TV & Film

A moving documentary

A scene from the documentary Martha, in which director Daniel Schubert is given a more appropriate shirt by his grandmother, Martha Katz. (Courtesy NFB)

Two very different scenes in the National Film Board of Canada’s short documentary film Martha – which will be released on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jan. 27 – combine to highlight the joy and pain that is life. Directed and co-written by Daniel Schubert, a grandson of the film’s subject, Martha Katz, there is a funny and relatable interaction where his grandmother questions his choice of shirt for the filming and provides him with a more appropriate one. This lighthearted exchange contrasts with the heart-wrenching tour that Katz takes with her grandson through the Holocaust Museum LA.

Born in Berehove, Czechoslovakia, Katz is 14 years old when she’s taken to the ghetto, then to Auschwitz. Both of her parents and two of her brothers were murdered in the Holocaust; she, along with two other brothers and two sisters, survived the concentration camps. She speaks, with emotions near the surface, about some of her experiences. The documentary is a mix of seemingly spontaneous moments, while other parts are scripted reenactments or prepared questions being asked and answered.

“My original idea for the documentary,” Schubert told the Independent, “was to track Martha and her two sisters’ incredible journey together through the ghettos and, eventually, Auschwitz. After Auschwitz, they were even forced to work at a German bomb factory together in Allendorf, manufacturing the bombs. The fact that Martha and her two sisters managed to stay together and survive through all of the horrors of the concentration camps, to me, was a miracle. I thought that would make an amazing documentary.

“But, as we developed it at the NFB, we realized that a more traditional cinéma vérité documentary could be a viable way to tell her story, too. I did not know many of the facts beforehand, so many of the things she told me in the film came as a surprise. My grandmother and I have a warm and loving relationship and I thought, why not show that on screen as I find out all of these amazing things?

“The other thing about my grandmother,” added Schubert, “is she’s hilarious. She’s the classic Jewish grandmother and I wanted that to come across. I wanted this to also be a real picture of a grandmother and her grandson and how we naturally interact.

“We also decided that in between these cinéma vérité moments would be cinematic vignettes narrated by my grandmother herself. There were many more amazing things she went through, but, due to time constraints, I picked those stories.”

One of the stories is how, after the war, in Vienna, his grandmother met and married Bill Katz, who had been in a labour camp. The couple went to Winnipeg, with $200 they had saved up. They had two children – Jack and Sharon – and struggled financially. It was his grandmother who suggested they go into business for themselves. She went to night school, then saw an ad for a grocery store for sale – she bought it, learning on the job. There are some wonderful photos and video in this part of the film.

photo - Martha Katz saw an ad for a grocery store for sale – she bought it, learning on the job — Martha Katz saw an ad for a grocery store for sale – she bought it, learning on the job. *(photo from NFB)*

It was her goal in life for her two children to have whatever they wanted and she talks about her happiness at having had them. “We had to have a life again,” she says, stressing that this doesn’t mean she doesn’t think about the Holocaust all the time, because she does – “I hope it should never happen again. That’s all.”

“Bringing her to the museum was a bit of a tough decision, but she encouraged us to go,” said Schubert. “The intention was to see whether there was anything new that she and I could both learn about the atrocities committed. And, as it turned out in the film, there was; specifically, about the excruciating length of time the gas chamber took, in some cases, to exterminate those poor victims trapped inside, including my great-grandmother and her young son. Suffice to say, it took way longer than expected, and neither of us knew how long they may have had to suffer inside.”

It was for health reasons that Katz, who is now 90 years old, moved to Los Angeles.

“My grandmother suffered from chronic bronchitis since the war and, because of Winnipeg’s frigid winters, the doctors advised her to move somewhere warmer, or else her life could be at risk,” explained Schubert. “My grandfather’s brother lived in Los Angeles, so they helped them get settled there. They came to Winnipeg from Europe in 1948 and moved to Los Angeles in 1964.”

The 22-minute documentary is dedicated to the memory of Katz’s older sister, Rose Benovich. The statement at the film’s end notes: “Her courage in Auschwitz is the reason I am alive today.”

