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.
In Ganjy, Ben Ratner plays the title character, who is, among other things, suffering from dementia pugilistica. (photo from Ben Ratner)
“People don’t think of Jews as boxers these days, but, back in the ’30s and ’40s, there were a great many Jewish champs: Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Max Baer, Battling Levinsky; in Canada, we had Sammy Luftspring. These were tough bastards, immigrants living in poverty with no other way to put bread on the table.”
He added that the film is about more than boxing. “It’s about the will of the human spirit to overcome adversity, survive and flourish,” he said. “Who knows that better than Jews?”
Filmed over two long days in a questionable motel in Surrey, the cast and crew, including director of photography Pieter Stathis, assistant director Gordie Macdonald, production designer Josh Plaw and Pantages worked together to bring the film to fruition. In true independent filmmaking style, Ratner and co-star Paunovic spent a night in the motel guarding the equipment and feeding the cockroach, which guest starred in the film.
Ratner said he probably only slept two hours that night: “I had nightmares about skin disease breaking out on my legs.”
Ratner worked with his long-term mentor and acting coach Ivana Chubbuck in preparation for his role as Ganjy. Chubbuck is known for her bestselling book The Power of the Actor and for working with Sylvester Stallone on his ultimately Golden Globe-winning, Academy Award-nominated performance in Creed.
“In his touching, yet unsentimental self-directed short film, Ganjy, Ben Ratner gives a performance and directs a piece that is a testament to the human spirit,” said Chubbuck. “No matter how much battering, both emotionally and physically, a human being can withstand, there is a survivor in all of us. Ganjy is this, and more.”
Among Ratner’s many accomplishments are 100-plus film and television credits, as a multiple-award-winning actor, writer, director and producer. As but one example, at the 2013 Leo Awards, Ratner’s Down River won for best director and best feature film screenplay, and the film garnered nine wins and 12 nominations, including best world showcase feature, at the 2014 Soho International Film Festival in New York City.
Ratner has starred in numerous feature films that have played at top festivals worldwide and has had various types of roles on North American TV shows.
“I’m just finishing a fun acting job, a supporting role in a film called Wonder, with Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson, Mandy Patinkin and Jacob Tremblay, the amazing kid from Room,” said Ratner. “After wearing so many hats on Ganjy, it’s a relief to be a small part of a big film, to just focus on playing my role the best I can and staying out of the way when I’m not called upon to perform.”
Wonder is set for release in April 2017.
Also keeping Ratner busy is his coaching work. He has run his own studio in Vancouver, Haven, for more than 10 years.
“In some ways I am Ganjy,” Ratner said. “I’ve been doing this showbiz thing a long time, about 27 years, and I’ve got banged up along the way. But I’ve got a lot of fight left in me, and there’s no way I’m going down!”
The goal is to eventually develop Ganjy, which runs 14 minutes, into a feature-length film. But the immediate future is focused on the Indiegogo campaign and promoting the film.
“I have been creating my own work since 1990,” said Ratner, “and this is the first time I’ve ever done a crowdsourcing venture. In some ways, I feel uncomfortable asking people for money to fund our film when there are so many people in the world who desperately need help to stay alive. On the other hand, Jews have always understood the importance of art in society, and have made it a priority to create and support it. As Albert Einstein said, ‘creativity is contagious, pass it on.’”
Ganjy screens at VIFF on Oct. 2 and 8, preceding the film Marrying the Family. The full festival schedule and tickets are available at viff.org. To contribute to the fundraising campaign, visit indiegogo.com/projects/ganjy-film.
Alice Howellis a graduate of the University of Otago, New Zealand, with a BA in film and media studies and a BSc in psychology. She has worked in the entertainment industry as a performer for 12 years and, most recently, as a writer and director. She lives in Vancouver, where she counts herself lucky to be one of Ben Ratner’s acting students at Haven Studio.
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.
Hannah Arendt (photo from the Hannah Arendt private archive via Zeitgeist Films)
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.”
A “theatre of the oppressed” workshop at the Holot Detention Centre in Israel. (photo from Vancouver International Film Festival)
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….”
Samar Qupty and Tamer Nafar in Junction 48. (photo from VIFF)
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.
The social awkwardness of the protagonist of Short Stay, Mike, is obvious in his exchanges with others. (photo from VIFF)
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.
