NYJFF ’12: Incessant Visions

One of Jewish German architect Erich Mendelsohn’s final projects in Berlin served as an SS prison during the National Socialist era. Wisely, he did not stay long enough to get a look at their renovations. Often dubbed an “expressionist” pioneer but frequently associated with the Bauhaus movement, his architecture would be very influential in pre-war Europe and post-war Israel. Duki Dror’s Incessant Visions: Letters from an Architect (trailer here), a documentary survey of the architect’s life and work, based on Mendelsohn’s collected correspondence and his wife’s memoir, screens during the 2012 New York Film Festival.

Like many Jewish Germans, the Polish-born Mendelsohn proudly served his country in WWI, frequently sending letters and drawings home to his wife Louise. A man resolutely of the left, Mendelsohn maintained his ideological leanings even when his wife’s affair with Communist poet Ernst Toller nearly scuttled their marriage. After the reception of his Einstein Tower observatory, Mendelsohn became one of the most successful and stylistically identifiable architects in Germany. He would be closely identified with the department stores he designed for Schocken, only one of which survives today.

Recognizing the prevailing winds, the Mendelsohns left Germany while that option was still open to them. Leaving everything behind, Mendelsohn never attained the same level of prominence in exile, but still produced a striking body of work, particularly in the once and future Israel.

A friendly admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright, Mendelsohn’s work could be considered a link between the American’s distinctive modernism and the more austere International Style of Mies van der Rohe. Featuring dramatically curved prows, set-back terraces, and circular interior staircases, his work looks sleekly modern, but comfortably livable.

Dror captures the personality of the buildings quite well, often finding a hospitable host to provide a tour for viewers. It helps that Mendelsohn’s architecture is considerably more photogenic than that of his International colleagues. Incessant sufficiently covers biographical matters as well, but never obsesses over the couple’s infidelities and politics. As a result, the documentary moves along quite briskly, keeping its focus where it should be.

Indeed, Incessant is a rather smartly executed documentary. Saving the introduction of its talking heads for the final credit is a nice little touch, like a curtain call (after all, it is clear enough who they are from the context of their comments). Combining a fairly interesting story with some striking structures, lovingly shot, Incessant is a very solid architectural documentary. It screens this coming Tuesday (1/24) and Wednesday (1/25) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

NYJFF ’12: Lea and Darija

Lea Deutsch’s very name is a cruel historical irony. She was also known as the “Croatian Shirley Temple.” It could have been a hard title to live down later in her life, but Deutsch never had the chance. Branko Ivanda dramatizes the story of the ill-fated Jewish superstar and her German friendly rival in Lea and Darija (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Deutsch ruled benignly over the Children’s Realm, her father’s youth theater ensemble. A huge star in Zagreb, Pathé even filmed her for their Parisian newsreels. The only performer who could keep up with her was Darija Gasteiger, a young German expat with a ferocious stage mom. Despite the friction between their mothers, the girls become fast friends. Together, they triumph on stage as Hansel and Gretel. Shortly thereafter, Croatia follows the lead of its German ally, enacting a series of anti-Jewish laws. At this point, the Deutschs’ fortunes suffer a dramatic reversal, while Gasteiger’s star continues to rise.

Although Croatia did not exactly cover herself with glory during WWII, it seems like everyone in Zagreb wanted to save young Deutsch. Yet, for reasons the film cannot explain due to gaps in the historical record, every effort failed. At one point, a rendezvous was arranged with the partisans to take Deutsch and her mother to relative safety, but their contact never showed. They also had a slightly creepy but potentially life-saving marriage proposal from a young fascist soldier acting as their protector, which they do not outright reject, but for unknown reasons, it never comes to fruition. One thing is known for certain: Deutsch would perish in the bloody madness unleashed by the National Socialists.

