Teaching Racism, which looks at discrimination against Roma in the Czech Republic, is one of nine videos currently comprising the Global Reporting Centre’s Strangers at Home project. (photo from strangers.globalreportingcentre.org)
Shayna Plaut has long been concerned with the plight of minorities in Europe. Her doctoral thesis focused on the Roma, and she has gone back and forth to Central and Eastern Europe to advocate for migrants, refugees and minorities since 2001. She speaks Romani fluently and, during her phone interview with the Independent, words from the Romani and other languages came out of her mouth with ease, pronounced perfectly. Plaut is clearly someone who deeply respects the details and uniqueness of different cultures.
In January 2014, Plaut began work as research and project manager on Strangers at Home, a Global Reporting Centre initiative featuring short films by a range of talented people in Europe – filmmakers, writers, cartoonists, musicians, scholars, as well as average citizens. The film project was aired at the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights in April 2016, and had its Canadian debut at Simon Fraser University Harbor Centre in September. It will screen at the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library on Nov. 19 during Media Democracy Days.
Most of the films are from the perspective of minorities – Jews, Roma, Muslims – but some are from the perspective of nativists who are acting out of fear of the increased presence of migrants and refugees. As the project website says, “Extremist voices are gaining political power, inspiring white Europeans to take to the streets to ‘claim back’ their place in Europe. As a result, millions of people in Europe are feeling like strangers at home.”
The nine videos, which can be viewed online, are rich and varied. Hate Poetry features Germans with “foreign sounding last names” reading hate mail, Queen of the Gypsies discusses how life has improved for Roma in Macedonia, Fascist Logic details the fear of immigrants felt by an Italian national, Teaching Racism looks at the discrimination against Roma in the schools of Czech Republic, Exceptionally Greek looks at the struggles of migrants in Greece, Hatschi Bratschi features a racist children’s book that continues to be a bestseller in Austria and Defending Russia presents the perspective of a paramilitary warrior in training to protect what he considers traditional Russian values.
Two videos deal specifically with Jews in Europe: Chasing Ghosts, by a non-Jewish cartoonist, examines the antisemitism present in Serbia despite the virtual absence of Jews, and Breaking the Silence looks at what the filmmaker sees as a conspiracy of silence about rampant antisemitism in Malmo, Sweden.
“We asked them, ‘What do you want people in North America to know about what’s happening in your country?” explained Plaut. “News coverage here can be sensationalistic, or overly simplistic. We wanted to hear from the people themselves, their stories. The way to do this is not to send another American journalist but rather to solicit the stories from the storytellers themselves.”
In Plaut’s view, the media jumps too quickly to simplistic narratives like “it’s 1938 again,” or lumps different countries with different problems together too quickly.
“Take Greece, for example,” she said. “The media is often quick to associate the rise of the right-wing with austerity, but we found Greek xenophobia to have more to do with deep cultural ideas about fears of impurity. When countries are portrayed in caricatures, that’s how they are engaged with. If diagnosis is incorrect, then the solution will be incorrect.”
Of the pieces that present the perspectives of nationalists themselves, Plaut said she was torn over whether to pay nationalists to present their views, but decided that, ultimately, it is important to hear their stories and understand where they are coming from as human beings as well.
“We can’t just write people off and say they are crazy,” she said. “People need to hear and understand that story, too. We can’t just shut off stories we don’t like.”
While the Strangers at Home project currently consists of nine pieces 60 to 90 seconds long, Plaut would like to see it expanded into 10-to-15-minute films comprising a feature-length documentary to go on the festival circuit, as well as being used online as an educational tool. Fundraising efforts are underway. For more information and to watch the videos, visit strangers.globalreportingcentre.org.
Matthew Gindin is a freelance journalist, writer and lecturer. He writes regularly for the Forward and All That Is Interesting, and has been published in Religion Dispatches, Situate Magazine, Tikkun and elsewhere. He can be found on Medium and Twitter.
One of the best parts of Moos, which screens Nov. 10 as part of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, is the friendship between Moos (Jip Smit) and Roel (Jim Deddes). (photo by Greetje Mulder)
Moos is a delightful and unpretentious film. The title character is a truly nice person, so busy taking care of others that, not only do her dreams fade into the background, but she does. When a close family friend toasts everyone at the Chanukah dinner table but forgets Moos, she drops her news – she’s going to audition for theatre school.
In this light and uplifting Dutch contribution to the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which runs to Nov. 13, no one believes that Moos has the talent or confidence to pass the auditions and, well, she doesn’t, but her attempt starts her on a path of self-discovery and self-assertion. On their own personal journeys are Moos’ father, who must also become more independent and move through the loss of his wife, and Sam, a childhood friend of Moos who returns from 15 years in Israel for a visit and discovers that maybe he belongs in Amsterdam.
“I wanted to make a film about ordinary people in a world where beauty and appearance are everything,” writes director Job Gosschalk. “Not a glamorous romantic comedy but a film about two people who were not first in line when they were handing out good looks. There are enough stories about heroes. This would be a small story about daily troubles. I wanted to give the audience characters they could easily identify with.”
Sam, Moos and the other characters do seem like people viewers might actually know. And, while as predictable as most rom-coms, Moos has its own sense of humor and style. In addition to telling a good story, the film reinforces the importance of trying something (more than once) and of supporting (and being supported by) your family and friends – one of the best parts of the film is the friendship between Moos and Roel, who does get into theatre school. The value of tradition and ritual also play a large part in the film, which starts on Chanukah and features a bris and a bar mitzvah – for different boys. Moos is a really enjoyable hour and a half.
In the documentary realm, Mr. Gaga is a joy to watch if you’re a fan of contemporary dance. Full of excerpts from his masterful choreographic creations, the film also features many video clips of Ohad Naharin – as a boy dancing, as a young man trying out moves in his apartment, as a student, as a performer and as a teacher.
Naharin has been artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company since 1990 and is the founder of his own language of movement, Gaga. His brilliance is evident from his work and, while Mr. Gaga, oddly enough, doesn’t tell viewers much about Gaga, it does offer a meaningful introduction to Naharin, his career path, relationships, method of work, love of dance.
“Dance started in my life as long as I remember myself,” he says. But, when asked by a reporter why he dances, instead of simply saying, there is “no one clear answer,” as he does in the documentary, he makes up a fantastical story about a tragedy involving a fictional twin brother and a grandmother dying in a car accident. It would be an understatement to say that Naharin has an active imagination and the courage to use it.