On Aug. 29, the National Film Board of Canada released more than 60 films that now can be viewed free of charge on nfb.ca. Among the new releases is Chi by Anne Wheeler (2013). The documentary follows Canadian actress Babz Chula (seen in the background of the photo) to Kerala, India, where she is to undergo treatment by an Ayurvedic healer in an effort to manage her six-year battle with cancer. The bare-bones Indian clinic at first disappoints, but Chula is uplifted, as her condition seemingly shows signs of improvement following treatment and introspection. Returning home, however, it is revealed that her cancer has advanced. Amazingly, the actress invites Wheeler to continue bearing witness to her journey into the unknown. Chula died on May 7, 2010.
In Indignation, Logan Lerman plays model student Marcus Messner. (photo from indignationfilm.com)
For his directorial debut, veteran producer and writer James Schamus chose a Philip Roth novel set during a turning point in the Jewish-American experience.
Indignation unfolds in 1951, when opportunities and prospects for young Jewish professionals were just beginning to expand in the United States.
“You discover when you start to inhabit that world that there was a genuine sense of optimism, a genuine belief that belonging in this country was possible and real and happening,” said Schamus, 57. “And, on the other hand, you have all the traumas associated with the experiences of extended families in the Holocaust disappearing and a political culture in this country that was bizarrely – especially if you’re of my age, and you didn’t experience it but you realize that your parents did – about as openly antisemitic as you can imagine.”
Schamus cites the covenants for real estate developments that excluded Jews, and the quotas for Jewish students at Ivy League universities. So, Marcus Messner, the protagonist of Schamus’ insightful and moving film adaptation of Roth’s 2008 autobiographical novel, is fortunate to receive a scholarship from a small college in Ohio. He has to travel some distance from his New Jersey home, but not as far as the young Americans fighting in Korea.
A model student, Marcus (Logan Lerman) believes that college – and the world – is a meritocracy, and his brains and hard work will push him forward. His parents worry that he has little margin for error, and dread any disruption, such as Marcus’ involvement with an alluring blond named Olivia Hutton (Sarah Gavon).
“One of the great crises as articulated by the characters in the book is, ‘Oh Lord, my son is dating a shiksa,’” Schamus said with a smile in an April interview before he showed his film at the San Francisco International Film Festival. “The kind of psychic and carnal energy created by that dynamic drives a lot of Roth, but really a lot of the work of most major Jewish-American male artists of mid-century America. It’s a bit of a trope.”
But Schamus, who does inordinate research for all his screenplays, found much more to plumb in Indignation. He realized that the author subtly drew Olivia as a parallel to Roth’s contemporary, Sylvia Plath.
“One of the things that drew me was a spark of recognition that, in this late novel, Roth is going back to a much earlier time than he often [does], that he’s connecting with a generation that we often don’t realize that he’s part of,” said Schamus. “While Roth is growing up in very, very Jewish Newark, N.J., up the road a few towns is Allen Ginsberg, who’s a few years older. In fact, Ginsberg’s aunt was Roth’s English high school teacher.
“So, Indignation, to me, is more than a tip of the hat to, ‘I saw the best minds of my generation, dot, dot, dot.’ It’s the same subject. These were those best minds who were destroyed by precisely the system that Roth rails against in the book.”
Schamus, who grew up Jewish in Los Angeles and has lived and worked in New York for many years, wrote and produced most of Ang Lee’s films, from Pushing Hands through Taking Woodstock. He also headed Focus Features for many years, earning a reputation as a staunch and astute supporter of independent filmmakers. (He financed and distributed the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man, among other titles.)
Well-versed in the etiquette of adaptation, Schamus reached out to Roth as Indignation was about to go into production.
“You don’t adapt one of the world’s greatest writers and not get a little nervous,” said Schamus. “I grit my teeth and sent him the script before we started shooting, which was scary because, if he’d had a violently negative reaction, it would have put me in the pickle of probably not making the movie, to be honest. Philip did me one of the greatest favors anybody’s ever done a filmmaker, and that is he refused to read it.”
At press time, Indignation was screening at Cineplex Odeon International Village.
Michael Fox is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Sergio Toporek made Beware of Images to educate people about the power of images. The documentary’s poster includes the pipe from René Magritte’s 1929 painting “The Treachery of Images,” which shows a pipe and, under it, the words, “This is not a pipe.” The Beware of Images website notes that, when Magritte was told he actually had created a pipe, he responded, “OK, you should try filling it with tobacco then.” (image from Sergio Toporek)
Sergio Toporek worked in advertising for more than two decades before realizing he had a problem – “I had become a tool of the market,” he admits in a 2013 CreativeMornings Vancouver talk that can be seen on YouTube. He decided then to become his own client, and to educate people about how images are being used. The result is the feature-length, animated documentary Beware of Images, which premières at Vancity Theatre July 27 and 28, with Toporek answering audience questions after each screening.
