TV & Film – Page 2

Ari’s Theme opens VIFF

Ari Kinarthy’s nightmare before the live recording session. (screenshot from Salazar Film)

The 43rd Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) officially opens Sept. 26 with the screening of Ari’s Theme, a TELUS original feature documentary about local composer Ari Kinarthy by local filmmakers Jeff Lee Petry and Nathan Drillot, who run Salazar Film.

Jewish Independent readers will be familiar with all three creatives, who will attend both VIFF screenings, ready to answer audience questions, as well as participate in a panel discussion.

Sam Margolis first wrote about Victoria Jewish community member Kinarthy in 2020 – Kinarthy, 30 years old at the time, had released two albums, won an international music competition and was looking for people who might want original music for a project they were working on.

“I create all my music entirely with the computer,” he told the Independent. “Sometimes, I will have access to a guitar player or singer but normally the music will be all done by the samples I use. I usually start with just piano and sometimes will write out a score. I think of a melody and/or harmony and continue from there. I love making themes.”

Kinarthy uses a special computer system to record his music, as he has spinal muscular atrophy type 2, a symptom of which is worsening muscle weakness.

When Margolis interviewed Kinarthy a second time for the Independent, it was because Ari’s Theme was about to première at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival. In the article, which was published in April, the filmmakers share that the documentary was inspired by the first JI article.

“We hired Vaka Street Casting to help find us subjects for potential documentaries. They found the JI article while searching for individuals with unique stories,” Drillot told the Independent in an interview last week.

Drillot said the number one factor he and Petry look for in possible documentary subjects is that the individual has a unique perspective – “You’ve got to be an outside the box thinker,” he said, “which Ari most definitely is.”

“As we learned more about Ari’s story, we thought about how interesting it would be to work with a composer like Ari, who has a very particular life experience, and ask him to compose music about the most impactful moments, dreams and experiences of his life and let us create cinematic scenes around them,” Petry told the Independent in April.

It was hard to imagine just how Petry and Drillot would create those scenes and how Kinarthy would not only choose the times in his life to highlight, but be able to compose the music to accompany those emotional times. We learn in the film that Kinarthy doesn’t just want to write any song – he wants to leave a legacy, to make an impact on the world, so that his life will have been, in his words, “worth it.”

screenshot - Ari Kinarthy in a recording session with musicians at the Alix Goolden Performance Hal — Ari Kinarthy in a recording session with musicians at the Alix Goolden Performance Hall. *(screenshot from Salazar Film)*

Kinarthy’s honesty with his feelings, fears and ambitions, is remarkable. He undergoes a transformation during the film. His physical challenges and the dangers to his health if he gets sick have led to him being isolated for much of his life, relying on a few key caregivers and his parents. He is mentally strong, though, and this is made clear as he questions the walls he has built to protect himself and as he lives seemingly at peace with his limitations, while also knowing what he is capable of beyond them. That he allows the filmmakers – and us – to see just how vulnerable he is, is proof of his sheer strength.

“Watching Ari go through the process of making the film was incredibly rewarding,” said Drillot. “He overcame a lot of creative obstacles and consistently impressed the whole filmmaking team with his drive, determination and creativity. Personally seeing him watch the footage in the movie theatre was the most impactful. It’s a very unique experience to sit in a movie theatre and see your life reflected back at you. I really have a lot of respect for Ari for trusting the process and for constantly rising to the occasion.”

Kinarthy opens himself up creatively in ways even he may have thought not possible. We see him working with fellow musicians Allan Slade and Johannes Winkler, who provide feedback and guidance, and help him translate his vision into reality. It is in these scenes that we witness both Kinarthy’s confidence and anxiety, and the filmmakers capture it incredibly well, unobtrusively filming the men creating together, with other shots of Kinarthy talking about the process. There is an especially powerful scene, where Kinarthy sits alone in the Alix Goolden Performance Hall, on stage, as pages of music swirl madly about him.

Ari’s Theme uses such special effects, as well as animation and reenactments, to help tell Kinarthy’s story. There are home videos of Kinarthy and his family, and it is so moving to hear him talk about his family – describing his sister as a drum, driving him to enjoy himself; his dad as a cello, supporting from the background; and his mom as a piano, providing the strong underlying cords binding the family together. “And then there was me. I was a flute,” he says. “A little sound that would come in and out. I wasn’t integral to the song, but I added something unique. I often miss that version of myself, when life was expanding, free of concern and anxiety. As I’ve gotten older, these memories have become more and more important to me.”

In the film, Kinarthy questions whether other people will be interested in his memories. Anyone who sees the documentary will likely respond with a resounding, yes! Not only interested in the memories, but inspired by the man who shared them and the man who created their impressive soundtrack.

Passages of that soundtrack will be performed live at the opening event by members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. For tickets to either screening of Ari’s Theme (Sept. 26 or 28) and any other VIFF offerings, visit viff.org. The festival runs to Oct. 6.

Victoria film fest set to start

The Latin American and Spanish Film Week returns to Cinecenta, on the campus of the University of Victoria, Sept. 19-22. (photos courtesy Dan Russek)

The Latin American and Spanish Film Week returns to Cinecenta, on the campus of the University of Victoria, from Sept. 19 to 22. Now in its 14th season, this year’s event will offer movies from Argentina, Mexico and Spain, with all screenings taking place at 7 p.m. Each showing will have English subtitles.

The cinematic fiesta is put together by the Hispanic Film Society of Victoria. The society’s mandate is to promote Latin American and Spanish films in the city through the annual film festival. It also aims to further the knowledge and enjoyment of Spanish-language films through cultural and academic events to benefit the community.