L&D has far more singing and dancing than the typical Holocaust drama. As Deutsch and Gasteiger respectively, Klara Naka and Tamy Zajec are dynamic and polished performers. They also look awfully young, which is grimly historically accurate. Given the circumstances, Naka logically has the meatier role, painfully watching her sheltered world implode. She is certainly engaging, coming across a bit immature in a believably human way. Zajec in contrast, largely just dances, but she does it quite well. Yet, it is Sebastian Cavazza who really gives the film its soul as Deutsch’s reserved but deeply humane father, Stjepan.

As a conscious strategy on Ivanda’s part, L&D never shows the actual horrors of the camps. Instead, he uses symbolic interlude represent Deutsch’s final moments. It might be expressive, but it has the effect of whitewashing the reality of what happened. To be fair though, the film is never ambivalent or in any way problematic in the way it depicts the anti-Semitism of the NDH puppet regime.

L&D is not the exactly most absorbing Holocaust drama ever, but it is perfectly respectable, well produced and intentioned period production. It also offers a relatively rare (for American audiences) examination of the wartime experience of a minor ally of the Axis Powers. Indeed, the “Ž” worn by Jewish Croatians rather the notorious star is somewhat jarring, but no less ominous. A fascinating and tragic story, L&D is a solid selection for this year’s NYJFF. It screens this Sunday (1/22) and Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF ’12: A Bottle in the Gaza Sea

A teenaged French-Israeli girl learns you have to have a partner in peace. A young “Palestinian” man burns out on hate. They might make some small hopeful gestures, but there will be no choruses of “Kumbaya” in Thierry Binisti’s better-than-you-expect A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Tal Levine has trouble comprehending the hatred that led to a recent terrorist bombing killing a bride and her father on her wedding day. She asks her brother Eytan serving his military service in the Gaza to send a message in a bottle asking how anyone could be so hell-bent on carnage. Naim and his bitter unemployed cousins find her note, resulting in several sexually violent emails. Yet, for some reason, Tal and Naim bug each other enough to continue trading insults. Yes, eventually, they discover they are not so different after all.

Still, Naim has trouble letting go of all his deeply ingrained grievances. Simultaneously, Levine tries to live a normal high school life, but has trouble acclimating to the constant presence of terrorist attacks. Of course, the mere act of emailing with an Israeli is dangerous for Naim, whose suspicious time spent at the internet café gets him interrogated and beaten by the local Hamas militia (right, let’s put them in charge a full-fledged state post-haste).

Adapted by Binisti and Valérie Zenatti from her young adult novel, Bottle bends over backwards to show no favoritism to Israel or the so-called “Palestinians.” Both societies we are assured are held captive by the more extreme and recalcitrant elements within them. Nevertheless, it is obvious if the “Palestinians” were to unilaterally foreswear violence, the bloodshed would be over, yet every time Israel calls a unilateral cease-fire, the terror continues unabated.

Despite its dogged moral equivalence, Bottle does not have its head completely in the clouds. Levine and Naim’s relationship is significant to them, but will not bring imminent peace. Indeed, it explicitly suggests the best thing for him is to get out of Gaza.

Frankly, Mahmoud Shalabi’s Naim looks somewhat more than just three years older than Agathe Bonitzer’s Levine, but they are more or less evenly matched in terms of maturity. Bonitzer has a keen cerebral screen presence that helps sell her idealism. Shalabi is also rather intense and even dynamic as the moody Naim, convincingly charting what is a significant arc of character development, given the toxicity of his environment.