More than meets eye

Catalina Beraducci plays Noemí Goldberg in the Topic film Noemí Gold. (photo from Topic)

For his first feature film, writer and director Dan Rubenstein has done well. Noemí Gold, which is currently streaming exclusively on Topic, is a quietly engaging story that touches upon serious issues, though never delves into them. While the story is somewhat scattered and doesn’t always make sense, the acting is strong and the glimpse into Argentine culture interesting.

The title role is played by Catalina Beraducci, who is perfect for the part. Noemí Goldberg, 27, has accidentally become pregnant from a tryst with an egotistical artist of questionable talent and character. She is an unassuming person, recently graduating with her master’s in architecture, though she doesn’t appear to have a job. When she seeks a doctor who can perform an abortion – which was an illegal procedure in Argentina until just last month – she has some trouble raising the money she’ll need to go to Uruguay to get one.

Noemí has a couple close friends – eccentric roommate Rosa and party-girl Sol – both of whom help in small but important ways. Also in Noemí’s court is her grandmother, though we find out later in the movie that their relationship has had its complications. Lastly, while all this is going on, Noemí’s cousin, David, comes to visit from Los Angeles, where his family moved when he was 7, for tragic reasons we eventually find out.

David and Noemí were once close, but, for most of the movie, their interactions are strained. David works for an energy drink company and his job is, literally, to post photos on Instagram of himself enjoying the drink in various places and while doing various activities. (He is the only one in the film who has a job, it seems.) Social media plays a prominent role in the narrative as a whole – and, hopefully, younger viewers will take it not only as a representation of themselves in film but as a critique of how much time they dedicate to promoting the fun they are ostensibly having versus actually having fun.

Women’s rights, religion (via a discussion with and seduction attempt of two young Mormon missionaries), what constitutes art (one amusing scene features an objectively poor dancer filming her own performance using a camera on a selfie stick, while being cheered and applauded by an adoring audience), the importance of forgiveness, the challenges of being a good friend, the imperfection but necessity of family, and many other topics run through Noemí Gold. There are no pronouncements and the laidback pace could fool one into thinking there is not much of substance in the film, but they’d be wrong.

Kliner voices Old Dog

As I watched the National Film Board of Canada short film Old Dog, which preceded a documentary screening at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, I did a double take. Or, rather, a double listen. I knew that voice. And the credits confirmed it – former longtime Independent Menschenings columnist Alex Kliner was the voice of the elderly gentleman caring for his elderly dog.

Old Dog was created by writer and director Ann Marie Fleming.

“This film started off as a way of talking about aging, inspired by my namesake, Ann-Marie Fleming, who I often get mixed up with in internet searches,” said Fleming in an interview on nfb.ca. “The other Ann-Marie has a company that makes technologies for aging dogs and also for their humans. I was struck by the compassion she has for these vulnerable animals, helping them navigate the latter stages of their lives, and by how much dogs have to teach human beings.”

“Full disclosure,” Fleming told the Independent, “I made a film about twins and doubles many years ago (It’s Me, Again) and there is another Ann Marie Fleming out there I have been confused with, so it’s not unusual that I would do some sleuthing. When I read Ann-Marie’s interview and mission statement on her website for her company, Dog Quality, which makes technologies for senior dogs, I was really moved by her saying that she felt she was her best self when she was caring for her aging canines.”

So, Fleming contacted her namesake last year, and then approached the NFB, who agreed to produce it, and even suggested she use her “team” to make it: animator Kevin Langdale and composer/sound designer Gordon Durity.

“I went to 100 Mile House to meet Ann-Marie and her old dogs (literally), listen to her stories, see her technologies and get some reference footage for the animation,” said Fleming. “Then I wrote the very simple script and drew a storyboard. Kevin took my designs and made them his own – he definitely improves on them. Then it was recording the voice, cutting together an animatic, doing the animation.