Jewish community member Prof. Dan Russek, the organizer of the event, which began in 2010, said, “As part of the UVic faculty and a member of the Hispanic community, I am proud to bring this cultural event to Victoria again. It should interest folks not only from Latin America and Spain but also members of the community at large.

“There is no need to speak Spanish to understand the movies,” Russek added. “They all feature contemporary, relatable stories, and they function as windows to the diverse societies, cultures, histories and politics of the Spanish world. Our mission is to expand the horizons of our audience, and we believe, at the society, that we have achieved this goal again.”

The week will actually start on Sept. 18 at Caffe Fantastico (965 Kings Rd.) at 6 p.m. with a presentation from the society that will feature five local artists, all of whom hail from Latin America. They will discuss their experiences as migrants to Canada, their process of adaptation and their artistic practices.

Cuban pianist Pablo Cardenas, Mexican classical violinist Pablo Diemecke and Mercedes Batiz-Benet, a Mexican writer, theatre director and producer, will start the evening. They will be followed by Cuban trumpeter Miguelito Valdes and Chilean actress and theatre producer Lina de Guevara. The event is free, though audience members are encouraged to purchase food and drinks.

The first film offering, on Sept. 19, is Totem, a Mexican movie from director Lila Aviles. The family drama focuses on 7-year-old Sol, who bears witness to the preparations of a party in honour of her cancer-stricken father, Tona.

Totem was Mexico’s entry for best foreign feature for the 2023 Academy Awards. It picked up the Ecumenical Award for Best Film at the 2023 Berlin International Film Festival, and Aviles received an award for best director at the 2023 Jerusalem Film Festival.

Puán, an Argentine-Italian-French-German-Brazilian international co-production, will hit the screen on Sept.20. The 2023 comedy-drama from Maria Alché and Benjamin Naishtat tells the tale of Marcelo, a philosophy professor in Buenos Aires who sees his plans upended upon the arrival of his former colleague, who is based in Germany – the charismatic Rafael. Their conflict is set amid the crisis in Argentina’s education sector.

“The hapless but deeply lovable and tragically self-aware Marcelo needs and deserves a psychological makeover, and Naishtat and Alché are too fond of him to deny him one. How and where it happens is a treat,” Jessica Kiang wrote in Variety.

Lillian Torres’s Mamifera will represent Spain on Sept. 21. The 2024 film tells the story of Lola, who, along with her partner, Bruno, enjoys a happy life until an unexpected pregnancy turns everything upside down. Her previous determination not to be a mother is challenged by social expectations and the inner fears she faces. In a review for the Austin Chronicle, Jessi Cape wrote that the film “tackles an endlessly complicated, often excruciating, sometimes beautiful topic with grace, humour and easily relatable characters.”

The festival concludes Sept. 22 with Bernardo Arsuaga’s 2023 documentary The Michoacán File, which traces the history of Mexican food and the efforts of a group of diplomats, chefs and intellectuals to make the country’s cuisine an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, an acknowledgement granted by UNESCO. After the film, the public is invited to stay for a conversation and Q&A about Mexican food with Israel Alverez Molina, owner and chef of Victoria’s MaiiZ Nixtamal Eatery and Tortilleria, and Maria Elena Cuervo-Lorens, the author of two cookbooks on Mexican cuisine.

For more information about the Latin American and Spanish Film Week, visit the Hispanic Film Society of Victoria website, hispfilmvic.ca.

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

Rise and fall of a hacktivist

Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum opens at VIFF Centre June 14.

Jacob Appelbaum was an influential internet freedom, privacy and free speech activist. He collaborated with Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, which Assange founded in 2006 to publish leaked documents and information. He helped the journalists with whom whistleblower Edward Snowden shared documents make the stories public. And he was prominent in the TOR Project (aka “the dark web”). Then, suddenly, Appelbaum took himself out of the spotlight.

Writer, director and producer Jamie Kastner wanted to know why. He also wanted to know more about this well-known yet little-known “hacktivist” and the subculture in which Appelbaum operated. The result is the documentary Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum, which screens at VIFF Centre June 14-17 and June 20.

“I first saw Appelbaum in another documentary about WikiLeaks, in which he was playing a supporting role,” Kastner told the Independent. “He jumped off the screen both for his charisma and his clear-eyed and apparently fearless political commitment. I learned about the broad strokes of the scandal in which he was later involved, became intrigued not only by what had happened with him, but by this whole activist community about which I had known little.”

After being accused of sexual abuse in 2016, Appelbaum left the United States for Germany. It is there, reads the documentary’s PR material, that Kastner “finds him, adamant that he is the victim of government black ops, ‘canceled’ without legal process or recourse, punished for who he is, and for what he represents.”

“Though I’m sure even he would not claim that all the work he has done has been flawless,” said Kastner, “to me there remains at least an aspect to the work he’s done, regardless of what may or may not have come later, that represents a fearless standing up to authority, taking significant personal risks to expose abuses of power and to help improve people’s lives by making them better informed about governments and surveillance.”

He continued, “As lawyer Margaret Ratner Kunstler explains in the film, in an era in which journalism has shrunk and become ever more controlled by government and/or large corporations, the significance of so-called leakers and hackers has grown to become one of our last sources of unfiltered news and information.”

Kastner gave the examples of WikiLeaks having “released Chelsea Manning’s leaks, including the ‘Collateral Murder’ video of American drones killing civilians and journalists in Iraq in 2007, and a trove of Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, among many other controversial releases.”

