Sometimes miracles happen

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Last week, the Jewish Independent reviewed four of the eight movies that will be at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival Mini-Fest March 28-30. This week, we complete our look at the offerings of this first-ever event.

As Passover approaches, we are all prepared to speak the words that Moses said to Pharaoh in his effort to convince the dictator to free the Hebrew slaves: "Let my people go!" They resonate still, and not just at the seder table. When Israel triumphed in the Six Day War, many Soviet Jews began to think about leaving the Soviet Union and making aliyah. As one of the most famous refuseniks, Israeli author and former politician Nathan Sharansky, says in director Laura Bialis' Refuseniks, that's when he started "turning from Soviet slave into free person and from frightened Jew who's trying to escape his Jewishness, his identity, to proud Jew.”

Refuseniks follows the international human rights campaign that paid off some 20 years after it began. By 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, it was as if the "nightmare had never been," says Sir Martin Gilbert, who is also interviewed by Bialis, along with a range of academics, politicians, human rights activists (including Canada's Irwin Cotler) and, of course, various refuseniks. The interviews are supplemented with archival film footage and photographs that make this documentary a must-see.

Another excellent documentary is Blessed is the Match, which concludes the mini festival. About Hannah Senesh, the movie starts at the end, with archival footage of Senesh's body arriving in Israel in 1950. Among the mourners waiting at the port was her mother and the camera focuses on the footage of Catherine Senesh, as narrator Joan Allen reads from the mother's memoir about her daughter.

Director Roberta Grossman takes viewers through Senesh's life with interviews, archival material from the Senesh family and Senesh's own writings.

Senesh had a privileged childhood. Her father was a successful playwright and journalist in Budapest, Hungary. She was close to her mother and brother; her father died when she was very young.

At 17, in 1938, Senesh writes in her diary: "I've become a Zionist.... One needs something to believe in, to feel that your life has meaning. Zionism fulfils this for me. I now consciously and strongly feel I am a Jew, and am proud of it.”

By the next year, she was applying to study in the Girls' Agricultural School at Nahalal, in Palestine. Senesh explained her choice to her mother: there are too many intellectuals already, Palestine needs workers to build the country. Once there, Senesh wondered if she had been selfish, leaving her mother. She felt very lonely, especially at Kibbutz Sdot Yam, where she moved after school.

As the situation for the Jews of Europe became better understood, Senesh felt as if she is being called back to Hungary to save her mother and her fellow Jews. She joined the Haganah and, sadly, in one of the many tragedies of timing in the Holocaust, she and her fellow parachutists on the rescue mission arrived mere days after Germany invaded Hungary.

Senesh was captured, tortured and murdered by a Nazi firing squad in Budapest but, while imprisoned, she was able to reunite somewhat with her mother, who had also been arrested by the Nazis. The reenacted scenes of the mother and daughter in jail are incredibly moving.

Blessed is the Match captures Senesh's essence and spirit. Somehow, she retained her faith in humankind: "Despite everything, I believe the world was created for good and there's nothing on Earth so evil that a ray of light can't seep through.”

On a much lighter note is Beau Jest, a comedy that is quite fun to watch, despite the poor acting by a few of the main characters.

Set in Chicago, Beau Jest is about a Jewish woman, Sarah Goldman, who wants to hide from her parents the fact that she is dating a non-Jewish man, so she hires an actor she thinks is Jewish to pretend to be her Jewish boyfriend. It all starts with a Shabbat dinner with her Jew-ish parents and brother. While it was supposed to be a one-time thing, the actor, Robert Shroeder, so impresses Sarah's parents that they cajole her into bringing him – her tall, handsome, doctor boyfriend – to her nephew's bar mitzvah. The happy couple then host a Passover seder for Sarah's family. Of course, there's still Sarah's real boyfriend kicking about, wondering why he never sees Sarah anymore. All the mayhem culminates in a family bonding moment that seems to take place a little late in life for a grown woman, but, heck, it's a movie.

Written and directed by James Sherman, this is not the best romantic comedy ever, but it is charming and there are some very funny moments.

There are few such moments in Empty Nest (El Nido Vacío), which is filmed in Buenos Aires and also Israel. This movie centres around a somewhat unhappy couple, Leonardo and Martha, but Leonardo, a writer, is the main character and the action is seen from his perspective. Now that their three children have grown up and left home, Martha comes into her own, taking courses, going out with friends, throwing parties, while Leonardo spends his days regretting the time he didn't spend with his kids when they were young and fantasizing – about both a beautiful younger woman and a psychiatrist. This is a film that will speak more to older viewers.

Included in the three-day Mini-Fest are two shorts: Cheftzi On Air, about a religious radio broadcaster who offers romantic advice to her single, religious female callers and who, one day decides to try her own advice; and The Kiddush Man, about a young boy who often raids the kiddush lunch buffet, where he encounters – and gets to know – an older congregant who always appears angry.

All of the VJFF Mini-Fest movies are at the Ridge Theatre, 3131 Arbutus St. For the entire schedule, ticket prices and other information, call 604-266-0245 or visit www.vjff.org.

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