WORLD OF JEWISH FLICKS DECEMBER 2009
The holiday of Chanukah is one of the most joyous and fun-filled periods in the Jewish calendar. For eight days, presents are given out to children, who play games and eat special foods such as potato latkes and jelly-filled donuts.
Unfortunately, not too many films have been made to celebrate this wonderful time of the year, although there have been a number of television programs produced that are now available on DVD, so let’s take a look at some of those.
The holiday is a celebration of the victory of the Jewish Maccabees in the second century B.C. against the occupation of the land of Israel by the Seleucid empire. When King Antiochus IV Epiphanes decided to impose his religion and his gods on the Jews, a Jewish priest by the name of Mattathias and his five sons Jochanan, Simeon, Eleazar, Jonathan, and Judah led a rebellion and headed into the Judean hills. Mattathias and his sons formed a small army, and from the sanctuary of the rugged hill country, they set out on forays against the Seleucid armies, defeating them time and again.
Eventually, the Jews swept the Seleucids out of Jerusalem and retook the Holy Temple. At that point the Jews found only one vial of oil with which to fuel the eternal light, and it would require eight days to make a new supply of the oil. They lit the light and by some miracle, the light burned for eight whole days, until a new supply of oil was ready.
That was the miracle of Chanukah. And through two thousand years of history, the Jews have set aside eight days every year for the celebration of this miracle and of the Maccabees’ victory.
As I mentioned earlier, not too many films have been made about this holiday. Many of the films and television programs that do exist are targeted to children. That is not the case with EIGHT CRAZY NIGHTS, an animated holiday fable put together by Adam Sandler. It tells the story of an unhappy small-town guy by the name of Davey Stone who screws up big-time and winds up in jail in his New England hometown. Davey’s old basketball referee bails him out and tries to put Davey to work doing community service. The entire experience is a disaster, until Davey finally commits to changing his life. Although an animated film, there is a lot of adult material and may not be appropriate for all children. But the animation is pretty good and the songs and the moral lessons are excellent.
Another film that may not be considered child friendly is THE HEBREW HAMMER, a hilarious comedy about Mordechai Jefferson Carver, a young man who grew up to become the Hebrew Hammer, a cross between a private eye and a Jewish superhero. The Hammer is recruited to save Chanukah from the ruthless Damian, who killed his father, Santa Claus, and took over the top job at the North Pole.
Children’s films seem to be some of the best Chanukah productions, and one of the best of these is LIGHTS: THE MIRACLE OF CHANUKAH. It is a short animated film that uses animated dancing Hebrew letters to follow the Jewish characters in dealing with the question of the forced assimilation of the Jews during the second century BC. LIGHTS is one of the best renditions of the Chanukah story available.
RUGRATS’ CHANUKAH tells the Chanukah story from the Rugrats’ point of view. It tells about Tommy the Maccabee, an ancient idol named Cynthia, and a turbo-charged menorah, it’s a very funny holiday program.
SHALOM SESAME: CHANUKAH SPECIAL is one in a series of Sesame Street films produced specifically for the Israeli market, and it explains the holiday of Chanukah the Sesame Street way. It’s a delight for all Sesame Street fans, whatever the age.
LAMBCHOP’S CHANUKAH AND PASSOVER SURPRISE is a delightful gem. Shari Lewis incorporates the stories behind these two holidays and uses music, songs and comedy to entertain and enlighten the viewer. The entire family will enjoy this program, as they will THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A CHANUKAH BUSH, SANDY GOLDSTEIN, based on the best selling book by Susan Sussman. This film teaches children to take pride in their own heritage and culture and to share their traditions with others.
A TASTE OF CHANUKAH is a joyous celebration of Chanukah that the whole family can enjoy. It offers host Theodore Bikel and Hankus Netsky, leader of the Klezmer Conservatory Band in a terrific one hour concert that celebrates and explains the customs of Chanukah and even has a segment that demonstrates how to cook perfect potato latkes. The music is great and makes terrific use of the talent available at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.