Bottle is a small film with pretensions of greater meaning, but what it does well, depicting young people learning to think for themselves under trying circumstances, it does very well indeed. Recommended not as a teaching tool, but for two nice lead turns, Bottle screens this Sunday (1/22) and Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

NYJFF ’12: Daas

“Daas” was a term used to signify a utopian ideal in the teachings of Jakob Frank, a self-proclaimed Judaic messiah who built a fiercely loyal following during the eighteenth century. The vagueness of its meaning is surely intentional. While obviously a charlatan, Frank had protectors highly placed in the court of the Austrian Emperor, who perniciously complicate the investigation of a crusading imperial attorney in screenwriter-director Adrian Panek’s Daas (trailer here), which has its American premiere at the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Frankists were expected to convert to Catholicism (but not observe its tenets), participate in sexualized rituals, and seek healing through faith rather than medicine. Jakob Goliński used to be part of the flock, but the death of his daughter, despite all his fervent prayers, profoundly disillusioned him. However, his wife stayed with Frank. Not kindly disposed to apostates, the Frankists set out to ruin Goliński. Spurned by his former royal patron, the Frankist defector sends an appeal to the Imperial court, where it eventually comes to the attention of junior clerk (think prosecuting inspector) Henryk Klein.

Though ambitious, the clerk is rigidly principled. Nor has his wife’s recent incapacitating stroke dulled his commitment to justice. However, it certainly exacerbates his feeling of isolation when Frankists within the court conspire against his investigation.

The well produced Daas might be aesthetically conventional, but thematically it is a decidedly idiosyncratic costume drama. The narrative center of the film is preoccupied with the Frankist conspiracy, presented as a secret history in the Dan Brown tradition. Yet, it ultimately subverts its own subversion. Oddly, Panek seems decidedly uninterested in the mysticism and false prophesies that would seem to lie at the film’s core. Viewers who really want to understand Frankist doctrine, especially in the context of the widespread anti-Semitism faced by Continental Jewry in the 1700’s, will find it all rather obscure.

As the tortured (literally and figuratively) Goliński, Andrzej Chyra (so memorable in the Solidarity-era drama All That I Love) is a forcefully compelling everyman. Mariusz Bonaszewski is steely enough as Klein (though his fainting is less than convincing), but Olgierd Łukaszewicz’s Frank lacks an appropriately malevolent presence. He also vaguely resembles Chyra, like an older relation, which might confuse international audiences who will not necessarily recognize the two actors.

Throughout Daas, Panek tries to have his enlightenment and eat his mysticism too, deliberately muddying the waters of ostensive reality with several ambiguous scenes. Still, he packs in an eccentric hodge-podge of fascinating historical detail. There are insights to be found, including the noteworthy use of the American New World as a recurring motif. Panek makes it clear the Old World power structure was definitely on edge and it was largely our fault.

An ambitious oddity, the strangely dispassionate film has its moments, but what they add up to, viewers must tabulate for themselves. Considering nearly every Jewish character is a convert to the Frankist cult, it is more than a bit of a ringer at this year’s NYJFF. The flawed but undeniably intelligent Daas screens this Saturday (1/21) and the following Thursday (1/26) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF ’12: My Australia

While not the worst of times, the 1960’s were a difficult period for Polish Jewry. Conditions would eventually reach intolerable levels during the Communist Party’s anti-Semitic purges in 1968. For one mother, more than her livelihood is at stake in 1960 Łódź. Concern for her sons’ moral compasses necessitates a dramatic move in Ami Drozd’s My Australia (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

It is important to note that the Poland of today is not reflective of the Communist Party’s values. Poles are represented more than any other nationality among the names of the righteous. Post-Communism, the Polish government and leading cultural institutions have taken an active role preserving the nation’s Jewish heritage. Danny Gold and Matthew Asner’s excellent documentary 100 Voices, which also screens during the 2012 NYJFF, addresses this phenomenon directly. Unfortunately, Halina does not live in such times.

A Holocaust survivor, she has chosen to raise her two sons, teenaged Andrzej and the bratty Tadek, as Catholics unaware of their family history. She comes to rue this decision when they fall in with a gang a violent anti-Semites. Talking their way out of prison, she decides to avail herself of the only advantage Jewish Poles had under Communism. It was the only Soviet bloc country that allowed free immigration to Israel. For expediency’s sake, Tadek is told they are going to Australia, a place the young boy considers a utopia with kangaroos (hence the counterintuitive title of the Israeli-Polish co-production).

