Eye Meets Ear: Visual Arts Competition for Emerging Artists
The FJC partners with the Milken Archive: The pursuit of art and $40,000 in prizes!
The Milken Archive of Jewish Music in collaboration with the Foundation for Jewish Culture is launching Eye Meets Ear: Visual Arts Competition for Emerging Artists to select 20 works as cover art for 20 themed volumes of music in the Milken Archive’s new virtual museum.
The competition runs from September 1 to November 1, with winners to be announced in late December 2010. Each work selected will earn the artist a $2,000 cash prize. Artists, who must be ages 18 to 39, may submit works of art in any visual mediums that express and/or relate to the theme of individual virtual museum volumes, each of which explores a particular historical, cultural or musical theme.
The 20 selected works will be featured in the virtual museum, as well as in related products and communications. Runners-up will also be displayed in a special online exhibition.
The virtual museum, known officially as the Milken Archive of Jewish Music: The American Experience, launches the Archive’s third decade as a resource to performers, composers, cantors, educators, scholars, and music enthusiasts of varied genres. Since its creation by philanthropist Lowell Milken in 1990, the Milken Archive has cultivated a collection comprising more than 700 works including 500 world premiere recordings, 800 hours of oral histories, 45,000 photographs and historical documents, and thousands of hours of video footage from recording sessions, interviews and live performances, plus an extensive collection of program notes, essays and articles.
Galeet Dardashti and The Naming
Six Points Fellow Galeet Dardashti’s new album The Naming drops in September. Culture ensues. From Galeet.
Hi there! September is an exciting time for me, as the long-awaited release of my album “The Naming” is finally here! Please mark your calendar for September 14 and spread the word. With live music and dance, video, and tasty food and drink, it promises to be an amazing night for all the senses. The Huffington Post calls the album “a heart-stopping effort” and says it will “make you fall hard in love” (with me!). Here’s a short video excerpt from the show.
The Naming CD Release Party – NYC
September 14, 2010 (Tuesday), 7-9 p.m. (doors at 6:30)
With full band, SYREN Modern Dance, and video art from Lustre plus special guests.
Opening: Mycale — the all-female John Zorn Vocal Project (Basya Schechter of Pharaoh’s Daughter, Ayelet Rose Gottlieb, Malika Zarra and Sofia Rei Koutsovitis)
At Le Poisson Rouge (serving food & alcohol)
158 Bleecker Street, New York, NY
Tickets
Earlier in September, you can catch Divahn (for free) at the largest outdoor stage at North America’s biggest Jewish music festival, the Ashkenaz Festival, in Toronto.
Divahn at Ashkenaz Festival
September 5, 2010 (Sunday), 8-9 p.m.
At Ashkenaz Festival
Harbourfront Centre Sirius Stage
235 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Canada
Followed by Balkan Beat Box
Free
Galeet Dardashti Chants High Holy Day Services
September 8-10, 17-18, 2010
Congregation Beth Elohim
Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY
New Six Points Fellows Announced!
Congratulations to the new cohort of Six Points Fellows!
Music Fellows: Judith Berkson, Judd Greenstein, Alicia Jo Rabins
Visual Arts Fellows: Liana Finck, Hadassa Goldvicht, Oded Hirsch
Performing Arts Fellows: Hannah Bos, Sylvan Oswald, and Netta Yerushalmy.
For more information on each of the artists and their work please visit the Six Points website.
Jewschool on “Budrus”
Interesting Jewschool.com blog entry about watching our 2009 Film Fund grantee Budrus in the West Bank: Seeing “Budrus” in Ramallah.
It is one thing to know that peace-loving Palestinians exist, but quite another to join several hundreds [700, I have since learned] of Palestinians giving a standing ovation five minutes long to a film about non-violence. Last Wednesday night, I sat in an IMAX-sized theater in the West Bank Palestinian city of Ramallah for the grand opening of Budrus, a documentary about a village that successful relocated the security barrier off their lands through peaceful protest. I was overwhelmed, galvanized. …
Pablo Utin and the New Israeli Cinema
Haaretz profiles visiting Israeli artist Pablo Utin and his impact on contemporary Israeli film.
