Film fest offers a visual feast

The Vancouver Jewish Film Festival runs another week and the selection this year is as varied as it is interesting. The Bulletin takes a look at four you can catch in the coming week.

Nazi's life revealed

Monika Koplow's film Alois Brunner: The Last Nazi is a compelling historical document. Her film achieves this merit not by its cinematic design, but rather by its simple rendering of a few startling and very disturbing facts.

One fact is that a Nazi, through the credentials of his bestial military experience, has been able to have a gainful and secure postwar career. Under the auspices of the United States and, more recently, Syrian authorities, Alois Brunner has been a consultant to a number of powers on the deployment of military intelligence. Since 1959, he has made his home in Damascus, where he continues to enjoy everyday freedoms and liberties, without a hint of censure about his sordid past. International powers have left him alone.

Another fact is Brunner's role in the Holocaust. As Adolph Eichmann's protégé, Brunner devised the Nazi regime's systematic method of deporting Jews from western Europe to the death camps in Poland. We learn that, at times, Brunner personally undertook the selection of his victims. He would prey upon their good will, emotion and common sense to cajole them on board buses and trains to their death. Alarmingly, Brunner often sought after young women, either pregnant or with infants, to join these carloads. He did so with the cold-blooded rationale of "I can't let children live; they will be future terrorists."

The Last Nazi screens at the Norman Rothstein Theatre May 19 at 3 p.m.

– Tim Fuchs

Good ol' Dixie Jews

For a fun romp through the land of Dixie, the jazzy streets of New Orleans and the retail stores of Louisiana, Jewish style, pick up a bolo tie and head off to Shalom Y'All for some thoroughly enjoyable filmmaking.

Brian Bain, who is a third-generation southern Jew, takes the viewer through an historical journey that traces the development of the Jewish community in the South. From the first major influx of Jews from Europe in 1733, to the recent migration of Jews out of the confederate heartland, Bain's tracks are filled with interesting, funny and likable Jewish characters.

We meet Jack Cristil, a legendary sports announcer who calls for the Mississippi Bulldogs, Reubin Morris Greenberg, an African-American chief of police and Kinky Friedman of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys ("They Don't Make Jews Like Jesus Anymore") fame.

As the film points out, the acceptance of Jews in the South swung back and forth based on historical factors. Many fundamentalists liked the Jews because they shared a common view on the importance of religion. In some areas, Jews felt a strong need to build "Jewish churches" (synagogues) in order to belong. But when synagogues were used for civil rights meetings in the 1960s, Jews found more in common with the black population than the white.

Today, younger Jews are moving out of the South, leaving open the question about the future of Judaism in the region.

Shalom Y'all has its world première at Pacific Cinémathèque May 20 at 7 p.m. Director/narrator Brian Bain and producer Susan Levitas will attend.

– Baila Lazarus

Ghosts from the past

Based in the French countryside in the early 1970s, the drama Louba's Ghosts tells the story of Louba, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, who finds herself alone after her mother was killed in an accident and her father abandoned her.

She is taken in by a Catholic family where a unique relationship develops between her and her flirtatious step-sister Jeanine. But the shy and cautious Louba is betrayed by her boyfriend Charlie and by Jeanine, and finds herself alone once again. Twenty years later, in modern-day Paris, she meets Jeanine once again and seeks revenge by stealing her life and her loved ones.

Some of the acting isn't the highest quality, particularly from the child performers, but Louba's and Jeanine's characters are convincing enough to believably portray the emotional back stabbing.

The film features well-timed flashbacks into Louba's past that offer the viewer a greater understanding of the loneliness of her character. Unfortunately, the poor choice of white subtitles, which often appear on a bright background, make Louba's Ghosts sometimes difficult to follow.

Directed by Martine Dugowson, Louba's Ghosts will be presented at Pacific Cinémathèque May 21 at 9 p.m.

– Kyle Berger

Love from Israel to India

Missing the 1970s? Then Total Love is the movie for you. In addition to its drug-related theme, it is interspersed with segues of colorful, psychedelic graphics depicting the fluid movement of a love potion. The whole movie has the feel of a bygone era, at least from a North American perspective.

The storyline is basic. Two young Israelis, Haim and Renanna, create a new drug – TLV, or total love. They plan to distribute it with the help of their friend Shushan, a drug pusher who is moving to Amsterdam.

Being the good scientists they are not, Haim and Renanna try the potion out on themselves first. The worst thing that could happen, they reason, is that they will fall in love. They do. Things go along happily for awhile but ultimately Renanna leaves Haim, taking some TLV with her.

Soon after her departure, Haim reads in the newspaper of the arrest and imprisoning of an Israeli woman in Goa, India, and he sets off to save Renanna. Along the way, he enlists the help of Shushan and another acquaintance, Zohar, both of whom encountered and fell in love with Renanna before she got into trouble.

Total Love is a fun movie, albeit one with a pretty silly plot. The acting is good and there are some great shots of India. In Hebrew with English subtitles, the film plays at the Norman Rothstein Theatre May 23 at 9 p.m. Director Gur Bentwich will be in attendance.

– Cynthia Ramsay

Due to popular demand, a second showing of Match Made in Seven will be added to the festival. Read the Bulletin next week or go to www.vjff.org for more details.

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