Obviously, Andrzej and Tadek are in for a rude awakening, which the younger boy handles particularly churlishly. Indeed, the former thugs soon come to understand what it is like to be cultural outsiders and religious minorities. The boys’ secret otherness manifests itself in numerous ways, but Australia focuses on the circumcision issue. Frankly, the film’s preoccupation with the young boy’s junk borders on the outright icky.

Essentially presented from Tadek’s POV, Drozd maintains Halina’s secrets, without making the young boy a clueless blockhead. Nor does the writer-director overplay the shoe’s-on-the-other-foot moral of his tale. However, his two featured principled are not particularly engaging screen presences. At least he earns points for honesty, showing all their acting out and petty resentments. A quality period production, Australia also nicely captures the look and spirit of the golden age of the kibbutz movement, in all its coed communal bathing glory.

For those who missed it during its spotty theatrical go-round, 100 Voices is highly recommended when it screens twice this Thursday (1/19). Though well intentioned and largely free of sentimentality, Australia never delivers a big payoff and has a few too many unnecessary tighty-whitie scenes. Basically recommended for nostalgic former kibbutzniks, it also screens this Thursday (1/19) as well as this Saturday (1/21) at the Walter Reade Theater, but only standby tickets are available, so good luck.

NYJFF ’12: My Father Evgeni

Evidently, during the Stalinist era the term “Cosmopolitan” served as a euphemism for Jewish. It might sound relatively benign, but its usage was far from polite. It was an ugly fact of Soviet life Ukrainian documentarian Andrei Zagdansky’s parents were all too aware of. The letters of his state filmmaker father provide a window into the history of his family and his country in My Father Evgeni (teaser here), which screens during this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival.

Born two years after the Russian Revolution, Evgeni Zagdansky would outlive Communism as the official state ideology, only to bemoan Russia remaining under the rule of “criminal mediocrities.” The great Zagdansky family secret was his mother’s Jewish heritage, a dangerous inheritance during the time of Stalin’s Doctors’ Plot anti-Semitic show trials. It would be even worse for the Zagdansky family, considering his father’s bourgeoisie roots. Scandalously, Zagdansky’s grandfather Peter made women’s shoes in a modest storefront before the new regime confiscated his property and exiled him to the provinces.

Somehow during the war, Evgeni Zagdansky cleared his record to the extent he could work with the state system. For eighteen years, Zagdansky père served as editor-in-chief of the Kiev Popular Science Film Studio, where he earned his spurs producing propaganda pictures about the triumph of scientific materialism over superstitious notions of God.

Clearly, filmmaking is a generation-bridging bond for Evgeni and Andrei Zagdansky. Drawing on home movies and film archives, the junior Zagdansky captures the sweep of Russian and Ukrainian history as well as documenting the ebb and flow of his family’s standing. Particularly valuable are the topics of furtive family conversations in each successive era. Oftentimes, these are well known figures and events, such as the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and celebrated dissidents like Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. However, he also includes important figures now largely faded from short-term Western memories, like dissident Ukrainian poet Vasil Stus and oppressed Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov in the honor role of discussion subjects.

Father is a bit slow and unfocused out of the blocks, but once Zagdansky gets into the rhythm of it, the film is a parade of striking images. War, famine, and propaganda campaigns all factor prominently, but sometimes the little details are the most telling, like the frequently changing street names, ever reflecting the political tenor of the times. For film programmers, it would be a fitting companion film to either Mikhail Zheleznikov’s short For Home Viewing or Sergei Loznitsa’s Revue. Recommended for Cold War students and scholars, it screens this coming Tuesday (1/17) at the Francesca Beale Theater and Wednesday (1/18) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2012 NYJFF.

