Nonfiction filmmaking comes in many forms. Among the hottest documentaries each year are films that expose a hidden story about a cover-up or other wrongdoing, seeking to inspire change by gaining publicity and exposure. They are important and worthwhile, and very often controversial. Equally valid are documentaries that dramatize events in a way meant purely to tell a story rather than to achieve an objective, presenting as clear-cut and straightforward examination using archive footage and interviews. This is one genre that comes closer to being objective than any other.

The Oslo Diaries, which competes in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, covers the beginnings of the talks that would lead to the historic Oslo Accords. It starts out as a sort of thriller like Man on Wire, in which two Israeli professors and three members of the Palestine Liberation Front meet in secret in Norway to discuss a possibility road towards peace. Initial confrontations are expectedly tense, but common ground soon emerges as they speak to each other as people without the burden of government involvement, preparing a template to bring back to those in power.

This is a popular subject right now, on the heels of the Tony-winning play Oslo, which focuses heavily on the Norwegian diplomats responsible for starting the process, something the film does not, and an announced feature film adaptation produced by Marc Platt. The Oslo Diaries is fittingly named, since much of its dialogue comes from the diaries of those involved in the talks, used as a framework for the film’s chronology. Those who are still alive – or have recently passed away, such as Shimon Peres – are interviewed, and speak openly and honestly about their preconceptions and the difficulties they had seeing eye-to-eye with those considered either occupiers or terrorists.

The magnitude of this start to the peace process is significant: this was the first time that the Palestine Liberation Front and the government of Israel acknowledged each other in an official capacity. On television, Yasser Arafat eagerly reached out his hand while Yitzhak Rabin hesitated before shaking it. For the two of them to stand next to each other, with Bill Clinton serving as a unifying force, was momentous, and the road to that moment is explored in great detail beginning with those whose names and faces aren’t known to the world.

What this film shows, more than anything, is that the people in power on both sides of this long-running Israeli-Palestinian conflict were able to come together to reach an agreement despite many obstacles. When the initial documents are signed, protests erupt, and it becomes clear that the battle is not between Israelis and Palestinians but rather between those who want peace and those who don’t, regardless of their national or religious identity. Watching Palestinians place olive branches on Israeli tanks to indicate their desire for peace is inspiring. Learning of the organization of a protest for peace is reminiscent of much of what we see today in American society: people marching for rights rather than against them. In his final interview for the film, Shimon Peres puts its best: “No war is ever finished unless it’s being replaced by peace.”

This film, sadly, is far from the end of the story. Watching Yitzhak Rabin sing the words to “Shir LaShalom” — “Song for Peace”— along with Peres just moments before he was assassinated is especially heartbreaking. Knowing that these events took place more than two decades ago and little has changed is disheartening, and this film serves more as a chronicle of history than any call to action since those involved know that there is no easy solution.

The Oslo Diaries is certainly less controversial than the last documentary filmmakers Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan brought to Sundance. Censored Voices featured recorded testimonies of Israeli soldiers lamenting their misdeeds during the Six Day War, something that, while seemingly true, was seen as easy fodder for critics of Israel to use to denounce it is an imperialist state with an illegal military. Loushy and Sivan seem determined to continue presenting stories that might not always be warmly received, like Sivan’s recent editing of the disturbing documentary Death in the Terminal, which explores the beating and killing of an innocent Eritrean refugee mistaken for a terrorist after an explosion at a bus station. Extensively featuring Bibi Netanyahu in archive footage in The Oslo Diaries railing against Rabin and then being elected prime minister after his death is far from a subtle message that they believe his government isn’t helping the peace process.

There are many stories to tell about Israel and the conflict in which it remains eternally engulfed, and this spotlight on an unlikely early step forward is an optimistic and detailed one, presented as a meeting of two sides in a middle that for so long couldn’t have existed. It’s informative, affirming, and positive while things are going well, and a reminder that there is a way to see the other side.

The Oslo Diaries has three more showings in Park City and Salt Lake City later this week.

