The study methods of Jewish school have served Jake Pascoe well in his study of film at the University of British Columbia. His works will be among those featured in the Persistence of Vision Film Festival 28 (POV28) April 28 and 29.
The festival showcases the work of fourth- and third-year students in the film production program at UBC Theatre and Film, which is what brought Pascoe – born and raised in Toronto – to Vancouver in 2014. Now in the final year of his bachelor of fine art in film production, Pascoe is involved in many of the 21 short films being screened at POV28. He directed Genesis, was the producer of Snoop! and first assistant director on three films, With Love From God, It’s a Boy! and How Long?, as well as being key grip on two others and gaffer on yet another. Pascoe said that, for a student to be involved in so many productions is “completely usual.”
“In fact,” he told the Independent, “I have some currently exhausted friends who have been in several more roles this year than I have. The program really emphasizes getting as much exposure to the different departments as possible, which makes the production season of the school year a lot of fun; you and your friends working several long days in a row and having to figure out how equipment works on the fly since – hey, you’re suddenly our sound mixer now!”
Pascoe’s bio notes that, in addition to “a background in directing theatre, he’s won fiction and stage play awards and has had stories published in magazines.”
“Before I was ever interested in filmmaking, I loved writing, so that stage of the process will always feel a little sacred to me,” he said. “This year, I got my first opportunity to direct a large and legitimate set with a big, scary camera and lots of equipment. Directing a movie like Genesis has been an opportunity that’s sort of eluded me, so I didn’t know what to expect coming up to the shoot. My favourite directors, like David Fincher or Wim Wenders, have been almost holy figures to me but I haven’t had the chance to take on that role with any of the resources remotely similar to the movies I grew up watching. Just feeling part of that tradition was pretty special.
“It also just gave me a creative buzz I hadn’t really ever experienced before. There was a moment I had with my actors getting ready before a big scene and I listened as they were getting into character, talking about their fears and emotions and I got so caught up with them. It was really surreal sharing a creative process with so many people since writing is so solitary. Watching and working with them along with my producer Ayden Ross and cinematographer Sam Barringer was really inspiring.”
Pascoe said he will be taking some summer courses to complete his minor in English literature and he aims to graduate this fall. As for his plans after that, he said, “Directing is such a fun and almost addictive experience that I feel like I need to get back in the chair sometime soon, but what’s nice about writing is that you don’t need any money or equipment to do it. I’ve been writing fiction for my whole life so, immediately following graduation, I’ll be working on getting some of my writing published.”
Pascoe said he attended a Jewish day school until Grade 11, “so it was a very large part of my life growing up. In terms of how it comes into play now – it’s funny, I was just giving a little spiel about this at my family’s seders this year – it struck me recently just how strangely effective Jewish school was in preparing me to study film.
“There’s something really talmudic in the analysis and criticism of cinema and the application thereof to any filmic creative pursuits I’ve had at UBC,” he said. “I remember very vividly in long Grade 7 classes being given an excerpt from the Torah and having to take the ‘story’ and methodically comb through it for all the moral quandaries it presents, all of its impacts on daily life it posits, and all the laws within its lessons to follow.
“In a very similar way, when you watch a movie, you’re really being handed a puzzle in the form of a story and are expected to totally squeeze everything out of it and methodically ask different kinds of theoretical questions.” He spoke of walking out of theatres “with the movie nerds in my program, who are just, if not more so, as trivial and hairsplitting as any of the ancient rabbinical commentators I read in middle school.”
POV28 screenings take place at UBC’s Frederic Wood Theatre, and there are morning matinées and evening programs. For tickets and the full schedule, visit povfilmfestival.org.
Craig Miller in a shot from the documentary The S Word, which screened for the first time in Western Canada on March 22 in Winnipeg. (photo from MadPix, Inc.)
Jewish Child and Family Service of Winnipeg (JCFS) partnered with the Suicide Prevention Network and the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg’s Young Adult Division to show the documentary The S Word for the first time in Western Canada. The screening took place March 22 at the JCC Berney Theatre, and the event’s aim was to help put a stop to the silence surrounding the subject of suicide.
“Suicide is widespread and affects all age groups and communities,” said Carli Rossall, JCFS addictions and mental health caseworker. “There are many ‘S words’ that reinforce the behaviour around suicide, such as silence, stigma, shame and struggle. The hope is to turn this around into S words such as support, survival, sharing and solutions.”
Rossall has taken the lead in organizing this project, along with Cheryl Hirsh Katz, JCFS manager of adult services, and Shana Menkis, JCFS director of operations.
JCFS is a member of the Suicide Prevention Network, which is a group of agencies and individuals committed to enhancing the mental wellness and quality of life of people in Winnipeg, preventing suicides and supporting those bereaved by suicide.
“I think our goal with this [event] was to begin to create a safe space within the community where topics like suicide can be freely and openly discussed,” said Rossall. “Staying silent doesn’t make an issue cease to exist. Suicide is a reality in our community as it is in all communities. Healing requires openness, acceptance and dialogue. The more we talk about these things, the more fluency we develop when it comes to hard conversations, [and] the better equipped we all are to support one another.”
“Bringing this film to our city and specifically to this community,” Hirsh Katz added, “will hopefully give a voice to this problem and put a face to the solution.”
The S Word aims to open the conversation surrounding suicide. Its director, Lisa Klein, is a survivor of both her father’s and her brother’s suicides. In the film, she wanted to show the voices of those who survived suicide attempts, as well as others, to provide an honest portrayal of the thoughts and feelings surrounding suicide. She further wanted to provide positive messaging.
