The 8th annual Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (AJFF) arrived on the day of the first snow of the season in a city that, well, isn’t exactly used to or prepared for snow. The fact that a large theatre-packing audience braved the elements to attend the opening ceremonies is a testament to the devotion of the audience to this festival.
Founded by the American Jewish Committee, this was the largest AJFF yet, with over 12,000 expected ticket sales this year, up from around 10,000 last year. In fact, if those numbers bear out (over the two-in-one-week, unprecedented-in-recent-history bout of snowstorms) it would make this the 2nd largest Jewish film festival in the country despite being younger than most and most major cities having one. The 12 day festival featured 47 films from 16 countries, 15 of which were sold out by opening night. The festival this year had 118 sponsors, 143 committee members, over 200 planning volunteers, and over 100 enthusiastic on-site volunteers.
The festival was located at three separate film theatres, mainly because of the sprawlingness that is Atlanta. The upside is that three far flung locations makes some films easier to reach for all. The downside is that it makes all films very difficult to reach for any. The solution, a decent mass transit system for Atlanta! But I digress. The locations were each wonderful theatres, including the Regal chain, represented well by the new Regal 16 Atlantic Station with its 600 seat theatres and stadium seating, and the LeFont theatres, known throughout Atlanta for being long time bastions of independent film.
The volunteers were very friendly and enthusiastic. The thing about Atlanta’s ever-growing film community is that it is large enough to support successes like this but small enough to have a real sense of community. Imagine my surprise when the very volunteer sending out my press packet turned out to be Rebecca Biggs, a young woman I had oddly enough been both a production assistant and zombie for on an independent film Dead Justice that she was a producer on just a few months before. Big town, small world. She and the other volunteers I chatted with at the festival gladly give hours of their free time, year after year, drawn back by the atmosphere, the importance of the project, and the quality of the films. They pour their hearts, souls, creativity, time, and passion into this project. Honestly, some of the promotional postcards and flyers that were take offs on movie posters like “Brokeback Sinai” or the Rocky one with a Rabbi standing at the top of the steps, just cracked me up. The volunteers feel the experience gives them a chance to work behind the scenes, meet other filmmakers and filmbuffs, and support and enhance the Atlanta film community as a whole.
The crowd too was enthusiastic, though admittedly perhaps a little older overall than your average film festival audience. One exception to this was the Young Professionals Night, which I suppose is to inspire young people’s interest in the festival, I am not exactly sure as the co-chair of this event was the one volunteer not enthusiastic to speak about the festival for some reason. If the purpose was outreach, I would only encourage them to do even more next year. There was definitely an eager crowd, but Atlanta is a big town and there are many young professional and film associations of which I am a member that would love to be a part of this.
Atlanta, though, can be a difficult town when it comes to outreach for any cultural event. From its numbers it is amazingly diverse, but in real life terms it has yet to diversify as much as one would hope. I would have loved to see a more diverse crowd at the festival and would encourage that sometimes outreach means going way out of your comfort zone, shaking people up, and going hey you might not realize it at first blush but we’ve got something here for you too.
Along those lines, the theme of the festival was, “Great films with a Jewish twist.” These are true independent films which any film lover can learn from and enjoy from psychological thrillers to war dramas to documentaries to coming-of-age family films to romances to everything in between. The question explored here of, “What is a Jewish film?” was clearly used to be all embracing, not limiting. The goal was to present the audience with great films through which you would learn more both about Judaism and about yourself. I did.
A great job too was done with the number and variety of the post-film Q&A sessions. Sometimes, you would hear from the producers, or the director, or some of the actors. However, guests also included university film chairs, authors of the book behind the film, a member of the Israel Defense Force for a war drama, a former 60’s activist who worked alongside the Chicago 7 at a film about the Chicago 7, and so on. Due to the variety of guests, these discussions were engaging, surprising, and fascinating, and let you see the films from so many different angles you would leave thoroughly fulfilled. All the knowledge gained and used here comes from so many sources, the guest speakers, the post-film discussions, the AJFF trailer and program, conversations with volunteers, and of course the films themselves, so many sources because there really was so much there to learn from. The AJFF is a good time. Next year, I hope even more Atlantans check it out, especially those who may never have considered it before. I think they would be warmly surprised at what they would learn, discover, and enjoy.
