessible entryway to teaching about the Holocaust by approaching history one story at a time.

Cohen was born in 1928, the youngest of seven children in the Weissenberg family.

In 1938, when she was 10 years old, her parents and other Hungarian Jews became increasingly alarmed by news from adjacent countries, including the Anschluss of Austria, followed a few months later by Kristallnacht.

When the mass transport of Jews from Hungary began, in 1944, Cohen spent days in a boxcar with 78 others, with two buckets – one for drinking water, the other for a toilet. On arrival in Auschwitz-Birkenau, as they disembarked from the cattle cars, a worker approached women with children and “very quietly in an urgent tone” told the young mothers to hand their children over to the grandmothers.

“At the time, we didn’t know what it meant,” Cohen recalled. “The fact was [the worker] asked the young mothers to give children over to the grandmothers because he knew that, within hours of our arrival, the grandmothers who looked 45 years or older and Jewish children 14 and younger immediately will be murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau. He wanted to save the young mothers. If you didn’t carry a child, then you lived. If you carried a child, even if the child wasn’t yours, you went to the gas chamber with the child.”

Cohen and her sisters were showered, shaved and given dirty hand-me-down garments. Sent outside without towels to dry themselves, Cohen could not locate her sisters.

“Only when they started to talk … and all of a sudden we started to laugh in our painful way,” she recalled. “How drastically we changed within a few hours.”

Cohen was subsequently transported to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and then to a forced labour facility that was a sub-camp of Buchenwald.

In the spring of 1945, on a death march through the German countryside, she was finally liberated. The realization came in a German man’s choice of language.

With other girls and women, Cohen was sleeping in a barn during the march. “In the morning, there was a loud knock on the barn door,” she said. “We woke up all of a sudden from our shallow sleep and there stood a guy in the doorway. I still remember, it was a beautiful sunny day, the sun was behind him and he stood there like a dark silhouette. And, in a nice, strong voice in German, he said, ‘Fräuleins!’”

The women were startled as much by the word as by the awakening.

“Did he really say Fräuleins? A German addressed us as Fräuleins?” they asked one another, “The war must be over. A German hasn’t addressed us in a civil tongue for ages.”

He immediately continued: “Fräuleins, you are free.”

The terms liberation and freedom may be equivocal given what Holocaust survivors experienced. In Cohen’s case, she returned to her hometown in Hungary, certain that if she, the youngest, had survived, then surely her elders, who were more capable of caring for themselves, would likewise be coming home.

“I don’t know why I dared to be logical about the Nazi genocide,” she said.

Instead, she was reunited with one brother, one sister and two cousins.

“So it was very traumatic,” she said. The trauma was accentuated by the fact that some of the returning villagers had been on work battalions and had not experienced the death camps, and in fact had no knowledge of them.

“I had to be the messenger to tell them that their wives and their little girls were murdered in the gas chambers in Birkenau,” she said. “They didn’t believe me. They actually [considered] me insane.”

She went to a displaced persons camp – constructed on the grounds of the razed Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – and lived there for two years, learning a trade. But, when the opportunity came to emigrate, it wasn’t as a dental technician that she was chosen.

The Canadian government was seeking 2,500 garment workers. Though she had no experience, Cohen faked it and came to Montreal ostensibly as seamstress. (She moved with her family to Toronto in 1961.)

“But, with all other difficulties that we overcame through the time, I finally learned, with kind helping people, how to put together a dress and made some kind of a living,” she said. “The contract was only for one year, but I stayed for three years.… During those three years, I also prepared myself to change skills, change profession. I learned French, I learned English, I took a course to become a bookkeeper with typing ability and switch to office work.”

There was no psychological support and the term post-traumatic stress disorder did not yet exist.

“I don’t think we realized that we were traumatized,” she said. “You went through difficult times but it didn’t have a name. It so happened that my sister and I, and my brother, we had self-help among ourselves…. The emotional baggage, as far as I’m concerned, and I can only speak for myself, that had to be put on the back burner. It no longer was a priority to talk about it. Furthermore, nobody wanted to listen to us…. We just went on living as new Canadians and establishing new lives basically on the ashes of the old, and even became happy Canadians, got married, had children. We became like all other Canadians, overcoming all emotional difficulties by not giving them eminence in our lives.”