“It’s an outstanding collection of stories that, unlike other films on the same subject, shines a light on hope,” said Klein. “It talks about language, relationships, relapses in mental health, and about how recovery is rarely a straight trajectory. It’s very real and raw. I consider it to be one of the best mental health documentaries I’ve ever seen … unique in its approach to an otherwise familiar topic.
“We hear about suicide epidemics, about over- and under-medicating, about the bereaved when it comes to suicide in the community, but, rarely do we hear from survivors. Frankly, I don’t know if ‘survivor of suicide’ is a concept most people even know exists.”
Carli Rossall, Jewish Child and Family Service of Winnipeg addictions and mental health caseworker, at the information table on March 22. (photo from JCFS)
“Loss is never easy to talk about,” said Rossall. “But, when loss gets tied together with morality, as suicide often does, an added layer of stigma exists. Anything that challenges our definition of ‘right,’ ‘moral’ or ‘normal’ tends to make us uncomfortable – and it often makes people look to blame.
“Generally,” she said, “people who have thoughts of suicide suffer from intense psychological pain, where there is a feeling of hopelessness, isolation, and no alternative. The reasons for this can vary, from those experiencing mental health challenges or physical illness, to those who have experienced trauma, are struggling financially or have addictions. The rise in suicide rates may be due to life’s increasing pressures and complex circumstances.”
It was in her late teens that Klein lost her father and then, three months later, her brother, to suicide.
“It’s something that obviously is a huge part of my life, my existence, and it wasn’t something that right away I knew what I’d do with,” said Klein. “It affected me greatly. I really didn’t know who to talk to. That was a big part of why I did this film, because it’s so difficult to talk to people when you’ve lost people. They don’t know what to say to you.
“When I came out to L.A. and went to graduate school, I did a film prior to this one…. We started to do documentaries. We did one on bipolar personalities and, when we did that one, we had someone who was in the film who had lost their daughter to suicide. I thought, OK, I’ve dealt with this. And then, almost immediately, I realized that I actually hadn’t. I thought it was time to do something, because people weren’t, and aren’t, talking about it enough, not talking about it responsibly.”
As Klein began researching the topic, she found a large community of people dealing with suicide – so great a number that they were holding conventions in the United States about it. Klein found this resource helpful when it came to finding specific stories to include in her film.
While The S Word is not yet widely available, Klein has worked to get the message across through teachers, mental health professionals and survivors. And she created a toolkit that is on the movie’s website that anyone can access to find ways to bring the message to their communities.
“We’ve signed with an educational distributor and eventually it will be available – probably in the late fall…. We want to help open the conversation, for sure,” said Klein. “We want people to feel less alone, like they’re not the only ones going through this. And we want people to know that they can be there for somebody else, too. Also, to know that, if you, yourself, are struggling, there are people to talk to.
“A lot of times, what can really kill people, what can drive people to this is the silence or the hopeless feeling of being alone – feeling that they have nobody to talk to, and the stigma and shame keep people from talking about it.
“We see this also in the rape culture and the whole #MeToo movement,” she added. “People who were so afraid to talk are now coming forward. And it’s so important to be able to do this. We want to be part of that conversation.”
Klein invited everyone to visit the film’s website – theswordmovie.com – for more information and to watch the many interviews conducted with suicide survivors that did not make it into the film (click on the “#SWordStories” link). She further encouraged people to send in written stories about their own experiences to the website.
In Winnipeg, JCFS is ready to help anyone in need, via their active mental health services program for the Jewish community and counseling services that are open to the general public. In Vancouver, Jewish Family Services is also ready to help.
“Through these supports, there are opportunities for individuals and families to address their concerns, feelings related to suicide, and other issues on a proactive basis,” said JCFS’s Hirsh Katz. “There are also several other community-based agencies in Winnipeg that provide both crisis and non-crisis work with suicide. The Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention is a nationwide organization dedicated to offering support. Livingworks Education Inc. is a leading provider of suicide intervention training through various workshops – the training is focused on identifying, speaking and intervening with people who have thoughts of suicide, and it is invaluable for individuals ages 15 and over who want to help people be safer from suicide.”
Itay Exlroad as Dancer Soldier. (photo by Giora Bejach, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)
An audacious work of art that melds raw emotion and absurdist allegory into a blistering assessment of contemporary Israel, Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot deserves to be seen and demands to be discussed.
Winner of the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival – where Maoz’s taut debut, Lebanon, won the Golden Lion in 2009 – and eight Ophir Awards (Israel’s Oscars), including best film, director and actor, Foxtrot uses a small-scale story to examine some of Israel’s deepest issues: the concept of military sacrifice, the oppression of Palestinians and the legacy of the Holocaust.
Skilfully strewn with ironies all the way to the final shot, Foxtrot was shortlisted for the Academy Award for best foreign language film but did not receive a nomination.
The film begins with a middle-aged man (the sublime Lior Ashkenazi, who played a fictitious prime minister last year in Norman and Yitzhak Rabin in this month’s 7 Days in Entebbe) opening his door to the worst possible news for a father with a son in the army. Even as the gravity of the situation and the intensity of his response wallops us in the face and grabs us by the collar, Maoz counter-intuitively undercuts the emotional naturalism with precision camerawork and a stylized set design.