Photo by Saar Yaacov, courtesy of Sundance Institute

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During her acting heyday, Hedy Lamarr was described as “the most beautiful woman in the world.” The Austria native was well-known in Hollywood in the 1930s for her appearance in the German film Ecstasy, which featured her entirely nude in one memorable scene, and soon became a part of the American movie industry thanks to a contract with Louis B. Mayer. But there’s much more to the inimitable Lamarr than meets the eye, and a new documentary entitled Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story seeks to unmask the true story behind a woman who should be remembered for much more than just her beauty.

Lamarr’s story began in a Jewish home in Vienna. Her early marriage to a rich Austrian man closely connected with both Mussolini and Hitler started her career out in Europe, but she soon fled to Paris and then came to the United States with the promise of an exciting film career. She starred in some memorable movies, to be sure, but her legacy doesn’t compare to the likes of other actresses of the time, and her final film appearance came just twenty years after her Hollywood debut.

The way in which Lamarr was used by the moviemaking industry is particularly disturbing, with stories of how she would be given speed in the morning to wake her up and sleeping pills at night to put her to sleep so that she, like other actresses, could be ready to function at exactly the moments when she was needed to fulfill her contract. Her twenty-five-year relationship with Dr. Max Jacobson, better known as Dr. Feelgood, meant that she was constantly being medicated and rarely able to function as a person normally should, leading her to become a recluse, get arrested for shoplifting, and even sending a stand-in for herself at a divorce hearing (to predictably poor results).

Through all of this, Lamarr was still a pioneer in the area of technological innovation. She was responsible for developing a frequency hopping system designed to combat frequency jamming by the Nazis during World War II, a system that was put to much more use by the United States later on and is attributed as an early inspiration for modern-day tenets such as wi-fi. Much more than just a pretty face, Lamarr was decades ahead of others in the science and technology industry and eager to have her ideas come to fruition.

Lamarr’s Jewishness wasn’t something that she discussed often since it was seen as a black mark on her purity as an actress, and she had also been married to a man considered to be a Nazi sympathizer. This history led many to believe that she was a spy, deliberately sent to sabotage Allied war efforts, when it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Bombshell shows that amongst the many unfair aspects of her life, Lamarr was extremely under-appreciated as a scientist in her time. Even the patent she received for a “Secret Communication System” didn’t give her the rights it should have. Her little-known contribution, only acknowledged many years later, is reminiscent of Alan Turing’s story, brought to life on screen in The Imitation Game a few years ago.

In a fascinating anecdote, this film also shows that Lamarr’s two lives, as scientist and actress, converged in an unexpected way. As she aged, Lamarr had a good deal of plastic surgery and took an active role in telling the surgeons what to do, figuring out innovative ways of continuing to look young. Actresses, both at the time and after, would ask for whatever Lamarr had suggested, showing her influence and the respect people had for her. Lamarr died in 2000, more or less a recluse by the time of her passing at age 85.

This documentary does a superb job detailing Lamarr’s life and uncovering her true personality through interviews with her adult children and with others who interacted with her during her life, including Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Peter Bogdanovich. German-born actress Diane Kruger is also featured, discussing Lamarr as a role model for those who come from Europe to make it in Hollywood. Much of Lamarr’s story features disappointing and unfair developments, and this documentary manages to convey it all in an engaging and, yes, entertaining manner.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story opens Friday, November, 24, at the IFC Center in New York City, and is slated to screen at a number of Jewish film festivals after that.

Image via Zeitgeist Films

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Destination Unknown, which opens in New York tomorrow, is a collection of testimonies from Holocaust survivors culled over a thirteen-year period. Jewcy had the chance to speak with director Claire Ferguson, producer Llion Roberts, and 92-year-old survivor Ed Mosberg about how this film came together and why it’s vitally important to keep talking about the Holocaust.

Jewcy: How did you begin working on this film?

Roberts: In 2001, I went with my brother on a trip to Auschwitz like millions of other people have done. When I got there, I came across a picture of a 13-year-old girl named Christina. She had been in Auschwitz from December 1943 to May 1944; she only survived six months. She was the spitting image of my own daughter, who was also thirteen at the time. That struck me, so when I went home, I immediately started researching.