NYJFF ’12: Iraq ‘n’ Roll

Due the her neighbors’ violent hostility, we rarely think of Israel as a Middle Eastern country, but in many respects, its aesthetic tastes are very much in line with the wider region. The debate whether Sephardic Jews or Lebanese Arabs invented Hummus is a case in point. For decades, Israel was home to Saleh and Daud al-Kuwaiti, two greatly esteemed Jewish-Iraqi musicians. Decades after their deaths, the latter’s rock musician grandson revisits their music. His genre and generation spanning project is documented in Gili Gaon’s Iraq ‘n’ Roll (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Nationally recognized, the al-Kuwaitis often played command performances for the Iraqi king, a fact that suggests they were probably right to immigrate to Israel before the 1958 coup. Though they had regular gigs in Israel, including on the Voice of Israel’s Arabic language radio station, their concert hall days were essentially over. Indeed, the film makes much of this comparative scuffling, but is it really so scandalous that the general Israeli populace was not fully versed on the Iraqi music scene? Arguably, it might be easier for musical reputations to travel in this age of interconnected worldwide media, but globalization is still a bad thing, right?

Dudu Tassa readily admits he simply did not get his grandfather and great uncle’s music for years and when he did, he was intimidated by its rich complexity. Finally dialing up his confidence, Tassa reaches out to some of the duo’s old associates and well as a few of his own colleagues to create a fusion of traditional Iraqi music and grungy rock.

The resulting sessions and concerts are in fact quite agreeable. Favoring the old world sound of his forefathers, Tassa largely adds the electric as an additional layer into the aural mélange. It is quite evocative, if not absolutely transcendent. In contrast, Roll falls rather flat attempting to portray Israel as a less then welcoming society. Frankly, Israel is the truest nation of immigrants, whose new arrivals have always struggled as a result the unwarranted isolation and existential threats the country has endured. Indeed, many also started new lives in Israel with absolutely nothing, but achieved better or worse results than the al-Kuwaitis.

Clearly, Roll is best when it sticks to music. Although less artfully produced, it has a similarly nostalgic appeal as Mahmoud Kaabour’s far more charming and scrupulously apolitical Grandma, a Thousand Times. Pleasant sounding, but hardly essential viewing, Roll screens during the 2012 NYJFF as part of a double bill with Lost Love Diaries this coming Monday (1/16) and Wednesday (1/18) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF ’12: Remembrance

The unfettered flow of information is a powerful thing. During the final days of WWII, Tomasz Limanowski smuggled shocking photographic evidence out of a concentration camp. Thirty-some years later, his former lover is shocked to discover he is still alive, thanks to a BBC interview. Based on historical events, their incredible story of love and survival is told in Anna Justice’s Remembrance (trailer here), which screens at the upcoming 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Limanowski is not Jewish, but the resistance fighter is quite resourceful, which makes him a natural scrounger in the camp. He is thought to stand the best chance of breaking out and rendezvousing with the Polish Homeland Army with his comrades negatives. However, his decision to bring Hannah Silberstein with him complicates their plans. She is Jewish, speaks German, and is very sick. In fact, unbeknownst to Limanowski, she is pregnant.

Somehow, Limanowski and Silberstein manage to escape (in markedly well shot and edited sequence), but with her health failing, they are forced to take refuge at his former estate. Of course, it has been confiscated by the National Socialists, but his mother Stefania now lives in a servant’s cottage and Limanowski’s resistance colleague Janusz still tends to the stables. Unfortunately, his mother’s anti-Semitism comes as a rude surprise her son. It will also be the cause of much future grief when the couple must separate.

Decades later, both lovers assume the other is dead. Silberstein is now Hannah Levine, married to a perfectly nice research doctor in Brooklyn. When she happens to see Limanowski’s British interview on her dry cleaner’s television, it all comes flooding back, inconveniently during an important dinner party.

In a way, Remembrance shares a kinship with Sophie’s Choice, but it is a more forgiving, life affirming film. Levine nee Silberstein suffers acute survivor’s guilt that viewers can well understand and easily pardon. Indeed, her complicated but loving relationship with her husband is just as important to the film’s dramatic structure.

