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March 24, 2006
Staying true to who you are
Movies underscore the value of sticking to what you believe in.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY AND KATHARINE HAMER
The 18th annual Vancouver Jewish Film Festival begins March 30,
featuring a new crop of movies from North America, Israel and around
the world. This year, there are a number of entries focusing on
coming-of-age tales. The following two films deal with prejudice,
bullying and, ultimately, positive outcomes.
The First Time I Was 20 is truly a delightful movie, full
of humor and insight.
The opening credits and the Afro-Cuban beat that accompanies them
set the tone for the entire film. Director Lorraine Levy has put
together a fun, well-crafted coming-of-age story that will appeal
to anyone who has had to struggle with acceptance – both of
oneself and by others.
The movie is set in the 1960s in a suburb of Paris. Hannah Goldman
(Marilou Berry) is a 16-year-old with two main hurdles to overcome:
she must learn to like herself and she covets a position on the
traditionally all-male jazz band at school.
The movie opens with Hannah in her room, sulking about being ugly:
"I demand a right to beauty," she tells her mother. After
listing Hannah's eyes and hair as beautiful, with no success in
making her happier, her mother says, "You're beautiful on the
inside," to which Hannah responds, "Brilliant. I probably
have one hell of a gall bladder, sweet lungs, a cute liver and sublime
ovaries." When her mother says that she'd be happier if she
lost some weight, Hannah is not to be consoled: "Can't you
see that to slim down, I need to be happy?"
This mix of wit and wisdom carries throughout the movie. Lucky for
Hannah, she has an amazingly supportive – if suffocating –
family. While she fights with her two older sisters, as any sibling
would, the sisters constantly praise her when she doubts her ability
to play the double bass and they come to her rescue on more than
one occasion. As well, Hannah has a sympathetic uncle to whom she
can escape when she needs some quiet and several friends at school.
With all of this support, Hannah is in good position to win the
place in the band and to survive the spiteful pranks pulled on her
by the boys in it – who don't want to perform with a girl,
especially a Jewish girl. How she manages to out-think and outperform
them is inspirational even to those of us well beyond our teens,
as is her eventual self-acceptance.
The First Time I Was 20 is in French with English subtitles.
Showing at Oakridge Cinemas at 7 p.m., Thursday, March 30, it's
a great way to start the festival.
Accepting differences
On the heels of Trembling Before G-d, which played at VJFF
four years ago, Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School
tackles the quandary of being gay and Jewish.
This latest film – screening for the first time at Fifth Avenue
at noon on Friday, March 31 – centres around a teenager, Shula
Izen, who knew even before she began high school that she was a
lesbian. She also knew, after a trip to Israel for her bat mitzvah,
that she wanted to be an observant Jew. Izen opted to attend the
New Jewish High School in Boston – a self-described "pluralistic"
environment where Reform, Conservative and Orthodox teens study
together.
We witness Izen wrestling from the outset with the two most important
strands of her identity. "I understand struggling as part of
being a Jew," she observes. "What I don't want is to struggle
with my community. Where do I fit in my tradition? What does it
mean that I'm doing something that's prohibited by Torah?"
It's not until she discovers Keshet – a support group for gay
and lesbian Jews – that she feels enough at home to try and
introduce a gay/straight alliance at her school. (Keshet executive
director Idit Klein also served as producer of this film.)
Izen's attempt to launch a gay/straight alliance met with some resistance
both from the head of the school and some of its more Orthodox members.
"I think it is an almost impossible line to walk: how do you
have gay kids feeling safe, while not having the Orthodox families
running for the hills?" asks teacher Jessica Keimowitz in an
interview. Keimowitz, as it turns out, is one of four gay teachers
at the school who eventually back Izen in her bid to create a public
discussion around the issue – a discussion with some surprising
results.
Of another lesbian teacher, one Orthodox boy first declares, "She's
gay and she's teaching me Tanach. That just didn't work with me."
Later, realizing just how knowledgeable that teacher is about Torah,
he amends his perspective: "I still think it's wrong, but I'm
not going to shun people who are gay, in the same way I won't shun
people who are Reform or don't keep kosher."
This will always be a controversial issue – and though director
Irena Fayngold's film, shot on low-budget digital video, lacks the
impact of Trembling Before G-d, it remains a valuable tale,
particularly for parents and teens, of bravery in the face of conflict.
As Izen herself might say, "Hineini," "Here
I am."
For more informationm visit www.vjff.org.
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