”I first conceived of the idea for a media literacy documentary about 10 years ago, but started working on it two years later,” Toporek told the Independent. “At first, I was doing it part-time, but gradually it took over most of my time.
“The documentary is based on a 24-hour course I teach at Vancouver Film School. The documentary and course have been influencing each other for the past decade and have evolved in parallel. The original script was five hours long, but I have been distilling it to its current 2.5-hour format.
“While the original idea was more focused on current technologies, the final piece has evolved to include much of the history of mediated representation,” he said. “The idea is that the best way to truly understand our current media environment is to understand how it came to be. There are explicit and suggested similarities between past and present technologies throughout the film. My hope is that we will be able to create a better media landscape by learning from past mistakes, mostly by encouraging the audience to be active participants to its future.”
In the 2014 Kickstarter campaign video for the documentary, which can also be seen on YouTube, Toporek explains that his aha moment came when he was given the opportunity to work on a Budweiser commercial in 2007. The way in which the advertising objectified women started him thinking differently, not to mention that he would be working to increase awareness of a product that didn’t need any more awareness, in his view. Add to that the fact that serious issues – many caused, in his opinion, by the corporations hiring him, such as consumerism, environmental pollution, racial stereotyping and glamorized violence – receive little attention, and are even “intentionally underreported.”
“The documentary is divided in 14 interconnected chapters,” said Toporek. “My hope is that educators can address specific media literacy subjects by screening its corresponding chapter. While the best way to experience the film is to watch it in full, short chapters on propaganda, advertising, race/gender representation, etc., can be very helpful to educators to set up and start a conversation.”
He will be promoting the film by screening it in educational and community settings around the world, he said. “I’m interested in the potential post-screening dialogue it can generate. After a year or so of touring with the documentary, I’d like to start writing a new film about the history of automation and its current implications.”
Toporek was born and raised in Mexico City. There, he studied photography and graphic design and earned the bulk of his living designing CD covers for Latin American musicians, work that dwindled after he moved to Vancouver in 1996 because of distance in part, but mainly because of changes in the music industry as it went digital. He was mainly earning his living in advertising by 2005, and joined the Vancouver Film School faculty in 2006. He has a master of education from Harvard University and “completed the thesis for Beware of Images at Stanford University based on research he conducted at the University of British Columbia,” notes the short bio on the film’s website.
“I grew up in a Sephardi-Ashkenazi family in Mexico City,” Toporek told the Independent. “Even though I became an agnostic at a very young age, my Jewish background has been essential…. The great value placed on education during my formative years was instrumental in fostering the constant pursuit of knowledge that has led me to embrace all culture – Judaism included – as a single field of studies.”
Since leaving advertising, making a living “has been one of the most difficult aspects to address,” Toporek admitted. “Commercial design and advertising can be very lucrative careers, particularly when compared to the severely underfunded educational sector. That said, there are many fulfilling rewards in education, even when they can’t be monetized. For now, I’ve made peace with the fact that my income will remain more modest than when I was serving the corporate world.
“For the past years, my income has come from teaching at VFS and from the odd commercial project I do when money becomes an issue. I am very lucky, though, to have a very supportive life partner. She has been an amazing champion of this project, helping it come to life with her constant understanding and encouragement.”
And what an ambitious project, trying to educate people about the power of images. Not only is he up against wealth and power, but ignorance. As he explains in the 2013 CreativeMornings talk: most people believe they can tell the difference between images and reality or are too sophisticated to fall for advertising campaigns, but our reaction to images is emotional not intellectual, and we like the illusions they create. It is our belief that we are immune to images that makes us so vulnerable to them, he contends.
So, he’s up against seemingly insurmountable odds – and others have tried before him (Naomi Klein and Adbusters, for example). In what ways will his efforts be unique or different?
“This is a great question, and one that I ask myself constantly,” he said. “I think that we all have a part to play in the media literacy discourse. There are no simple solutions or absolute victories, and there will never be. It is all just tendencies and gradual improvements. I see my work as a small contribution to a vast field of studies – studies that are as ancient as the Taoist cautious examination of language and as new as virtual reality.
“I greatly admire the work of Naomi Klein and the Adbusters Media Foundation, as well as that of media scholars such as Neil Postman and Jacques Ellul. I think that my work differs from theirs mostly in the way it is being delivered. While I think that the book is still the most nuanced and comprehensive medium we have to address complex issues, we are gradually shifting towards a visual and short-attention-span culture. In that respect, I think that Beware of Images talks about its subject in its own language and terms: images about images.”
For tickets to the July screenings, visit viff.org.