Naharin only started formal dance training at 22, and he credits his late start as a reason for his success: “… I was a lot more connected to the animal that I am.” A dance teacher notes, “what he did was different.” It certainly was – and is. Mr. Gaga shows just how creative and exacting a person Naharin is, some of the challenges he has faced, the losses he has mourned, the temper he has tried to quell, and his efforts to become a better communicator and teacher. As we all are, Naharin is a work in progress.
Another documentary in the festival is a local community project: A Life Sung Yiddishly about singer Claire Klein Osipov, made by Haya Newman. For viewers unfamiliar with Osipov and her accomplished lifetime career performing Yiddish folksongs – for the most part with pianist and composer/arranger Wendy Bross Stuart – the film touches on some highlights and serves as an important video record.
Chef Michael Solomonov samples the wonders of the Levinsky Market in Tel Aviv. (photo from israelicuisinefilm.com)
The 28th Vancouver Jewish Film Festival starts next week. New this year is an all-ages weekend of films at Rothstein Theatre, which follows the Nov. 3-10 festival screenings at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Not new is the diverse selection of thought-provoking offerings.
With the festival opener, In Search of Israeli Cuisine, foodies will get their fix and then some. Guided by Michael Solomonov, the chef-owner of Philadelphia’s Zahav restaurant, the viewer is taken on a global food tour all within the confines of the tiny state of Israel.
Is there even an Israeli cuisine, the film asks. Yes, says food writer Janna Gur. “It’s perhaps a nascent cuisine, a baby cuisine, but a very precocious baby,” she says.
Israeli cuisine, Solomonov says, is made up of “traditions that were brought here and also that were born here.” He asks one market vendor how long he has had a spice shop. The reply: “Four hundred years.”
The food of Israel mirrors the history of the country, particularly its economy. In the years after independence, cuisine was defined by economical, modest recipes that incorporated the agricultural resources of the new state. In the 1980s, when the economy boomed, Israelis traveled more and wanted at home the kinds of flavors they found abroad.
Philosophically, Israeli food developed alongside the new identity the people were creating for themselves and their country. People were ashamed of the past and embarrassed by the foods of their parents. Israel’s “new Jew” was supposed to leave sad history behind and create a new post-galut civilization.
“In Israel, when you say Polish cooking, it’s another way of saying bland, boring, guilt-ridden kind of food,” says Gur.
Yet, the effort to abandon the past was both successful and, thankfully, unsuccessful. Tradition, in fact, integrates change through adaptive cookery. The centrality of Shabbat has defined Jewish and, therefore, Israeli cuisine, because of the necessity of developing recipes that can cook slowly for up to 16 hours. And, even though most Israelis are not religiously observant, Shabbat can still be a sacred family experience. One person explains that watching American TV, where families gather twice a year for Thanksgiving and Christmas, seems foreign, because every Jewish mother wants her daughters and sons with her every Shabbat.
Also unlike in most of North America, the film illustrates mouth-wateringly that a vegetarian in Israel can eat like royalty with endless options.
Politics also intervenes. During the Oslo peace process, Palestinian restaurants flourished in Israel. “Food makes peace,” says an Arab-Israeli chef. But there are also accusations of cultural appropriation.
“They often accuse us of stealing it,” chef Erez Komarovsky says of Israeli cuisine. But food knows no borders, he contends. “Food is not political. Food is what is grown on this land by the people who are living in it. If they are called Palestinians or Israelis, I don’t care. I don’t think the tomato cares.”
“Israeli salad is actually Arabic salad,” Gur admits. “What makes it Israeli is the way we use it.” That means eating it three meals a day and, for instance, stuffing it in pita with schnitzel.
The evidence about what defines Israeli cuisine is not entirely conclusive. Though Komarovsky claims to know.
“The essence of the Israeli taste is lemon juice, olive oil and the liquids from the vegetables,” he says. “And this is the taste that you miss after two or three days when you go abroad.”
– PJ
Liberation after the Holocaust was not unalloyed joy. It was complex, emotional terrain that involved coming to terms with the reality of the extent of the destruction of European Jewish civilization, individual family members and entire communities. This mix of emotions is clearly shown in Magnus Gertten’s documentary Every Face Has a Name.
Gertten took a film that was shot of arrivals to Malmo, Sweden, on April 28, 1945, and obtained the list of 1,948 passengers who arrived that day. Then he set out to put names to faces.
Elsie Ragusin was an Italian-American New York girl visiting her grandparents in Italy when the war began and they could not return home. When the Nazis occupied Italy, she and her father were arrested as spies and she became, as she says, the only American girl in Auschwitz.
She looks at her face on the film and says: “There, I’m thinking: ‘Can this be true?’” The smiling people handing out food seemed unreal to her. No one had smiled at them in the camps.
Gertten, a Swede, was moved to make the film when he saw parallels with the faces in footage of refugees arriving in Europe today. “Who are they?” he asks.
Fredzia Marmur, now of Toronto, sees herself on film, at age 9, wearing the same cloth coat she wore when her family left the Lodz ghetto. “There I am again,” she says of a little girl beaming into the camera.
The other women in the screen were together with her in Ravensbruck and, while Marmur admits she didn’t know what was happening, she took a cue from those around her. “I saw that everybody seemed happy, so I decided to be happy too,” she says.
Siblings Bernhard Kempler and Anita Lobel, 8 and 10 in 1995, try to reconstruct their thoughts at the time. Bernhard survived dressed as a girl and the pair stuck together, avoiding all others through their time in hiding and at Ravensbruck.
“It looks to me like I’m somewhere between happy and frightened,” says Bernhard. “A mixture of hope, a mixture of relief, a mixture of ‘Can I trust this?’ and some fear.”
He recalls his reunion with his parents. He was in hospital and the staff gathered around to watch what they expected to be a joyful scene. It wasn’t. His response, he recalls of meeting his parents after years of separation was, “Who are these people?” He suspects his parents wondered, “Who is this child?”
“I didn’t know who I was for a long time after that,” he says.
The film intersperses images from 1945 with those of present-day refugees arriving (some alive, some dead) in Sicily. A small but disturbing 1945 scene is ostensibly happy – women receiving clothes in Sweden – but the camera shows their nakedness, as if, even on liberation, their right to privacy was not granted.
People couldn’t always tell who they were seeing in the film. Judith Popinsky recognized four of the five young women who formed her surrogate family in Auschwitz after their families were murdered on arrival there. Only after some self-convincing did she determine that the fifth woman must be her.
“You encountered so many nameless faces throughout that period in time,” she says. “No one remembers them anymore. They lived anonymously. They were buried anonymously. At least now some of them have their names restored.”