Cohen became a public speaker, sharing her Holocaust experiences with schools and other audiences after she had a run-in with neo-Nazis in downtown Toronto. She also has become a researcher and author on the topic of the unique experiences of women in the Holocaust.

Above all, Cohen said, she wrote her memoir in the 10th decade of her life as a warning.

“Mainly, I would like you to understand that this generation and subsequent generations must learn from us while we are still alive that this kind of depravity, one human to another, was possible and did happen and, unfortunately, it could happen again,” she said. “We are writing it to you all as a warning, as a very serious warning of what can happen even in cultured, educated, civil societies.”

Highlighting goodness

Grounds for Goodness Downtown Eastside: Adventures in Digital Community Art Making, led by Ruth Howard, is part of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, which starts Oct. 28. (photo by Adrienne Marcus Raja)

Tikkun olam, the imperative to repair the world in which we live, is a core influence of the project Grounds for Goodness Downtown Eastside: Adventures in Digital Community Art Making. Led by Toronto-based theatre designer and educator Ruth Howard, the residency is part of the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival.

The festival runs Oct. 28 to Nov. 8, and Grounds for Goodness, which “explores why and how people sometimes do good things towards others,” takes place Oct. 30 to Nov. 12. It comprises participant and audience interactive story-sharing, art-making, workshops and an evolving gallery online, as well as Downtown Eastside window displays. The residency is co-produced by Jumblies Theatre and Arts and Vancouver Moving Theatre.

Howard – who has participated in the festival before (jewishindependent.ca/putting-heart-into-city) – is the founder of Jumblies. She said tikkun olam is an underlying motivator in all her work – “and one of this project’s explicit intents is to connect its themes and questions, my Jewish heritage as a second generation Holocaust survivor and my vocation a community-engaged artist.

“Community arts is predicated on the working belief that bringing people together across differences can foster commonality and understanding,” she explained. “And yet, growing up in the 1960s, as the child of a German Jewish refugee (my mother and family escaped to England in 1938) and an experimental psychologist, I was bred on evidence that groups of people tend to do atrocious things towards others, with goodness being individual heroic exceptions. I was told at a young age about [Stanley] Milgram’s electric shock experiments, and understood the link between such cautionary tales and attempts by survivors to explain the Holocaust. My own uncle – Henri Tajfel, both social psychologist and Holocaust survivor – coined the term ‘social identity theory.’

“Therefore, my attention was grabbed a few years ago when I read some books about the saving of Danish and Bulgarian Jewish populations during the Holocaust by citizens of those countries. The Danish story was slightly familiar to me and the Bulgarian one not at all. I have since become quite obsessed by these and other instances (for example, Albania, the Rosenstrasse protests) that run against the grain of my and other people’s common assumptions about human behaviour and ‘nature.’ I felt compelled to tell these stories and learn more about the reasons behind them. I started to investigate the notion of ‘social goodness’ from many angles: history, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, memory, folk tale, legend, theory.”

With the help of independent research and creation grants, Howard “gradually brought the project into the work of Jumblies, inviting and including the responses of diverse community participants and groups. Now, we have a broad and growing repertoire of stories with which to play.

“However,” she stressed, “it’s important to me to uphold the project’s origins in Jewish perspectives and histories, and my own Jewishness: a complicated mix of darkness, hope and urgency to understand how to cultivate grounds for goodness through never forgetting what can happen in its absence.”

The Jumblies team in Toronto includes Howard’s daughter, web designer and choir conductor Shifra Cooper, and composer Martin van de Ven, also a member of the Jewish community.

photo - Martin van de Ven — Martin van de Ven *(photo from Heart of the City Festival)*

In addition to being a composer for film, television, theatre and dance, van de Ven is a music facilitator and educator. He is also a clarinetist and has performed with the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Chutzpah Ensemble, and Beyond the Pale. He has been involved in many Jumblies projects – as musical director, composer and/or performer. “Ruth and I have written several choral works together,” he told the Independent.

“To me, Jumblies is the embodiment of a music and art-making philosophy that believes the arts are there for everyone to create and not just for the well-trained elite,” he said. “Composers such as John Cage and Canada’s R. Murray Schafer talk about this in their writing and both were an early influence on my music education. Jumblies allows me to use my own skills and training to combine the efforts of trained and non-trained performers to create art, and specifically music, that serves the purpose of the moment, whether a stand-alone piece or something that supports a story being told. I think this work is important; it democratizes and decommodifies music-making and breaks down barriers to creation for community members who are otherwise shut out of the creative process. The myth that music-making is the sole purview of the highly skilled, and it is only worthwhile if it is commodified into a product to be consumed, is damaging to the whole idea of ‘homo ludens,’ the idea that a fundamental human attribute is the ability to play, invent and create.”