It appears, at first, that the filmmaker is evoking the surreal, detached and alienating experience of being struck with a life-changing bulletin. But we get the nagging feeling, from Ashkenazi’s character’s black-humour interactions with the army representatives to the off-centre introductions of his wife and daughter, that there’s more on tap than the melodrama of domestic tragedy.
Indeed, Maoz pulls the rug out from under us, then cuts from the climate-controlled setting of a high-in-the-sky condo to an isolated checkpoint in the barren, forgotten north of Israel. This is where the son, Yonatan, is assigned the “mission” of guarding a remote, nonessential road with a handful of other bored young men.
The tilted shipping container that comprises the soldiers’ base and barracks fronts on a puddle-strewn mudfield, which they must trudge across to the checkpoint. The roadblock itself is cartoonishly minimalist, resembling a set you’d see onstage more than a military installation, and putting us in mind of surrealist (anti-)war films like Apocalypse Now and Catch-22.
Nothing happens in this God-forsaken spot, and everything happens here. Each detail has significance, though one must pay close attention because it may not be clear until events play out. In fact, the meaning of a close-up or sound cue often remains obscure until the movie is over, at which point the viewer is required to arrive at his or her interpretation.
Two key events occur at Yonatan’s base: one at the checkpoint involving a carload of Palestinians heading home from a party and the other in the barracks when the soldiers are killing lonely downtime. The latter scene, in which Yonatan relates an anecdote from his father’s youth, is the most astonishing passage in this taboo-trampling movie.
Left to right: Danny Isserles as Official Military Officer, Yehuda Almagor as Avigdor, Michael’s brother, and Lior Ashkenazi as Michael. (photo by Giora Bejach, Courtesy Sony Pictures Classics)
Yonatan has rendered his memory into a graphic novel, and Maoz brings it to life in the form of animation. This harrowing episode connects the Holocaust – and the self-reliance, persistence, shared sacrifice and residual faith that survivors applied to building the Jewish state – to a modern Israel, where idealism has curdled into a pursuit of temporary pleasures, and worse offences.
To be sure, in every land and every age, older generations castigate young people for ignoring tradition and abandoning their core values. But this parable takes place in Israel, so Yonatan’s father’s hormone-driven rashness hearkens to Esau swapping his birthright for a bowl of stew.
Threaded through Foxtrot is a critique of Israel’s leaders for maintaining a culture of cynicism and corruption that results in the unnecessary deaths of young soldiers. Furthermore, each loss is described as heroic regardless of the circumstances.
This is not unique to Israel, of course, but it’s harder to push back against the military spin when you’re a small country surrounded by enemies than a superpower. Maoz satirizes PR functionaries in the opening scene, in fact, and never stops spearing sacred cows.
Maoz’s triumph, finally, thanks in large measure to Ashkenazi’s unexpectedly vulnerable performance, is tracking the human cost amid the not-quite-real scenarios and sociopolitical commentary. Foxtrot is an altogether remarkable work, not least because it is a beautiful film about ugly truths.
Foxtrot is in Hebrew with English subtitles, runs 113 minutes and is rated R for some sexual content, including graphic images and brief drug use. It opens at Vancity Theatre on March 23, and runs to April 1.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Adel Karam as Toni, left, and Kamel El Basha as Yasser in The Insult. (photo from Cohen Media Group)
Ziad Doueiri was born in Lebanon, studied filmmaking at San Diego State and worked nonstop for more than a decade in Los Angeles as an assistant cameraman shooting Quentin Tarantino’s early movies, among others.
“One of my favourite films of all time, I looked at the film and said, ‘One day, I hope I make a movie like this,’ is Judgment at Nuremberg,” confided the impassioned director of Lebanon’s official Oscar submission, The Insult.
Inspired by Stanley Kramer’s 1961 courtroom drama, Doueiri set out to make a deeply felt moral saga using a familiar American genre that would connect with an international audience. The catalyst that sets The Insult in motion is an altercation on a Beirut street between a Lebanese Christian mechanic and a Palestinian construction supervisor. They are unable to resolve their disagreement for personal reasons – male ego and pride, to start – compounded by the overriding political context. The Insult unfolds against a backdrop of half a million Palestinians living as refugees in a country with a population of four million.
“The Palestinians came in 1948,” Doueiri noted in an interview during a visit to San Francisco late last year. “They never returned, they could not return. They were not given green cards. They were not given the right to settle in Lebanon, or the right to work.”
The Lebanese government’s logic, according to the Paris-based filmmaker, was and is “if we give you jobs, you’ll start making a good life. And if a Palestinian settles down in Lebanon and does not go to Palestine, the Israelis are happy.”
Meanwhile, the dispute between the antagonists escalates into a court case that, unexpectedly, turns into a penetrating historical inquiry exposing the depths of simmering resentment between the Lebanese and Palestinians. The elephant in the courtroom, of course, is Israel.
“The Insult is not about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” stressed Doueiri. “It’s a story of two people, one who is seeking justice and the other who doesn’t believe in it. The film is also about [how] you cannot have exclusivity on massacres. The Palestinians, in the last 20, 30, 40 years, they have kind of gained a monopoly on their suffering. The Insult is a way of saying, ‘You can’t blame Israelis all the time.’”
Doueiri acknowledged that his emigration to the United States in 1983 began a process of dissipating the hatred he grew up with for everything that’s Jewish and Israeli. Another important turning point was shooting The Attack – his first-rate thriller about a successful Arab surgeon in Tel Aviv whose world collapses after his wife commits a terrible crime – in Israel in 2011.