“Gordon and I discussed the vibe I wanted – Dave Brubeck ‘Take 5’ meets ‘Freddy the Freeloader.’ Cool jazz from when our human character would have been in his youth. A few months later and shazam! The film is finished right as we go into a lockdown across the country.”

Fleming listened to many great voices for this film, she said. In her mind, she would think, “Does he sound mature enough? Does he sound like he really has a connection with his dog? Alex didn’t sound like anybody else. (You recognized him immediately, right?) The warmth and vulnerability and humour and care he had was just there.”

Alex was the consummate professional, she added. “I felt he was very generous to me with his performance in this little film. He can say a line a dozen nuanced ways. I love working with actors.”

Alex has been in the industry a long time, and his desire to act goes back even further – to Jewish school, when he just 7 years old, and was asked by the teacher to read the Yiddish poem “Why a Grandmother is the Way She is.”

“And I did the poem, and I got a huge applause – not so much perhaps because of the talent but because I spoke Yiddish so beautifully,” Alex told me. “And I did speak it beautifully, just the way any person who has a first language speaks it beautifully. I liked the applause and I liked doing the poem. I liked the ambience of the whole thing and, at that point, I decided I was going to be an actor. And, 20 years later, at age 27, I became a professional actor, got all my union cards because I was working in the theatre, in a union company.”

Over the years, he has been in theatre, radio, film and television, and he’s worked as both an actor and as a director. A very partial list of people with whom he has shared the screen include Melanie Griffiths, Vince Vaughn, Ellen Burstyn, Ryan Reynolds, Eddie Murphy, William H. Macy, Christopher Plummer, Sylvester Stalone, Jerry Lewis, Laura Linney, Isabella Rosselini, Jack Lemmon, Mariel Hemingway, Valerie Harper, Mandy Patinkin and Robin Williams.

“I worked with them either as an actor or as a background performer who interacted with the actor,” said Alex.

He was Mickey Rooney’s stand-in in Night at the Museum, which is also where he worked with Dick Van Dyke and Ben Stiller, among others.

The audition for Old Dog was an ordinary call, said Alex. While he hasn’t done much by way of voice work, he has done some dubbing of acting parts that didn’t come out properly sound-wise in the filming. The process for Old Dog was similar, he said.

“I just did one line and then the director said, OK, time to do the next line. Sometimes, she would ask me to do it two or three times but never more than three times,” he said. “The whole thing took a little more than an hour.”

In this type of work, while the actor doesn’t see the animation, he said, “You know what she wants, like your attitude toward the dog … and then you bring that attitude or that feeling or emotion to the line. But you do it without seeing the movie and then they sync what I’ve done vocally to the film.”

Alex’s wife, Elaine, works with him in the film industry. “We’re both still working,” said Alex. “It keeps us happy and young.”

Old Dog can be seen at nfb.ca/film/old-dog.

Making sense of chaos?

Earlier this fall, the National Film Board of Canada released the short Come to your senses, co-created Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis. It is part of NFB’s The Curve, an online series “featuring the talents of 40 creators and filmmakers, giving a voice to millions whose lives have been touched by COVID-19.”

Eisen, a member of the Jewish community, is an animation filmmaker and visual artist, while Jarvis is a writer and director. Both women are based in Vancouver and have worked together before.

“We met in 2015, when Alicia was in pre-production on her first short film, Old Man,” they co-wrote in an email interview with the Independent. “A mutual friend introduced us, as he knew that Sophie was interested in learning more about stop-motion. It turned out that we live across the street from each other, and a wonderful friendship was formed.

“We first worked together on a short film for kids that blended live action (Sophie’s arena) with stop-motion (Alicia’s arena) and was basically a vessel for us to learn more about each other’s practice and to test the waters of a working relationship. It was an intense experience that threw every obstacle at us, and we came out stronger and ready for more. Which leads us to the stop-motion short film we are currently working on with the National Film Board, Zeb’s Spider.”