The community choir that Cooper directs embodies this concept of art being for everyone.

“The Gather Round Singers is an intergenerational community choir, made up of 30-plus mixed-ability, multi-aged singers, from across Toronto and beyond,” she said. “We exist within Jumblies Theatre, and so share their dedication to radical inclusivity and benefit from their experience in creating interdisciplinary work.”

Despite the challenges of COVID-19, the choir has been meeting weekly online since April, said Cooper, “to rehearse and perform new choral works designed or adapted for this new context” – that “[c]horal music is among the more challenging forms to adapt to online gathering, as video calling platforms such as Zoom are designed to reduce vocal overlap, and create latency that makes in-sync singing impossible.”

The Gather Round Singers will perform two new pieces for the opening of the DTES Vancouver residency, said Cooper – “one a world première by Martin van de Ven and one a work-in-progress by Arie Verheul van de Ven, both of which were developed this summer especially to be performed on Zoom. These are both part of Jumblies’ larger Grounds for Goodness project, which continues until a final presentation in June 2021, and will include several other new musical and choral pieces … and other composers (including Andrew Balfour, Christina Volpini and Cheldon Paterson).”

“Grounds for Goodness overall is a multi-year project that includes many partners, places and participants,” explained Howard. “It has been taking place through real-live and virtual activities for almost two years. There have been episodes in Nipissing First Nation (near North Bay, Ont.), Montreal, Brampton, the Ottawa Valley, Algoma Region (northern Ontario), and with various Toronto groups.… We have received funds to tour the project, which have now been adapted to allow for ‘virtual touring.’ The Vancouver iteration is the next big chapter in this project.”

For Grounds for Goodness Downtown Eastside, Martin van de Ven said, “we’ll be premièring a work called ‘Besa.’ ‘Besa’ is an Albanian Islamic concept about hospitality and the need to help and protect guests and those in need within and beyond your community.

“In Albania, during the Second World War (and Italian and then Nazi occupation), this meant that almost all Jewish people living and finding refuge in Albania were sheltered and hidden, and Albania ended up with a larger Jewish population at the end of the war than at the beginning. We created a work based on texts found in writings and interviews with Albanians – from the book Besa: Muslims who Saved Jews During WW II by Norman H. Gershman.

“The COVID-19 restrictions prevented us from developing this piece as we normally would,” he continued, “and so I composed a work that could be performed and rehearsed with everyone being online. It involved researching the technology, experimenting with Zoom meetings and audio programs, as well as writing music that allowed for enough flexibility to deal with internet latency. For our Vancouver residency, we will be presenting this work and sharing our experience of creating an artwork to be performed online with members of the Vancouver art community.”

Those Vancouver artists include Savannah Walling, Olivia C. Davies, Beverly Dobrinsky, Khari Wendell McClelland, Renae Morriseau and Rianne Svelnis, as well as 10 DTES-involved participants.

* * *

Van de Ven started music lessons when he was 6 years old – on recorder. “In elementary school,” he said, “my friends and I decided we wanted to form a circus. As the only one in the group with musical training, I was charged with writing the theme for the circus band. I dutifully started writing down half notes and quarter notes on paper and tried to play them on the recorder. The method worked fine but I soon realized I would need some additional training if I wanted it to sound good.

“I ended up with a musical education partially shaped by my father’s interest and taste for very modern classical and jazz music and eventually formal training at university,” he said. “In my late teens, I realized that my interest in science and engineering paled compared to the excitement I felt for a live performance, whether as an audience member or as a performer.”

In university, in addition to his formal training, van de Ven was involved in various jazz programs and, eventually, studied and performed in free improv ensembles. He also did a short stint in Europe, studying early computer music in electronic sound synthesis.