Eighteen months later, I made a call to a company in Ronkonkoma, New York, that was the only place that had some equipment I needed, and eventually I got through and they explained to me that they were closed for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. The conversation quickly turned to the Holocaust, and soon I was on conference call with one survivor, and then another. Ed Mosberg was the third, and this continued for the next fourteen years. In 2013, a sampler of the survivors’ interviews was put on Blu-ray. We met with Claire in December, and all 400 hours was put into her Avid.

Ferguson: I looked through all this extraordinary material, and it was then a question of how to piece together the jigsaw puzzle. What film do we make from this? It’s not possible to make a history of the Holocaust. It’s a well-trodden subject: the more you learn about it, the more it becomes unfathomable. How could you have a life with so much pain and then live with this? Focusing on the trauma of survivors and the lives they made afterwards seemed like the most powerful direction.

It was a huge challenge. Llion filmed thirty survivors, and in the film we only used twelve. Trying to tell a story with a narrative arc that would link these twelve survivors and still hold on to their individual stories was a delicate balance. The detail is what makes this film special. We even have love stories of people who survived and were reunited. There are important, moving details among horrible traumatic memories.

Jewcy: Ed, the sight of you wearing your uniform from the concentration camp and a tallit in the film is extremely powerful. Can you talk about what motivated you to do this?

Mosberg: Before the war, I had my whole family, and then everybody was murdered. This is what motivated me to do everything. My wife can’t talk about the war and what she lost because she was ashamed that she survived. Many tried to cover or eliminate the numbers on their arms. I was never ashamed. It is my duty to tell the world and show them what happened. I was wearing that tallit in Birkenau when I donated a Torah to the Israeli army. This was the end of the line of the railroad tracks: whoever came in there didn’t leave. Soldiers were saluting my wife at that time, and it was very powerful.

Jewcy: Ed, I read that you donated a Torah to Steven Spielberg’s synagogue. Can you tell me about some of the philanthropic work that you can do?

Mosberg: I’ve rescued about twenty Torahs from the Holocaust. I make them kosher, and then donate them. My mother was a religious woman – I think she would be very proud of it. I donate to Yad Vashem, to the Shoah Foundation, to rabbinical schools. Anyone who needs, I give to them, especially places where the Holocaust is involved. It’s very important that they teach people what can happen. When the camps were liberated in May 1945, Americans didn’t let them out from the camps because they were afraid that they would kill the Germans. When Patton was in charge of the camps, he said, “I cannot give to the Jews better food than other prisoners they will say I am discriminating. They want to go to Palestine, and English don’t want to let them in.”

If you were not there, you don’t know what it was. This was a terrible life. In October 1943, a group of rabbis came to talk to President Roosevelt to get him to bomb railroad tracks leading to the camps but he wouldn’t meet with them. If he had, maybe my family would be alive today.

Jewcy: What stands out to you most from your experiences?

Mosberg: When they liquidated the ghetto, I was there. I saw a baby taken from his mother and shot. Parents put a child in a knapsack and then the Germans shot into the knapsack. They made sick people run across to the other side or be shot. It was like a game for the Germans. Mauthausen was the worst concentration camp. There were 186 steps we had to walk on from morning to night, and whoever fell behind or couldn’t do it was punished horribly. They were burning and shooting those people. The smell never left me. I always smelled this. I can never forget this.

Jewcy: What lessons do you think today’s generation can learn from the Holocaust?

Mosberg: We should not forget and not forgive. We have no right to forgive! Only the dead can forgive. As long as I love this is my duty and obligation to go and talk and talk until the last day of my life. Whenever I talk, they should listen and hear it. There are plenty of deniers. If you didn’t live through this, you can’t understand.

Destination Unknown opens in New York and Los Angeles on November 10, and November 15 in Bangor.

Image: Ed Mosberg in Destination Unknown.