Now, on to the movies themselves.
Director: Helen Hunt
This film made its East Coast Premiere as the centerpiece of the opening night ceremonies of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. In her directorial debut, Oscar-winning actress Helen Hunt leads an all-star cast to bring us the perfect first example of “great films with a Jewish twist.”
Hunt brings us a deeply real and endearing performance as a 39 1/2-year-old New York Jewish schoolteacher who soon after her wedding finds herself in the midst of a full on mid-life crisis when her immature husband (Matthew Broderick) decides their marriage was a mistake. April then finds herself in a position that many women will be able to identify with. She is at a point in her life when she is desperate to have a child, suddenly finds herself with no man or marriage in sight, and has a mother begging, cajoling, harassing, and pleading for a grandchild. “Why can’t you just adopt, they’re throwing little girls away in garbage cans in China for god’s sake?” You would be amazed how many women of all races, cultures, and religions have heard that one or something similar from their own mothers at some point.
In the midst of dealing with one part of her life falling apart, another soon follows when her adoptive mother passes away and her eccentric biological one (Bette Milder) plows back into her life a day after the funeral. She also, far too soon, meets Frank (Colin Firth, who gives an absolutely stellar performance that is both witty yet fragile and truly helps ground the film), a single dad and father of one of her students who has recently been through his own painful divorce. This film is clever, quirky, and witty, but at its heart it is about us, people, and what do we do when our lives don’t turn out like we planned? The characters are all at incredible turning points in their lives. They are lost and confused, wounded and vulnerable, and uncertain but hopeful. At one point you wonder what April is thinking when she does some of the things she does. Then, you realize she’s just as confused by her actions as you, and that’s just life. Unexpected things happen in life. You don’t necessarily meet people, even the love of your life, at the right time, and it’s messy and imperfect and not at all what the fairy tales made it out to be, but again that’s life. And, if you let it, it might end up just as good as the fairy tales, not as pretty maybe, but good, maybe even better.
And, as promised, I learned more both about Jewish culture in this film, as the character leaned on her religious faith and rituals to help her through these times, and about myself. It never hurts to have a reminder that it’s okay for life to be messy and that if you don’t always know what to do you’re not alone. I also have to say that as a strong advocate of adoption, the film makes a nice statement about the joys of that as well.
Then She Found Me took ten years to make and is the screen adaptation of the 1990 novel by Elinor Lipman from which it was optioned 19 years before. The Q&A after the film with Elinor, a truly lovely woman, was insightful, humorous, and instructive. It took a long time, but I am glad Then She Found Me found us. Now, see it.
Director: Brett Morgen
“This movie is not intended to be a historical document of 1968. It’s a movie about eight guys who decided to take a stand and were willing to get clubbed on the head or go to jail for 10 years to change the direction of this country. It’s that level of commitment and that level of activism that I really admire, that I think is absent in our culture today.” – Brett Morgan
This inventive documentary uses a clever mix of animation and archival footage to bring to vibrant life a retelling of the infamous Chicago Democratic National Convention Riots and the trial that followed. In late August, 1968 thousands converged on the city where the Democratic Convention was being held to protest the war in Vietnam. Chicago police led by Mayor Richard Daley cracked down hard on the protestors causing violence and provoking riots. September of the following year, 8 supposed leaders of the anti-war movement entered a federal courtroom to face charges of conspiracy to cross state lines and incite a riot. The film’s title is drawn from the fact that several of the protestors, the defense attorneys, the prosecutor, and the conservative judge that oversaw the trial were all Jewish.