“Klezmer music has a history deeply rooted in East European and Middle Eastern music traditions. As a clarinetist,” he said, “it provided for me a wonderful vehicle to not only deeply emerge myself into a culture other than my own but also perform a lead role playing in a band.”

photo - Shifra Cooper — Shifra Cooper *(photo by Liam Coo)*

For her part, Cooper has loved choral singing her whole life. “And I bring this love to my own work,” she said, “while having always believed that bringing together community arts and choral singing requires a flexibility and a softening of our understanding of the boundaries of what ‘choral music’ can be – this is something that I have always been creatively driven by. In these times, I’m learning a lot more about how far this can go.

“Sometimes, turning things on their head can be revealing of new approaches, considerations or perspectives,” she said. “For example, one young woman who has sung with the choir for many years, said to me the other day: ‘In rehearsal, I always sit in the back row, so I only see the backs of people’s heads. I like on Zoom that I can see the faces of everyone I’m singing and performing with.’ Another choir member told me that she feels more confident and motivated to practise when she has her microphone off and is alone in her room following along – this confidence comes through strikingly in the recordings she shared with me for one of our digital projects. In these ways, sometimes, working online has revealed the limitations of our previously established norms for singing in-person. I think often now about how, whenever we can safely be back together, we might incorporate these learnings.

“Which is not to gloss over any of the challenges of meeting online,” stressed Cooper. “I think I can speak for at least the majority of the choir when I say we all immensely miss singing together – in sync, in harmony, in rhythm. And a digital space, even though full of many possibilities, is also full of boundaries and obstacles to folks joining in, especially those experiencing more precarious housing or financial insecurity. Our team worked closely all summer with members of the choir community to bridge this gap, purchasing and delivering internet-enabled devices to choir members and providing remote and in-person (socially distanced) trainings and trouble-shooting.” They did so with funding from several sources, notably the Toronto Foundation.

“Another part of my work has often included event management and digital design and, in the new reality of virtual art-making, these two often come together in interesting ways,” Cooper added. “I’m delighted to be designing a new interactive website for Grounds for Goodness at the DTES Heart of the City Festival, that will act as an online evolving gallery, showcasing new work created through the community workshops and acting as the container and guide for the culminating virtual event.”

For the full festival schedule, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

Berner part of Heart

Geoff Berner (photo by Genevieve Buechner)

The theme for this year’s Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is “This Gives Us Strength.” One of the more than 50 events that will take place over the festival’s 12 days is Spotlight on the East End on Oct. 30, 8:30 p.m. Curated by artist-in-residence Khari Wendell McClelland, the online presentation will feature “the compelling creativity and strength of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside-involved artists and residents who illuminate the vitality, relevance and resilience of our neighbourhood and its rich traditions, cultural roots and music.” Among those artists is klezmer-punk accordionist Geoff Berner, with whom JI readers will be familiar.

JI: You released Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis late last year (jewishindependent.ca/honestly-jewish-and-radical) and you also had a new musical, then COVID hit. What have you been doing creatively over this time?

GB: I just finished working on a lovely project for KlezKanada with the great theatre artist Jenny Romaine and a lot of other talented folks. It’s called Vu Bistu Geven? (Where Have You Been?) and it’s about figuring out the history of the land that KlezKanada takes place on. It was commissioned for their 25th anniversary. It felt particularly right to work with Trina Stacey, a Kanien’kéha singer, researcher and teacher. We talked a lot during the making of the piece about the value of recovering our ancestors’ languages, in order to find a way to think outside of capitalism and colonialism.

JI: You were scheduled to perform an outdoors concert in Roberts Creek Sept. 11. Did that happen? In what ways does an in-person audience affect your performance?

GB: Yep, that concert went off nicely. Everyone was outdoors and properly distanced. The folks in Roberts Creek are lovely. I’ve played only two other shows like that since the pandemic, one at a park in Vancouver, for Alan Zisman, and another in Chilliwack at the Tractor Grease. It sure was nice to play live again. It’s been a bit of a strain these past months, not being able to do the thing I’ve devoted my life to doing. I miss that magic human connection that only live music can do.

JI: What inspires you to participate in events like the DTES Heart of the City Festival?

GB: What inspires me is the honour to be invited. I’ve tried to be a friend to folks in the DTES, opposing displacement by City Hall-backed developers, fighting to stop the war on drugs, fighting against legislated poverty, and other stuff. It means a lot that I’m allowed to be part of things.

JI: Chelm is a recurring theme/subject in your work. If you had to offer “advice from Chelm” for people coping right now, what might that be?