And as the month of December spools out, we have two major Jewish film festivals taking place at the same time in two widely separated parts of the United States. The WASHINGTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL runs from December 3-13, 2009 in the Washington, D.C. area. This is the 20th edition of this festival, and it will be screening 62 films from 20 different countries. The festival will include such films as the winner of this year’s Best Film award in Israel, AJAMI, as well as the Slovak nominee for Best Foreign Film at the upcoming Academy Awards, BROKEN PROMISE. Washington will also be showing such great films as BROTHERS (about the conflict between an orthodox brother and a secular brother), CAMERA OBSCURA (about the awakening of the spirit of a repressed farmer’s wife in Argentina) and CYCLES (a French film about a Holocaust survivor and her family), amongst many other excellent films.
Coincidentally, the PALM BEACH JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL is also celebrating its 20th anniversary. It runs December 2-13, 2009, in the Palm Beach area of Florida and will be showing some 34 films from around the world. Palm Beach will also be showing BROKEN PROMISES and BROTHERS, and its schedule includes the Israeli films A MATTER OF SIZE (about a group of Israelis who wish to become sumo wrestlers), EYES WIDE OPEN (about homosexuality in the religious community) and ZRUBAVEL (about the Ethiopian community in Israel). In addition, Palm Beach will be screening the outstanding Canadian short film PIGEON, directed by Anthony Green.
Larry Anklewicz is the Programme Coordinator for the Toronto Jewish Film
Festival, He has written and lectured on Jewish films for many years and is the author of A Guide to Jewish Films on Video.
World of Jewish Flicks – October
Summer is over! With October comes cooler weather and a flood of new movies at the theaters. It is time for the film studios to begin releasing the films they hope will garner public attention and Academy Award consideration.
In the World of Jewish Flicks, it means the release of such outstanding films such as Inglourious Basterds and A Serious Man. Inglourious Basterds was actually released in August and it has already taken in over $100 million at the North American box office and twice that much world wide.
A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers’ first cinematic look at their roots and the Jewish world they grew up in, has just started its run and it will be interesting to see whether this kind of film will receive widespread support by film audiences around the world.
October is also a time to reflect on what happened in the past. Last month I talked about the Toronto International Film Festival and the large number of Israeli films that were screened at that venue. Several of these films have since been picked up by North American distributors.
Lebanon, a highly acclaimed film that played at TIFF, has been picked up by Sony Classics for the U.S. market and by Maple Films in Canada. Ajami, another, more quirky Israeli film, was signed by Kino. Ajami recently won the Israeli equivalent of the Academy Awards as Best Film and will be the Israeli nominee to the American Academy Awards in the category of Best Foreign Film.
Other Jewish films to watch for in the near future include Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. This is a charming feature length documentary about Gertrude Berg, the actress, screenwriter and the driving force behind the radio and television series The Goldbergs, which was popular in the 1940s and 50s. It has been playing in selected locations in the United States and is scheduled to arrive at theatres in Toronto later this month.
Also opening theatrically recently was As Seen Through These Eyes, a documentary describing how artists survived the Holocaust by painting and creating works of art for the Nazis. This is a compelling film by director Hilary Helstein and has opened in New York City and is scheduled to appear in Los Angeles and other cities in the near future.
And in December be sure to watch for the theatrical opening of The Debt, a remake of an Israeli film about revenge and a Mossad operation against a Nazi doctor who performed experiments on Jewish patients. The film was an exciting thriller and the English-language remake, starring Helen Mirren, promises to bring this film to a larger audience. I will present more details when final details about the film’s release are announced.
As always, the heart of the World of Jewish Flicks is comprised of the numerous Jewish film festivals taking place around the world. The Haifa International Film Festival in northern Israel is probably the most important festival taking place at this time of year.
