Women filmmakers deliver

CYNTHIA RAMSAY

Two separate events this month celebrate women’s contributions to the film industry in one of the best ways possible – by screening their work.

The annual Vancouver International Women in Film Festival, which takes place March 7-10 at Vancity Theatre, features two selections that will be of particular interest to the Jewish community: the French/Israeli short Aya and the Israeli documentary Life in Stills. The March 10 Sunday Morning Bagel and a Movie event at the Park Theatre features the South African documentary The Power of Art: Women’s Voices in Africa, preceded by Toumani Diabaté: The Voice of the Kora and followed by a Q&A with the films’ producer/director, Claudine Pommier.

Written by Mihal Brezis, Oded Binnun and Tom Shoval, and directed by Brezis and Binnum, Aya is about “what if...?” Although the story almost verges into the creepy at times, it manages to stay on the side of charming. It begins at Ben-Gurion Airport, where Aya (Sarah Adler) is waiting to pick someone up, as are two male drivers, one of whom asks the other to hold his sign – clearly labeled Mr. Overby – when he must attend to his car. As Aya waits on hold, her cellphone call is interrupted by the remaining driver, whose charge has arrived – just hold the sign for a few minutes, he requests and Aya begrudgingly agrees. When Mr. Overby (Ulrich Thomsen) arrives, she impulsively decides to be his driver, abandoning her own traveler.

The 40-minute film mainly takes place on the drive from the airport to Jerusalem, where Mr. Overby, a music professor in Finland, will be a judge for the Arthur Rubinstein International Music Society piano competition. Both excellent actors, Adler and Thomsen have chemistry and the sexual tension is palpable almost from the moment they meet. There are funny, awkward and sensual moments, with an undertone of loneliness – a longing to experience a life other than our own.

Aya screens on March 9, 3:30 p.m., with A Broken Tear, an eight-and-a-half-minute Lebanese film based on a true story, depicting “a coming of age and a young love blossoming, remembered through shattered memories repeated in a hurtful spiral caused by Alzheimer”; Reach, a 15-minute Canadian film about a man who has had an adventurous and physically active life but who, as a weakened old man, lives alone with his memories until he suffers a stroke and “[h]is memories become distorted and overwhelming. Still, they remind him of how important it is to survive”; and the 29-minute American production The Devout, which “follows the people of medieval Exmoor, England, as they witness the systematic killing of the village’s sick by a demonic, cloaked rook creature. Two conflicting avenues emerge to lead the villagers to salvation, each guided by a brother and sister, Luke and Emery.”

Life in Stills, written and directed by Tamar Tal, is a multiple-award-winning documentary. At just under an hour, it is the relationship between the very crusty Miriam Weissenstein, 96 at the time of filming (she died in 2011), and her grandson Ben Peter, as much as the nostalgia of a Tel Aviv landmark slated for demolition, that makes for compelling viewing.

Opened in 1940 on Allenby Street by Miriam and her husband, Rudi, a renowned photographer – the official photographer for the signing of Israel’s Declaration of Independence and for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, among other assignments during his auspicious career – the Photo House (Pri-Or) is home to some one million negatives that document key moments in Israel’s history. The film focuses on the tense period when the shop might have been demolished permanently but, in the end, is relocated for a few years until the new development on Allenby, in which it has procured a space, is constructed.

At the time of filming, the grandmother and grandson are business partners. What will stay with viewers long after watching the documentary is the photographs, of course, Miriam’s mainly aggressive and dour personality, the pride she takes in her husband’s photographs, and her and Peter’s trip to a gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, for the opening of an exhibit of Rudi Weissenstein’s work on Feb. 17, 2010, what would have been his 100th birthday. Miriam delivers an amusing address, she almost seems happy during the visit and there is a moving heart-to-heart between Miriam and Peter in which Miriam is quite tender.

Life in Stills screens with the 32-minute French film Letters from Saigon – about a woman who rediscovers a box of letters she exchanged with her father when he was in Indochina – on March 10, 6:30 p.m. For more information about these and other Women in Film screenings, workshops, events and tickets, visit womeninfilm.ca.

In The Power of Art, Pommier interviews many artists from many different countries – Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Morocco, South Africa, Congo, Gabon, Egypt, Ghana, etc. Among the types of artwork are drawing, painting, sculpture, multimedia, video, photography, papier mâché, graffiti; the moods of the works range from horrific (genital mutilation, rape) to celebratory (women heroes) and whimsical (abstract).

The artists talk about the baggage associated with being a female artist in Africa. They discuss the reaction of men to their work and how women are viewed in general – they don’t have to think as much as men, they have fewer rights, they are associated with domesticity and the private realm versus as workers in the public domain. They also note how women see the world differently and choose subject matter from which a man might shy away. They bring up the conflict between the value placed on community versus individuality, as well as language difficulties: one woman found that couldn’t use Zulu to talk about art, but had to switch to English.

Some of the artists overtly express their identity through their work, but at least one contends that, to be a sophisticated international artist, the viewer shouldn’t be able to be read its creator’s identity into the work. In this vein, there is discussion of how, once a work leaves the artist’s hands, the critics, curators, sellers, et al., contribute to the artist’s identity and the work’s value/meaning.

All of the artists see art as having a function, not being purely esthetic. They talk about educating through art (about AIDS, for example), art as social commentary and art as documentation (one photographer plays with the idea of oral history/stories versus telling stories through imagery).

The Power of Art is a fascinating, visually impressive documentary. Its local screening will be preceded by another film by Pommier, a short about the kora (West African bridge harp/harp-lute) and Mali musician Toumani Diabaté, who comes from a long line of kora players – 71 generations, according to his family’s oral tradition. In 1988, Diabaté himself released his first album in the West, Kaira.

Presented by the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (vjff.org) and the Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery, with bagels provided by Solly’s Bagelry, Toumani Diabaté and The Power of Art screen at the Park at 10:30 a.m. An exhibit of Pommier’s photography runs at the Zack (jccgv.com/content/jcc-cultural-arts) from March 7 to April 7.

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