– PJ
In One Rock Three Religions, the rock in question represents the city of Jerusalem. The Temple Mount – which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif – is the literal rock, where the two historical Jewish temples existed and where al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock now stand. The film captures the glory of diversity and the tragedy of division that coexist in the holy city.
Divisibility in a political sense has been mooted several times. The 1947 Partition Resolution saw a Jerusalem under international governance. The city was divided, from 1948 until 1967, with East Jerusalem under Jordanian occupation and West Jerusalem in Israel. However, Kanan Makiya, author of The Rock, insists that, from a human standpoint, it cannot be separated. “How do you cut a rock?” he asks. “Jerusalem belongs to more than one faith. No one person, no one faith can claim it.”
When the Temple Mount was captured by Israel in the 1967 war, some soldiers raised an Israeli flag over the Dome of the Rock. Gen. Moshe Dayan ordered it taken down and handed the keys to the Wakf, the Muslim religious authority. This was both a symbolic and a practical decision, particularly in contrast with the exclusion experienced from 1948 to 1967, when Jews were forbidden from the holiest Jewish sites.
The documentary focuses on the contending claims and assertions of rights. The founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council says he has not seen Jerusalem because he will not stop at checkpoints and be searched “by soldiers that I consider occupiers.”
Some religious Jews say that, because the Temple existed where al-Aqsa Mosque now stands, they should be able to pray there as well as at the Western Wall. A Palestinian diplomat calls this a provocation.
Former Israeli diplomat Dore Gold contends that Palestinian and other Arab leaders frequently incite their followers with allegations that Israel is attempting to undermine or destroy the mosque and its environs. And the film features the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations repeating the incendiary falsehood that the Jews are trying to build the Third Temple in the place of the Dome of the Rock. Some Muslims are quoted denying any Jewish connection to the location.
This sort of denial, recently codified by UNESCO in a resolution that erases Jewish and Christian historical ties to the holy site, is evidence that strength through diversity in a place of such importance is often more wishful thinking than reality.
– PJ
When you read the sentence-long review of AKA Nadia on some sites – “A happily married mother of two seems to have the perfect life, until her hidden past comes to light” – you make a few assumptions. Namely, that the two-hour film is a fairly fast-moving tale of deception and drama. The opening scenes, in which a host of events happens, back this up: lively protagonist Nadia (Netta Shpigelman), a young Arab girl, graduates school in Jerusalem and secretly marries her lover, a PLO activist; they move to England where, fairly quickly, he’s caught by the authorities and she’s left alone, branded a terrorist and with no easy way of returning to Israel.
It’s not until half an hour in that the movie reveals its style – thoughtful and slow-moving, far more complex and compelling than you might first assume. When we were first introduced to Nadia, it was in East Jerusalem in 1987. We’re now reacquainted with her 20 years later, in the city’s west. Having fled England, thanks to a young Jewish woman’s passport, she’s completely (and secretly) rebuilt her life, as a Jew called Maya. And this is where the movie focuses the bulk of its time, perhaps too much time, on her new roles: successful dance choreographer, mother of two and wife to a Jewish official at the Ministry of Justice.
It’s only to be expected that this pleasant middle-class family life shatters when her past catches up with her. And every aspect of the subsequent relationship breakdown is well-acted and artistically produced. You feel for both husband and wife, and of, course, you’re forced to think of the bigger picture, too – religious identity in Israel and the ramifications of being Jewish versus Arab. Even after the movie ends – which it does a little abruptly – you’ll be left contemplating these issues for days.
– RS
My Home doesn’t shy away from its aim: showing how much minorities in Israel are typecast. It starts by stating that minorities (mostly Muslims, Christians, Bedouins and Druze) make up 20% of the population, but are often viewed by the outside world as all being Arabs who resent the Israeli “occupation” and the Jewish “apartheid state.” To show this is far from the case, the documentary follows the work of four people, one from each of the minority groups listed above.
The result is a slightly disjointed, but incredibly interesting portrayal of people who are all different, but united in their bravery. There’s a Greek Orthodox priest and a Lebanese Christian, both promoting integration by “others” into Israeli society. But the two people who really resonate are Wafa Hussein, a Muslim Zionist and school teacher preaching acceptance of all ethnicities, and Mohammad Ka’abiya, an Israeli Bedouin who prepares Bedouin teenagers in his village for Israel Defence Forces service, having served himself.
The latter two have been labeled traitors by their communities because of their activism, but persist in striving for coexistence. And this is an aspect of the documentary that must be applauded – there is no sugar-coating the discrimination minorities face: “as an Arab, you wake up in the morning and tell yourself, ‘I have a lot to deal with today.’” But, the film ultimately is a heartening look at the complexities, both good and bad, of calling Israel “home.”
– RS
For tickets to the festival, visit vjff.org or call 604-266-0245.
Rebecca Shapirois associate editor of vivalifestyleandtravel.com, a travel blogger at thethoughtfultraveller.com and a freelance journalist published in Elle Canada, the Guardian, the Huffington Post and more.
The first “character” we meet in Marcin Wrona’s coolly fascinating Demon is a yellow bulldozer, rolling menacingly through the empty streets of a Polish village. It’s a harbinger, as well as a metaphor, but of what?
Bulldozers dig, and they bury. Both tasks are central to the plot of Demon, which seizes on the disturbing idea of the dybbuk – a ghost who takes possession of a bridegroom on his wedding day – and reimagines it in the contemporary world. A world, that is, in which the Holocaust is part of our experience – even for those who have buried it in hopes of forgetting.
A Polish-Israeli co-production that is by turns deeply unsettling and absurdly funny, Demon follows the arrival of handsome architect Python (Israeli actor Itay Tiran of Lebanon) from England for the unambiguously happy occasion of his wedding. The groom is Polish, like his lovely bride Zaneta (Agnieszka Zulewska) and her family, but we have the disquieting feeling from the get-go that he is apart, on his own, an innocent outsider who has (in horror-film tradition) unknowingly ventured into a situation of unimaginable dangers.
Setting to work on the yard behind the decrepit farmhouse that Zaneta’s family owns and has bequeathed to the couple, Python hops on the ominous, aforementioned bulldozer. A noise makes him stop almost immediately, whence he discovers that he has unearthed bones.
So begins Python’s descent from a rational, regular guy to a tormented figure of unreachable despair. Unfortunately, but also comically, his transformation mostly takes place during the marathon rain- and vodka-soaked reception following the wedding ceremony.
Wrona and writer Pawel Maslona freely adapted the latter’s 2008 play, whose title translates as “Adherence” or “Clinging.” The director’s decision to shift the setting to a wedding was clearly inspired by the 1937 Polish-Yiddish film Der Dibek (The Dybbuk), itself adapted from a play by Shimon Ansky.