“The dedication of the Israeli crew on my film was fantastic,” Doueiri said with his characteristic intensity. “How could that not change you?”
Doueiri took a huge risk shooting The Attack in Israel.
“Not only is it a moral dilemma for the Lebanese that one of their compatriots went to Israel, it’s a legal problem,” he explained. “I violated Law 285. It is incontestable.”
When Doueiri flew to Beirut in September last year after premièring The Insult at the Venice Film Festival – where Kamel El Basha received the best actor award for his portrayal of Yasser – he was arrested at the airport. He claims he was released due to the direct intercession of the prime minister, but, regardless, he had to appear the next day before a military judge who specializes in cases involving Israeli collaborators and ISIS terrorists.
“The judge was really bothered by this case,” Doueiri said. “He knows that I did not collaborate with the Israelis. I did not share military information. I just went to do a movie. And I’m an American citizen.”
Fortunately for everyone concerned, Doueiri’s lawyer discovered a loophole: the five-year statute of limitations had expired.
“Isn’t it great?” Doueiri said with a smile. “This is how I was acquitted. It’s a movie. Isn’t it a movie?”
The Insult generated a lot of debate when it screened in Beirut in the fall, according to Doueiri. A truly happy ending would be if it gets a wide release in the Arab world.
The Insult opens Friday, Feb. 23, at Vancity Theatre (viff.org).
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
The riveting Netflix documentary One of Us follows three New Yorkers in various stages of the painful process of leaving their Chassidic community. The lone woman among them is far and away the film’s most memorable character, in part because she has the most harrowing journey.
“Etty was in the middle of a case and under massive personal duress from the beginning,” co-director Rachel Grady recalled. “She was apprehensive at first [about being in the movie] because she’s somebody that does not seek attention and would never under normal circumstances want to be filmed or photographed for her ego.”
Etty had filed for divorce after 12 years, claiming physical abuse, and she was fighting an uphill battle for custody of her seven children. At the same time, her family and friends abandoned her.
“We had agreed we wouldn’t show her face,” said co-director Heidi Ewing. “She had very good reasons for not wanting her identity to be shown to the world. What happens in the film is what happened to us in life, which is, about halfway through the project, she said, ‘I’ve got nothing to lose anymore. I’m not going to hide.’”
“She was very much alone and isolated and this insane, unexpected reaction from the community was happening to her,” said Grady. “She couldn’t believe it herself. I think she needed some documentation that this was real.”
One of Us debuted on Netflix in mid-October, but the New York-based filmmakers were recently on the West Coast for screenings and Q&As with Academy members who will vote on Oscar nominations.
Grady and Ewing, whose films include last year’s Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You and Jesus Camp, took steps to include the Chassidic community’s perspective, including a portion of a rabbi’s speech at an assembly at New York’s Citi Field that laments the threat – assimilation on steroids – that the modern world poses to Chassidism.
“Anything we had to show the warmth among the people in the community is in the movie,” said Ewing. “If you’re in the community, if you’re standing by all the rules and doing the right thing, there’s a lot to be gained. People will know about you and care about you. It’s when you deviate a little bit to the left or right, there’s going to be consequences.”
While most of the duo’s films focus on a religious community, Grady noted that they are interested in the belief systems that create community rather than matters of doctrine.
“It’s really about the community, how you identify yourself, how you identify yourself compared to others, your worldview based on your community,” Grady explained. “It’s something we could explore over and over and over, and religion is just a great way to do it. You could do the same thing on the zealots at my food co-op.”
Grady, who was raised Jewish in Washington, D.C., confided that she had never thought more about being a Jew than in the three years that she and Ewing were making One of Us.
“This idea that Jews always talk about, is it an ethnic group, is it culture, is it religion? It’s all of those things, and it weighs heavily one way or another depending how you were raised. In this case, there’s a group of people who are my neighbours in Brooklyn that I see every day and I know that I have a deep connection with them.
“I’m always thinking, ‘Did my great-grandfather do that? Would I have done that?’ It was kind of like an exercise every day when I was working on this film.”
While those questions will come up for some viewers as well, they are more likely to be moved by Etty’s struggle to leave the only society she’s known and forge a life in the wider world.
One of Us is now streaming on Netflix (unrated, in English and Yiddish, 95 minutes).
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Aiden Cumming-Teicher celebrated his bar mitzvah by organizing Our Voices. (photo from Aiden Cumming-Teicher)
Aiden Cumming-Teicher got his start in acting at the age of 9. In the four years since then, he has played leading roles in numerous films and documentaries, receiving several Joey Awards nominations for his acting and winning a Young Entertainer Award in Los Angeles. For Beyond the Sun, he spent two months shooting in Argentina last year. He describes the film as “a religious adventure movie for kids.” The film – which features Pope Francis – was a highlight of his career so far, he said.
This year, Aiden celebrated his bar mitzvah in a novel way: by organizing Our Voices, a film festival that put child and youth filmmakers in the spotlight. Said Aiden of his unusual choice, “I wanted something that wasn’t all about me, something that gave back to other people, gave them the chance to express themselves and the opportunity to be heard and celebrated.”