When their work was interrupted by the pandemic back in March, they said, “It was very disorienting to have that full-time routine stopped cold, so, when the NFB offered us the opportunity to contribute to their pandemic series, The Curve, it was a blessing to focus our creative energy into something new, and completely different from anything we have ever created before.”

Using the format of a group Zoom, Come to your senses explores the question, “Is the human need to make sense of chaos an inherently chaotic pursuit?”

“The five senses can be a somewhat intangible subject to explore, especially through film (which is an audiovisual medium). We aimed to evoke the other three senses with these limitations, which meant that we had to get a little weird with imagery and sound,” said Eisen and Jarvis. “A large part of our process was to let our intuition guide us; instead of planning what footage we needed to collect to complete the film, we issued open guidelines to ourselves and our artistic collaborators and worked with what we received…. It was exciting to see the patterns and instincts that were shared amongst the group (who were all working remotely from each other), and these similarities helped guide our process into the next phase: the edit.

“Our editor, Kane Stewart, was integral to helping organize this experimental film and to creating what you see in the final cut. We gave him direction on the tone and the arc, and detailed notes on the material that we wanted to include, but ultimately let him organize the material with fresh eyes. Our sound designer, Eva Madden, took the core intention of the project and brought her own spin to the film, which was exciting. The score really sets a tone, and we were thrilled to work with Yu Su, whose personal work we admire.”

The film is voiced by an AI voice-generator, said Eisen and Jarvis. “This way, we could manipulate the speed of the voice and revel in the tech restrictions that come with that choice (which are mirrored in the group video call). We landed on a voice named Tessa, who struck the right tone – gentle but commanding, like a self-help audiobook.”

The artists collaborating on the film were people with whom Eisen and Jarvis had worked over the years: Mona Fani, Suzanne Friesen, Meredith Hama-Brown, Charlie Hannah, Kara Hornland, Arggy Jenati and Janessa St. Pierre.

“We gave everybody a list of creative prompts designed to be completed within two days … things like ‘choose a spherical item from your home and interact with it using each of your five senses.’ We asked each person to approach each prompt with a design sensibility informed by our mood board, but to ultimately bring their own flair and artistry to it, so what we received from each person was unique, yet fit into the collage that ultimately makes the film.”

To watch the short, visit nfb.ca/film/come-to-your-senses.

Success in Hollywood

In Bloomywood, Michael Bloomstein (played and co-created by David Meyers) wanders around Tinseltown asking random people on the street to help him make a movie about his life. (photo from David Meyers)

When David Meyers moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, one of his goals was to make it in Hollywood. Without any connections or famous friends, he set out to get a project off the ground. Finding humour in his struggle, Meyers developed a fictional comedic YouTube mini series called Bloomywood, which is loosely based on his experiences.

Meyers plays the main character Michael Bloomstein, a nice Jewish guy who wants to write his uneventful life story for a major Hollywood studio.

“It isn’t autobiographical per se, but is definitely based on my experience of trying to be an artist,” Meyers told the Independent. “Michael Bloomstein has never been to Hollywood before, but he does have an unyielding self-belief and a willingness to do anything to succeed. As he chases his goals, Michael will see the highs and lows of the industry – and question if he really has what it takes to make it.”

Meyers said there is so much rejection and “no” along the way for people trying to succeed in Hollywood that he and his co-creators want to show there can be joy and optimism in chasing your dreams.

In the series, Michael wanders around Tinseltown asking random people on the street to help him make his movie, using an unscripted mockumentary format. “In the tradition of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen, Bloomywood incorporates man-on-the-street interactions, sketch comedy and improv to explore the absurd realities of Hollywood,” said Meyers.

“When we made the show, I thought no one would stop to talk to Michael when I approached them on the street – but almost everyone did. And I think it is because they were attracted to this character who was determined to be positive and happy, no matter what happened. And I think that’s a message people could really use right now, with all the negativity we are bombarded with.”

Meyers, who was raised in Fort Lee, N.J., went to Rutgers University and Columbia Law School. After graduation, he worked in the staff secretary and communications offices in the White House for three years, then did communications and speechwriting in the U.S. Senate. He worked part-time in journalism, wrote plays and pursued acting, as well. He did a national commercial with Danny DeVito, was in a feature film called Killer Caregiver for Lifetime TV, did a commercial with James Franco, and more.