Lone Voice in the Written Void
There’s no doubt that Israeli film is flourishing. A slew of films made here in recent years have been well received at home and abroad. They have been screened at the most prestigious film festivals around the world, won important prizes, wowed critics, drawn large audiences and made an international name for the local film industry. Yet this exciting development is slightly overshadowed by the fact that there has been little serious analysis of the phenomenon. The press does frequently highlight the accomplishments of Israeli films, features interviews with artists and considers the changing face of the local film industry, but a truly in-depth and theoretical discussion of local movies is truly lacking in Israel. The amount of bookstore shelf space devoted to Israeli film is embarrassing in its paucity.
Pablo Utin, 32, a doctoral film studies student at Tel Aviv University, finally decided to do something about the lack of a theoretical discussion of local films. Utin, also a journalist and a film critic, decided to write a book using the interviews he conducted with local filmmakers over the last two years for the Cinematheque journal.
“Karhonim B’eretz Hahamsinim” (“The Iceberg Effect: Israel’s Cinema of Disengagement”), recently published by Resling Publishers, presents conversations with 13 leading Israeli directors, as well as an introduction in which Utin analyzes the factors that led to Israeli film’s current success in the world.
For years, Israeli film has focused mainly on ideology and not esthetics, says Utin. “Hardly anyone considered the esthetics of films and no one dealt with the question of whether Israeli films have a style,” he explained during a conversation. His book is a collection of enlightening interviews that a provide a glimpse into the creative process of new Israeli cinema.
Utin argues that contemporary Israeli films are more restrained than early Israeli film, and believes that the new focus and restraint are the reasons for the considerable success. “It seems that the young artists have lost the need to shout out their statements, messages and emotions and have found a restrained, complex and interesting way to express them,” he writes.
Utin uses two main symbols, the icebergs and the disengagement, to make his point.
“There is Nothing Like Jerusalem”: Time Out Covers the JCF
[Time Out Jerusalem, July 29, 2010. Translated from the Hebrew by Uri Dromi]
Even Nicole Krauss says that there’s nothing like this city. Creative guests at Mishkenot Sha’ananim sum up their stay here
Last month, five outstanding guests were hosted at Mishkenot Sha’ananim: Novelist couple Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer (who will be staying for another month), visual artist Shelley Jordon, choreographer and dancer Reggie Wilson and urban planner Josh Sirefman. Bonding with local cultural institutions, they were both inspired and inspiring. The project began through cooperation between Mishkenot Sha’ananim Director-General Uri Dromi and Elise Bernhardt, President of the Foundation for Jewish Culture in New York. Following the project’s impressive success, Mishkenot Sha’ananim plans to invite similar groups in the coming year.
Participants told Time Out about their stay at Mishkenot Sha’ananim:
Shelley Jordon – visual artist specializing in animation and professor of art at Oregon State University, Portland:
This is my first visit to Israel. Obviously, I did not know what to expect. I asked to have a studio set up where I could work and was offered lovely premises at the Jerusalem House of Quality. But I soon realized that every moment I spend closed up in the studio will take away an opportunity to learn something about this astounding city and to meet its unique people. That’s why I dedicated myself to a fascinating, month-long journey that I will never forget in my life.
I already felt the intensity of this experience on opening night, when I presented my exhibit at Mishkenot Sha’ananim – in the presence of leading Jerusalem cultural figures – and subsequently at the laboratory. Prof. Milly Heyd invited me to lecture on postmodern art and I was amazed at the vitality her students displayed.
I was invited to present projects at the Musrara School and was treated to a guided tour of the Israel Museum that is soon to [re]open. When I visited Yad Vashem’s Holocaust History Museum, my personal guide was none other than its curator, Yehudit Inbar. What impressed me most of all was the burst of energy that emanated from all the people I met, their human warmth, their desire to create and inspire and their belief that everything is possible.