Our Voices received more than 200 submissions from around the world and the contest culminated in a screening at Hollywood 3 Cinema in Pitt Meadows on Nov. 4. The entries represented a wide range of
genres and narrative styles: documentaries, films about relationships, films about giving kids the tools to deal with anxiety, music videos, comedies. The selections were judged by a panel that included professionals in the movie industry, with Aiden having the final say on the winners. His favourite movie was A Pencil, a satire on Apple. “It didn’t really fit in the categories so we created a Wildcard Award,” said Aiden. “We also made a Tikkun Olam Award for another wonderful film from Australia, Today?, which was about giving kids the tools to express themselves, finding solidarity against bullying.”
Admission for the screening of the 60-plus films was by donation, with the proceeds being donated to B.C. Children’s Hospital. Aiden presented a cheque for $610 to the hospital on Nov. 7, to show his gratitude for the care they have provided him, his friends and family.
“A big part of my life is finding ways to give back, because I know that I have been blessed,” said Aiden. “My family has faced difficult times – such as my mom’s cancer diagnosis a few years back – but we have always found ways to make it through.”
With his parents, Chris and Apis, Aiden helps others, despite whatever adversity he might be facing. “When my mom was sick, we made a kids book to help others going through the same thing. It’s available as a free PDF to anyone that needs it, and some printed copies have been given away too.”
Regarding his approach to tzedakah, he said, “A big part of this is feeling that we are helping to heal the world, even a little. I can’t fix everything, but being a kid doesn’t mean I’m helpless. I can still make a difference, even if it’s a small one.”
He credited his family for his sense of agency. “I am really thankful that I have a very strong, loving family, and that we tackle all challenges together, perform mitzvot together.”
This was certainly the case with a documentary he made on Vancouver Island, about saving at-risk salmon fry during a brutal drought.
Some of Aiden’s philanthropic work has brought him into contact with the harsh potential realities of life as a young adult. In 2016, he received an award at the Wall of Stars, an annual event that celebrates excellence in entertainment, with an emphasis on mutual support among artists. “The best part was that it was presented by Ms. Carol Todd, mother of Amanda Todd,” he said, referring to the teen who committed suicide in 2012 after relentless bullying. “My mom was there to see it,” he said.
Reflecting on the personal rewards of his work, Aiden said, “Making this film festival made me very happy. We got to see so many perspectives from around the world and see so many different lives.”
The big picture, though, is the impact of all this on the world around him. “I have been lucky,” he said, “to be in projects that all have a positive message.”
Shula Klingeris an author and journalist living in North Vancouver. Find out more at shulaklinger.com.
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’t looking to make a transition to movies when she was introduced to Muhi. In fact, she wasn’t remotely prepared for their chance meeting.
In 2013, she was working on a series of portraits for the New York Times 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’s grandson, a small boy named Muhi, whose limbs had been amputated.
“It was hard for me,” Castelnuovo-Hollander recalled with a bit of embarrassment. “‘How am I going to photograph him?’ The picture I published in the New York Times – I can’t believe it today – nobody can see that Muhi has no legs and no arms. He’s semi-concealed, because I wasn’t sure yet what the story was.”
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’s arms and legs to save his life.
Castelnuovo-Hollander and Tamir Elterman’s profoundly moving documentary, Muhi: Generally Temporary, 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 – 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.
The poignancy of Muhi’s situation is exacerbated by the extraordinary difficulty that his mother encounters obtaining documents and navigating the checkpoints. This political backdrop informs Muhi, 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’s mother can.
The core of the film, however, is the strong-willed, funny and occasionally rebellious boy for whom it is named.
“I was around Abu Naim and Muhi for almost a year before I came up with the idea that we want to do a film,” Castelnuovo-Hollander said during an interview this spring when the film had its world première at the San Francisco International Film Festival. “First, 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, ‘Let’s try and do a film.’ So there were a few stages and, by then, Abu Naim trusted me that I didn’t come to destroy his world or expose something.”
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’s personality and character, along with his bizarre state of limbo.
“When we started speaking about this,” said Elterman, “Rina told me, ‘I’m taking photographs and this kid’s amazing and there are extraordinary relationships, but these people need to speak. People need to hear Muhi, and see him in action.’ He sees himself like anyone else and, when you interact with him, after five minutes, you see him as everyone else. But that’s a function of meeting him and getting to know him in a way that still photos don’t allow you to do.”
Elterman, who was born in Berkeley, Calif., to Mexican parents and moved to Israel after college – and then returned to New York to earn his master’s before returning to Tel Aviv for good – met Rina when he was making two- and three-minute films for the New York Times’ website.
“I’ve always been interested in the mixing of worlds coming together and what happens at that intersection,” Elterman explained. “It might have been serendipitous, but this story and this setting was perfect for what I’m interested in exploring.”
For her part, Castelnuovo-Hollander preferred a novice filmmaker to a veteran.
“He came without preconceived ideas, and that was a very important thing for me,” she said. “Tamir 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’s how it is. We did it for passion, basically.”
Muhi is at the Roxy Theatre in Victoria on Nov. 21, 6:30 p.m. For the full Victoria film festival schedule, visit vijff.ca. For the remaining screenings of the Vancouver festival, visit vjff.org.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
Five years before the end of his life, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, gave six hours of interviews to an American who had recently made aliyah and moved near to Ben-Gurion’s Negev kibbutz retirement home in Sde Boker. The 1968 video footage sat undisturbed in the Steven Spielberg Jewish Film Archive in Jerusalem until it was rediscovered, but the audio was missing. Eventually, it too was found – in the Ben-Gurion archives at Sde Boker. Reunited, the six hours were whittled down by director Yariv Mozer to the one-hour film Ben-Gurion, Epilogue, which is part of this year’s Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.
