NYJFF ’17: Dimona Twist

Dimona was (and still is) a modest provincial town in the Negev Desert when large parties of Moroccan and Polish immigrants were encouraged to settle there. Fortunately, the Israelis are good at building quickly. Perhaps you might have heard that already. Despite what the UN and the old Administration thought, this is a good thing. Of course, starting from scratch in the hardscrabble community was not easy, especially for the girls and young women accustomed to a more cosmopolitan environment. Yet, they survived and ultimately thrived, as they explain in Michal Aviad’s documentary, Dimona Twist (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Among the new arrivals, the Poles were Ashkenazi and the Moroccans were Sephardi. Their parents did not mix well, which set up many a Romeo & Juliet-style romance amongst the younger generations. Life was hard regardless in Israel during the mid-1960s, especially for those who did not speak Hebrew. Yet, most of the women Aviad interviews slowly managed to find their place in the Israeli economy and society.

Yes, they also danced the twist. It seems the Moroccan Dimonians came over with particularly hip record collections. Nevertheless, the “twist” in Dimona Twist is probably overstated. In terms of theme, style, and tone DT is much more closely akin to Aviad’s Women Pioneers than a music or style doc.

Regardless, the stories of resiliency are pretty darn impressive. Again, there is a pronounced feminist dimension to Aviad’s latest film. Israel is truly a feminist nation, but in the 1960s, there were pockets like Dimona, where the more patriarchal attitudes from their old homelands (most definitely including Morocco) still held sway.

In fact, Dimona Twist represents Israel’s continuing efforts to come to terms with its complicated past, including the less than edifying aspects. Such self-examination and self-criticism is a unique manifestation of liberal democracy. Yet, viewers should really watch DT for the toughness of its subjects. They ask for no sympathy and express few regrets. Respectfully recommended for those interested in Israeli history, Dimona Twist screens twice this coming Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYJFF.

NYJFF ’17: Angel Wagenstein—Art is a Weapon

Bulgarian screenwriter-novelist Angel Wagenstein was sort of like the Alexander Dubček of Soviet-era cinema. He really believed in Socialism with a “human face” and frequently criticized the oppressive excesses of Soviet Socialism. His films were often hailed abroad but censored at home—always a sure sign of quality. Andrea Simon profiles the nonagenarian filmmaker in Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weapon (trailer here), which screens with the Wagenstein-scripted Stars as part of this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival.

Wagenstein served with the Bulgarian Partisans, trained in Moscow, and worked with the illustrious DEFA studio in East Germany (the classic Eolomea was based on his novel). He should have been a valued member of the establishment, but the criticisms of Stalinist Communism he not so subtly buried in his films led to his expulsion from the Party on more than one occasion.

Still sharp as a tack at ninety-four, Wagenstein has never had any illusions regarding the Soviet Union. However, as an original red diaper baby, whose revolutionary parents were exiled to Paris before WWII, Wagenstein maintains his early faith in socialism. Frankly, Simon rather glosses over his time as a member of parliament for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (the reconstituted Communist Party), merely characterizing it as “frustrating.” However, the Socialists (and absolutely the Communists before them) bear a great deal of responsibility for the current depressed and depressive state of things in Bulgaria, but Simon lets Wagenstein off the hook for legitimizing them through his well-earned prestige.

Of course, it is hard to fault Simon’s somewhat deferential treatment when Wagenstein takes viewers on a tour of prisons he had been incarcerated within. The clips from his films are also quite illustrative of Wagenstein as an artist and a political thinker. They will definitely leave viewers wanting to see more, but the festival has happily obliged by presenting Simon’s documentary on a double-bill with Stars, arguably his most historically important film.

Wagenstein remains a towering figure in Bulgaria and a recognizable name in many former Captive Nations, but he is not as well-known as he ought to be in the West, so it is nice to have Simon’s film to help rectify that situation. It is also good to give the anti-Communist Left their due. Their economic positions might be torturous, but they were on the right side of history when it mattered most. Together with Stars, Angel Wagenstein: Art is Weapon is highly recommended for cineastes when they screen this Sunday (1/22) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 NYJFF.