Amir Heshin took us on our first tour, explaining the complex realities of this city and all Israel. Having noticed that Israel has no defined borders, the little time I spent in the studio was devoted to creating a series of animated maps of the Land of Israel, from ancient times until the present. I am waiting eagerly for my next opportunity to return to Jerusalem.
*
Reggie Wilson, choreographer and dancer, New York:
I visited Israel many years ago and was even privileged to dance with Ohad Naharin, whom I consider my spiritual mentor. My visit here is part of a personal quest and I will be proceeding from here to Egypt.
The moment I set foot in Jerusalem, I was invited to the Higher Academy of Dance. Choreographers and dancers need no introductions. The moment I walked into the classroom, we all began moving in our international language. There are extraordinary talents here – but I’m not telling you anything new.
We spent Friday nights at the homes of Jerusalemites. One such evening was traditional, with prayers and blessings, while the other was secular. We were also invited to a party in Tel Aviv – what a difference! There is no doubt about it – Jerusalem is special, although I did take a few trips to Tel Aviv on my own to get a taste of something different. I also went to Haifa to meet with the Beta troupe of immigrants from Ethiopia. They did not want to let me leave and to tell the truth, it was also hard for me to part from them. Members of the Vertigo troupe hosted me at their village at Netiv Halamed-Heh. We danced, sang and ate together.
I leave behind friends that I feel I have known for years. For me, as a music, rhythm and movement person, Jerusalem is a dream. I sat with the whole group in the Mahaneyuda Restaurant. No choreographer could ever arrange such a celebration of tastes, human affection, sounds and colors.
For me, it was also a spiritual experience of the highest order. In such a complex city, with a multiplicity of faces and opinions, the focus of world attention, there is only one question: Can people listen to one another?
*
Josh Sirefman, urban planner who assisted New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with several major projects:
From the outset, I felt like a foreign implant among creative people, artists and writers, but the intensive time period spent with them enriched me with new, more complex outlooks regarding reality. I was surprised that the busy Jerusalemites were so willing to make time and talk to me, presenting me with their fascinating projects. While it’s true that I spearheaded extensive projects in New York, I came here with the intention of hearing more than being heard. People showed such interest in New York, however, that when I lectured at Mishkenot Sha’ananim I tried to find similarities between urban planning elements in New York and Jerusalem.
I was very impressed by the tour of Ariel Sharon Park in Hiriya and especially by its overall conception, that takes environmental quality and leisure into account. I learned a lot from meetings with Ir Amim Association members and Bimkom Association planners. Essentially, I realized how little I knew about the situation in eastern Jerusalem and the settlements. Here, everything, including urban planning, originates in conflict. I traveled to Ramallah on my own and was surprised by its economic growth, although I know that it does not provide a complete picture of what is going on in the West Bank.
My discussions with Deputy Mayor Naomi Zur, Richard Lester and others led me to examine the special complexity of urban planning in Jerusalem, in which the true source of authority is uncertain. During my tours of the city, I saw open areas that were not being used for the public good. I thought that French Hill Junction, for example, could be turned into a park that would serve all population groups in the city, as we did in New York when we turned the abandoned High Line into a bustling multicultural park.
*
Jonathan Safran Foer – author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Eating Animals – and his wife Nicole Krauss were recently designated by The New Yorker as two of the world’s 20 most influential novelists under 40:
Nicole and I have been guests of cultural institutions throughout the world. Recently, we were hosted at the American Academy in Berlin, where we were treated royally and could create to our hearts’ content. When we were invited to Mishkenot Sha’ananim, I was pleased to be given another opportunity to take time and write. I must say that your hospitality has exceeded all expectations. People have really gone out of their way to make our stay pleasant – and that’s no easy task because we’ve got two small children.
In Berlin, no one expects you to come into contact with the local cultural community, but Jerusalem was different. Ostensibly, writers, unlike visual artists or choreographers, do not really need to commune with their environment. But when you’re staying in the same room in which Saul Bellow wrote To Jerusalem and Back and Amos Oz wrote chapters of A Tale of Love and Darkness, you’re placed within a special context. Then you roam the streets and the special Jerusalem atmosphere entices you to leave your shell.