In the press notes, Demon producer Olga Szymanska says, “We wound up doing a lot of research into the history of the [dybbuk] story, not to mention Jewish-Polish history in general. If you read the studies on the dybbuk, those who became possessed by the spirit find themselves unable to speak. It originated in a very orthodox society of Jews, so it was the idea of this voice that could never have been heard which was longing to be heard.”
Given the clue or two I planted above, and this review’s appearance in a Jewish publication, you will have an idea of the general nature of the long-suppressed secret that the spirit who inhabits Python desperately wants uttered. The specific details are melancholy and enigmatic, and Wrona conveys them with chilling effectiveness. (The viewer is haunted also by the knowledge that Wrona died – reportedly of suicide – at 42, shortly after the film’s world première a year ago.)
It’s always of interest when Polish filmmakers choose to address their country’s past and the spectre of antisemitism, in part because they (and their fellow citizens) have historically been more reluctant to do so than their German and French counterparts. So, Demon provokes memories of Aftermath, the excellent Polish thriller from 2012 that likewise involved the physical excavation of the Jewish past (gravestones, in this case) and also invoked an otherworldly presence.
The kind of movie that lingers in the mind for days afterward, Demon contains any number of images that don’t just stick but demand to be puzzled over further. The more literal-minded viewer, meanwhile, will find plenty to mull in the movie’s slicing comments on present-day Poland.
Demon screens at Vancity Theatre Oct. 28-Nov. 1. In Polish, English and Yiddish with English subtitles, it is rated R for language and some sexuality/nudity.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Author Deborah E. Lipstadt, right, with actor Rachel Weisz, who portrays Lipstadt in the film Denial. (photo by Liam Daniel/Elevation Pictures)
In 1996, Deborah Lipstadt, an American historian and author of Denying the Holocaust, was sued by British Holocaust denier David Irving. Unlike in the United States, British courts put the onus on the defendant to prove they did not libel the plaintiff. But this trial had larger stakes than whether Lipstadt (and her publisher, Penguin Books) were guilty of libeling Irving by characterizing him as a denier of the Holocaust. To media and many in the general public, the case put the Holocaust on trial.
A major motion picture scheduled for release Oct. 7 in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, is a retelling of the events around the trial. The film, Denial, starring Rachael Weisz as Lipstadt, captures the contending forces inside and outside the Jewish community as the trial burst onto the global news cycle.
Lipstadt told the Independent in a telephone interview Sunday that the film focuses emphatically on actual events. Insubstantial details may have been changed – a meeting portrayed as taking place in a restaurant actually took place elsewhere; she didn’t own a dog at the time of the trial – but the substance of the film was subject to absolutely no dramatic or artistic licence.
“Every word that comes out of David Irving’s mouth is exactly as he said it,” Lipstadt offered by way of example. In fact, the film opens with remarks Irving made in Calgary and every statement he makes throughout the film seems intended not to convince but to rub salt in historical wounds.
The film captures Lipstadt’s frustration with the strategy of her British legal team, which refused to allow Lipstadt or survivors of the Holocaust to testify. Lipstadt thought she would be seen as a coward for not speaking in court and, in a poignant scene in the film, she promises a survivor of the Holocaust that the voices of survivors will be heard. Her lawyers stood firm, however. This was not to be a trial about the Holocaust, they insisted, nor was it a trial about Lipstadt. It was about whether Irving was what Lipstadt had said in her book: a denier of the Holocaust.
She sparred with the legal team throughout but, in retrospect, she is completely happy with their strategy.
“Absolutely 110%,” she said. “First of all, we won. Second of all, not only did we win, but we got the most damning judgment, one of the most crushing libel judgments against anyone that has ever been issued, certainly in recent years, against anyone in England. [The judgment] calls the man a liar, a falsifier of history, his version of history is mendacious, that no sane, thinking historian could ever doubt the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. In fact, everything we needed. Obviously, the lawyers’ strategy was precisely the right one. It would not have added anything to have me go in on the stand. It would not have added anything to have survivors go on the stand. This wasn’t an emotional excursion to make me feel good that I can stand up there and challenge Irving or could give survivors a modicum of comfort that they could stand and confront him. This was to win a major case and that was what it was about.”
In fact, of the whole experience, which on film appears to be a horribly emotional and wrenching multi-year battle through arcane legalities and unanticipated notoriety, Lipstadt would only change one thing if she could.
“I might have learned to trust the lawyers faster than I learned to trust them,” she said.
The trial and the events around it did not affect her academic career – she was then and is now a professor at Emory University in Atlanta – but it allowed her a bigger stage.
“It gave me a far higher profile than I had before,” she said. “I don’t think it’s changed me, but it’s changed the size of the megaphone I happen to have to speak out on things.”
While Lipstadt was not formally involved in the making of the film, she credits the filmmakers and Weisz, who depicted her, for their willingness to engage her.
“No film will be made if the author of the book is going to be meddling,” she said. “They would never go ahead with that. But the filmmakers were exceptionally generous with wanting my input … passing the script by me, meeting with me, the director coming to Atlanta to meet with me, the screenwriter coming to meet with me, and Rachel Weisz asking for my help … in my spending time with her and hanging out with her and talking with her. Not just about the role, but about myriad things. They gave me far more input than is normally the case.”
When she saw a pre-final cut of the film the first time, it was with a test audience in a multiplex, and it left her “sort of speechless,” she said.
“You can buy your popcorn and your oversized Coca-Cola and go into your reclining chair and there was my story on the screen,” she said. “It was very weird. It was very, very stunning and very, very weird.”
She hopes the film helps people understand that not everything is subject to opinion.
“There are facts,” she said. “There are not two sides to every opinion. Not everything is up for grabs. There are facts, opinions and lies. I could say to you, it’s my opinion that the earth is flat. Well, just because it’s my opinion that the earth is flat doesn’t make it flat. Not all opinions hold water. Some opinions are based in ridiculous, nonfactual … claims.”
She also encountered, particularly in Britain but elsewhere as well, Jewish individuals and groups who believed that by not settling with Irving and instead going to trial, Lipstadt was giving Irving a platform he did not deserve. Similar to the way she came around to see her legal team’s strategy as the right course, Lipstadt believes those who thought she should settle now realize that going to trial was the right course.
“You can’t fight every battle, but there are certain battles you cannot turn away from and certain battles you have to take on,” she said. “There were lots of people who didn’t want me to fight this and I did and I’m glad I did. And I think they are glad I did, too. Lots of those people came around and recognize that we were right and they had been wrong.”