He has written plays that have been produced around the United States, and has two TV shows in development. His play We Will Not Be Silent – based on the true story of a group of German college students who opposed Hitler during the Second World War – had five productions around the country. “It was supposed to come to New York, starring two-time Oscar-nominee Michael Shannon and directed by Dexter Bullard. Unfortunately, we were derailed by COVID, but I hope not permanently,” said Meyers.

Growing up, Meyers was very active in his Jewish community. His grandfather was Orthodox and his grandparents were a very big part of his childhood. Because of his strong Jewish identity, Meyers wanted to make it clear that Bloomstein was a member of the tribe.

“Viewers will definitely know Michael is Jewish,” he said. “He talks about it all the time. Since so much of the show is improvised, and since being Jewish forms so much of who I personally am, I knew Michael had to be Jewish. Once I came up with the name Michael Bloomstein, it wasn’t even a question. I didn’t try to come up with a Jewish name – it’s just so internal to me, that my first idea of a name was Michael Bloomstein.”

“Not only that,” Meyers continued, “Bloomstein brings up his Jewishness constantly – whether it’s landlords liking him because he’s Jewish and, therefore, responsible, or the fact that his Jewish mother doesn’t believe in him. It informs all of his interactions and, to be honest, he’s definitely a bit of a nebbish.”

Meyers met his co-writer for the show, Taylor Gregory, after an audition in Los Angeles. “The director left right before I was supposed to go on,” he said. “So Taylor and I talked about the way that people mistreat actors and writers (Taylor is also a writer), and how hard it can be to pursue your dreams amid all the rejection.

“Taylor had the idea to create this show – he initially called it Doormat – which would have my character constantly being rejected, but still move forward with hope and optimism. We decided to start filming and see what happened. Taylor’s friend Rory Leland is an incredible editor and he shot all of our footage. On our first day, the character of Michael Bloomstein really came to life. Rory and Taylor had so many great ideas and the three of us put together Bloomywood.”

They started filming Bloomywood last November and, after finishing seven episodes, the pandemic arrived. “COVID hit us really hard. We had to stop production on the show, abridging our season from 10 episodes to seven,” said Meyers, noting that each episode is two to three minutes long.

“We had an amazing social media person who was helping us, who had to withdraw after her mother died from COVID. We had a great press agent who agreed to take us on pro bono because she loved the show – and then she had to leave because of staff cuts at her agency and a death in her family. At times, it felt like the show was cursed,” said Meyers. “But we were inspired to move forward with hope and optimism, just like Michael Bloomstein. The show inspired me to stay positive on a daily basis.”

Meyers is financing the show himself. “I have been using my money from past acting and writing projects to try and invest in myself and get exposure. Right now,” he said, “the main goal is to get as many people to see Bloomywood as possible.”

Meyers is thrilled with feedback they have received. “It’s been amazing,” he said. “We have heard from celebrities and TV writers, including one of the writers from The Goldbergs. It has been really gratifying because we put so much time and so much love into this show.”

One of the people they heard from was Curb Your Enthusiasm actress Cheryl Hines. “We sent Cheryl a cameo request and, in return, we would donate money to charity, asking if she would watch our trailer and send Michael a message,” Meyers explained. “We assumed she wouldn’t do it, but she did! And we could tell by her response that not only had she watched the show, but she enjoyed it, so that was extremely gratifying.”

Although Meyers doesn’t have any ties to Vancouver, he said, “There is so much TV shooting in Vancouver and I’ve often said that I want to move there one day – I am just waiting for the right professional opportunity.”

Who knows, maybe Michael Bloomstein will wind up taking his quest for fame on the road to Canada!

Bloomywood can be found online at youtube.com/bloomywoodtheseries and at bloomywood.com.