At Mishkenot Sha’ananim last week, I participated in a discussion with Etgar Keret. He and I have a lot in common: Not only did we watch the World Cup matches together but also shared the feeling of being two young authors who cannot write literature but do so nonetheless. I also attended the opening of the Jerusalem Film Festival at Sultan’s Pool. I’ve never been in the company of so many Jews!
*
Nicole Krauss, author of Man Walks into a Room and The History of Love:
This is not my first visit to Jerusalem. My family has deep roots here. But I always felt that I need to stay in this city for some time, to learn more about local literary activity here and examine the sources of my own creativity. In 2008, during the First International Writers Festival, I suggested to Uri Dromi that I and my family come to Mishkenot Sha’ananim, in keeping with Teddy Kollek’s tradition of hospitality that I had heard so much about. The dream came true and now – without revealing everything about my next book – I can tell you that I am actually in the place I’m writing about.
At the Writers Festival, I was privileged to speak with Amos Oz. This year, I met Aharon Appelfeld, an author I greatly admire. As a young writer who devoured his books, the opportunity to sit next to him on the dais, before a literature loving Jerusalem audience, facing the captivating landscape of the Old City walls, was an unforgettable experience. Last week, I spoke with another author at Mishkenot Sha’ananim whom I hold in high regard, Yoram Kaniuk. It was a fascinating conversation with a creative artist whom I feel has not been given the worldwide recognition he deserves.
Generally speaking, I find the close familiarity among people here to be enchanting. Who sat in the first row at the meeting with Kaniuk? Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer. When I needed to speak to a judge because I have such a character in my book, people referred me to one who was eager to talk to me. When I needed an architect to explain a neighborhood to me, a most enthusiastic candidate was found at once. All in all, I have never been to any other city whose residents speak about it with such warmth and love. There is nothing like Jerusalem anywhere else in the world.
DCJCC Writing Contest
COMMUNITY PRIZE FOR WRITING ON A FESTIVAL THEME
TO BE AWARDED AT WASHINGTON DCJCC
WASHINGTON, DC – The Washington DCJCC’s Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival proudly announces the COMMUNITY PRIZE FOR WRITING ON A FESTIVAL THEME writing contest. Winners will be recognized during the Festival, October 17–27, 2010, at the Washington DCJCC, 1529 16th Street NW.
This year’s Opening Night theme is: Strangers in a Strange Land: The Lives of Jewish Immigrants.
We surround ourselves with communities that sustain and enrich our lives. When we leave those communities—by choice, by force, or both—our lives are upended. What do we choose to take with us to the new environment, and what do we leave behind? This year’s Opening Night explores these questions of immigration and home.
Jews have often found themselves strangers in strange lands, but new environments are not always the result of physical displacement. Tell us a true story—from your life or a family member’s—of finding oneself alone in a new place or situation.
Submissions are open to all and will be judged blindly. Work will be considered in two categories: 1) 18 years and under, and 2) over 18. Please include your contact information and age category on the first page only. Send submissions of 500 words or fewer to litfest@washingtondcjcc.org by September 27, 2010.
A selection committee will choose three entries in each category to honor during the Festival and online. These winning entries will be published on the 16th Street J’s website and The Blog at 16th & Q. The first place selection in each category will win the Community Prize for Writing and a $100 Visa gift card.
ABOUT THE HYMAN S. & FREDA BERNSTEIN JEWISH LITERARY FESTIVAL
The Hyman S. & Freda Bernstein Jewish Literary Festival, hosted in Washington, DC, presents the year’s best in Jewish writing by both emerging and established authors from across the globe. An annual celebration of Jewish literature, the Festival features engaging author panels, readings and talks for lovers of fiction, history, politics, humor, children’s stories and much more. washingtondcjcc.org/litfest
ABOUT THE WASHINGTON DCJCC
The Washington DCJCC works to preserve and strengthen Jewish identity, heritage, tradition and values through a wide variety of social, cultural, recreational and educational programs and services. The 16th Street J is committed to welcoming everyone in the community; membership and activities are open to all. The Washington DCJCC is a beneficiary agency of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and a designated agency of the United Way.