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The new documentary Aida’s Secrets comes from brothers Alon and Shaul Schwarz, who chronicled their uncle Izak’s search for the brother he never knew he had, featuring an emotional reunion between Israeli Izak, Canadian Shep, and their mother Aida, and the exploration of many unexpected developments and histories along the way. Jewcy sat down with Alon, who just arrived from Israel to promote the film.

Jewcy: What brought you to this project originally?

When I was five years old, I was playing around in the garden at my grandfather’s house. A lady walks up to me and says to me in English, “You know, Izak has a blind brother.” I understood it was a secret [Izak didn’t know], and the moment she turned away, I ran into my house and asked my grandfather about it. His reaction was very harsh – “it’s a secret, you can’t tell anyone.”

That was a childhood trauma – a secret that I held for forty years. Four years ago, when I was sitting in my uncle and aunt’s living room, they started telling me that Izak came back from Poland with his granddaughter, and that’s when he realized that he might have a brother. I said to myself, if you don’t tell them now, you’ll never be able to. I started researching that night, and that continued for three years with the help of MyHeritage.

Jewcy: What surprised you most in the research process?

The whole research was divided into two parts. The first: we knew that he had a brother, but we didn’t know if he was still alive. The four of them got out of the [DP] camp at a different time: Izak, his father, Aida, and the brother. But how does a blind kid leave alone?

I was looking through ship records for months. Then we filmed the meetings, and I started researching what had happened in those three years in the DP camps. For me and most Israelis, this is a total surprise. All we’re taught about is the Holocaust. There’s nothing from April 1945 to 1948. There were 20 million refugees and millions of Jews that had nowhere to go. No one talks about them. I wanted to add this as a part of the film.

Jewcy: You worked with your own brother on this film. What was that experience like?

Shaul is a very successful filmmaker. He was nominated for an Emmy for A Year in Space, which was on PBS, which I was not involved in. It was nice – we collaborated on several things and he let me lead here. He’s more experienced in films; I come from a hi-tech career. Prior to Izak telling me about his brother, the only person in the world that I told about this secret, seven years ago, was Shaul. I told him about it while we were looking for stuff to do. There were rumors that Izak had a Nazi father, and everyone knew this but no one knew if it was true. Shaul said, “You don’t want to open this Pandora’s box.”

Jewcy: What has the reception been like?

In Israel, it was just unbelievable. I knew we had a great movie, but I didn’t realize how it would be received. This is one of the five most successful documentaries ever made in Israel. It was overwhelming. I was really happy, and the crowds loved it. I’ve done probably 150 Q & As by now, and the crowds don’t let me go. Fifteen minutes turn into an hour. People want to ask questions.

The amazing part is that, in Israel, people with similar stories come to see it. It looks like a very unique story, and it’s probably a world record of a 70-year reunion for three people, but the story of finding your father, or being born in the DP camps is shared by many. There were thousands and thousands of babies born in the DP camps. There was a baby boom— people wanted to live, and they started doing that. There were 6000 people in the Bergen-Belsen DP camp, and 1300 babies were born in the first year. That’s a world record in births. Kids come up to me and they’re 70 years old now and tell me that they were there.

Jewcy: What’s next?

I need to finish this, but probably another movie. I do want to find a nice girl, that’s what Izak keeps telling me, “you need to have your own kids.” Maybe I’ll focus on starting a family, my family.

Aida’s Secrets is currently playing or about to open in select theaters.

Photo of Aida Zasadsinska in Aida’s Secrets. Courtesy of Music Box Films

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Presented at Lincoln Center each year, the New York Film Festival, now in its 55th year, is always Jewish experience. For example, last year, the festival presented documentary The Settlers, an incisive look into one of Israel’s most contentious issues.

This year’s most Jewish content comes in the Special Events section of the festival. This weekend is the screening of  Claude Lanzmann’s Four Sisters. Lanzmann, now 91, is a French filmmaker most well-known for his epic and important documentary Shoah, which was released on PBS in 1987 and runs over nine hours. Rather than recreate history with a fictional narrative or attempt to recreate the lives of the survivors he interviews, Lanzmann’s style has always been to let them speak for themselves. Their stories are immensely powerful (understandably), and now Lanzmann returns with the presentation of four new interviews completed decades earlier— complementary pieces to Shoah.