In 2013, Snowden, “a former contractor for the National Security Agency, America’s cyber-intelligence gathering service … leaked a vast trove of documents revealing the information gathering practices of the US and its ‘Five Eyes’ allies countries, including how data was gathered covertly on their own citizens,” said Kastner.

With Snowden, the filmmaker added, Appelbaum “helped the journalists to whom Snowden leaked his documents both manage the technology involved, and investigate and disseminate stories arising from Snowden’s leaks, including penning a cover story in German newsmagazine Der Speigel revealing that the US was spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.”

Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum was about five years in the making.

“It was a slow and wary process, once contact was made, of gaining access to Appelbaum and establishing trust on both sides,” explained Kastner. “I knew he was a controversial, brilliant and at times troubled figure, but I approached the story with an open mind. It struck me as a fascinating story in which one person’s trajectory tracked the rise and fall of a movement that, for a time, was rocking the world.

“I worked with a team of researchers to gain necessary context and try to build relationships within this very wary community. I worked extensively – features, in my experience, take six months or so in editing – with my collaborator Michael Hannan in the edit suite, to try to craft a film that would make the audience experience the real-life spy quality I experienced in entering into Appelbaum’s world, in which things, at times, seem too fantastical to be true – but sufficient evidence is there to suggest they are not false.”

Kastner’s many credits – through his and wife Laura Baron Kastner’s Cave 7 Productions – include The Skyjacker’s Tale (2016), There Are No Fakes (2019) and Charlotte’s Castle (2023). Cave 7 documentaries have not only garnered award recognition but inspired action. There Are No Fakes, for example, helped launch “a criminal investigation into widespread fraudulent production of and distribution of Indigenous art,” leading to “eight arrests, 40 charges laid and 1,000 paintings seized,” notes the company.

As a documentarian, Kastner is especially aware of the evasiveness of “the truth” and its often-subjective nature. While he said, “I still admire the same qualities about Appelbaum that first drew me to the subject, his political spirit and work,” the making of the documentary took him to all sorts of places he hadn’t expected.

“Learning about the community from which he and Assange sprung made me realize the film was about a larger story, larger issues which the narrative of Appelbaum’s life raises,” said Kastner. “You don’t have to like him, the film is not an apologia or a hagiography. I investigate the accusations as extensively as possible. Ultimately, as the title suggests, the film equally became about the people who don’t want to talk about him, and the many reasons for that. I don’t think I had fixed ideas about the ‘truth’ going into this film. I don’t pretend the film leaves with any one conclusion, but rather hopefully, is the jumping-off point for further discussion.”

For tickets to a screening, visit viff.org/whats-on/nobody-talk-jacob-appelbaum. The documentary will start streaming on CBC Gem on June 26.

Art transcends our lives

Little Richard, left, and Jackie Shane. A still from the film Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story, which closes the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 11. (image from NFB and Banger Films)

An incredible voice, a charismatic performer, a unique human being. Yet, most of us have never heard of Jackie Shane, a rising R&B star in the 1950s and ’60s, who appeared to disappear in 1971.

Michael Mabbott and Lucah Rosenberg-Lee’s feature-length documentary Any Other Way: The Jackie Shane Story closes the DOXA Documentary Film Festival on May 11 at Simon Fraser University’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema. In addition to Toronto Jewish community member Rosenberg-Lee, who may attend the festival, Winnipeg Jewish community member Toby Gillies is coming to Vancouver with co-director Natalie Baird for the May 10 screening of their short, Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, which also takes place at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema.

An R&B legend

A Banger Films and National Film Board of Canada co-production, Any Other Way mixes animation and real-life footage, using Shane’s music, recorded phone conversations between Mabbott and Shane, as well as other interviews, photos and the sole recorded performance of Shane to tell the transgender artist’s story. And it’s a fascinating story, from her leaving her home of Nashville, because of safety concerns, as a queer person, to being a musician in a traveling carnival, to leaving the carnival for Montreal, then leaving Montreal for Toronto, where she immediately felt at home.

By 1963, Shane was a sensation. Her recording of “Any Other Way” was a hit, even though radio stations in Toronto at the time generally did not play Black music – people called CHUM Radio so much they had to play the song and it rose to #2. Shane was invited onto The Ed Sullivan Show but turned them down because they wouldn’t let her perform with makeup, dressed as she wanted; she didn’t do American Bandstand, saying it was a racist show. Shane chose not to do other shows or tour. She recorded her one live album in Toronto.

But not being able to be her true self took its toll and Shane walked away from her success in 1971, changed her name and moved. “I chose Los Angeles because I wanted to feel something else,” she says in the film.

For family reasons, she eventually had to return to Nashville, where she became a recluse, only emerging in 2016 for a reissue of her songs. Nominated for a Grammy in 2018, she was ready to tour, but died in 2019, before that could happen.

Among the treasures found in Shane’s storage unit was an autobiography she had handwritten, as well as unreleased recordings.

“Those discoveries … were incredible,” said Mabbott in an interview on the NFB website. “After Jackie passed away, we started working with her family, who didn’t know that Jackie existed, and then inherited her incredible archive. As they were discovering who Jackie was, we were understanding her through her jewelry and tapes. What was also born out of that is the family’s story, which was a slightly unexpected creative approach.

“Hearing the family talk about her, learn about her legacy and describe what it meant to them was obviously very personal but also really universal. This is a family that lived blocks away from her, didn’t know she was there and missed out on having her. I think that a lot of us feel that loss and that translates in all sorts of ways.”