100 Voices: A Journey Home on 9/21
On Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 7 pm in theatres nationwide, you will experience 100 Voices: A Journey Home, a documentary based on the largest group of Cantors to ever return to Poland, where it all began, paying homage to the Cantorial tradition.
The documentary will be preceded by an exclusive specially produced mini-concert with the Cantors featuring 20th Century contemporary American music.
Check out the website for more information and to buy tickets.
Six Points Fellowship in LA Job Opening
Six Points Associate Director, Los Angeles-based
Organization
The Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, the leading supporter of emerging artists creating new Jewish culture, has a part-time opportunity (4/5 time) for an Associate Director based in Los Angeles. We are looking for a self-motivated, resourceful and detail-oriented person to join the Six Points team. Working under the supervision of the fellowship’s New York-based Director, the Associate Director administers the day-to-day operations of the Los Angeles-based program. The Associate Director will work collaboratively with the Six Points Fellowship Director, who will play a significant role in devising and implementing the long-term strategy for the Los Angeles Fellowship Program.
Major Responsibilities
• Coordinate operational aspects of the fellowship program in Los Angeles, including day-to-day interaction with a range of internal and external constituencies.
• Execution of key marketing strategies such as fellowship branding and positioning, advertising creation and placement, press relations and pitching, and internet and e-mail marketing.
• Coordinate aspects of the artist selection process, including oversight of application processing, convening selection panel, and facilitating meetings.
• Provide one-on-one performance coaching to artist cohort, guiding artists through a process for identifying project objectives and professional development needs, and monitoring ongoing developmental progress.
• Implement the Six Points educational program including training, learning, mentoring, and networking activities.
• Schedule, coordinate, and co-facilitate a variety of fellowship meetings and gatherings, including retreats, one-on-one mentoring, and group learning sessions.
• Work with Evaluation Consultant(s) to use data gathering tools that measure fellowship effectiveness and whether program objectives are being met.
• Participate in targeted fundraising activities in Los Angeles to support sustainability of the fellowship.
• Build and maintain relationships with a variety of cultural and educational institutions, to promote program partnerships and cooperative networking.
• Assist in the preparation of program budgets and schedules; monitor, verify and reconcile expenditure of budgeted funds as appropriate.
• Prepare scheduled and special reports; oversee the maintenance of program records and other required documentation.
• Work on special projects, as identified and assigned by the Fellowship’s Director.
Job Requirements
The ideal Associate Director has a professional background in arts administration and/or business management in a related cultural/arts organization. The candidate should have a bachelor’s degree with a minimum of 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in arts program management and artist development, or any combination of advanced degree and experience that provides the necessary knowledge, abilities and skills required.
Desired Skills
• Stellar interpersonal skills, skilled at facilitating meetings, making presentations, and building rapport with a range of communal institution.
• Communicate persuasively with diverse audiences, including artists, donors and communal professionals.
• Project management, and performance management skills, to provide the artist cohort with coaching resources for personal and professional success.
• Familiarity with Los Angeles cultural institutions, and film, video, visual and performance-based art communities is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of Jewish educational and communal resources is preferred.
This position reports to the Fellowship Director, who is based in New York City, and includes occasional travel.
Start Date: October, 2010
Salary: Commensurate with experience.
Please send cover letter and resume to Rebecca Guber at rebecca@sixpointsfellowship.org.
Feel free to circulate widely!
A Film Unfinished: An Early Look
A Film Unfinished hits NYC next week and already the buzz is building. Reprinted from Tablet Magazine.
by A.J. Goldmann
Months before the Warsaw Ghetto was to be liquidated, Joseph Goebbels commissioned a documentary about Ghetto life. The project was never completed, but the surviving raw footage forms the backbone of a new documentary, Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished, which opens in New York and Los Angeles next week and nationwide thereafter.