Alice Burdick Schweiger is a New York City-based freelance writer who has written for many national magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day and The Grand Magazine. She specializes in writing about Broadway, entertainment, travel and health, and covers Broadway for the Jewish News. She is co-author of the 2004 book Secrets of the Sexually Satisfied Woman, with Jennifer Berman and Laura Berman.

Israeli series Nehama on Topic

The character of Guy Nehama, played by Reshef Levi, dreams of becoming a standup comic. (photo from Topic)

It took me a couple of episodes, but then I was hooked. Initially, most of the characters on the award-winning Israeli show Nehama – in particular the lead, Guy Nehama, played by Reshef Levi – are completely unappealing, even annoying. While they more or less stay that way, they do start to show shades of competence and compassion, and begin to use humour to salve as often as to stab. But, most importantly, their intrigues, become, well, intriguing, and more plentiful.

The series starts dramatically, to say the least. Guy’s wife careens off the road, the car rolls (if I’m remembering correctly – so much has happened since then). She manages to get out of the vehicle but doesn’t make it far, though she does manage to make a short phone call. Since it’s the starting point of everything and the main plot, it’s not too much of a spoiler to share that she dies, leaving Guy with their five children, ranging in age from baby to high schooler.

A tech guru working for a beast of a man, Guy – as he repeats often – is the household’s sole breadwinner. Before his wife’s death, he had little or no time for parenting. After she dies, he has no choice but to change his attitude and his approach. It’s difficult, though, not just because of his own self-absorption, but because of the people around him and their pressures and secrets.

Overarching all this is Guy’s dream of becoming a standup comic. He had been the more talented half of a comedy duo and the fact that his partner went on to become famous, while he became his family’s breadwinner in a “real” job, frustrates Guy to no end. In the first couple of episodes, where we don’t see Guy perform, it is hard to believe that this whiny, lacklustre man who constantly dictates ridiculous stories into a recorder could be funny, but turns out he is, which, combined with him trying to do right by his kids, makes him an underdog to root for, as he discovers his wife had lied to him on more than one account – and others, including his children, continue to lie to him.

There are 10 episodes in the first season of Nehama. The acting is superb, the comedy is dark; the hour-long shows go quickly. Topic, a streaming service launched last year by First Look Media, can be accessed on topic.com, AppleTV, Android, Roku, Amazon Prime and elsewhere.

Returning after tragedy

Abigél Szoke and Károly Hajduk in the film Those Who Remained. (photo from Menemsha Films)

The Hungarian movie Those Who Remained has been making the rounds at international film festivals, including, in recent weeks, the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival. And perhaps no other film at this year’s VIJFF, which contained six features and one short, generated as much discussion afterwards.

“In its purest form, Those Who Remained represents near-perfect film composition, entailing exceptional directing, editing, pacing, acting and cinematography. A film of this calibre only comes along every few years,” said Farley Cates, a committee and jury member of this year’s VIJFF.

“This film was selected for its ability to leave such a strong impression on the viewer, pondering its many layers and facets from a psychological and geopolitical perspective. This film is like a wondrous painting in which the longer you look at it, the more you see happening,” added Cates, who will serve as co-director of the festival in 2021.

The film takes place in Budapest during the period between the end of the Second World War and the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. While surviving Hungarian Jews did go to Israel and elsewhere, a large number stayed in their homeland. The Jewish population of Hungary today is estimated to be well over 100,000, the vast majority of whom live in Budapest.

The postwar period for Jews who remained in Hungary was difficult. An Orwellian state of affairs had commenced: people were questioned by the police in the middle of the night; colleagues reported on other colleagues. Amid this upheaval in Hungarian society, the two principal characters in the film – Aldo, a middle-aged doctor, and Klara, a teenage girl – deal with the trauma they experienced during the Holocaust.

Abigél Szoke, who plays Klara, was selected by Variety as one of the “10 Europeans to watch” in 2020. The magazine calls her a “revelation”: “She makes Klara’s energy, pain and smarts palpable, all the while being touchingly tuned to the emotional shadings of Aldo.”

