Apparently neither snow nor ice nor bitter cold (again! in Atlanta for God’s sake!) can keep me from a good shorts program and a day of great independent films. I think that’s a good thing.
Shorts Program
No true film festival is complete without a shorts program. Given that it occurred Sunday morning after yet another surprising night of snow and sleet, I was not only thrilled to be there because I love a good shorts program, I was thrilled to make it there alive. Showing again the devotion of the audience to this festival, though there were hardly any cars on the roads, the theatre was quite full and, thankfully, warm.
Broken Mirrors – A Lost Identity
Directed By: John Henry Davis
This autobiographical film tells us the story of the filmmaker’s lost Jewish identity. For generations, their branch of the family chose to “pass” for gentile. They did not talk about being Jewish, did not follow Jewish customs and did not raise their children to think of themselves as Jewish. They would censor their language so as not to “sound” Jewish and even during the holocaust considered it something that was happening to someone else, to the Jews, not them. In the beginning, it was less a question of ill intent and more a matter of just wanting to fit in to mainstream American society without being “different” or “other.” Eventually, out of years and habit it just became true to them, until they honestly felt not Jewish. The children grew up feeling the same, but, as the film shows, later in life felt like they were missing a vital connection in their lives, to their history, and to the rest of their family, and thus made an effort to different degrees to reconnect with their community, religion, and heritage. Members of many other ethnic and immigrant groups can identify with this story and the questions it asks about the importance and strength of roots and community versus the prejudice and discrimination that such identity can cause in an at times highly unjust world.
A Different Dish
Directed By: Shay Hamias
Though the animation was nice, the characters realistic and empathetic, and the message one of acceptance and tolerance, this story of a Moroccan mother who takes her son to a charlatan rabbi to “cure” him of being gay only to have the rabbi help them understand each other’s point of view was slow, predictable, and thus a little boring. When the audience starts shuffling through their belongings in the middle of a short, it is usually a good sign that a trimming edit wouldn’t hurt.
http://www.adifferentdish.com/
888-Go-Kosher
Directed By: Lauren Shweder Biel
This fascinating documentary follows a day in the life of 888-Go-Kosher, New York City’s only rapid-response kitchen koshering service. That’s right, if you have a kitchen you need made kosher for a large event or if you are moving into a new place and want to keep a kosher home, one call and Rabbi Sholtiel Lebovic and his team will be there. While the documentary had a light-hearted and fun feel drawing hardy laughs from the audience, the service they perform is a vital and important one for many. The only complaint I have of this short is the rarest of complaints with a film, that it was just a little too short. The entire process was so interesting that as I watched the separation of different parts of the kitchen and utensils into “meat” and “dairy” and the boiling of some utensils in water while others were taken back to a special, presumably blessed, cleansing bath called a Mikva. It was so intriguing I only wish they had gone through an explanation of the process of koshering designed for those who do not know what it involves as they went. It was so interesting, I wanted to learn more. Rabbi Lebovic and his team have apparently koshered over 10,000 kitchens, with their motto, “Making America kosher, one kitchen at a time.”
http://www.kavanahproductions.com/888GOKOSHER.html
Directed By: Lena Einhorn
Told through animation, this short shows us quite humorously a day in the life of a couple fulfilling the Jewish tradition of Nidah. Nidah means separation. The tradition itself is a time of complete sexual and even physical separation (separate beds, no touching of any kind, the placing down and picking up of objects instead of just handing them off) during the wife’s menstrual cycle. At the end of the “cleansing period” the woman then purifies herself in a ritual bath called a Mikva, and then they can live again as husband and wife. An amusing short that shows the oddness, some might say absurdity, of what I assume is a rarely-used-in-modern-times tradition. It makes me think of tribal cultures that would make the women go live in a hut or the forest for this period because they were unclean. It always amazes me that cultures and religions scattered throughout history that celebrate life and birth as sacred find the very process that makes both possible “unclean.” Odd that.