Happy imaginings

image - A still from the short Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, co-directed by Toby Gillies and Natalie Baird, which screens May 10 at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, as part of this year’s DOXA festival. — A still from the short Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying, co-directed by Toby Gillies and Natalie Baird, which screens May 10 at SFU’s Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, as part of this year’s DOXA festival. *(image from NFB)*

The NFB short film Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying also explores loss. The PR material describes the seven-minute work as a “meditation on love, grief and imagination,” which “celebrates life and the transformative ability of art to elevate and transcend us.”

Featuring Edith Almadi, the short uses Almadi’s artwork and words to spur contemplation of the bonds people form, and what it’s like to lose a loved one. In this case, Almadi is recalling her son, who recently died.

“I fly with him,” she says, and she feels happiness. In the animation of Almadi’s artwork, we see her son fly to the moon and beyond, with fairies, butterflies and other creatures. Not only is she with her son in her art, but also with everyone she loves. In her imagination, she is totally free.

“Our initial motivation for interviewing Edith was to save memories for ourselves – we find the way she speaks fascinating and poetic,” write Gillies and Baird in a directors’ statement. “When Edith looks at her drawings, she sees her memories and fantasies. She is able to escape her physical circumstance, through entering her marker and watercolour worlds.”

Gillies and Baird have led an art program at Winnipeg’s Misericordia Health Centre since 2014, and that’s where they met Almadi, a Hungarian immigrant in her late 80s, who uses a wheelchair.

“In our time knowing Edith, she has always loved sharing her outlook publicly,” the directors write. “As we have developed the film, we have shown Edith our progress along the way. She says, ‘That’s me’ and ‘That’s all I have to give’ proudly. Facilitating art-making in this personal care home has allowed us to meaningfully connect with many people in their last stages of life. As directors, this film gives us the opportunity to share this one particular experience of intimacy found through collaborative art-making.”

DOXA runs May 2-12. For tickets and the full festival lineup, visit doxafestival.ca.

Ed Asner shines in final role

Ed Asner gives a remarkable performance in Tiger Within, which is part of the online Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, April 15-19. (tigerwithin.info/press-photos)

I had the privilege of interviewing Ed Asner several years ago. It was an experience I (and my mother, who also got to speak with him) won’t forget. So, it was with some sentimentality that I watched his last film, Tiger Within, which can be screened online April 15-19, as part of the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which has other movies being presented at the Rothstein Theatre April 12-14.

Asner, who died in 2021, gives a wonderful, understated performance in Tiger Within, as widower and Holocaust survivor Samuel, who takes a troubled young woman under his wing, and changes her life for the better. His performance is the main reason to watch this film. People old enough to know Asner will understand when I say Tiger Within would have fit perfectly into the ABC Afterschool Special lineup. Well-intentioned, it is not well written and, with the exception of Asner, the acting is middling.

Casey, played by Margot Josefsohn, is a rebellious teenager with a struggling mother who prefers to keep her nasty boyfriend happy than care for her daughter. Casey’s father has started a new family and their suburban life isn’t a place for the mouthy, punk-loving, artistic teen. Another highlight of Tiger Within is Casey’s art, which makes appearances throughout, further communicating her frustrations and other feelings.

Out on her own, Casey is lucky to meet Samuel, who sees her inner light and inherent worth, even if she doesn’t. He manages to see beyond the swastika someone spray-painted on her jacket, which she didn’t bother to wash off, and her antisemitic opinions, including that Jews made up the Holocaust, which were taught to her by her mom and others. He gives her the unconditional love, snippets of wisdom and space to “tame the tiger within” and make her place in the world.

The movie has a timely and important message. And a younger audience might be just the one to receive it in the manner it was intended.

“One of the biggest tragedies is the misuse of love, the most powerful force there is,” writes director Rafal Zielinski on the movie’s website (tigerwithin.info). “Loving oneself, family, group, race, country (narcissism) and being incapable of loving the other equally, as oneself, is the misuse of love, it breeds hate.

“That is the message, I feel, in this film – Samuel overcomes hate for this girl and shows her unconditional love.

“It’s the greatest gift anyone can receive on this earth, and he keeps his promise, he once made to his wife – ‘to forgive all before he dies.’”

For tickets to Tiger Within and other festival films, visit vjff.org.

Writing music for life

Composer Ari Kinarthy writes music using interactive hardware and software systems that form sounds from movements. His story is told in the documentary Ari’s Theme, which will screen at Hot Docs in Toronto, then be available on TELUS originals. (photo from Salazar Film)

Ari’s Theme, about Victoria composer Ari Kinarthy, will make its world première this spring at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Festival. Directors Jeff Petry and Nathan Drillot said the idea for the documentary came from an article about Kinarthy in the Jewish Independent, which was published in April 2020.

Petry and Drillot, who run Salazar Film, a production company located in Vancouver, were intrigued and inspired by Kinarthy upon discovering his method for composing music. By using interactive hardware and software systems that form sounds from movements, Kinarthy can use the movements he makes with his wheelchair to produce music that is recorded into multimedia platforms. For example, movements closer to the recording device create lower notes and movements further away result in higher notes.

Petry and Drillot pitched the project to TELUS originals, which supports local documentaries by independent filmmakers in British Columbia and Alberta, with the objective of bringing films on various social topics to wider audiences.

“As the filmmaking relationship between Ari and ourselves developed, it turned into a really deep collaboration, and other themes we hadn’t expected started to grow and evolve,” said Petry. “Ari showed a lot of strength and vulnerability in creating this film with us and, for this, we are really honoured by his trust.”