GB: Advice from Chelm? Well, Chelm was the “Village of Fools” of Jewish legend, but in fact it was a real place, where the people had to struggle to survive. They weren’t fools at all, just ordinary people trying to live. Several fine Yiddish poets came from Chelm. So the advice from Chelm is, the real fools are people who look down on communities of other human beings.

JI: You helped start the BC Ecosocialist Party. Any opinions on the election you’d like to share?

GB: I have real hopes for the BC Ecosocialists. B.C. voters need to at least have the choice to be able to vote for people who will actually stand up against LNG, Site C, legislated poverty, colonialism and the war on drugs.

* * *

Heart of the City runs Oct. 28 to Nov. 8. For tickets and information, visit heartofthecityfestival.com.

Virtual VIFF now streaming

Shai Avivi, left, and Noam Imber are excellent as father and son in Here We Are. (still courtesy VIFF)

Understated and poignant are just two of the words I’d use to describe the screeners I watched in anticipation of the Vancouver International Film Festival, which opened Sept. 24 and runs to Oct. 7.

As with most everything these days, much of VIFF has moved online; however, there are still in-person screenings and talks, with audience sizes limited. And, as with other film festivals, online viewing is geo-blocked to British Columbia, meaning that you can only watch the movies if you are physically inside the province. The new format should allow for more access to the festival offerings and, while there will be those who miss dressing up and going out to the movies, there will be many people excited to be able to attend VIFF in their pajamas at home, me being one of them.

Last week, I watched two full-length features and two shorts: the narrative Here We Are, directed by Nir Bergman (Israel/Italy); the documentary Paris Calligrammes, directed by (and about) Ulrike Ottinger (Germany/France); The Book of Ruth, directed by Becca Roth (United States); and White Eye, directed by Tomer Shushan (Israel).

Every year, the Jewish Independent sponsors a selection at VIFF and, this time round, we’ve chosen a wonderfully written, acted and filmed movie. We generally have zero time and little information on which to base our choice, so I feel particularly grateful to have lucked out with this gem.

Here We Are is the story of a father who both will do almost anything for his autistic son, but who also uses his son as an excuse to not deal with the larger world. Aharon (played with incredible delicacy by Shai Avivi) has left his job to care for his son Uri (acted by Noam Imber, who gives an empathetic and strong performance). Aharon and his wife Tamara (played by Smadar Wolfman, who does a wonderful job, too) are no longer together, and Uri’s care has been left in his father’s capable and loving hands.

But Uri is an adult now and, to grow, we need space and the ability to direct our own lives. Tamara recognizes this and has worked hard to find Uri a good home, where he will be able to make friends and participate in activities with his peers. Aharon, however, is unable to let go and, though he also wants the best for Uri, he undermines Tamara’s actions – not only in words, but he takes Uri on the run.

The script by Dana Idisis leaves room for the pauses and emotions that make Here We Are an excellent film. Avivi’s face speaks more than a thousand words and you can see the inner conflict as his character struggles to accept that his son no longer needs him as much. The chemistry between Avivi and Imber makes the father-son relationship believable and compelling. And there are no “bad guys” here, even though mother and father differ in their opinions on parenting.

“I love the characters, the relationships, the way Aharon has reduced his needs to accommodate his son’s, and the transformation they experience throughout their journey,” reads the director’s statement. “I believe that, if I’m able to convey these characters as they are, from the written page to the screen, together with the bittersweet and humorous tone of the script, the audience will also fall in love with them.” Bergman accomplished his goal, and then some.

image - Ulrike Ottinger with her portrait of Allen Ginsberg, Paris 1965, and the work in colour (below) — Ulrike Ottinger with her portrait of Allen Ginsberg, Paris, 1965, and the work in colour (below). *(©Ulrike Ottinger courtesy VIFF)*

Paris Calligrammes is also very watchable and engaging. I’ll admit to never having heard of Ottinger before, so I was looking forward to learning more about her, her artwork, her photography and what eventually inspired her to filmmaking. However, while I thought the documentary was esthetically pleasing and gave a tangible sense of how exciting it would have been to live among the artistic elite in Paris during the 1960s, I couldn’t tell you much about Ottinger herself and what she contributed to the thoughts, images and culture of those turbulent times. But, I guess, perhaps it is assumed that one knows these things already.