The relationship between Aldo (played by Károly Hajduk) and Klara never develops into anything scandalous, though some of the peripheral characters in the film perceive it to be so. Despite Klara’s advances, Aldo does not allow the relationship to become sexual.

The film is a tale of survival, depicting two people’s attempts to get on with the normal, sometimes banal tasks of everyday life within the shadow of the unspeakable atrocities they witnessed and experienced only a very short time before.

Repressed emotions among survivors was a central theme to the VIJFF panel discussion after the film. Speakers included Budapest-born survivor Adrienne Carter, University of Victoria professor Charlotte Schallié, psychologist and member of the Victoria Shoah Project Robert Oppenheimer and music professor Dániel Péter Biró of the University of Bergen in Norway. Among other things, they discussed the common tendency of many survivors to refuse to talk about the events of the camps and the persecution afterwards, just as, in the film, Aldo refuses to say anything about the loss of his wife and children.

What is interesting, too, about this movie, the panelists noted, is that it was made in a Hungary led by Viktor Orban, a populist, nationalist and authoritarian leader who has presided over the country in an undemocratic fashion for the past 10 years. In fact, Hungary has produced a number of films set in the period around the war recently, including 1945 (2017) and Son of Saul, which was selected as the best foreign language film at the 2015 Academy Awards.

Orban has displayed a penchant for playing up the antisemitic caricature of Jews as the power brokers of the world stage. A popular target of his has been 90-year-old Hungarian-born financier George Soros, a regular figure of derision among right-wing groups in North America, as well. In 2017, Orban, who ironically received a scholarship from the Soros Foundation to study at Oxford in the late 1980s, plastered billboards across the country in an anti-migrant campaign featuring a smiling Soros that read “let’s not let Soros laugh in the end.”

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

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Note: This article has been amended to reflect the correct name of the film festival. It is the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival.

Panel on shared legacy

A still from the documentary Shared Legacies: From the left are Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Abernathy, Maurice Eisendrath and Abraham Joshua Heschel during the march from Selma to Montgomery, 1965.

The Victoria Shoah Project held a panel discussion on Oct. 20, following an online showing of the documentary Shared Legacies: The African American-Jewish Civil Rights Alliance.

The 2020 film, part of the sixth annual Victoria International Jewish Film Festival, chronicles the common history of prejudice and hardships each group has faced, and features footage of the relationships of such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Included are interviews with many prominent civil rights leaders of the time, such as Andrew Young, John Lewis, Rabbi Alvin Sugarman and Rabbi Peter S. Berg.

After the screening, there was a Vancouver Island-based panel discussion with Adrienne and Barrie Carter, Paul Winn and the Victoria Shoah Project’s Robert Oppenheimer. From their own experiences, they each spoke about African-Canadian and Jewish-Canadian relations. They also talked about the film, and the events from 1960s America that it depicts, from personal, historical, present-day and Canadian perspectives. Rick Kool, also of the Shoah Project, served as moderator.

Adrienne Carter was born in Hungary in 1944, as the Nazis marched into the country and were increasing their campaign to exterminate the Jews. Many in her extended family died in Auschwitz. She and her family moved to Canada in 1956, following the Hungarian Revolution. “The whole stateless experience is very well known to me,” she recalled. “I married Barrie in 1965, at a time when Blacks and whites rarely ever connected, let alone married, and at a time when many Southern states had laws against interracial marriages.”

A co-founder and the director of services at the Vancouver Island Counseling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees, she has spent much of her working life helping immigrants by providing therapy to those who have experienced trauma, including intergenerational trauma.

Barrie Carter, who was a special needs education assistant until his retirement, told the audience of his early years. Born in Jacksonville, Fla., he moved to the northeastern part of the country where, in his teens, he volunteered with the NAACP in Bridgeport, Conn., and in New York and picketed Walgreens to challenge their segregationist luncheonette policies in the South. He immigrated to Canada on a bicycle in 1963. “While I was riding north, people were taking the bus south to the March on Washington. But I just had to get away,” he said.