Kinarthy, now in his 30s, has used a wheelchair since childhood because of type-2 spinal muscular atrophy, a condition that continues to weaken his muscles. Kinarthy is profoundly cognizant of his mortality and Ari’s Theme delves into his desire to tell his story, as he endeavours to create a new composition inspired by some of the most meaningful moments in his life.

“This film has been nothing short of a gift from God,” Kinarthy said. “The ability to install my music in a visual project is already amazing, and my dream, but to have that project be a complete portrayal of my life is truly special. I have always wanted a way to not only inspire others but to have my memory, or legacy, encapsulated so that I live on beyond my body.”

Kinarthy said he enjoys the challenge of creating grand symphonic music of the sort John Williams writes – the kind composed for a hero. There have been times in his life, he said, when he has had to fight like one.

For Kinarthy, the process of working on the film was a journey from stress to happiness.

“Looking back and reflecting on my past, myself, and my life was challenging and rewarding. I have been through a lot and I got to write music about key moments,” he said.

“Working with Salazar was a wonderful experience,” he added. “The studio was always very understanding of my situation and gave me tons of flexibility to write how I write. They were also very helpful in helping me articulate my thoughts. The directors and I became close during the process of the film, and I am so glad I got to meet them. I will never forget them.”

Petry and Drillot have several documentaries to their credit, including Becoming Sumo, the story of Ōsunaarashi Kintarō, the world’s first Arab Muslim professional sumo wrestler; Handsome and Majestic, a short film about a teenage transgender boy growing up in Prince George; and Wizard Mode, a feature-length movie (eventually acquired by Netflix US) about Robert Gagno, a world champion pinball player.

Over the past decade, Petry and Drillot have filmed around the world, from Nunavik to Bolivia, to the Democratic Republic of Congo. They received Juno and Grammy nominations for best full-length music documentary for their work with Canadian indie rock duo Tegan and Sara.

Despite some problems, which were recently reported in the entertainment media, it appears the show will go on for Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival, now in its 31st year. In late March, director Hussain Currimbhoy stepped down for personal reasons, according to the festival. Ten other members of the programming team also left, for undisclosed reasons.

Ari’s Theme will first screen in Toronto on April 30, followed by another festival screening on May 2. After its Hot Docs run, the film will be available on TELUS Optik TV Channel 8 and online at TELUS originals.

To read the article that sparked the idea for Ari’s Theme, visit jewishindependent.ca/no-barriers-to-music. To view the documentary following its showing at Hot Docs, go to watch.telusoriginals.com.

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

Movies that offer optimism

Stay With Us (still from the film)

Healing. Of body and soul. Of self, community, family, friends. This year’s Vancouver Jewish Film Festival offers many poignant films – dramas sprinkled with humour that invite contemplation, and hope that we flawed humans are capable of change and loving one another, despite our insecurities and differences.

Of the films the Jewish Independent reviewed this week, Stay With Us and Rose are among the films that will be screened at Fifth Avenue Cinemas in the main portion of the festival, April 4-12, which is followed by various screenings at the Rothstein Theatre April 13-14. No Name Restaurant will be both at Fifth Avenue, as well as online during that portion of the festival, which runs April 15-19.

Stay With Us is a sensitively written and well-performed movie that is based on Moroccan-born Canadian comedian Gad Elmaleh’s real-life fascination with the Virgin Mary. In the movie, he returns to Paris to visit his family, not sharing with them that he is in the process of converting to Catholicism. Perhaps because he’s dealing with his own actual emotional journey (though he co-wrote the script with Benjamin Charbit), Stay With Us delicately and thoughtfully explores some of the roles religion has in life and the effects a potential conversion can have on a family.

Despite being an immensely personal film – Elmaleh’s real parents and sister play his family in the film and most of the cast are people close to him – Stay With Us will resonate with anyone who has questioned their purpose in life, or been curious about other religions and cultures. Elmaleh doesn’t disparage religion or the religious. Thankfully, he chooses to tackle the subject seriously, with well-timed comedy, his own stand-up act as part of the story, as well as other natural-seeming, unforced funny moments – the reaction of his parents when they find a statue of the Virgin Mary in his suitcase is hilarious, for example.

The movie Rose is similarly satisfying – serious but also light and amusing. In the first minutes, set at Philippe’s rocking, festive, friend-filled 80th birthday party, we learn that Rose and Philippe are still madly in love after decades of marriage, that their three adult children each have their own personal challenges and rivalries (between themselves and for their parents’ affection), and that Philippe is fatally ill.

Understandably, after Rose loses the love of her life, she grieves. Her children worry that she doesn’t answer the phone, that she’s not taking care of herself. When 78-year-old Rose does start to take care of herself, to focus on her needs, to rediscover herself after years of being a wife, mother and grandmother, her children worry even more.

image - a still from the film Rose — Rose *(still from the film)*

Written by Aurélie Saada and Yaël Langmann, Rose is a charming, heartwarming film about how we choose to experience life, its happy, sad and other moments – and how it’s never too late to find joy. Saada is the film’s director, and she also composed original music for the film, which has a notably wonderful soundtrack. The movie is infused with her Tunisian Jewish background.

“It was important for me to put my first film in this setting because I didn’t want to cheat,” Saada says in the press material. “I wanted this film to resemble me and not to borrow anything from cultures that I hadn’t sufficiently mastered. Also, Eastern Judaism is often caricatured in French cinema. I wanted to show its more complex face, far from the clichés. But it remains a setting, a costume, a perfume because the heart of the subject is not there. This film may be imbued with Judeo-Eastern culture, but a friend of mine from Corsica, a Christian, told me a short while ago: ‘It’s crazy, it’s like home.’ I believe that we humans are much more alike than we imagine.”