Mere months after the death of his wife, Paula, Ben-Gurion reflected on his personal and public life. His Zionism was born in his Polish childhood, when the larger-than-life visionary Theodor Herzl traveled the Pale of Settlement. “When Herzl arrived in our little towns, they said, ‘Messiah’s come!’ And I believed it,” Ben-Gurion shared.
Ben-Gurion created a new life at least twice, first making aliyah and bringing to life the Jewish state, then, again, in retirement, when he retreated to the life of a simple kibbutznik in the Negev. His fascination with the desert was sparked in 1954, he said, when he was driving from Eilat back to central Israel and saw a cluster of rudimentary homes by the side of the road. He asked what they were doing there. “We were fighting in the War of Independence in this place,” the pioneers told him. “I decided to join them, to start building up, in the desert, where there is no soil, no water, no grass, no rain.”
The human side of the Ben-Gurion couple is on display through interspersed earlier footage of David and Paula together. In an interview with the BBC’s Malcolm Muggeridge, Paula says she was opposed to David’s retirement from politics. “Because he could not exist without politics,” she says.
“I can exist without politics,” he replies, without looking up.
“No you can’t,” she says. “It’s born in you.”
Likewise, when David gives a ponderous explanation of why he no longer defines himself as a Zionist, Paula deadpans, “I married a Zionist and you are not a Zionist?”
The interviewer draws Ben-Gurion into reflections on his tumultuous time in politics, including the riots that emerged in response to his decision to accept reparation payments, arms and military training from the West German government. But if the viewer is anticipating any earth-shattering revelations, Ben-Gurion is largely glib. Israel needed support and West Germany was offering.
As the Jewish people have a special role in the world, Ben-Gurion says, so does the Jewish state: to reflect the virtues set out by the Prophets. “To be just, truthful, helping all those who need help, and love other men like yourself,” the statesman says. “These are the virtues.”
“Do you think Israel is carrying out that mission?” asks the interviewer.
“Not yet,” Ben-Gurion replies instantly.
Ben-Gurion, Epilogue screens Nov. 6 and 11.
– Pat Johnson
***
In the American film Pinsky, the main character, Sophia Pinsky, has a good life: a job, a girlfriend, an apartment. But then her girlfriend leaves without saying goodbye and Sophia’s life unravels. She moves back home, to join her father, grandmother and brother, all still living together (what a miserable prospect), and the cheerless family dynamics are the focus of the movie.
The family are Russian Jews, and they are all unhappy for various reasons. Sophia works at a Russian grocery store. She feels alone, underappreciated and vulnerable. Nobody understands her. Her grandma tries to set her up with a nice Russian Jewish boy. “You’re too pretty to be a lesbian,” grandma declares, which drives Sophia bonkers.
She misses her girlfriend, she is searching for something big and beautiful, but, unfortunately, nothing even remotely resembling her dreams enters her drab life.
Depression seems to run in the family. Sophia’s brother is an alcoholic. Her father isn’t dealing well with aging. The grandmother, the only colourful character in the movie, is meddlesome and tactless, bossing around everyone in the family.
Everyone is lonely. Nobody understands one another. But, the truth is: none of them even tries to understand anyone else. Everyone concentrates on their own melancholy, hides inside their own bubbles of misery.
This movie reminded me of Chekhov’s plays: everyone is whining and nobody does anything positive. Unlike Chekhov though, this is a fragmented series of moments in the lives of different family members over a few days. The entire dysfunctional family comes under the director’s scrutiny, and all are found wanting.
Pinsky screens Nov. 9. The festival runs until Nov. 12. For the full schedule, visit vjff.org.
Like one of her favourite romantic comedies, Crossing Delancey, writer-director Rachel Israel’s narrative feature debut, Keep the Change, is a New York love story with a tangible Jewish undercurrent.
The romantic duo in the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival’s opening night selection readily self-identify as Jewish, but they share another quality that for most people primarily defines them: David (Brandon Polansky) and Sarah (Samantha Elisofon) are on the autism spectrum.
Refreshingly honest and sexually straightforward in its portrayal of the way people with autism interact with each other, with their families and with strangers, Keep the Change received two prizes when it premièred at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
“A few of the characters are naturally unfiltered in the way they talk about sex, and I thought it was a beautiful and fun aspect of the characters,” Israel explained in a phone interview.
“A lot of depictions of people with autism shy away from sex, and I think it’s important to show that people on the spectrum have sex lives,” she said. “To shy away from it is in some way demeaning or infantilizing.”
Keep the Change receives its Canadian première when it opens the VJFF Nov. 2 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas, followed by a Nov. 12 screening at the Rothstein Theatre. It also screens Nov. 19 at the Roxy Theatre, as part of the Victoria International Jewish Film Festival.
Israel spent her childhood in the Princeton, N.J., area and her adolescence and teen years in Boca Raton, Fla., before pursuing her undergraduate degree at the Rhode Island School of Design. She moved to New York for her graduate studies in film at Columbia, where she refocused her first screenplay from a drama about David’s family to an endearing, awkward and rocky love story between he and Sarah.
Israel set about making a short film, and discovered a community of people with autism at the Manhattan Jewish Community Centre. She cast Brandon and Samantha and, some five years later, asked them to reprise their roles for a feature.