The footage, shot by German cameramen in April and May of 1942 and stored away for decades in an East German film archive, shows elaborately choreographed scenes of Jewish ritual and practice. Some feature what are supposed to be well-off Jews living alongside (and in a state of indifference to) their starving coreligionists. All the scenes are carefully staged, as we see from the multiple takes. One of the most painful shows well-fed women and starving men reluctantly taking a dip in a mikveh.
The footage itself, which Hersonski, a 33-year-old Tel Aviv native, says has never before been presented as comprehensively, is maddeningly inconclusive. Was it meant to further convince the German public of the Jews’ degeneracy? Was it to be an ethnographic document of a vanished race after the Nazis had solved the Jewish Question? Why was the project shelved? There is no script, no narration—nothing but an hour of silent black-and-white footage.
This is certainly not the Nazi filmmaking we know. It doesn’t trumpet the beauty and purity of the Volk as in Triumph of the Will; nor does it melodramatically stir up hatred, as in Jud Süß.
For Hersonski, the key challenge was to find an appropriate way to package the four 35mm reels of archival material. “[Hersonski’s cameraman] spent most of his time thinking about how we could create something that will not harm the image and will allow the image to stay all the time foregrounded,” she said at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, where the documentary had its European premiere. The film had its U.S. premiere at Sundance in January, where it was awarded the festival’s World Cinema Documentary Editing Award.
Intercut with the original footage are interviews with Ghetto survivors located by Hersonski—four women and one man—who were children when the Nazis came with their cameras. “Although it was the largest Ghetto in Poland, only a few survivors remained alive after the uprising. And among those few, we succeeded in finding the few who remember the making of this film, which was for me inconceivable,” Hersonski said.
A Feeling For Family
A closer look at Jerusalem fellow Shelley Jordon and her work, reprinted from OSU Art Blog Terra.
Personal relationships drive Shelley Jordon’s experiments with painting and animation
By Angela Yeager
When Shelley Jordon was a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, she got in trouble for pulling her mother’s books off the shelves and drawing in the white spaces. Her need to create was so strong that she couldn’t resist, despite knowing her mom would be angry.
Many years later as an adult reeling from the news that her husband had a brain tumor, Jordon followed a similar urge. She printed out his MRI scans and started painting on top of them, covering them with her brush strokes, using personal imagery to come to grips with her fear.
“It was like going to a new country,” she says. “It was a whole new world of visual subject matter that I didn’t know existed, and it was my husband’s brain. It was visually exciting to me and at the same time a living document of the reality of our situation.”
Jordon, a professor of art at Oregon State University, has been an artist ever since she can remember. Painting has been not only her life’s work but also a lifeline during difficult times. Through trauma and transition, she has drawn from personal experience, but the feelings she captures are universal, grounded in the daily events that we share with the people who are closest to us.
Her early focus on still lifes took a dramatic turn with the uncertainty of her husband’s condition. Interpreting objects on a canvas was no longer enough to express her day-to-day feelings. She needed her pictures to move, to express a reality that was not fixed and a future that was in doubt. Adapting her work to a life in flux, she transformed herself over a period of several years from a renowned still-life painter to a creator of award-winning hand-painted animated movies.
“Shelley has recently embarked on an exciting new direction, exploring animation, installation and video in works that introduce a very moving type of content – the vicissitudes of human relationships,” says Sue Taylor, a respected art critic and historian at Portland State University. “This seems a pivotal point in her career, almost a reinvention of her artistic interests, and it will be fascinating to see where these experiments will lead.”
Catch a glimpse of grantee Toby Perl Freilich‘s new film, Inventing Our Life, posted at Tablet Magazine.
By Toby Perl Freilich
My documentary film, Inventing Our Life: The Kibbutz Experiment, has its roots in my own biography. In 1968, my sister, then 18, moved to Israel and settled on a kibbutz. My parents were horrified. Polish-born Holocaust survivors who’d immigrated to America after the war, they saw kibbutz as nothing more than a glorified kolkhoz, one of Stalin’s failed collective farms, a prison camp in the guise of a commune. They couldn’t understand why my sister would chuck the American dream in favor of something that smacked so much of Soviet oppression and limited opportunity.