This notion pretty much encapsulates the film No Name Restaurant as well. Written and directed by Stefan Sarazin and Peter Keller, the idea for the story apparently came from Sarazin’s “numerous travels to the Middle East” and was “inspired by an abandoned boat in the desert and the friendship to an elderly Bedouin.”

Ben, an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn, has yet to marry. Within hours of arriving in Jerusalem, both to visit family but mostly to meet the matchmaker – who he purposefully misses by taking his time to get to his uncle’s shop from the airport – Ben eagerly agrees to Uncle Yechiel’s request to head right back to the airport to catch a flight to Egypt.

image - still from the film No Name Restaurant — No Name Restaurant (still from the film)

The Jewish community of Alexandria, the president of which is Yechiel’s brother-in-law, needs a 10th man to form a minyan before Passover. If they can’t observe the holiday, according to some written agreement, all the community’s property and possessions will have to be turned over to the state.

Ben seizes the chance to save the ages-old synagogue, but misses his plane and then is kicked off the bus to Alexandria by fellow passengers, putting the whole plan in jeopardy. Luckily, he is picked up in the Sinai Desert by Adel, a Bedouin searching for his lost camel. Unluckily, Adel’s truck breaks down and the two men must head out on foot. Short on water – much of which had been used by Ben for ritual handwashings along the way – and going only on Adel’s memory of a well his family had frequented when he was a kid, the journey is fraught with existential concerns, including what other Arabs might do to a Jew in their midst and to the Bedouin who is helping him.

No Name Restaurant is a buddy movie that delivers all that one would expect from such a movie and more. With respect and humour, it brings together Jews, Muslims and Christians in a novel way to optimistic effect.

For the full Vancouver Jewish Film Festival lineup, go to vjff.org.

Taking on care homes – Stolen Time screens in March 21

A still from the film Stolen Time: lawyer Melissa Miller reviews footage from a long-term-care room camera. (photo from National Film Board of Canada)

“I’m only at the beginning of this fight,” says lawyer Melissa Miller in the documentary Stolen Time, written and directed by Jewish community member Helene Klodawsky. Miller, of Toronto firm Howie, Sacks & Henry LLP, is lead counsel in mass tort claims against for-profit long-term-care corporations Extendicare, Revera Inc. and Sienna Senior Living.

Stolen Time will screen in Vancouver March 21 at VIFF Centre – Vancity Theatre, as part of a national release that includes Edmonton, Toronto and Montreal. The film is a joint production of Intuitive Pictures Inc. (with Jewish community member Ina Fichman at the helm) and the National Film Board of Canada (Ariel Nasr, producer).

To give readers an idea of what Miller is up against, there is a scene in the film where the private investigator she has hired, Brett Rigby, shares some financial data. According to Rigby’s documents, Extendicare had a revenue of $1.1 billion in 2019, $91 million in earnings and $42 million cash dividends declared – “and they’re locking up incontinence pads,” remarks Miller.

The film notes that “a few hundred family clients have grievances against these companies,” the most common complaints being serious dehydration, malnutrition, injuries and misdiagnoses. The homes apparently meet the requirements for staffing, but at least one person is off at any given time, so they are consistently understaffed. There seems to be no regulatory oversight, while the companies bring in record profits, the film contends.

Miller has been suing for-profit nursing home corporations in Canada and elsewhere for negligence since 2018, both in mass tort (class action) claims and independent cases against various facilities, one of which is featured in the documentary.

Video clips of residents experiencing abuse juxtaposed with family videos of the long-term-care residents when they were healthy allow viewers to see the people more fully and the depth of the injustices more clearly. Miller contends that it isn’t the staff who are to blame, generally, but rather that the staff aren’t given adequate resources by the companies, who could afford to do something but don’t.

A complicating factor in effecting change is that, for example, Revera is owned by a Canadian Crown corporation, ie. the federal government, notes the film. As COVID ravaged nursing homes in 2020, with thousands of residents dying, “governments across North America pass[ed] legislation to protect them from lawsuits.”

“Today, nursing home chains around the world have become sites for wealth extraction by investors and shareholders,” writes Klodawsky in her director’s statement. “At its core, such financialization of care ties frail elders to overworked, racialized and predominantly female staff. When public pension fund managers, private equity and real estate companies help set the rules, compassion and dignity fall by the wayside. Nonetheless, rapidly expanding populations of the frail elderly, combined with shrinking numbers of family caregivers, ensure a steady stream of residents.”

People interviewed in Stolen Time include Dr. Pat Armstrong, a sociologist and professor at York University; Lisa Alleyne, a personal support worker who has worked in for-profit nursing homes (she is also an artist and her illustrations of what some long-term-home residents face are powerful); Rai Reece, who writes and teaches on anti-Black racism; Jackie Brown, who researches how publicly traded companies make money for investors; Jason Ward, who investigates how public pension funds are invested in for-profit nursing homes globally; Katha Fortier, who has been fighting for the rights of care workers for decades; Ayesha Jabbar, a former social worker who became a union rep; and members of a couple of the families Miller is representing.

Stolen Time is an engaging film that raises a lot of important questions about how nursing homes are run. It is unfortunate that it doesn’t include any interviews or statements from company representatives or government officials.

The post-screening panel discussion in Vancouver will feature Sara Pon, staff lawyer and researcher at Seniors First BC, and co-chair of the BC Adult Abuse and Neglect Prevention Collaborative; Bruce Devereux, a recreation therapist with three-plus decades of experience in the not-for-profit aging care sector; and Julia Henderson, assistant professor in the department of occupational science and occupational therapy at the University of British Columbia, and chair of the North American Network in Aging Studies.