“Brandon’s search for love and companionship, and possibly sexual experience, is a defining part of his personality,” Israel said. “When I met him, I didn’t know he was on the spectrum … until he told me. When he told me he had autism, it was an awakening, because I thought of someone like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, someone who shies away from contact. And that was very much not the way Brandon was.”
His character’s Jewishness is front and centre, which may feed into some viewers’ judgment of his ostentatiously wealthy parents (played by Jewish actors Jessica Walter and Tibor Feldman). Sarah’s Jewish identity is much less pronounced but it could be a plus – in theory – in winning David’s parents’ acceptance.
“He is quietly desperate to have a girl, so it wouldn’t have stopped him at all [if Sarah wasn’t Jewish],” Israel said. “But it’s a big thing for many Jewish parents for your kids to stay in the tribe. He thinks that it will please his parents. But, more than that, for himself he wants some traditional things for his life. He wants a permanent loving relationship. I think he thinks that should be marriage. He very much wants the things that he’s seen his peers from childhood acquire, and he doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t have them.”
David and Sarah are fictional versions of the real people.
“We wrote it in collaboration with the cast, but they are playing fictional characters,” Israel emphasized. “They are not playing themselves. We’ve created characters that had some of their tendencies, while other things were different. They could definitely draw upon who they were to inform their characters.”
After Tribeca, Israel screened Keep the Change at the Los Angeles Film Festival and at Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic, where it won two more prizes. Her grandfather, a financial supporter of the film, who escaped Czechoslovakia at 14 on one of the Kindertransports organized by Sir Nicholas Winton, attended the festival with Israel and the film.
For tickets and the full schedule for the VJFF (Nov. 2-12) and VIJFF (Nov. 18-21), visit vjff.org and vijff.ca, respectively.
About two dozen of the most popular Christmas songs were written by Jewish composers. An engaging documentary by Canadian producers, Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas, uses this fact as a jumping off point to explore the varied issues around Jewish relationships with Christmas, including Chinese food, the Chanukah-Christmas competition and some Jews’ conflicting desire to both fit in and remain distinctive from the majority culture.
The dreamlike documentary takes a retro, festive approach to the topic, beginning with a family of four arriving at a Chinese restaurant, circa the 1960s. Here, the wide-eyed children drink in the scene as waiters and fellow patrons break into song and chefs engage in kitchen percussions and choreography. Talking heads intersperse with these song-and-dance routines to explore, in an amusing way, the sometimes deep and multifaceted connections between Jews and the inescapable December holiday.
Jewish songsters are responsible for familiar tunes like “Walking in a Winter Wonderland” (Felix Bernard, born Felix William Bernhardt), “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” (Mel Tormé and Robert Wells, born Levinson) and “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (George Wyle, born Bernard Weissman). The propensity for changing Jewish-sounding surnames is also addressed.
Mark Breslin, the founder of Yuk Yuk’s comedy club chain, puts a fine point on the Jewish role in Christmas music. “You could write a song three percent of the population would buy the record or you could write a song that 97% of the population will buy the record,” he says. “The businessman in me says go for the bigger market.”
Another comedian, Jackie Mason, dismisses the idea that there is anything odd about people writing songs about a holiday that is not their own. “Who cares if it’s your own holiday?” Mason says. “If I see a lot of cows on the street, am I going to write about a cow? Do I have to be a partner with cows, do I have to live with cows, to write a song about them? If everybody’s a Christian, that’s an easier sale, isn’t it?”
One commentator notes that almost all the Christmas carols written by Jews were what could be called “secular” songs. They are not about the birth of Jesus but about chestnuts, snow and winter coziness, reinforcing a new mythology that was emerging in the middle of the 20th century, which turned Christmas into a non-denominational winter celebration. In this, Jews and other non-Christians could more fully participate.
Ron Sidran, author of There Was a Fire: Jews, Music and the American Dream, cites Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas,” sung by Bing Crosby in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, as a turning point. “That song is the song where Irving Berlin de-Christs Christmas,” he says. “He turns Christmas into a holiday about snow.”
Calgary-born Ophira Eisenberg, who hosts NPR’s Ask Me Another radio quiz show, recalls receiving Chanukah gifts so she wouldn’t feel left out when her friends were getting visits from Santa. When the young Ophira asked her mother who the gifts came from, she was told that Moses came down from the mountain each year bringing presents to good little Jewish boys and girls. “Presents of dreidels and socks,” she adds wryly.
And while one speaker claims that Jewish composers wrote Christmas songs not as Jews, but as Americans, music journalist Robert Harris says “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is explicitly Jewish.
Rudolph’s creator, Robert May, said that he based the story of the reindeer – with his prominent nose, who was excluded from games with his peers and called names – on his own childhood as a Jewish American in the first half of the 20th century.
“And you know what’s incredible about Rudolph?” Harris says. “Rudolph doesn’t get a nose job. The point of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer is not for Rudolph to blend in and become another reindeer. The point of Rudolph is for Rudolph to be appreciated for what he is.” Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas screens at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival on Nov. 5.
In Maysaloun Hamoud’s Bar Bahar (In Between), three young Palestinian women share an apartment in Tel Aviv as they struggle with the issues of religion, sexuality and overall identity. They live “in between” cultures. They are not Israeli enough – they are Palestinian, and are reminded of that fact occasionally. They are not Palestinian enough either – they want to escape the traditional role of a Palestinian woman. Centuries-old traditions and modernity clash in this film, as each of the main characters undergoes her own challenges and heartaches.