The film is humorous at times, many of the laughs coming from the characters at the heart of the protests, figures like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin who were hippie, yippie, and counter-culture to the core and had no problem mocking and flying in the face of a system they saw as unjust. Much of the rest of the humor and indeed much of the film comes from the court transcripts themselves. The generation clash evident in every page as the prosecutor and extremely conservative Judge Julius Hoffman (no relation to Abbie) try to reign in their “outrageous” defendants. The laughs, however, are more than equally balanced by outrage as a hush falls over the audience when we are shown footage of our own army and police beating unarmed protestors for peace or, in one of the most striking moments of the film and trial, as we are forced to sit back helplessly and watch the laws of our land trampled as Black Panther member Bobby Seale is first denied his constitutional right of self-representation then when he keeps insisting on it actually taken away and brought back to the courtroom bound and shackled, yes shackled, to his chair.
This film has been described as not just a historical recreation but a call to action for the modern generation. The parallels between the times of war are not exactly hard to see. After the film, an extremely thought-provoking Q&A with activist and educator Mark William Rudd, who worked alongside members of the Chicago 8, discussed the difference between the two generations of anti-war movements. At the time, activists were inspired by both the Civil Rights Movement and the events of WWII. Then, people truly believed that one person could really change the world, because they had actually seen it. People also had a definite desire not to commit the ultimate sin of becoming “the good German” as in someone who knows of atrocities being committed and does nothing. Our times, without those examples good and bad, are quite different. People are far less likely to believe that one person can change the world, to the extent that many often don’t think their voice matters enough to even vote. Many now have a self-fulfilling prophecy that we can’t make a difference. People also now have no problem looking the other way. Rudd discussed how “we have accepted the terms of our privilege” which means ignoring Iraq and even the poverty and violence of the poorest sections of our own city if it means not rocking the boat, being comfortable, and getting on with our lives. Of course, the main difference is the draft, kind of hard to keep ignoring things after that. It is this type of passionate, engrossing, reactive discussion that a film like this generates. It has a lot to say about our times and definitely should be sought out.
Director: Ilan Ziv
This engaging documentary tells the story of the Six Day War, the 1967 battle between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Though not exactly riveting storytelling, a combination of newly declassified archives, home movies, photographs, dramatic recreations, unpublished personal diaries, and dozens of interviews shows the step-by-step series of circumstances and events that lead to and comprised the dramatic confrontation in which a series of decisions in the Arab world made Israel feel pushed into conflict. Israel then annihilated the forces of their adversaries with a first strike comprised of some of the most precise, devastating, and crushingly quick series of attacks imaginable. The part where the Israeli air force flew in below the radar and delivered an opening deathblow that completely and utterly destroyed the entire Egyptian airforce (planes, runways, everything) in under an hour was amazing. The pressure of a country alone in the an unwelcoming world was clearly felt, as was the feeling that to protect themselves they had to show that world what they were made of. The film, however, also made clear that once that was accomplished the use of the situation to expand into Palestinian areas of Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights, created a problem far greater and more dangerous to the area and the world than those at the time could have imagined. On the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War, filmmaker Ilan Ziv shows us the flashpoint that forever altered the course of Middle East relations and has led to the lethal cycle of violence, terrorism, and reprisals that continues to threaten world peace to this day. If you want to know how it all started, this is the movie that can tell you.