NYJFF ’17: Scarred Hearts

They thought they were like the Romanian Algonquin Round Table. They just happened to be confined to a sanitarium. As they quip and carp their days away, some will get better, but most will not. Sadly, 1930s Romanian medical treatment engenders little confidence in Radu Jude’s Scarred Hearts (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Scarred Hearts is not precisely based on the writings of M. [Max] Blecher, but it is inspired and informed by his autobiographical fiction. Emanuel will be Jude’s stand-in for Blecher or rather lay-in. Like Blecher, the waggish merchant’s son is afflicted with Pott’s Disease (spinal tuberculosis). Soon after his arrival, the rather dubious Dr. Ceafalan will slap a restrictive body cast on Emanuel. Generally, he does not mind, because he was never the outdoorsy type, but it makes his infrequent attempts at hook-ups rather awkward.

Solange is one of the sanitarium’s rare success stories. Aside from an unobtrusive leg brace, she is as good as new. However, she keeps returning to the clinic as a visitor, because the patients have become her only social circle. Emanuel will do his best to woo her with poetry, standing a better chance than he really ought to.

Jude uses static long takes and the boxy Academy aspect ratio to make viewers nearly as antsy and cabin feverish as the unfortunate patients. Frankly, he is probably too effective. In general, Scarred feels like The Death of Mr. Lazarescu reconceived as a vehicle for David Hyde Pierce. Lucian Teodor Rus’s Emanuel is just insufferable in his suffering, but Jude does him no favors by constantly interrupting the drama with super-title extracts from Blecher’s writings. Presumably, something was lost in the translation, because they generally have the ring of failed haikus.

Without question, the most rewarding aspects of Scarred are the character of Solange and the performance of Romanian documentary filmmaker Ivana Mladenovic. We pick up hints of her uncertain social position. We can assume she was once well-to-do, given her former residency in the pricey sanitarium, but she now works in a clerical position. She is also now single, since her husband abandoned her during her convalescence. She looks rather glamorous in spite of it all, but she still shares a kinship with the plastered-up patients. Mladenovic invests her with tremendous sensitivity, but also a mostly appealing flirtatiousness.

You probably already suspected it, but Jude conclusively proves it was a very bad idea to get sick in 1937 Romania. Occasionally, he has characters drop references to the rise of the Iron Guard and Romanian fascism, but nobody really seems interested, so it comes across like a transparent attempt to shoehorn in something properly “serious.” The result is a decidedly mixed bag, so patrons should make no herculean efforts to see Scarred Hearts when it screens Wednesday night (1/18) and Thursday afternoon (1/19) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYJFF.

NYJFF ’17: Home Movie (short)

8 and 16mm video was supposed to help families remember their good times together, but for Caroline Pick’s parents, it was a way to help them forget. She was there when much of the family archive was shot, but she would later see those films in a different light after eventually learning their full family chronicle. Personal history become a meditation on something greater in Pick’s short documentary, Home Movie, which screens as part of the Shorts Program at this year’s New York Jewish FilmFestival.

Originally, Pick’s parents hailed from Czechoslovakia, but she had a rather privileged upbringing in Cardiff. As the images of her nuclear family at-play unspool, Pick’s voiceover starts to describe the friends and extended family who are missing. Of course, they perished in the Holocaust, but that is hardly meant to be a surprise. Instead, Pick wonders at her parents ability to seemingly forget the past.

Granted, we have seen this sort of film before, but Pick’s editorial judgement is unusually assured. We do get a feeling of her parents’ personalities and suspect we see a flicker of sadness in their eyes. She also maybe implies their survivors’ issues manifested in odd ways, especially when we watch the footage her father shot of their mother with men suspected of being her lovers. Regardless, they certainly remained very European and cosmopolitan.

Pick’s approach in Home Movie is simple, but the effect is haunting. Recommended for viewers who appreciate a shrewd eye for “found” visuals, Home Movie screens this coming Monday (1/16) as part of the 2017 NYJFF’s Shorts Program.

NYJFF ’17: Peshmerga

The Kurdish homeland remains divided between four nations: Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Sadly, these days Iraq is probably the friendliest nation of the quartet—and the one in the least position to object. Moderate Sunnis also appreciate the efforts of the Kurdish Peshmerga forces countering the advance of ISIS. Is it time to call for the independence of a free, unified Kurdistan? French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy indirectly but unmistakably raises that question in his remarkable documentary Peshmerga (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival.

These are the Kurdish resistance fighters who rose up against Saddam Hussein. It was also the Peshmerga who uncovered key intel that led to the capture and death of Osama bin Laden. Lévy (or BHL as it is often dubbed in the press) flatly asserts they have been the most effective fighting force battling ISIS (they prefer the term “Daesh,” which is good enough for us)—and he ought to know. For six months, the mediagenic BHL was embedded with various Peshmerga companies, with brief time out taken to tend to his wounded cameraman. Yes, they were very definitely under fire.