The notion that there can never be too many Holocaust stories has never felt truer than in Four Sisters: The Hippocratic Oath, the only one of the four films screened for press ahead of the public showing of the series. Viewers who expect anything other than a straightforward question-and-answer session will be disappointed: this is simply a filmed interview between Lanzmann and survivor Ruth Elias. Yet, it’s much, much more than that. Ruth, who was born in Czechoslovakia in 1922, lived with her family for several years at the start of the Holocaust before being sent to Theresienstadt, and later Auschwitz.

What distinguishes Ruth’s story – though each person’s experience during the Holocaust was horrifying and needs not be qualified by a standout event – is that she interacted closely with Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on her after she gave birth to a baby. It is not easy to hear Ruth tell this tale. Ruth projects a quiet confidence, speaking in English throughout the interview and eloquently recalling the horrors she suffered during that time. She also shares positive memories of her childhood and, most stirringly, of the friendship she has made with the woman she now considers her mother, a doctor in the camp whose courageous act gives the film its title.

With many new films using cutting-edge styles and clever techniques to share their truths, it proves surprisingly rewarding to see this very matter-of-fact, simple film, which also appears grainy (this interview was conducted in the 1970s) and is not always easy to understand. Sitting near her, Lanzmann appears occasionally as he asks a question or follows up on something she has said, listening attentively just like the audience. At no point does he interject or try to prompt her to dig deeper on a given subject; this is her story and all he desires to do is get her to share it. He even sits by as she plays her piano accordion with an impressive passion, recalling songs in Czech and Hebrew from her childhood.

Ruth’s resilience shows in her survival of the Holocaust and her building of a new life in Israel. The other three films in this series, which showcase women from four different areas of Eastern Europe, are sure to be just as powerful. This is documentary filmmaking at its barest and purest, and this feels even more relevant now as survivors are getting older and Holocaust stories are becoming part of the past.

Find out more about Claude Lanzmann’s Four Sisters, which screen from Saturday to Tuesday, October 7 to 10, on the New York Film Festival website.

Photo from Four Sisters: The Hippocratic Oath.

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The fact that there are so many films, both documentaries and narratives, about the Holocaust speaks to multiple needs. There’s the need to remember those who died, but more often the incredible power of survival of so many despite horrific and unimaginable circumstances. Yet the sheer number of stories of those who still live — or at least lived past the end of the Holocaust — represents an immense contradiction in relation to the number of people who died and were not able to have their stories told. Steven Spielberg’s choice to put a girl in a red coat in color when the rest of Schindler’s List was in black and white was extremely meaningful, but the thousands around her who also died remained nameless. Though it might appear that there a lot of Holocaust movies, some of which are accused of serving as “Oscar bait,” there are still so countless stories left to tell.

The new documentary Red Trees comes from filmmaker Marina Willer, who created the short film that turned into this full-length feature as an exploration of her family’s life in Prague before the rise of the Nazis and their subsequent exodus to Brazil. Marina’s family was one of just twelve Jewish families to survive World War II in Prague, one statistic among the many in this film that are disheartening, including the decimation of the Czechoslovakian Jewish population from over 300,000 to less than 15,000 by the end of the war. On her Kickstarter page to fund the original short film, Marina explains that, even back in 2015, “war, violence and persecution has left one in every 122 humans on the planet a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum.” Her film is meant in part as a wake-up call to governments not to turn their backs on families seeking survival.

It is, primarily, the story of her father, Alfred, who was a man of prominence in Prague thanks to his contribution to the invention of citric acid. Tim Piggot Smith acts as the narrator, speaking as Alfred, explaining how he would hide the formula in his wife’s recipe book whenever the Nazis would come to search for it so that he could avoid become irrelevant and likely being killed. Alfred tells harrowing tales of what life was like in Prague for the Jews once the Nazis rose to power, and it’s hard not to find parallels to present-day cinematic explorations of dystopias. The Handmaid’s Tale might be referenced more for its terrifying depiction of the total loss of reproductive rights for women, but its swift and systematic disenfranchisement of an entire gender, conveyed in one scene where all the women who work at a company are let go and escorted from the building, bears a frightening resemblance to Alfred’s recollections of Jews having to ride in the last car of the tram, not allowed to sit even if surrounded by empty seats.