Haifa opened with a film that recently played here in North America, Taking Woodstock. This is a film that describes one young man’s experiences while trying to save his family’s hotel in the Catskills, near where the famous Woodstock music festival took place in 1969. It isn’t a great film, but it is an interesting story told by well-known film director Ang Lee, and has an excellent cast (Emile Hirsch, Eugene Levy and Liev Schreiber). Many of the characters in the film are Jewish, including the young man and his family, the farmer whose fields were used for the Woodstock music festival and some of the entrepreneurs who put Woodstock together.
Haifa is also showing a number of new Israeli films, including several excellent documentaries and a few new feature films.
Also this month, there will be the Cleveland Jewish Film Festival (Oct. 15-24) and at the end of the month, the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival begins its run, which will extend into November. There will be more on the latter festival in next month’s column.
As far as DVD releases, October features several outstanding films. These include Lemon Tree, an Israeli film about the dispute that erupted when the Israeli government decided to uproot an orchard of lemon trees owned by an Arab widow. The film details the legal battle the Arab woman conducted in order to save her only source of income and provides an emotional ride for film viewers.
Another DVD being released is Anvil: The Story of Anvil. This is the story of two musicians who had a dream of making it big in the world of heavy metal rock music. They are Jewish boys who grew up in Toronto and who kept working at their dream for over thirty years, without much success. Then a couple of years ago, a former roadie of theirs made this film about them. It was a marvelous film that concentrates on the two mainstays of the band and their wonderful personalities. Despite their continual failure to crack the big time, they persevered and refused to give up their dreams.
The film was very successful. It opened the 2008 Hot Docs Documentary Film Festival in Toronto, and played successfully in theatres around the world. With the theatrical release of the film, Anvil did live shows before the film’s premieres that won them legions of new fans.
Now the film has been released on DVD. Not only is it a truly marvelous film, but it is sure to bring them even more fame and maybe even some fortune. If you haven’t seen it yet, give it a look. I am not a fan of heavy metal rock music, but it is an excellent and very enjoyable little film.
Also available on DVD this month is the BBC’s production of The Diary of Anne Frank. This is another great production put on by the BBC that should not be missed.
Until next month, good viewing and enjoy the wide variety of Jewish flicks arriving at theatres and video stores around the world.
Larry Anklewicz is the Programme Coordinator for the Toronto Jewish Film
Festival, He has written and lectured on Jewish films for many years and is the author of A Guide to Jewis Films on Video.
World of Jewish Flicks – September
In many ways September is the beginning of a new year. School starts up again after a long summer break, film studios begin releasing the films they consider Academy Award contenders, and DVD companies gear up for the big Christmas season and begin releasing their summer blockbusters for home consumption.
September is also the beginning of a new film festival season in Toronto. Every year close to one hundred film festivals enliven the Toronto landscape and the granddaddy of them all gets underway on the first Thursday after Labour Day.
Yes, it is time for the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), probably the biggest and certainly one of the most important film festivals in the world. This year promises to be a special festival. Not only will TIFF be screening over 300 feature films, documentaries and shorts, it will be premiering some of the biggest films of the year.
And in the World of Jewish Flicks, the Festival will be screening some 15 Israeli films and five or six other films of Jewish interest. This is the largest bonanza of Jewish films ever presented by TIFF.
What makes this year special is the fact that TIFF is inaugurating a new program. Its City To City program will concentrate on one specific city each year. This year, because the city of Tel Aviv is celebrating its 100th anniversary, TIFF decided to put the spotlight on that city and will be presenting ten films that focus on Tel Aviv. These ten films attempt to show a realistic picture of the city and of Israel. It shows its problems and its accomplishments.
These films include several classic films, such as The Big Dig, a comedy released in Israel in 1969 that was written and directed by one of Israel’s leading satirists, Ephraim Kishon, and Life According to Agfa, a film made in 1992 by Israeli screenwriter, director and actor Assi Dayan, which looks at some of the issues confronting a wide range of Israeli society during that time in Israel’s history.
Another film in this series is Bena, a new film by first time feature film director Niv Klainer about a father and his attempts to keep his schizophrenic teenaged son out of an institution.