Martha and Waitstill Sharp at home in Wellesley, Mass., in 1938. (photo from Sharp Family Archives via pbs.org)
At a time when many Americans embraced isolationism, the leaders of the American Unitarian Association were focused on the refugees clamoring to get out of Czechoslovakia. The AUA impelled Unitarian minister Waitstill Sharp to go with his wife Martha to Europe in 1938, leaving their young children in the care of others, and get as many people out as possible with documents and cunning.
Yad Vashem posthumously acknowledged the Sharps as Righteous Among the Nations in 2006. The couple’s saga, and that of several of the Jews they rescued, is recounted in Artemis Joukowsky and Ken Burns’ feature-length documentary Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War, which aired earlier this month on PBS.
For those who have seen a film or three about the various efforts to extricate Jews from the deathtrap of Nazi-occupied Europe, Defying the Nazis breaks no new ground. But there are always new generations who aren’t familiar with the Holocaust or cognizant of the courage of ordinary people who saved friends and neighbors or, in the case of the Sharps, complete strangers.
Joukowsky is the Sharps’ grandson, and the curator and guardian of their legacy. Burns, of course, brings household-name recognition and brand-name confidence to a PBS audience, as well as a uniformly high standard of craft and polish. If his name attracts viewers who otherwise wouldn’t tune in, it’s all for the good.
Defying the Nazis arrives at an especially ugly time when refugees and immigrants are being demonized and conflated with terrorists. Not that xenophobia is a new phenomenon, as Jewish readers are especially aware. But I find the film more valuable and inspiring as a reminder that there are highly moral individuals who will put themselves in mortal danger to do the right thing – even if they have no personal stake or connection to the beneficiaries.
Waitstill Sharp was a trained lawyer while Martha had the self-confidence and determination to attend college in a day and age when some families – including hers – disavowed their daughters for not getting a job to augment the household income. That is to say, the Sharps were adept at thinking on their feet, delivering persuasive and succinct arguments and hiding their emotions. Whether counseling desperate applicants in Prague, raising money in London or Paris (like Waitstill did) or accompanying refugees by train across Germany to a safe border (like Martha and Waitstill did, separately), these were essential skills.
The couple was based in the Czech capital for six treacherous months beginning just before the Nazi invasion in March 1939. They were dispatched again the following summer, this time to Lisbon.
As compelling as the Sharps’ activities were, they were relatively brief in duration. There’s only so much to tell, so the filmmakers augment the rescuers’ point of view with context from Holocaust historian Debórah Dwork and the firsthand recollections of several survivors whom the Sharps aided.
Viewers who are fascinated by the ways in which parental choices affect children will enjoy watching and interpreting the passages with the Sharps’ daughter. Martha Jr. admits to being (understandably) upset when her parents took off for Europe, not once but twice, but she touts the remarkable results they achieved rather than channeling a petulant child.
The Sharps may have alienated their daughter, at least for brief periods of her adolescence. They definitely paid a price in their marriage, which didn’t last a decade after the war.
Defying the Nazis doesn’t address it, but I highly doubt the couple had any regrets about embarking on their life-saving refugee work. Consider Waitstill’s succinct reply when the German-Jewish author Lion Feuchtwanger asked why he was taking such an immense risk to help him: “I don’t like to see guys get pushed around,” Sharp said.
Aleks Paunovic, left, and Ben Ratner in scene from the short film Ganjy, which Ratner hopes one day to develop into a feature. (photo from Ben Ratner)
Vancouver Jewish community member Ben Ratner steps back into his acting boots for his latest, ground-shaking film, Ganjy, premièring at this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs Sept. 29-Oct. 14.
Ganjy, directed and written by Ratner, is centred on the character of Ganjy (played by Ratner), a former boxer who is in bad shape, suffering from dementia pugilistica and living in squalor. With the support of his former-boxer friends, he endeavors to survive and lead a dignified life.
A large part of the inspiration for and foundation of Ganjy was Ratner’s encounter and interaction with his hero Muhammad Ali at the screening of the film Facing Ali in 2009, along with Ganjy co-star Aleks Paunovic. They both had the opportunity to spend a considerable amount of time with Ali and the boxer’s inner circle. “It was just a mind blowing, life-affirming experience for Aleks and I,” said Ratner.
Ganjy was filmed in February 2016, and Ali passed away four months later.
“The topical subject matter of dementia, particularly in sports-related head injuries, and the recent passing of Muhammad Ali makes Ganjy hugely relevant and, in our opinion, very important at this time,” said Ganjy co-producer Tony Pantages. “Of course, when we shot the film, we didn’t know Ali would pass away only months later, as we were in our final post, but we were honored to be able to pay tribute to him with the film.”
Ratner has launched an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to cover the basic costs of filming – all cast and crew took deferred wages – and anything raised over the $15,000 goal will be split between the promotion of the film and entry into notable film festivals, and the Muhammad Ali Parkinson’s Foundation.
“In Ganjy, Ben Ratner’s exquisite performance as the eponymous lead character tenderly but powerfully reminds us of the undeniable side-effects of the boxing trade,” said Pete McCormack, the award-winning writer and director of Facing Ali and I Am Bruce Lee, who saw Ratner’s short film in an advanced screening.
The three co-stars of Ganjy – Paunovic, Zak Santiago and Donny Lucas – are all experienced actors and former amateur boxers. Paunovic plays Marko, who quit boxing, opened a business and became “the Perogie King”; Santiago plays Jorge “El Matador” Zavala; and Lucas plays Cecil Livingston. Ratner also spent time in the amateur ring as a youth, winning gold at the 1981 B.C. Winter Games and competing in the Canadian Junior Championships in 1982. The latter fight led to a concussion at the hands of Howard Grant (a future Olympian), forcing Ratner into retirement.
Ratner thinks that Ganjy will resonate with the Jewish community.
“People don’t think of Jews as boxers these days, but, back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were a great many Jewish champs: Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Max Baer, Battling Levinsky; in Canada, we had Sammy Luftspring. These were tough bastards, immigrants living in poverty with no other way to put bread on the table.”
He added that the film is about more than boxing. “It’s about the will of the human spirit to overcome adversity, survive and flourish,” he said. “Who knows that better than Jews?”
Filmed over two long days in a questionable motel in Surrey, the cast and crew, including director of photography Pieter Stathis, assistant director Gordie Macdonald, production designer Josh Plaw and Pantages worked together to bring the film to fruition. In true independent filmmaking style, Ratner and co-star Paunovic spent a night in the motel guarding the equipment and feeding the cockroach, which guest starred in the film.