It’s important not to forget, and that’s a big component of what Marina is doing here by showcasing her father’s life. Yet there is also light to be found in this particular film, which finds the Willer family successfully emigrating to Brazil, where Alfred describes his first action as looking for a banana to eat since he has not had one in seven years. The multicultural society found in Brazil stands in stark contrast to the divisions and dehumanization that he found in Prague, creating a path for him to move into a new career as an architect. Brazil was a true melting pot that welcomed in so many survivors from World War II, and for the Willer family, it was their chance to start over.

This film’s title comes from the way in which Alfred discovered at a young age that he was colorblind. When he drew trees, he would color the leaves red, which to him meant nothing but allowed him to make an important realization. Those types of moments are what make this film an invigorating and affirming experience, one that lingers on people and moments to truly capture the feelings they stir. Cinematographer César Charlone, who has worked with director Fernando Meirelles on City of God and The Constant Gardener, collaborates with Willer to create what is described as an “impressionistic visual essay” that pays great tribute to one man who survived when many didn’t.

Red Trees opens on September 15th in New York at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas & Quad Cinema and in LA at Laemmle Royal.

Film still courtesy Cohen Media Group

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During her time abroad in Copenhagen last fall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) senior Amanda Lalezarian immersed herself in the Danish Jewish community. Her time abroad became Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark, a powerful documentary that explores both the history of and the current state of affairs for Jews in this Scandinavian country. 

At 20 minutes, Against the Odds provides a comprehensive picture of how Danes view religion, what occurred in Denmark during the Holocaust, and the varied experiences of Danish Jews in the 21st century. The film, which is Lalezarian’s senior honors thesis, is designed for an American audience that is not familiar with the Jews of Denmark. Much like her audience, Lalezarian, who hails from Long Island and whose mother is Swedish and father is Persian Jewish, had limited knowledge about Danish Jews when she embarked on this project. 

Lalezarian screened the film for the first time in late April at UNC, and has made it available on Vimeo. You can watch it yourself, embedded below this interview!

What inspired you to make a documentary about the Jews of Denmark?

It was mid-August, school was starting in two weeks, and I still didn’t have an idea for my thesis. I was home for less than 48 hours in between covering the Olympics in Brazil and going abroad to Copenhagen — which is nuts but that’s what I do — and I was having dinner with my parents and my dad asked, “You have an idea yet?” And I said, “No.” He said, “Do you know anything about the Jewish community in Copenhagen?” And I said, “No.” I just did a quick Google search and found out they’re a very small population of the country. I was like, “This sounds interesting; it could be an interesting project because I don’t know anything about them.”

Then two, three weeks later the program that I was on had a club fair where you can walk around the building and see what organizations have clubs for students. And I walked by the Chabad table and the first Jew that I met in Denmark was the Chabad Denmark Rabbi Yitzi Loewenthal. I told him that I had this idea and he said, “Oh yeah, that sounds interesting. We can chat later if you want to come to my office,” and it just started from there.

When you began, did you have any idea where this documentary would end up going?

At the beginning, I knew that I had to cover past, present, and future. For me, someone who didn’t know anything, I knew that an audience from America that didn’t know anything about the issues, they would need that background. I knew that I had to meet a Holocaust survivor. A majority of the project was about the Copenhagen attacks in 2015. That became a part of the story I didn’t expect going into it. 

How did you approach finding individuals to interview?

The first person I met was the Chabad Rabbi. He gave me the numbers for three Holocaust survivors, and the one who is in my documentary, Dan Edelsten, is the one I ended up connecting with. Through Dan Edelsten, I met his granddaughter. I met the kosher butcher just by looking him up. Everyone is connected and everyone knows everyone so people just kept introducing me to other people.