Director: Jeremy Kagan
This riveting one-woman portrayal of Golda Meir played by Emmy-winning actress Valerie Harper in a reprisal of her role on Broadway is the film adaptation of the William Gibson play. Golda’s Balcony traces the life of the woman who would become prime minister of Israel from her childhood in the Ukraine to her life in the U.S. to her role as one of the founders of the Jewish State to her leadership of the country during times of war, particular the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
Valerie Harper does true homage to this legendary figure in an honest, heartfelt portrayal. I was surprised having just seen Harper minutes before introducing the film at how quickly I lost her in the role. Harper disappeared and became Meir. Her accent melted into Meir’s own unique combination of a Yiddish and Milwaukee accent (and according to the very nice couple next to me in the audience non-Jewish Harper’s Yiddish was impeccable). I was soon drawn into the life of this powerful woman, who admittedly I knew only the basic facts of before. Now, I was shown the passion, the fierceness, the regret, and, surprisingly, the humor. She was at the same time a kind-hearted grandmotherly figure to her people and an iron lady to their adversaries. She led her nation through some of its most defining events, she made the tough calls during times of war, she accepted the inner turmoil that comes with having the decision over whether and when to use nuclear weapons, and somehow she brought her people and the state she helped create through it all. She also unhappily sacrificed her marriage and time and closeness with her children to do this. A truly fascinating woman.
Harper’s respect for Meir can be felt in every frame. Plus, the director rather ingenuously creates a hybrid of play and film here. Newsreel footage, archival photos, and artistic sets provide the backdrop for Harper’s performance. Subtle effects are used to turn monologue into dialogue allowing Harper as Meir to play quite a few other characters with versatility in a way that keeps the focus on Golda and reminds us that we are seeing all of the characters through Golda’s memory. The make-up, which took 3 1/2 hours a day to apply, was just strong enough to be effective without trying so hard to look dead on that it didn’t fit Harper. It just blended together perfectly and became Harper’s Meir, a portrayal that received a standing ovation as the credits rolled.
The film was surprisingly funny, because Meir was surprisingly funny. The only real negative of the story was that because it jumped around so much in time, the less you are previously familiar with the life and times of Meir and the history of Israel, the more confusing it will be until things tie up at the end. One of the most insightful things about this movie, and one reason I think it is really a must see for everyone especially now, is watching a woman commanding a country and a country and army at war over thirty years ago during a time when we have our first real contender for a woman president of the United States of America. For all those out there who still in 2008 ask if a woman can be president and commander-in-chief, see Golda’s Balcony. Your question will be answered.
http://www.goldasbalconythefilm.com/
Director: Joseph Cedar
From director Joseph Cedar, a veteran of the first Lebanon war, and based on the best-selling novel by Ron Leshen, this realistic military drama depicts the life of Israeli soldiers who occupy and defend an ancient fort in southern Lebanon in the final days before the Israeli military’s withdrawal from the area. The fort is Beaufort Castle, a symbol of one of Israeli’s most contentious military campaigns. But this film is not a mere historical reenactment it is an intensely authentic representation of what it is like to be an occupying soldier in a state of constant danger but also constant waiting. You feel the tension wearing on the soldiers trapped in the maze of the claustrophobic castle, not really doing or preparing for anything but still having to be constantly alert for danger. This movie makes you live their anxiety. In fact, by a point in the movie where they sent a dog out to check and see if a bomb would go off, I found myself so tied in their shoes and filled with stomach-churning anticipation of what would happen next, that when the dog survived and ran back to the arms of the tearful, joyful soldier who trained him, I was literally exhausted. At that point, we were not even half way through the movie. At 125 minutes with the type of intensity it brings, my one criticism is that it is just too long. But it is effective, and leaves us very powerfully with the questions of what is the true point of war and is it really ever worth the cost, when all these soldiers fought for and lived and died to defend is destroyed.
In keeping with this festival’s particularly interesting selection of Q&A speakers, after this military feature the audience got to ask questions of Uri Rosenheck, an actual former commander of the IDF (Israel Defense Forces).
Shalom. Salaam. Aloha. Peace.
- L. C. Cruell
L. C. Cruell
Award-Winning Screenwriter,
Published Author, Freelance Writer/Editor,
Attorney, and Founder RedStateResistance.Com.
JD, Harvard Law School, emphasis on Entertainment Law.
BA, Duke University, Majors: History; Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Minor: Film and Video Theory and Practice.