Ratner said he probably only slept two hours that night: “I had nightmares about skin disease breaking out on my legs.”
Ratner worked with his long-term mentor and acting coach Ivana Chubbuck in preparation for his role as Ganjy. Chubbuck is known for her bestselling book The Power of the Actor and for working with Sylvester Stallone on his ultimately Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated performance in Creed.
“In his touching, yet unsentimental self-directed short film, Ganjy, Ben Ratner gives a performance and directs a piece that is a testament to the human spirit,” said Chubbuck. “No matter how much battering, both emotionally and physically, a human being can withstand, there is a survivor in all of us. Ganjy is this, and more.”
Among Ratner’s many accomplishments are 100-plus film and television credits, as a multiple-award-winning actor, writer, director and producer. As but one example, at the 2013 Leo Awards, Ratner’s Down River won for best director and best feature film screenplay, and the film garnered nine wins and 12 nominations, including best world showcase feature, at the 2014 Soho International Film Festival in New York City.
Ratner has starred in numerous feature films that have played at top festivals worldwide and has had various types of roles on North American TV shows.
“I’m just finishing a fun acting job, a supporting role in a film called Wonder, with Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Mandy Patinkin and Jacob Tremblay, the amazing kid from Room,” said Ratner. “After wearing so many hats on Ganjy, it’s a relief to be a small part of a big film, to just focus on playing my role the best I can and staying out of the way when I’m not called upon to perform.”
Wonder is set for release in April 2017.
Also keeping Ratner busy is his coaching work. He has run his own studio in Vancouver, Haven, for more than 10 years.
“In some ways I am Ganjy,” Ratner said. “I’ve been doing this showbiz thing a long time, about 27 years, and I’ve got banged up along the way. But I’ve got a lot of fight left in me, and there’s no way I’m going down!”
The goal is to eventually develop Ganjy, which runs 14 minutes, into a feature-length film. But the immediate future is focused on the Indiegogo campaign and promoting the film.
“I have been creating my own work since 1990,” said Ratner, “and this is the first time I’ve ever done a crowdsourcing venture. In some ways, I feel uncomfortable asking people for money to fund our film when there are so many people in the world who desperately need help to stay alive. On the other hand, Jews have always understood the importance of art in society, and have made it a priority to create and support it. As Albert Einstein said, ‘creativity is contagious, pass it on.’”
Ganjy screens at VIFF on Oct. 2 and 8, preceding the film Marrying the Family. The full festival schedule and tickets are available at viff.org. To contribute to the fundraising campaign, visit indiegogo.com/projects/ganjy-film.
Alice Howellis a graduate of the University of Otago, New Zealand, with a BA in film and media studies and a BSc in psychology. She has worked in the entertainment industry as a performer for 12 years and, most recently, as a writer and director. She lives in Vancouver, where she counts herself lucky to be one of Ben Ratner’s acting students at Haven Studio.
Soon after he discovered he was Jewish, Csánad Szegedi reached out to Rabbi Boruch Oberlander. Szegedi’s transformation from virulent antisemite to Orthodox Jew is the topic of the documentary Keep Quiet. (photo from Gábor Máté/AJH Films & Passion Pictures)
While this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival holds much that will be of interest to Jewish Independent readers, the list is short when it comes to specifically Israeli or Jewish-related films that will appeal.
Perhaps surprisingly, the Israeli films are harsh critiques of Israel. Beyond the Mountains and Hills (Israel/Germany) is about a dysfunctional family (a metaphor for the country), Junction 48 (Israel/Germany/United States) is about an Arab-Israeli rapper who faces racism, among other Israeli-inflicted ills; Between Fences (Israel/France) is a documentary about Israel’s internment of African refugees at the Holot Detention Centre and Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt (Israel/Canada) is about Hannah Arendt, who, among other things, was critical of Jewish leadership during the Holocaust and did not approve of the state of Israel as it was founded.
Among the other film offerings is Keep Quiet (United Kingdom/Hungary), a documentary about Csánad Szegedi, the staunch antisemite who helped found Hungary’s far-right party Jobbik and its Hungarian Guard, which has since been banned. As a member of the European Parliament, he continued to foment hatred until a fellow nationalist and racist outed him as being Jewish – his grandmother had not been the adopted daughter of the Klein family, as she told him, but their daughter. The documentary includes interviews Szegedi did with his grandmother (about her imprisonment in Auschwitz, and other matters) and a conversation with his mother, who also found out later in life that she was Jewish. He asks both women about his increasing embrace of antisemitism over the years, why didn’t you stop me? Their responses are thought-provoking and sad.
Keep Quiet does not accept Szegedi’s transformation unquestioningly and gives speaking time to the doubters, as well as the cautious believers, such as Rabbi Boruch Oberlander, head of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council in Budapest. Oberlander has supported and taught Szegedi since the former antisemite contacted the rabbi for help. The event that ends the film is Szegedi’s attempt in 2013 to speak in Montreal about his Jewish journey – he wasn’t allowed to stay in the country. Before being put on the next plane home, however, Szegedi recorded a lecture, which was played at the event, with Oberlander fielding the hostility it wrought in some attendees. In Oberlander’s view, we must love every Jew, no matter how wicked. Of his choice to help Szegedi, he says, “I pray that I shouldn’t be disappointed.” Even Szegedi is unsure as to whether he would ever turn his back on Judaism – maybe, he admits, but not likely.
The way in which the filmmakers present Szegedi’s story is informative and balanced, and viewers get a sense of the man and his deeds, as well as about Hungary and how a political party as racist as Jobbik can find success there.
Vita Activa also does a good job of including both fans and critics of Arendt’s work, but mainly uses Arendt’s own words to explain her thoughts and analyses. The film uses as its foundation the Adolph Eichmann trial, about which Arendt wrote Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), describing Eichmann as “a typical functionary,” and thus an example of the “banality of evil.” (Viewers should be warned that there are many disturbing Holocaust-related images in this film.)
“Eichmann was quite intelligent but he had that dumbness,” she tells an interviewer in one of the clips included in the documentary. “It was that dumbness that was so infuriating, and that was what I meant by ‘banality.’ It has no depth; it isn’t demonic. It’s simply the unwillingness to ever imagine what others are going through.”
Another of Arendt’s theories – about refugees – remains relevant. With no rights, refugees are considered “superfluous” by a regime, she argued, and denationalization and xenophobia become a powerful weapon of totalitarian politics.
In Keep Quiet, a political journalist describes Hungary as a “part of the world where history has been manipulated” and the effects that such manipulation has upon generations. Arendt broadens that view beyond Europe, saying, “It has been characteristic of our history of consciousness that its worst crimes have been committed in the name of some kind of necessity or in the name of a mythological future.”