As you went about making the documentary, what did you learn about the Jews of Denmark?

The Jews came to Denmark in the 1640s and there was a small group of maybe a 1,000 of them. They came from Eastern Europe, and today there is 6-8,000. The number has increased, but not really that much and I think it’s amazing that they haven’t left. I think it’s amazing that they’ve continued to carry out their religion and culture and not shy away because of hard times. I think there they really hang onto their religion; I think that’s changing, but I think that’s amazing that they’ve continued to do it. 

The end is really powerful. You just don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. 

I kind of wanted to leave it that way. It is open ended because there isn’t an answer. There won’t be an answer until you look back at it. There is a conclusion, but not really— because who am I to say what’s going to happen?

From making this documentary, what sense did you get about the future of the Jews in country?

I asked everyone the same question: What is the future of Judaism in Denmark? And people would laugh and say, “I’m not a prophet.” “I don’t know.” One guy said, “People have been staying for the past 400 years . . . and we’re still here.” I just think some people will move, but I don’t think that many people will move. I think they will just become more cultural. 

But I really don’t see the numbers getting stronger because there’s not much opportunity. Not that you need a kosher market or a Jewish school to be Jewish … they have one daily active synagogue and the other one is a progressive. It’s just hard. I would be interested in seeing what happens 20, 50 years from now.

Do you think this experience changed or added to your own perspective on Judaism? 

It just added to my knowledge I think, to my understanding of Judaism. I think living in the States and being a Jew, you just have such a different perception of what that means compared to people who are from Europe who are Jewish. I think it’s opened my eyes to what Judaism is like in another country. 

What do you hope viewers take away from this experience? 

I just want them learn one thing they didn’t know before. So if you watch it, not that I expect everyone to get the same understanding out of it, but for them to at least acknowledge the story and whatever they walk away from it learning, and it can be different from one person to the next. And that’s kind of what I like to do with my projects, leave it open for interpretation. 

***

When asked the following question, “Did the interviewees feel it was very important to discuss the state of Jews in Denmark?,” Lalezarian felt it was best to ask an interviewee directly. The answer to this question comes from interviewee Mette Bentow, a Jewish activist, whose daughter Hannah’s bat mitzvah took place during the 2015 terrorist attack in Copenhagen. 

Why did you feel it was important to be part of Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark? 

Mette: Firstly, I will always do my utmost to help out a fellow Jew, especially when a young Jewish student needs a helping hand. Secondly, having had the experience we did, I feel it is my obligation to share that story – for the sake of my kids and for the everlasting memory of Dan Uzan, Z”L. [Dan was Jewish, and killed in the 2015 terrorist attack.]

Jews in Europe, all of Europe, is experiencing a rise in anti-Semitism, verbal attacks, bias from the media in their reporting of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. In Denmark, we have had a long, peaceful Danish-Jewish history, without much anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews — even during the Holocaust we had the unique story of the rescue of 95% of the Danish Jewish population.

But these days, exemplified to the extreme by the terrorist attack, Danish Jews are not in the safe haven they used to be in. I think that it is very important to speak out, to insist on our rights and to be an active part, instead of bowing my head and wait for others to fix it for me — or even worse, take the abuse and degradation.

Against the Odds: Embracing Judaism in Denmark can be viewed on Vimeo, or below:

Image from Against the Odds.

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The National Museum of American Jewish History hosts a residency program called OPEN for Interpretation that invites a diverse array of artists and thinkers to contribute their perspectives on the Jewish American experience. Emmy-nominated filmmaker and Webby Awards founder Tiffany Shlain and UC Berkeley artist and robotics professor Ken Goldberg are the current artists, and last night they premiered their short film, The Whole Cinemagillah, their best effort to capture Judaism in America as shown in film and television over the course of the past century. Clip ideas and submissions were – and still are – welcome for this truly collaborative project. Jewcy had the chance to speak with Shlain and Goldberg as they prepared for the big night.

Jewcy: How did you become involved with OPEN for Interpretation and the National Museum of American Jewish History?