More information about the March 21 event and other screenings of the documentary at VIFF Centre will be posted at viff.org. A ticket link will also be posted at events.nfb.ca/events/vancouver-theatrical-special-panel-on-march-21.

History, family & love – Vancouver Jewish Film festival starts April 14

A Radiant Girl (still from film)

As the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival approaches, the Jewish Independent reviews three more of the festival’s offerings: A Radiant Girl, All About the Levkovitches and One More Story.

Linking past to present?

In A Radiant Girl, 19-year-old Irene (Rebecca Marder) is an actress whose incessant theatrics get on her family’s nerves but the enthusiasm for performing that she and her diverse group of drama student friends exhibit provides a convenient distraction to the events going on around her in 1942 Paris.

A succession of Nazi policies add up, one after another, from the “Juive” stamped in red on her identity papers to the expropriation of Jewish people’s bicycles, radios and telephones, but Irene and her friends continue their thespian activities, mostly oblivious to larger events. The viewer, of course, knows that more ominous things await but the ending is both dramatic and subtly understated.

Costuming and hairstyles in the film do not always clearly situate the timeframe of events, especially early on, and a viewer beginning the film without any background might not be certain if it is set in contemporary times or another era. As the movie progresses, automobiles and more clearly discernible 1940s clothing styles make the era more specific. But is the filmmaker sending a message about the timelessness of vigilance against the slow drip of authoritarian actions that can lead to totalitarianism and catastrophe?

Shadow boxing

image - All About the Levkovitches (still from film) — All About the Levkovitches *(still from film)*

A family drama is at the heart of All About the Levkovitches, in which Tamás, an aging boxing coach in Hungary (Bezerédi Zoltán) is forced to confront his estranged son Iván (Tamás Szabó Kimmel) who, recently religious, returns from Israel for his mother’s shiva, hauling along his young son.

The decidedly unobservant father/widower has no interest in following traditional Jewish mourning rituals. “What’s a minyan?” asks one of his friends as he explains what is happening at home. “A bunch of Jews in my house,” he replies. (“When my mother died, we just drank,” the friend says.) The arrival of the local Jews to pray with the grieving son while the father goes about his business in an undershirt is a priceless vignette of worldviews colliding.

The father, who doesn’t know any Hebrew, and his grandson, who may or may not understand Hungarian, eventually find a common language. So, too, do the estranged father and son, through much fighting, boxing, arguing and wrestling demons.

The grandfather’s disastrous attempt to assemble a Scandinavian do-it-yourself wall unit as his own ritual tribute to his late wife is a metaphor for his fumbling way of dealing with crisis, a project that is (somewhat predictably) resolved when the handy ba’al teshuvah son finally relents to helping, resolving not just the bookshelf problem but the larger issue of how things fit together.

It is a darkly hilarious and often emotionally moving drama.

Live, laugh, love

image - One More Story (still from film) — One More Story *(still from film)*

In One More Story, Yarden (played by Dina Sanderson) is a 20-something journalist at Israel’s largest-circulation newspaper and needs an attention-grabbing human interest series. She goes to that old standby, modern dating, and sets up doofus Adam on a series of disastrous dates, aiming for the print media version of the reality TV dating genre.

She recounts the foibles of Adam’s love life – with flashbacks to cringe-inducing interactions between the hapless Adam and a stream of mismatched potential romantic interests – while herself on a first date (with the film’s director Guri Alfi, playing the bad first date foil for Yarden’s storytelling).

The bad dates within a bad date motif provides a canvas for a variety show-style packed script of hilariously calamitous meetups. But Adam goes off script when love at first sight hits him out of the blue – literally – which does not coincide with Yarden’s journalistic requirements.

There is nothing particularly innovative in the romantic comedy department, but the witty writing and vivacious acting, plus a veritable bombardment of sight gags and more subtle facial expressions, make the film a laugh riot and a delight.

Watch vjff.org for the full lineup and tickets for the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival, which runs April 4-14 in theatre and April 15-19 online.

Drama & more at film fest

Yoav Brill’s documentary Apples and Oranges, about a moment in the history of the kibbutz movement, is mesmerizing. (photo by Avraham Eilat)

The 2024 Vancouver Jewish Film Festival takes place in person April 4-14 and online April 15-19. As usual, a diversity of offerings is included in this year’s festival and the Independent will review several films in this and upcoming issues. The Vancouver Jewish Film Centre also sponsors events throughout the year and some screenings take place before the annual festival begins. Full festival details will be online at vjff.org as April approaches.

Idealism remembered

Amid the euphoric aftermath of the 1967 war and the enduring popularity of the 1958 Leon Uris book Exodus (and its 1960 film incarnation), thousands of Jews and non-Jews descended on Israel to volunteer on kibbutzim.

They came to experience and emulate “the embodiment of man’s highest ideals – the kibbutznik,” as an apparently promotional film clip declares in Yoav Brill’s mesmerizing documentary Apples and Oranges. In just one particular spurt, 7,000 volunteers arrived in Israel en masse from around the world.

Through the recollections of aging Scandinavians, Brits, South Africans and others, and with nostalgia-inducing archival footage, the documentary shines a light on the socialist idealism and hippie adventurism that motivated these people to travel to the farming communities of rural Israel. Many returned, to Sweden, Denmark, wherever, and formed associations to support the kibbutzim and drum up more volunteers. So successful were they that the supply exceeded the demand. One group chartered a jumbo jet to go from Stockholm to Tel Aviv but the Israelis had to admit they had no use for 340 volunteers.