In addition to her early work, Vita Activa touches upon Arendt’s personal life, which offers some further understanding of the philosopher, who was seen by many to lack empathy. In one interview, she talks about how Auschwitz shouldn’t have happened, how she could handle everything else but that. Yet, she criticized the Jewish leadership who cooperated with the Nazis – the councils and kapos – and hypothesized that, if there had been no such leadership, there would have been chaos and suffering and deaths but not six million. One professor interviewed for the documentary calls Arendt’s comments “irresponsible,” another says they showed her complete ignorance of history, yet another says she regretted her remarks later in life.
The film also notes Arendt’s change from supporting Zionism to condemning elements within it. Among other things, she said, “A home that my neighbor does not recognize is not a home. A Jewish national home that is not recognized by and not respected by its neighboring people is not a home, but an illusion, until it becomes a battlefield.” And she pointed to tendencies within Zionism that she considered “plain racist chauvinism” that do “not differ from other master race theories.”
The documentary also covers Arendt’s 1951 Book of Thoughts, in which she contemplates the nature of forgiveness, revenge, reconciliation. For her, the latter doesn’t forgive or accept, but judges. When you take on the burden of what someone else did, she believed, you don’t accept the blame or absolve the other of the blame, but take upon yourself the injustice that occurred in reality. “It’s a decision,” she said, “to be a partner in the accountability, not at all a partner to the guilt.”
Reconciliation and forgiveness don’t enter the picture in either the documentary Between Fences or the fictional (but based on a real person) Junction 48. They each highlight important, even vital, issues in Israeli society, but do so in such a condemnatory, predictable way that anyone but the choir won’t be able to sit through these films.
Without much context, Between Fences looks at the poor situation in which asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan find themselves when they reach the safety of Israel. In many countries, these asylum seekers face problems, but viewers wouldn’t know that from this documentary, nor would they begin to understand the atrocities being committed in their homelands. However, they will learn how Israel doesn’t recognize their refugee status and makes every effort to send them back, how racist Israelis are towards these newcomers and a host of other problems with Israel and its people. Not one government official or Israeli is interviewed, although some Israelis participate in the “theatre of the oppressed” workshops in Holot on which the film focuses. In addition to leaving many questions unanswered, the film also begins and ends confusingly and is slow-paced.
Bias also makes Junction 48 almost unwatchable for anyone who would like to see the Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolved, so that both peoples’ rights and safety are ensured. From the second sentence of the opening, the perspective is made clear: “The Israeli city of Lod is the Palestinian city of Lyd, which once sat on the main railway junction. In 1948, tens of thousands of Palestinians were exiled from Lyd in order to resettle the town with Jews….”
We then meet Kareem, an aspiring young rapper, whose parents are worried about his involvement with drug dealers and his future in general. His friends not only deal and take drugs, but visit prostitutes and dabble in other criminal activity. Nonetheless, every Israeli they encounter is the real bad guy, from the police to other rappers to the government, which is knocking down one of their homes to build a coexistence museum. Oh, the irony.
The only entertaining and thought-provoking aspect of this film is the music by lead actor and film co-writer Tamer Nafar, which is available online.
In the end, the Jewish Independent chose to sponsor what a VIFF programmer called a “classic Jewish comedy,” though, having seen a screener of the film, the Jewish aspect is hard to discern. While much lighter (and non-political) fare than the other offerings, it has much to say – or show, really, as the dialogue is minimal – about social awkwardness and a lack of direction in life. The protagonist, Mike, works at a pizza place in New Jersey and has the energy level of a slug and the magnetism of zinc. Yet, somehow, he has friends, albeit not great ones.
Short Stay is one of those films that moves apace with its main character, so slowly and in all different directions, as Mike both physically wanders the streets and mentally wanders to destinations unknown. Viewers don’t gain insight into what motivates Mike, who seems unperturbed by his lack of career, social skills, direction and future, but they root for him, empathize with what must be his loneliness.
Short Stay director Ted Fendt best describes the acting of the nonprofessional cast, many (all?) of whom are his friends. “The film contains a range of performance styles from the fairly natural (Marta and Meg), to Mark and Dan’s B movie ‘villains,’ who might have stepped out of an Ulmer or Moullet film, to the quasi-Bressonian, unaffected manner Mike delivers his lines.” And therein is a Jewish link, Edgar G. Ulmer.
Another Jewish filmmaker – Vancouver’s Ben Ratner – will be premièring his short film, Ganjy, at this year’s festival. About a former boxer suffering from dementia pugilistica, who is in desperate need of help when three friends visit, Ganjy was inspired in part by Muhammad Ali. Its creators are looking to fundraise enough to take the film to other festivals, as well as contribute to the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Centre. For more information, visit indiegogo.com/projects/ganjy-film#.
For more information about and the full schedule of films playing at VIFF, visit viff.org.
Note: This article has been edited so that it is clear Hannah Arendt was speaking of tendencies within Zionism that she considered “plain racist chauvinism” that do “not differ from other master race theories,” and not condemning Zionism as a whole.
For the Love of Spock explores Spock actor Leonard Nimoy’s legacy and his relationship with his son, Adam. (photo from For the Love of Spock via space.com)
When Leonard Nimoy announced in 1949 that he wanted to be an actor, and was leaving Boston for Hollywood, his Russian-Jewish parents were stunned.
“My grandfather said that he should take up the accordion,” said Adam Nimoy, Leonard’s son and the director of the new documentary For the Love of Spock. “You could always make money with the accordion. Those were Max Nimoy’s words of wisdom to my dad, if the actor thing didn’t work out.”
He needn’t have worried. Not because Leonard Nimoy eventually made it after 15 years of bit parts in movies and TV shows, thanks to Star Trek. Or because his talent and curiosity propelled him into singing, photography, poetry and film directing. Nimoy had a deeply ingrained work ethic, independent of the arts, that perpetually drove him. From folding chairs at the Boston Pops and selling vacuum cleaners in his hometown to installing aquariums in Los Angeles, Nimoy was determined to support himself and his family. But his ambitions assuredly lay elsewhere.
“He had a tremendous hunger to achieve, which was the dream of his parents coming over here, to achieve something in American society,” explained his son. “This is why he was so able to relate to Spock. My dad felt like an outsider, of a minority, of an immigrant background in a very defined neighborhood of Boston with other immigrants, and with a desire to assimilate himself into the greater culture.”
Nimoy, who died last year at the age of 83, is front and centre in For the Love of Spock.