Big Eyes was produced in 1974 and was directed by Israeli film icon Uri Zohar. It deals with a group of people who strive for happiness through their relations with each other. It’s a more personal film than many other films of that time period.
The Bubble shows off Tel Aviv’s free-thinking attitude towards gay relationships, including one between an Israeli soldier and a Palestinian. It created quite a reaction when first shown by TIFF in 2006 and when it was shown by the Toronto Jewish Film Festival a short time later.
A History of Israeli Cinema Part 1 and Part 2 is exactly what the title suggests. It gives a careful and very detailed history of Israeli cinema and shows how the film industry in Israel has grown from very modest beginnings until today, when it is producing films that are recognized and acclaimed around the world.
Jaffa examines the ancient port city, which contains a mixed population of Muslims, Jews and Christians. Although the city is now a part of the greater city of Tel Aviv, Jaffa retains many interesting areas that go back several years that the local inhabitants wish to preserve. Other groups in the city are trying to modernize and gentrify these areas, and this is making it difficult for the older communities to remain where they are and to retain the ancient characteristics of the city that make it a charming place to live.
Kirot delves into the world of prostitution and assassination in the backstreets of Tel Aviv, while Phobidilia deals with a protagonist who has taken refuge from the world in his apartment and refuses to leave.
In addition to the films on Tel Aviv, TIFF will also be screening an additional number of the latest releases by the Israeli film industry. These include Carmel, the latest work of director Amos Gitai; Eyes Wide Open, a film about a religious young man in Jerusalem and the temptations of the modern world; Five Hours From Paris, a romantic story of new love; Google Baby, a film about surrogate motherhood; and Lebanon, a film set during the first Lebanon War in 1982 and the dilemma of a small group of Israeli soldiers trying to decide whether to kill or be killed.
Other Jewish films include Ahead of Time, a documentary about the fascinating Ruth Gruber. Now 97 years old and still going strong, Ruth Gruber was born in Brooklyn and lived in Germany for three years while studying for her PhD prior to World War II. She witnessed the rise of Nazism and became a foreign correspondent and photojournalist.
In 1944, Gruber was instrumental in getting the United States to accept a group of 1,000 Jewish refugees into the United States, and was the only journalist allowed to board The Exodus in 1947 while it was anchored off the coast of France and obtain interviews with the survivors attempting to make their way to Palestine. She covered the Nuremberg trials and was always an outspoken commentator on world affairs.
Also being screened this year at TIFF is Marc Levin’s documentary, Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags, a look at the history of New York City’s garment district and how it was the place for new immigrants, especially Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, to start the climb up the ladder of American society.
One film that everyone seems to be waiting for with great anticipation is A Serious Man, the latest film by the Coen Brothers. This comic drama is set in the Coens’ home state of Minnesota in the year 1967 and deals with a number of Jewish characters and the troubles that life has dealt them.
There are probably other films at this year’s festival that would qualify as Jewish content, but as we haven’t had a chance to see them yet, we will have to leave any discussion of them to a later time.
If you can make your way to the Toronto International Film Festival, I’m sure it will be a rewarding experience for all of you.
Until next month, good viewing and maybe we’ll see you in one of the movie theatres showing films during TIFF.
Larry Anklewicz is the Programme Coordinator for the Toronto Jewish Film
Festival, He has written and lectured on Jewish films for many years and is the author of “A Guide to Jewish Films on Video”.
The Secrets – Trailer
Kosher not Kosher with Robert Cait
The Jewish Americans
Originally broadcast on PBS, The Jewish-Americans covers 350 years in the lives of Jews who have struggled to maintain their religious identity and still be fully accepted as Americans. It is a story at once specific and universal, one that can be appreciated by any ethnic or religious minority who tests whether “democracy, like America, can find room for everyone.” Beginning with 23 Jewish exiles seeking safe haven in New Amsterdam in 1654, writer-director David Grubin does an admirable job of charting the often rocky and treacherous course for Jews in this country, and their personal “tug of war between being American and being a Jew.” Do they consider themselves Jewish-Americans, or American Jews? Carl Reiner, Mandy Patinkin, Sid Caesar, Jules Feiffer, playwright Tony Kushner, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg are among the more recognizable personalities who offer illuminating commentary and bittersweet reminiscences. But Grubin presents what he calls “an ensemble of voices” rather than “a star-studded parade.” Authors, historians, sociologists, academics, and rabbis share a rich personal and cultural history.
