{"id":26692,"date":"2017-11-10T03:44:04","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T11:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=26692"},"modified":"2017-11-09T10:18:31","modified_gmt":"2017-11-09T18:18:31","slug":"living-in-hospital-limbo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2017\/11\/10\/living-in-hospital-limbo\/","title":{"rendered":"Living in hospital limbo"},"content":{"rendered":"

A scene from Muhi: Generally Temporary<\/em>, which screens Nov. 21 as part of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival. (photo from Medalia Productions)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Veteran Israeli photojournalistRina Castelnuovo-Hollander wasn\u2019t looking to make a transition to movies when she was introduced to Muhi. In fact, she wasn\u2019t remotely prepared for their chance meeting.<\/p>\n

In 2013, she was working on a series of portraits for the New York Times<\/em> of Israelis and Palestinians who had lost family members in the conflict. Palestinian elder Abu Naim and Israeli activist Buma Inbar arrived for their photo session with Naim\u2019s grandson, a small boy named Muhi, whose limbs had been amputated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was hard for me,\u201d Castelnuovo-Hollander recalled with a bit of embarrassment. \u201c\u2018How am I going to photograph him?\u2019 The picture I published in the New York Times<\/em> \u2013 I can\u2019t believe it today \u2013 nobody can see that Muhi has no legs and no arms. He\u2019s semi-concealed, because I wasn\u2019t sure yet what the story was.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story, she soon learned, was that Muhi had been born in Gaza with a life-threatening immune disease. As a baby, he was brought to an Israeli hospital where the doctors deemed it necessary to amputate Muhi\u2019s arms and legs to save his life.<\/p>\n

Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman\u2019s profoundly moving documentary, Muhi: Generally Temporary<\/em>, screened at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (which is on until Nov. 12) and is also part of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival, which runs Nov. 18-21. The film depicts the complicated, absurdist existence of the boy and his grandfather \u2013 who continue to live at the hospital. If they go home to Gaza, Muhi will likely die without adequate care and facilities. So they stay, but Naim is unable to obtain a visa or work permit.<\/p>\n

The poignancy of Muhi\u2019s situation is exacerbated by the extraordinary difficulty that his mother encounters obtaining documents and navigating the checkpoints. This political backdrop informs Muhi<\/em>, and Inbar plays a key supporting role in the film by reaching out to and negotiating with Israeli authorities in ways that neither Naim nor Muhi\u2019s mother can.<\/p>\n

The core of the film, however, is the strong-willed, funny and occasionally rebellious boy for whom it is named.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was around Abu Naim and Muhi for almost a year before I came up with the idea that we want to do a film,\u201d Castelnuovo-Hollander said during an interview this spring when the film had its world premi\u00e8re at the San Francisco International Film Festival. \u201cFirst, I did stills, then interviews just to research, then I started filming with an iPhone, and then with a camera. Then I joined forces with Tamir, and we said, \u2018Let\u2019s try and do a film.\u2019 So there were a few stages and, by then, Abu Naim trusted me that I didn\u2019t come to destroy his world or expose something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Castelnuovo-Hollander had long stopped seeing Muhi as a boy with a disability by that point, and related to him as she would anyone else. She also realized that a film was necessary to convey Muhi\u2019s personality and character, along with his bizarre state of limbo.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we started speaking about this,\u201d said Elterman, \u201cRina told me, \u2018I\u2019m taking photographs and this kid\u2019s amazing and there are extraordinary relationships, but these people need to speak. People need to hear Muhi, and see him in action.\u2019 He sees himself like anyone else and, when you interact with him, after five minutes, you see him as everyone else. But that\u2019s a function of meeting him and getting to know him in a way that still photos don\u2019t allow you to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elterman, who was born in Berkeley, Calif., to Mexican parents and moved to Israel after college \u2013 and then returned to New York to earn his master\u2019s before returning to Tel Aviv for good \u2013 met Rina when he was making two- and three-minute films for the New York Times<\/em>\u2019 website.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always been interested in the mixing of worlds coming together and what happens at that intersection,\u201d Elterman explained. \u201cIt might have been serendipitous, but this story and this setting was perfect for what I\u2019m interested in exploring.\u201d<\/p>\n

For her part, Castelnuovo-Hollander preferred a novice filmmaker to a veteran.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe came without preconceived ideas, and that was a very important thing for me,\u201d she said. \u201cTamir reacted enthusiastically to this story, so I knew he was going to be the right person to spend long hours with no pay. You can laugh, but that\u2019s how it is. We did it for passion, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n

Muhi<\/em> is at the Roxy Theatre in Victoria on Nov. 21, 6:30 p.m. For the full Victoria film festival schedule, visit vijff.ca<\/a>. For the remaining screenings of the Vancouver festival, visit vjff.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox<\/strong> is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A scene from Muhi: Generally Temporary, which screens Nov. 21 as part of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival. (photo from Medalia Productions) Veteran Israeli photojournalistRina Castelnuovo-Hollander wasn\u2019t looking to make a transition to movies when she was introduced to Muhi. In fact, she wasn\u2019t remotely prepared for their chance meeting. In 2013, she was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[6008,7573,7574,6224],"class_list":["post-26692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-film-festival","tag-muhi","tag-rina-castelnuovo-hollander","tag-victoria"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}