Both Barrie and Adrienne Carter have traveled around the world, providing services to victims of torture and genocide.

Winn, whose work experience includes having been the executive director of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, followed by recounting his experiences growing up in Toronto’s diverse Kensington Market neighbourhood.

“When I was 10 or 11, I was a Shabbos goy. I would do some things for the neighbours on Saturdays because they were unable to perform those tasks for religious reasons,” Winn recalled. “I got invited to bar and bat mitzvahs.”

He said, “It was natural for the Black and Jewish communities to support each other when there were struggles with such things as immigration. When I watched the film, I remembered how the connection between the religious Black and Jewish communities helped bring about a lot of activities in Canada, as well.”

Oppenheimer, a clinical psychologist with a focus on traumatized children and youth, a human rights activist and a staunch promoter of Holocaust education, also shared some information about his career. Reflecting on the 28 years he spent working in Detroit, he said, “It was an interesting experience for me. I was the only non-African-American on the staff and I was impressed with how welcoming the community was to me.

He added, “One of the things that impressed me about the movie was when Heschel said ‘not to be a bystander to history.’ I think that is central to my idea of human rights, that we cannot just stand by.”

“One of the things that really hit me in the film,” said Kool, “was a pastor standing in a church with a rabbi who said, ‘Reverend King isn’t here anymore, Rabbi Heschel isn’t here anymore, but are their children here now?’”

Barrie Carter observed that the youth in activist groups today “have the same dynamism as we did. They have an energy and a knowledge of concepts. It isn’t just a blind following. It is a positive morality.”

“They seem to believe it is part of their responsibility to make things better,” added Winn about today’s activists. “They want to make things better.”

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

***

Note: This article has been amended to reflect the correct name of the film festival. It is the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival.

Casting positive impact

Aaron Friedland, creator and host of the podcast Impact in the 21st Century. (photo from Aaron Friedland)

If you’re looking for a new, uplifting podcast to cast away the oppressive weight of pandemic blues, consider Impact in the 21st Century, recently launched by Vancouverite Aaron Friedland. The Vancouver-based founder of the Simbi Foundation, which promotes literacy and education worldwide, felt it was time to give voice to the inspiring things that people are doing.

“There’s a lot of really bad news and horrible things going on and, as a species, we seem to be more interested in those stories,” Friedland told the Independent in a recent interview. “There are lots of podcasts available that celebrate big businesses and a very capitalist ideology. Our goal is to help showcase the amazing, impactful things that many brilliant people are doing and that often go unnoticed, and to mainstream what positive impact really means.”

To date, Friedland has interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and scientific educator; David Suzuki, an academic, broadcaster and environmentalist; Maryanne Wolf, a Jewish author and Harvard academic researching the brain; Ndileka Mandela, the granddaughter of Nelson Mandela; and Alex Honnold, a rock climber and subject of the movie Free Solo. “It’s so nice to be the one doing the interviewing, and the people I’m speaking with are such brilliant minds with brilliant insights to share,” Friedland said. “I feel deeply privileged to be getting that information firsthand.” The plan is to release a new podcast every two to three weeks.

The Royal Bank of Canada has sponsored Impact in the 21st Century, but Friedland said he’s always looking for more sponsors. “Our goal is to reach a point where we have enough podcast sponsors that, with each episode we release, we can build another Bright Box,” he said. The Bright Boxes, which cost $55,000 per box, are classrooms comprised of shipping containers, refurbished with solar technology and aimed at enhancing learning in overcrowded classrooms in places that have little or no access to electricity.

Friedland’s next podcast will be an interview with Canadian cultural anthropologist Wade Davis. His dream interviewees are Elon Musk and David Attenborough, but he’s biding his time until those happen. “It could be they’re not ready yet,” Friedland quipped. “We look for subjects who have a track record of creating longstanding positive impact, and whose vision and values really align with ours.”

Listeners can stream Impact in the 21st Century anywhere they access their podcasts, or online at simbifoundation.org.

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

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.