Generally, the spirit of the overseas visitors was welcomed, though the social impacts were not negligible. The temporary nature of their visits was disrupting. A middle-aged man reflects on his perspective as a kid on a kibbutz, welcoming all the strangers who became like big brothers and sisters, only to have his heart broken every time the groups departed from what he calls “the kibbutz fantasy.”

Strangers from another world – blond, exotic, sophisticated and drinking milk with their meals – descended on a cloistered society where all the teens had been together since kindergarten, introducing predictable social and hormonal disruptions. For their parts, many of the volunteers soon discovered they had no aptitude for the tasks to which they were set, although at least one Brit made use of his talents performing Shakespeare for an audience of cattle.

Many of the overseas youngsters were unabashedly out for sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. As one woman interviewed in the documentary says, “If there weren’t female volunteers at [Kibbutz] Mishmar HaSharon, many of our boys would still be virgins.”

In one incident that apparently caused national outrage, a group distributed hashish-laden brownies to an entire community, including at least one 8-year-old child, a crime that is not the least bit funny – but, of course, is hilarious when recounted by octogenarians who experienced it.

With their Cat Stevens and Bob Dylan LPs, the foreigners brought a little bit of Woodstock with them, and took away some Israeli dance routines. But the adventure, as the viewer knows more than do the figures in the old footage, would not end well. Terrorism, including a highly publicized attack in which a volunteer was murdered, would strangle the flow of future volunteers.

The documentary is a masterpiece of the genre, capturing the joy and exuberance of the experience for both Israelis and the visitors, but addressing the serious problems the interactions raised. The clash of cultures introduced existential issues, including around conversion, mixed marriages, secularization and, of course, the collapse of the traditional kibbutz.

The apples and oranges of the title, we are to understand, are the people who came together on the kibbutzim, as much as the produce they harvested.

Critics of the volunteer phenomenon seem to place some of the blame for the collapse of the kibbutz system on the labour underclass they represented, which undermined the egalitarian foundations of the movement.

The kibbutz network has largely petered out, almost entirely in spirit if not completely in form, and some of the Jews and non-Jews who came during the heyday have remained and integrated to varying degrees in the society that Israel has become. In one instance, an aging, bearded former volunteer actualizes his idealism by leading a ukulele orchestra.

The collapse of the idealistic experiment that the end of the film documents is expected but no less depressing for that. The slice of history and the magnificence of the story, so vividly told in the film, will stay with the viewer.

Transcendence of song

photo - In Less than Kosher, the real star is the voice of Shaina Silver-Baird as Viv, an atheist turned cantor — In Less than Kosher, the real star is the voice of Shaina Silver-Baird as Viv, an atheist turned cantor. *(photo from Menemsha Films)*

In Less than Kosher, a number of fairly two-dimensional character sketches come together – but with a redeeming twist.

A feature film that began its life as serialized online videos has the feel of excellent amateurism. Wayward Jewish girl meets rabbi’s bad boy son. Overbearing Jewish mother, well-intentioned buffoonish rabbi, go-along-to-get-along intermarried stepdad and hyper-chatty high school friend flesh out the cast.

Sitcom-like circumstances turn the atheist young woman into unlikely cantor. But the outstanding component of the film, the real star, is the voice of Shaina Silver-Baird, the lead actor and co-producer (with Michael Goldlist) of this cute confection.

The unlikely cantor Viv, whose once-promising pop music career is on the skids, has the voice of an angel and the story is less about her family or her romance with the (married) rabbi’s son than about the transcendent power of song. When she opens her lungs, Viv ushers in a changed world – and Silver-Baird’s voice invites the viewer into it. Music video-style segments, which Viv is dismayed to have dubbed “Judeopop,” raise the film to a different level. Liturgical music goes Broadway. Amy Winehouse does “Shalom Aleichem.”

A tiki-themed shiva is truly the icing on the sheet cake.

Mysterious case

photo - The Goldman Case is a dramatic reenactment of the case of Pierre Goldman — The Goldman Case is a dramatic reenactment of the case of Pierre Goldman. *(photo from Menemsha Films)*

He was guilty of much, but was he guilty of murder? Pierre Goldman maintained he was innocent of the latter charges and a based-on-a-true-story film explores not only a man’s possible guilt but the intergenerational impacts of Polish-French Jewish life in the mid-20th century and their potential explanations for some unusual behaviours.

The Goldman Case is a dramatic reenactment of a famous (in France, at least) case of the Jewish son of Polish resistance heroes, whose own life was impacted by an apparent need to fill the giant shoes of his parents. The son wanted to be “a Jewish warrior” and so became a communist revolutionary, traveling to Latin America, Prague and elsewhere in search of opportunities for valour.

Charged with a series of crimes, including the murder during a holdup of two pharmacists, Goldman was convicted in 1974 and sentenced to life imprisonment, though he maintained he was innocent in the two deaths. Following the 1975 publication of his memoirs, the judicial system reconsidered his case and major French voices, including Jean-Paul Sartre, took up his cause. This film is a (massively condensed) court procedural of that retrial.

Goldman’s Jewishness was not on trial but, interestingly, his defence team built their case partly around his family’s experiences.

The case – and the film – end with a new verdict. But the dramatic story would continue. Audiences will no doubt race to Google more about Goldman and his crimes and punishments. Enduring mysteries, though, will make the search necessarily unsatisfying. This cannot be said of the film, though, which is a gripping enactment, enlivened by the extremely animated courtroom drama, which suggests the French judicial system tolerates a great deal more outbursts than we expect in Hollywood depictions of North American judicial proceedings.