I was surprised, then, when visiting my sister as a kid in the 1970s, to discover that her kibbutz more closely resembled a lush Israeli suburb than the impoverished collective I had been led to imagine. Food, electricity, health care, education—everything was free and liberally doled out. Communal life could be maddeningly close, but it was vibrant and thrummed with the energy of a shared enterprise.
As the years passed, the waste and inefficiency of a moneyless society gradually began to take their toll on Israel’s roughly 270 kibbutzim. Financial and social hurdles arose to challenge each one of the kibbutzim’s emblems, from communal child rearing to the joint dining hall.
Elise in San Francisco
Elise’s Shabbat in San Francisco.
It was my parents’ yahrtzeit last week. Julian, on our staff, found a shul where I could say kaddish. Congregation Magen David was closest to the hotel – a short 3 miles, for which I needed to leave at 6:30am. My Russian cab driver wasn’t paying much attention to me or the paper I handed him but when we arrived in front of the synagogue – which though modest, jumped out in the middle of the plain block where it was located – he asked why I was going. To say Kaddish, I explained, and so it was clear I was Jewish and of course so was he, from Odessa, somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit. Auspicious beginning…
The shul is Sephardic so I was surprised, as I entered up the women’s staircase, by the sound of Russian. There were a handful of old men on the other side of a modest mechitza. The shul was brightly lit by at least 10 chandeliers (each with a small tag dangling, acknowledging its donor) and it was quite handsome. Artwork on the walls, signs in Hebrew not to talk during prayers or Torah reading. One old man acknowledged my presence. There wasn’t a minyan and I was concerned – not only that I couldn’t say kaddish but that this was the last of a “tribe” of men who got up early, daily, to say their prayers. What would happen to other people who need to say kaddish on a Friday in the middle of summer? Fears unfounded: over the course of the next 20 minute men of all ages arrived, the voices and cadences swelled. What struck me was no matter how fast the baal tefila read (and one old fellow was unbelievably speedy, though every word was perfectly articulated) the sense of urgency and fervor was always present. These men knew the meaning of the prayers. Their phrasing, cadences, pitch and emphasis, raising their voices, even shouting out certain words together was so different from my recollection of the muttering I associate with orthodox prayer. And even on Friday morning there was a drash – on the importance of carrying out the small mitzvoth such as feeding your animal before yourself. In spite of my antipathy to the separate seating, etc, I was encouraged that a young man led part of the services (it seemed almost choreographed how leading got tossed around the room without any stop – like a great game of volley ball). I left most satisfied and delighted by this odd discovery.
Later that evening…
A Film Unfinished
Recently-uncovered propaganda film and archival footage of the Warsaw ghetto surface in Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished, coming soon to New York City.
A FILM UNFINISHED • Directed by Yael Hersonski
Opens at the Film Forum in NYC on August 18th • 209 W Houston St
Opens at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in NYC on August 20th • 1886 Broadway
Select cities to follow.
At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film, having sat undisturbed in an East German archive, was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May 1942, and labeled simply “Ghetto,” this footage quickly became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. However, the later discovery of a long-missing reel complicated earlier readings of the footage. A FILM UNFINISHED presents the raw footage in its entirety, carefully noting fictionalized sequences (including a staged dinner party) falsely showing “the good life” enjoyed by Jewish urbanites, and probes deep into the making of a now-infamous Nazi propaganda film. A FILM UNFINISHED is a film of enormous import, documenting some of the worst horrors of our time and exposing the efforts of its perpetrators to propel their agenda and cast it in a favorable light.
“Hersonki’s documentary is a monumental archival achievement.” – Masha Leon, The Jewish Daily Forward
“Perhaps the most understated and intriguing documentary ever made about the Holocaust.”