The public often conflates an actor with a role. The documentary is wilfully guilty of that, too, delving into Nimoy’s personal life only so far as it relates to Spock or to Adam’s relationship with his dad. But it does include the story of how Nimoy took a childhood memory of seeing elders in synagogue making the “shin” gesture and adopted it as a Vulcan greeting.
“He was very connected to his Jewish roots and very proud of his Jewish roots,” Adam Nimoy said during a recent interview. “He repeated the story of the Spock salute hundreds of times, literally, with great pride about where he got it – that Spock is an embodiment of some of Judaism.”
He added, “It’s become a universal symbol. My dad, through Spock, has spread this tradition of Judaism to the world. The magnitude of that fact alone, that so many people all over the planet salute my father with a ‘shin,’ is just mind-boggling to me.”
Of course, not everything Leonard Nimoy did endeared him to his son. Driven to make the most of what might be a short-lived gig on Star Trek – NBC canceled the show after three seasons, in fact, although it found greater success in syndication – Nimoy accepted every personal appearance he was offered.
“It took a toll on us, we had challenges we had to deal with, without him around, without his involvement in the family,” said his son. “His career was number one. This is what caused a lot of friction between the two of us because I just didn’t feel like I had that much of his attention early on. He had a great love and respect for the fans, but trying to get him to look at me was very challenging for me.”
Alas, that experience continued beyond Adam’s adolescence. He was at University of California Berkeley in the late 1970s, on his own path to getting a law degree, when his father made a stop at Wheeler Hall on a college speaking tour.
“I waited for him to finish,” Adam recalled with a painful clarity. “I thought we were going to go to dinner together. He came up the aisle, signed some autographs and came up to me and said, ‘I have to catch a plane. I got another commitment I got to make tomorrow in Los Angeles, and I’m leaving.’
“I was devastated. ‘What am I, borsht?’ It wasn’t until later in his life that it was less about Leonard and his career and more about ‘what’s going on with my kids and my grandchildren.’”
Adam and Leonard were estranged for a stretch, exacerbated by the actor’s drinking and his son’s drug use. When asked if it was difficult to forgive his father, though, he doesn’t hesitate: “No, because I’m in 12-Step, and that’s a huge part of what 12-Step’s all about.”
Resentments and setbacks play only a passing role in For the Love of Spock, which is an unabashed tribute to Leonard Nimoy’s contributions as an actor and a man to a character who was and is widely embraced for embodying intelligence, science, fairness and integrity. (And for being different, of course, and living on the margins of mainstream society.)
The film omits the elder Nimoy’s record as a major benefactor of Jewish causes: the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, a childhood centre at Temple Israel of Hollywood and the career counseling centre at Beit T’Shuvah, a Jewish recovery house.
It also leaves out the degree to which the actor passed down his pride and love of being Jewish.
“I would say that I am more religious than my father was,” said Adam. “I like to study Torah, I like to go to services on a regular basis on Friday night. Particularly the weekly Torah study has been very meaningful to me over the past couple of years. It’s just mind-boggling to me about the divine inspiration of the written word and how it always applies to something going on in my life. This is what enriches my life, and brings new meaning to my life.”
For the Love of Spock has two remaining screenings at Park Theatre in Vancouver: Sept. 18, 9:45 pm., and Sept. 20, 6:45 p.m.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Natalie Portman in a scene from the film A Tale of Love and Darkness. (photo by Ran Mendelson/Focus Features via houstonchronicle.com)
A Tale of Love and Darkness may seem like a nondescript and even coyly evasive title, but in fact it expresses the essence of Natalie Portman’s textured film of Amos Oz’s book.
An unfailingly sensitive though necessarily compressed adaptation of Oz’s acclaimed 2004 memoir, the movie portrays Oz’s nurturing yet fraught childhood with his immigrant parents in Jerusalem in the years just before and after the declaration of the state of Israel.
In the film, Amos possesses both character and potential, but there are rocks in the path of every promising child. Almost every frame of A Tale of Love and Darkness is imbued with a brooding, ominous tension that derives in various measure from Old Country suffering, the nascent nation’s Holocaust trauma and Amos’ mother’s depression.
Shot in a hard-edged, anti-nostalgic palette of black and green, the story unfolds in a constrained world where both the past and the future exert immense weight on the present. That said, Portman infuses her richly engrossing feature directorial debut with welcome dashes of poetry and humor.
Amos (Amir Tessler) is an exceedingly smart and empathetic child, instilled with a love of books and words by his academic father Arieh (Gilad Kahana) and an appreciation for the allusive power of fables by his quietly adoring mother Fania (Portman).
Because the viewer (likely) knows that Amos will grow up to be a great writer, we immediately presume that Arieh is his primary influence. In one of the film’s most rewarding turns, we come to realize that Amos received the gift for storytelling from his mother.
Amos doesn’t make that connection either, until much later. Even an observant child can’t recognize or understand the import of most events as they happen, whether they are as familiar as his paternal grandmother’s perennial disapproval of Fania or as dangerous as foraging for empty bottles on the outskirts of Jerusalem during the War of Independence.
Although Fania, Arieh and Amos are tightly connected, they also inhabit private universes. Arieh is subsumed by his goal of being a popular scholarly author, first reveling in the publication of his esoteric debut and gradually frustrated by the reality of his modest place in the world.
Fania’s inner life is deeply mysterious, with dark memories of her youth in Poland alternating with curious dreams, or fantasies. She has a recurring vision of a hunky, sandy-haired kibbutznik, a “new Jew” and the diametric opposite of her husband, who is a spiritual descendant of the yeshivah bochers of the shtetl.
Amos, who was born in Jerusalem – as was Portman, more than four decades later – tries to make sense of everything, from the late-night United Nations vote for the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel, to the Neanderthal schoolyard bullies who take his sandwich, to his mother’s catatonic fugues.
The film’s guiding light, Amos navigates this terrain with uncommon aplomb and resourcefulness. The impact of A Tale of Love and Darkness, though, is in its evocation of the currents of memory, sorrow, dread and pride that swirl through Jerusalem’s streets.
The elderly Amos (voiced by Moni Moshonov), a welcome albeit melancholy presence, provides occasional, wise narration about his city, as well as his parents.
“Jerusalem,” he muses at one point, “is a black widow who devours her lovers while they are still inside her.”
It’s a metaphor, yes, but it could be a synopsis for a parable that Fania might tell Amos. Ultimately, A Tale of Love and Darkness is about the power – and the limits – of stories to change our lives.
A Tale of Love and Darkness (in Hebrew with English subtitles) opened last week at Fifth Avenue Cinemas.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.