Narrated by Liev Schreiber, The Jewish-Americans is comprised of three two-hour episodes, “They Came to Stay,” “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times,” and “Home.” Each is a richly textured tapestry of talking heads, still photos, archival footage, and audio and film clips (the inevitable Gentleman’s Agreement), and reveal how Jews have become woven into the fabric of Jewish life. Songwriter Irving Berlin wrote “God Bless America,” and the holiday classics “White Christmas” and “Easter Parade.” Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster created Superman. Another crossover pop culture success was Gertrude Berg as Molly Goldberg of the Bronx, offering sage advice and homespun wisdom on radio, television and the movies. One illuminating segment reveals how assimilated movie mogul Louis B. Mayer’s Andy Hardy films, with their “fairy tale visions of small town life,” were the “American fantasies of a Jewish immigrant.” Anti-Semitism rears its ugly head throughout the series. Grubin captures the hysteria surrounding the murder trial of Georgia factory worker Leo Franks, who, in 1915, was falsely convicted in the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan, and subsequently lynched by a homicidal mob. The segment that addresses the Holocaust documents America’s indifference in dealing with Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Grubin notes how political activism has long been a part of Jewish-American life, and how Jews took an active role in the Civil Rights struggle. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be Jewish to be compelled and profoundly moved by this ambitious documentary miniseries. But it couldn’t hurt. –Donald Liebenson
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The innocence of childhood savagely collides with the Holocaust in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Bruno (Asa Butterfield) knows that his father is a soldier and that they have to move to a new house in the country… a house near what he thinks is a farm. But his father isn’t just a soldier; he’s a high-ranking officer in Hitler’s elite SS troops who’s just been placed in command of Auschwitz. As Bruno explores the woods around the house, he discovers the concentration camp’s perimeter fence. On the other side sits a boy his own age, with whom Bruno strikes up a friendship–a friendship that will have tragic consequences. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is most powerful in the details: The casual brutality of a Nazi lieutenant; the uncomfortable juxtaposition of the family’s domestic life with glimpses of the treatment of the imprisoned Jews; a ghastly propaganda film suggesting that life at Auschwitz was like a holiday. But more than anything else, Butterfield’s performance makes this film compelling. The young actor perfectly conveys Bruno’s limited perspective even as the film carefully unveils the larger, darker reality. The movie’s ending will undoubtedly spark arguments, but only because of the emotional complexity of what happens–The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is made with great skill and compassion. Also featuring David Thewlis (Naked) and Vera Farmiga (The Departed) as Bruno’s parents. –Bret Fetzer
THE SECRETS
Beautifully evocative, nominated for 8 Awards of the Israel Film Academy, The Secrets explores the passage into womanhood of the daughter of an orthodox rabbi finding herself at a crossroads of life. While studying at a women’s religious seminary in Safed, Naomi and her new friend explore the complexities of a religious lifestyle in a vibrant environment of youth, rebellion and desire as they befriend a beautiful, mysterious older woman.
One of the best Israeli films of recent years, the Secrets, is an emotionally overpowering drama that will move audiences wherever it plays. The film’s mix of sensuality and spirituality is arresting. Both of the young actresses are luminous (and) Ardant gives one of her strongest performances.” – The Hollywood Reporter
“One of the best foreign films I have seen in some time. …a true delight…a masterpiece of story-telling and one that everyone should see.”– VideoViews.org
“intriguing… passionate performances.” – The New York Times
“The Secrets handles itself with Grace and Charm” – The Village Voice
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