– Heeb Magazine
**Winner at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Jerusalem Film Festival & Hot Docs Int’l Film Festival**
GROUP SALES IN NEW YORK: Tickets at the Film Forum are half price ($6 instead of $12) for nonprofit and educational organizations bringing groups of 12 or more, Mon/Tue/Fri at 1:00, 2:50 and 4:40 or Wed/Thu 1:00, 2:50, 4:40, 6:30, 8:20 and 10:10. To arrange a group sale please contact sara@filmpresence.com.
More Information: www.afilmunfinished.com
Report from the SFJFF
Elise, in San Francisco for the Jewish Film Festival, gives her impressions of the panel: “Is Dialogue Possible?: How Films Help Us Talk About Israel (Or Not)“:
Report from San Francisco
Attended a most interesting panel at the conclusion of the SFJewish Film Festival today. Acknowledging the tensions of last year, Peter Stein introduced the session with the idea of moving forward and using today’s hour as the beginning of a conversation. The topic was how films help us talk about Israel (or not). He admitted that it might or might not prove always to work.
The panelists included our filmmakers, Ronit Avni (Encounter Point and Budrus) and Lisa Gossels (My So-Called Enemy, formerly entitled Imaging Peace). Ari Kelman, co-author of the 2006 Culture Study and numerous other books and publications relating to Jewish young people and transformation participated as did a wonderful SF professional focused on conflict resolution, Rachel Eryn Kalish, who is working with the JCRC on their “YEAR OF CIVIL DISCOURSE.” Ellen Schneider, a regular panelist for us and founder of Active Voice, was a skillful moderator, alternating between keeping the panel engaged and fielding questions from the audience – which were delivered on 3×5 cards, ensuring a diversity of voices and perspectives.
How can film be a catalyst to talk about difficult issues is the questions Ellen started with and she talked about how film is intimate, emotional and made by artists, as well as having large audiences. A few short film clips were shown – short enough for me to realize how easy it is for people to misconstrue perspective and intent from short bits. Ronit talked about how Budrus started as a response to the question they were asked during the screening of Encounter Point – where was the Palestinian Ghandi. In Dubai they were criticized for showing empathetic Israelis, in other places they get pushback on their portrayal of the Palestinians.
Lisa began her film when the head of the leadership program that brought together Israeli and Palestinian young woman introduced her to some of them and she was moved by them as human beings.
Issues of balance were raised and both artists expressed their personal focus on being true to the subjects of their films and their personal narratives – that they couldn’t nor shouldn’t carry the responsibility for providing the full historical context of the situation they are focusing on. Their objective is to provide personal stories that arent’ ordinarily covered in the media and to break stereotypes.
Rachel talked about the challenge of “taming the limbic part of the brain” so that when we talk about difficult subject matter we aren’t so reactive, that we really listen to other peoples perspectives instead of waiting for them to say what we already think, and how when there is fear around issues it is important to give people a place to unpack that fear. She called it the “If you don’t see it my way, we might all die” approach. She suggested that culture allows access to pent up emotions that tend to go to politics rather than dialogue.
A question that went unanswered is where are their more balanced media outlets in the Arab world, and while Ronit said that Just vision has good relationships with Palestinian press, no one spoke about a nuanced views of the Israeli Palestinian conflict reflected from the Arab perspective.
Around the question of context and media having an undue effect on college campuses, Ari Kelman (who teaches at UC Davis) talked about having faith in media consumers that they not immediately assume the worst if they see Israelis in uniform as “oppressors” and that criticizing Israeli policy doesn’t mean that young people are giving up on their Jewish identity.
Ultimately, the need for media literacy was expressed as of key importance. Documentary film is not the news and as a narrative driven form, it is not good for macro analysis. Several people complimented the SFJFF for making space for uncomfortable conversations. Lisa aptly expressed her own experience that she has found more than one version of history and that she hopes seeing her film is a starting point for people to do their own research.
This was an excellent starting point for conversation and I hope in the spirit of how the SFJFF spawned so many Jewish Film festivals, the conversation continues across the country.