image - Allen Ginsberg, Paris 1965 — Allen Ginsberg, Paris, 1965. *(©Ulrike Ottinger courtesy VIFF)*

Ottinger does offers some interesting and valuable commentary – read by British actress Jenny Agutter – but, for whatever reason, I didn’t think it was enough. The film is named after the bookstore Librairie Calligrammes, which specialized in antiquarian books and German literature, and was where Jewish and political émigrés hung out, along with others who we would now call cultural influencers. Ottinger drove to Paris in 1962 from Konstanz, Germany, to become, in her words, a great artist; to follow in the footsteps of her heroes and heroines. She not only follows those footsteps but walks alongside the likes of Tristan Tzara, Marcel Marceau, Raoul Hausman, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and countless others as well known.

Some of the most interesting parts of the film are about Algeria’s years-long war of independence from France (1954-1962) and the situation at the time with respect to the appalling treatment of Algerians living in Paris. Clips are shown of a peaceful demonstration held on Oct. 17, 1961, that was violently broken up by police. According to the film, 200 to 300 people were killed that night alone and, to this day, there has not been an investigation and no one has been held accountable for the deaths; even opposition newspapers didn’t report on it at the time and photos vanished from newsrooms. Ottinger notes that the order for the police to attack was given by then-chief Maurice Papon, who, under the Vichy government, had organized the rounding up of Jews to be murdered during the Holocaust.

This is a film that, I think, would be most appreciated on a big screen, but is still worth watching, for its content, yes, but mainly for its creative use of archival footage and interview clips, photographs and current-day images and filming. The documentary starts with a quote from Conseils au Bon Voyageur by Victor Segalen, advice that Ottinger has “gladly followed”: “Advice to the good traveler – A town at the end of the road and a road extending a town: do not choose one or the other, but one and the other, by turns.” If one needed inspiration to live by the conjunctions “and/both” rather than “either/or,” Paris Calligrammes might offer it.

image - Tovah Feldshuh plays a grandmother with a secret past in The Book of Ruth — Tovah Feldshuh plays a grandmother with a secret past in *The Book of Ruth. (still courtesy VIFF)*

While Paris Calligrammes is the product and vision of a longtime filmmaker, The Book of Ruth comes from the imagination of Chen Drachman, and is the first film Drachman has written and produced. She also co-stars in this exploration of how important it is to have symbols – in this instance, represented by an historical figure – around which to rally or by which to live one’s life.

The short takes place during the happiest, smallest (five people) and shortest seder that I’ve ever seen, and focuses on Ruth – played by veteran actress Tovah Feldshuh – and whether she is really the grandmother her granddaughter, played by Drachman, grew up knowing. While the scenario postulated is unbelievable, Feldshuh offers the gravitas and has the talent to make viewers look beyond that fact and consider the questions raised in the film about the stories we build around some people – their role in a war or a political movement or an artistic endeavour, whatever – and how that story or image can help make us, living in another time, feel less alone, more understood, etc.

image - Dawit Tekelaeb, left, and Daniel Gad co-star in the short film White Eye — Dawit Tekelaeb, left, and Daniel Gad co-star in the short film *White Eye. (still courtesy VIFF)*

Symbolism, of course, can be positive and negative. Racist views and bigotry also come from the stories we have learned and tell ourselves. And White Eye, both directed and written by Shushan, does a superb job of illustrating how prejudices and privilege we may not even know we have can lead to disastrous consequences.

The main character of Omer is played by Daniel Gad with convincing stubbornness and obliviousness at first, then quiet shock at what happens as a result of his desire simply to take back what is his. When he comes across his bicycle, which had been stolen, that’s all he wants to do: cut the lock off and take it back. Even after he meets the bike’s new owner, Yunes – actor Dawit Tekelaeb will win your heart with his touching portrayal of a hardworking father and husband who bought the bike so he could take his daughter to kindergarten – Omer wants his property back. Even when Yunes’s boss (Reut Akkerman) argues on her employee’s behalf, Omer refuses to budge even the smallest bit. Only after the police become involved and Yunes, an immigrant from Eritrea whose visa has expired, is taken away, does Omer realize the full implications of his actions. By then, of course, the damage has been done. And it’s much more devastating than having had one’s bicycle stolen.

For the full film festival lineup, schedule and tickets, visit viff.org.