The inherent decency of its three principles (this obviously does not include mother Limanowski) is what makes Remembrance such a touching film. It vividly portrays the personal consequences of two successive totalitarian ideologies that conspire to keep the star-crossed lovers apart. In addition to the horrors of the concentration camp, Justice also forthrightly depicts the terror of the post-war Communist regime. Years later, its attempts to excise the Homeland Army from the history books fittingly dovetails with the film’s themes of memory and documentation.

As young Limanowski, Mateusz Damiecki is viscerally intense and totally credibly as the scholarly looking action hero. Alice Dwyer is also quite compelling depicting the young Silberstein’s drive to survive. Yet, there is something unusually honest and real about Dagmar Manzel and David Rasche’s scenes together as Hannah and Daniel Levine. (Though the Sledgehammer! star still apparently works round the clock in television, to Rasche’s credit, he has appeared in a handful of interesting international films recently, Remembrance being the most notable.)

Pam Katz’s literate screenplay (co-written with the perfectly named Justice) features one of the most moving letters ever heard on film via disembodied narration. Never ginning up phony drama, the sensitively rendered Remembrance consistently rings true. It is one of the best Holocaust themed features in recent years, considerably superior to Sarah’s Key, Protektor, and Berlin ’36. Highly recommended, it screens this coming Monday (1/16) and Tuesday (1/17) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.

NYJFF ’12: Follow Me—The Yoni Netanyahu Story

Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu is revered to extent probably second only to Hannah Senesh amongst Israel’s fallen heroes. However, Netanyahu’s ultimate sacrifice came leading one of the most successful military operations in the history of the state of Israel. The life of the commander of the Raid on Entebbe is celebrated in Jonathan Gruber & Ari Daniel Pinchot’s Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story (trailer here), which has its upcoming world premiere during the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

Yoni Netanyahu was born to lead. An ardent Israeli patriot, he had the look of a man of action. Netanyahu was the oldest of three brothers, indeed including Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, the Israeli current Israeli Prime Minister, whom Obama and Sarkozy consider so gauche for being, you know, so Israeli. The family was always quite close, frequently writing back and forth while the eldest brother of destiny studied in America.

Thanks to a wealth of surviving letters, Netanyahu’s voice come through loud and clear in Follow. In fact, the film is most successful conveying a sense of what it was like to come of age and start a new life as a young man at a time when Israel was under constant threat of attack from her belligerent neighbors. Strangely, though the film steadily builds towards the moment of truth in Uganda, the actual boots-on-the-ground military operation is handled rather perfunctorily. (Perhaps the filmmakers assumed most interested audiences would already be well versed in the details of the operation, dramatized several times in the 1970’s including Menahem Golan’s Operation Thunderbolt and Irvin Kershner’s Raid on Entebbe).

In addition to brother Benjamin, two former Prime Ministers, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak, also sat for on-camera interviews, which speaks volumes about Netanyahu’s significance to his countrymen. Yet, without question, some of the most insightful and moving remembrances come from his comrades-in-arms.

Unless viewers truly have hatred in their hearts, there are episodes in Follow that will definitely choke them up. Years later, Netanyahu’s family and loved ones still clearly feel his loss acutely. Some moments are quite beautiful, including Benjamin Netanyahu’s memories of his brother’s desert wedding, which he explains perfectly represented him as a rugged son of Israel. Others of course, are deeply tragic. Altogether, they add up to an eventful but all too short life.

While Follow is very informative, it is really defined by its appropriately elegiac tenor. It is a film that documents the humanity and dedication of the IDF soldiers and officers (particularly but not exclusively Netanyahu) that American students (arguably more than their Israeli counterparts) truly ought to see. It premieres this Thursday (1/12) with a subsequent screening on Monday (1/23) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of the 2012 New York Jewish Film Festival.