Leila is a lawyer. Educated, sophisticated and beautiful, she drinks and parties, smokes constantly and does drugs, but, in her heart, she wants to find love and purpose. While she doesn’t forgive betrayal, she is generous and kind to her friends – no matter how lousy she feels, how much she mourns her unfulfilled dreams, she is always ready to help her roommates.
Selma is a bartender and a lesbian, but her parents can’t even hear the word, much less accept their daughter’s sexual orientation. Their confrontation on screen is painful to watch. The parents are overwrought, unable to come to terms with their daughter’s choices. Selma herself is full of anguish, torn between her parents and her lover, even though she doesn’t say a word. Only her father talks, or rather screams, furiously. Her conflict and her parents’ desperation are powerful.
Nour is a university student, studying computer science. Religious and quiet, she wears a hijab and tries to reconcile herself with the traditional role of a Palestinian woman. Unlike her two roommates, she is not an overt rebel. She is betrothed, but her fiancé is scary and repulsive in his hypocrisy; he demands unquestioning compliance, and she tries, but she doesn’t love him.
The rape scene in the movie is not graphic, but its impact is immense. The incident and its aftermath puts all the relationships into perspective. It tests all three women’s courage and their humanity. It shows their capacity for compassion and their resilience.
The movie is simple on the surface, just a few days in the women’s lives, but a lot goes on behind the scenes, providing a multifaceted view of life in today’s Israel. All three roommates are living, breathing women, hoping for a better life, helping each other to achieve it. As much as the movie is their story, its themes are universal.
The film won several Israeli and international awards, and all of the awards are well-deserved.
Bar Bahar screens at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival on Nov. 5.
Noa Koler in The Wedding Plan, which screens Nov. 9 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. (photo from Roadside Attractions)
The grin-inducing trailer for The Wedding Plan nonetheless suggests one question – did Israeli filmmaker Rama Burshtein sell out?
The Orthodox writer-director’s acclaimed debut, Fill the Void, was an uncompromising story of a young Orthodox woman grappling with her parents’ and community’s expectations regarding her prospective husband. In contrast, The Wedding Plan, while also being chuppah-bound, appears from the trailer to be a romantic comedy designed to entertain.
In fact, The Wedding Plan is a high-stakes emotional journey about an observant woman in her 30s who’s so unhappy that she resolves to wed on the last night of Chanukah – with no groom in sight – after her fiancé breaks up with her mere weeks before their appointed date. Michal’s family and friends counsel against such a bold, risky and potentially devastating strategy, but she remains undeterred.
The film contains plenty of witty one-liners but, as the Israeli trailer conveyed, it’s not a disposable sitcom. Burshtein has assuredly not sold out. She simply trusted her U.S. distributor’s marketing strategy, even if some ticket-buyers are misled.
“If you think you’re going to see a romantic comedy and you get something more, that’s good,” said Burshtein. “You get something stronger and that’s OK.”
The Wedding Plan screens on Nov. 9, 4 p.m., at Fifth Avenue Cinemas as part of this year’s Vancouver Jewish Film Festival.
Both of Burshtein’s films raise a curtain on the lives of Orthodox women, in part through honest conversations they have among themselves when men aren’t around. The characters reject the idea that Orthodox women are subservient to men and, unsurprisingly, so does their creator.
“For me,” said Burshtein, “being religious is liberating. It’s not killing or closing or not letting me express my thoughts.”
Burshtein goes even further, asserting that women are the creative force.
“The art world is women,” she said. “[Orthodox] men don’t make films, they don’t cook, they don’t paint.”
Burshtein originally pitched The Wedding Plan as a television series, but, after getting the green light and embarking on the script, she decided it would be a feature film. Although she doesn’t say it, a movie is seen by more people around the world than an Israeli TV show.
“I’m writing from my world to the outside world,” the filmmaker explained in a phone interview during a press day in Washington, D.C. “Not [just] to secular people but to non-Jews. It opens a window to my world to people who know nothing about my world.”
Burshtein was born in New York and became religious while she was in film school in Jerusalem in the 1980s. She admits she didn’t expect the attention her films have received abroad, but at the same time isn’t surprised they touch audiences far beyond Tel Aviv and New York.
“We live in an age when women find their partner pretty late,” she said. “And sometimes they don’t. It’s very hard to find someone that you really want to share your life with. [My films] connect to that. All over the world, it’s the same thing, the same heart.”
The Wedding Plan is unmistakably and unapologetically set in the Orthodox community but the crux of the film is Michal’s urgent personal quest. Although her ostensible goal is to get married, a raw and powerful opening scene makes it clear that what she really craves and seeks is the respect of a committed partner.
Michal’s striving is universal and at times absurd, which spawns the film’s humour. Because she has no time to waste, Michal (played by the fearless Noa Koler) confronts every prospective suitor with direct questions and shockingly honest confessions that derail and discomfit them.
Michal’s pain and desperation are palpable through the laughs, to the point where she makes a pilgrimage to Ukraine to the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov. That’s not an incidental detail, for Burshtein is a proponent of Rabbi Nachman’s philosophy.
“We can handle despair, and we can handle hope,” she said. “The film is that movement between the two. You should be a fighter in the movement, and not get lost in the movement.”
The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs Nov. 2-9 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas and Nov. 10-12 at the Rothstein Theatre. For tickets and the full schedule, as well as the trailer for The Wedding Plan, visit vjff.org.
Michael Foxis a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.