Understandably, BHL was reluctant to leave Ala Hoshyar Tayyeb during his initial treatment, but the time was not entirely lost. While waiting to either return to the front or shuttle his crew member to France for treatment, BHL visits an Assyrian Christian priest, who fled the Daesh onslaught along with his flock, the last native speakers of Aramaic let on earth, which just shows how closely linked this region is to antiquity.

Initially, viewers might presume Peshmerga was selected by the NYJFF simply because of BHL’s Jewish faith, but the film takes on deeper Jewish resonance when Lévy visits a remote village that still takes pride in its ancient Jewish roots. Surely, the significance of the Muslim Kurds embracing ancestral links to Judaism is so self-evident, it hardly needs belaboring. As an additional fun fact, the Peshmerga are sufficiently progressive to have women’s platoons, whom Daesh particularly fear, because if they are killed by a woman they will supposedly be denied their place in paradise and those seventy-two virgins, so good hunting to the Peshmerga women.

BHL is indeed one of the most important living philosophers, but as an embedded journo, he captures episodes of warfighting comparable to anything in the films of Sebastian Junger. He introduces viewers to several Peshmerga commanders, who are colorful and . . . commanding. Sadly, we will also mourn for one of them. BHL conveys the shock of his loss, but still handles the incident with appropriate sensitivity.

Lévy is clearly a Peshmerga backer, but it is hard to blame him, given the boots-on-the-ground reality. Arguably, his upfront honesty on the subject is rather refreshing, while the film itself is enormously informative and persuasive. The Peshmerga are protecting their homeland, but they are also fighting our fight. Hopefully, the incoming administration will be more proactive aiding them. Very highly recommended, Peshmerga screens twice this coming Wednesday (1/18) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival.

NYJFF ’17: Past Life

Pop music is all very catchy, but it is out of its depth responding to events of great enormity. However, classical chorale music is perfectly suited for grand elegiac concerts. As a composer of such music, Ella Milch-Sheriff would find inspiration within her own family. A somewhat fictionalized version of their story unfolds in Avi Nesher’s Past Life (trailer here) which screens during the 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Sephi Milch (as she is called in Nesher’s screenplay) is a chorale student in an Israeli conservatory who harbors ambitions of composing, but is too mousy to stand up to the sexist dean. During a concert in West Germany, Milch is rather stunned when an elderly woman accosts her, accusing her father, Dr. Baruch Milch of murder. To make it even more awkward, she happens to be the mother of famous German-Polish chorale composer Thomas Zielinski.

For various reasons (including her father’s often excessive discipline), Milch cannot dismiss the encounter, so she takes her sister Nana Milch-Kotler into her confidence. Having an even more fraught relationship with their father, the leftwing journalist assumes there must be some truth to it. With varying degrees of reluctance and enthusiasm, the two sisters start investigating their father’s past. As word of their inquiries reaches Dr. Milch, he offers to reconstruct the lost diary of the years he spent hiding in the Zielinski farm. However, the combination of Milch-Kotler’s lingering doubts and accumulated bad karma might produce tragic results for the Milch family.

The significance of setting the film in 1977 should not be lost on anyone, but Nesher does not belabor the parallels between the thaw with Sadat and the efforts of Sephi Milch and Thomas Zielinski to reconcile their parents. Indeed, it is richly detailed period production that evokes both the good and the bad of the era. For added authenticity, the haunting piece performed during the climax really was composed by Ella Milch-Sheriff.

Joy Rieger is rather remarkable as the initially naïve and submissive Sephi Milch. Her expressive face is like an open book. Nelly Tagar brings more attitude and angst as the razor-sharp but profoundly sad Milch-Kotler. Doron Tavory deftly walks a fine line as Dr. Milch, establishing his severity as a parent, but also a deep sense of his fundamentally decent but scarred psyche. Yet, Rafael Stachowiak might be the film’s X-factor as the constantly surprising Thomas Zielinski.

With Past Life, Nesher further burnishes his well-earned reputation as a filmmaker of great sensitivity. It is also a characteristic example of his affinity for historical dramas that reflect the Israeli national experience through more or less average people (this is particularly true of The Matchmaker). Nesher and his frequent cinematographer Michel Abramowicz (who also shot the first Taken film) have a knack for making a picture look nostalgic, but also darkly moody. Recommended for those who appreciate thematically sophisticated dramas and chorale music, Past Life screens Sunday (1/15) and Monday (1/16) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s NYJFF.