Directed By: Melanie Levy
This was, without question, my favorite short of the program and its subject matter one of my favorite discoveries of the whole festival. Set in Kingston, Jamaica, this documentary tells the story of the Jewish community who have existed on the island for over 350 years, some with tales of ancestors coming over during the Spanish Inquisition. What was fascinating about this community, besides the surprise to myself, and apparently, if the surprised noises, laughs, and gasps were any indication, even to much of the audience, that there was such a long-standing community of Jews in Jamaica, was how well and completely they had assimilated into the culture. The close, multi-racial congregation was a beautiful thing to see. Hebrew with a Jamaican accent was a mind-blowing thing to hear. And the beautiful white stone synagogue with its white sand floor was breathtaking. The members of the community were vibrant characters who felt both Jewish and Jamaican and who loved their church and community despite the fact that it had been dwindling over the years as political divisions that began in 1970’s Jamaica has over the years led to many leaving Jamaica. I loved the easy diversity and joy of this tiny community. At one point one of the leaders of the synagogue who happened to be Black, Jamaican, and Jewish, asked, “Why would there be a contradiction between being Black and being Jewish?” The answer, there shouldn’t be. And in Kingston, Jamaica where white and black Jewish Jamaicans worship side by side, there isn’t.
Directed By: Irina Litmanovich
In this animated short based on a poem by Ovsei Driz, the Wise Men of the village of Chelm attempt to save their city from a plague of mice. However, their “solution” only leads to a cycle of problems as cats brought in to kill the mice lead to a plague of cats, followed shortly by a plague of dogs, and so on. Though the animation is interesting and quite fun and well synched with the musical score, the story is very slow and didn’t seem to go anywhere or make a real statement about anything. At the end, I was left unsure of what the point of it all was supposed to be. Murmurs of “What?” and “I don’t get it” in the audience showed I was not alone.
Naturalized
Directed By: Julia Kots
In another of my absolute favorite shorts from this program, this film tells the story of a young Russian immigrant who argues with his family from his hospital bed as they descend on him in force to try to talk him out of his decision to undergo adult circumcision. This film did an excellent job at succeeding as a crossover film with mainstream appeal. For one thing, it was absolutely laugh-out-loud hilarious. But, amidst the jokes they somehow managed to teach all about the religious persecution in Russia that for many years forced Jewish Russians to hide their identity including foregoing certain religious rituals. When their adult son decides that he now wants to do this as a symbol of his membership in the Jewish community, his parents react with extreme displeasure much in the same way as they do when their daughter threatens a lip piercing. The ultimate line of the film for me that sums up both its humor and subject matter and its skill for making you laugh and learn simultaneously is spoken by the young man near the end as he waves a finger at his father. “The first mohel came to America 100 years ago, and now the whole country is circumcised. That one Jew truly achieved the American dream!”
Directed By: Neil Ira Needleman
This charming, fictional tale gives us the first-person narrative of a man who takes a trip to Prague to recreate the trip his parents took there just before their death in a car crash on their way back home from JFK airport. He was supposed to pick them up, but he had a work deadline. They died when the cab crashed due to an intoxicated cab driver. In an effort to reconnect and come to terms with things, he goes to see the city that they told him they loved so much. To his surprise, and with a bit of a twist, he on this trip also finds a surrogate family who lead him to a love of his own. Though the initial motivation sounds dark, the film has quite a lighthearted, warm, touching feel and is told virtually completely through the superb illustrations of Herb Rogoff that take us to Prague right along with the protagonist.
Directed by: Jaap van Heusden
A student exchange program brings Gideon, an orthodox boy from Israel, to the Dutch home of Simcha, a girl. Unfortunately, Gideon thought Simcha was a boy until his arrival and problems arise as soon as he realizes such is not the case. Staying with a girl, touching her, even talking to her are all considered indecent in Gideon’s eyes. Simcha’s initial attempts to reach out at first meet hurtful resistance. But as they hesitantly, tentatively spend time together, Simcha begins to see that in part Gideon is homesick. As she reaches out again, though still not sure if he will stay the full week, Gideon begins to let her in and they grow to appreciate each other’s interests, such as hers in magic and his in music. On one level the film shows young people from different arenas of Judaism crossing the divide to understand each other. On another level, it is a universal, charming, coming-of-age story of those scary, tender, unforgettable, still innocent moments when we first begin to try to understand and reach out to the opposite sex. Predictable but endearing.
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.