Shlain: I met Josh Perelman [Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions & Collections at the museum] at the Future of Storytelling conference a few years ago, and he asked us to do this artist-in-residency program. We did a film together ten years ago called The Tribe that explores the American Jewish experience through the history of the Barbie Doll. We came to the museum and saw an exhibit about the history of Jews in film and TV and Vaudeville, and we knew we wanted to work on this.

Goldberg: The museum is new and elegant. It’s chronological on multiple floors tracing the letter from George Washington to modern times. OPEN for Interpretation invites artists in from outside to provide some sort of response – cabaret to photograph to anything else – that engages with their exhibit to open it up for new interpretations.

Jewcy: Had you seen other films or books that covered this topic?

Shlain: When we first came up with the idea to do it, we found so many articles and a couple books, but nothing like a montage all together of most of the clips that we thought would be very compelling to see. So much written, but not visualized.

Goldberg: We found a lot of great clips of these Jewish moments but hadn’t found anyone who had put them together.

Shlain: There was no comprehensive list. There were plenty of lists like The 10 Best Jewish Moments in TV, but not one exhaustive list.

Goldberg: We were very conscious that for a lot of young people, the digital generation, their attention span is geared around something that only lasts about 10 minutes. We wanted to make something compact to get conversation started.

Shlain: There was something powerful about the way the way Jews are represented and represent themselves in this 12-minute gestalt. We wanted the whole pastiche, the evolution of representation.

Jewcy: What was the most surprising clip you received?

Shlain: The clip of Frank Sinatra from The House I Live In. Towards the end of making it, someone found this clip from his movie about anti-Semitism which I just didn’t expect to exist.

Goldberg: I had never seen The Believer with Ryan Gosling. Looking back, I found that to be incredibly riveting and powerful.

Jewcy: Were you pleased with all of the clips and recommendations you received, or were you hoping to find something more?

Shlain: As a woman, I found most of the woman characters very stereotyped, whereas the men were very nuanced. In the end, it couldn’t be 50/50 screen time – there was so much more for men. This is an evolving project. There is a booth at the museum where people can add their own favorite moments, and a Facebook where we’ve gotten over 20,000 people participating. We hope to add to this and make a new version.

Goldberg: We didn’t want to have a bias, or come at this with an axe to grind. It’s actually a really complex tapestry that’s opened up a lot in the past 20 years.

Shlain: The first film we showed is from the 1920s. It’s interesting to see how much we’ve revealed of our true selves in the past 100 years. Back then, it was very veiled and hidden. Seeing that evolution is very interesting.

Goldberg: In 2012, the book The New Jew in Film talks about a “Jew-aissance.” It’s a perspective on the stereotype. We get both irritated and insider pleasure from the stereotype – we can reclaim it.

Shlain: It’s like how Jews can tell jokes about Jews, but others can’t.

Jewcy: What is your favorite clip, and why?

Shlain: that’s like asking for a favorite child. I will never forget seeing Private Benjamin when he lists all of the 10-15 things about him that are very Jewish and then says, “I’m Jewish.” Then in the next scene they’re having sex.

Goldberg: The Believer was originally very long as part of the film, now it’s not even in there. He does a prayer and then goes into an amazing monologue, but as the film got shorter and shorter, it didn’t fit.

Shlain: We loved it so much it didn’t even make it into the movie! The more we cut down the clip, the less it was contextualized. We couldn’t do it justice unless we spent three minutes on it.

Jewcy: What’s next?

Shlain: We’re excited to start entering it into film festivals. We had a lot of fun with that when we did The Tribe. In terms of film, that’s a good question. We’re taking a nice break. I just had another film come out a month ago called 50/50: Rethinking the Past, Present, and Future of Women + Power that explores the history of women in power.

Goldberg: On Sunday, I’m hosting 200 people for a robotics conference. [laughs]

Jewcy: Is there anything else you would like Jewcy readers to know?

Shlain: Our film website has all the info on it. You can’t watch the movie on it, but it’s a call for entries. To watch the movie, come to the museum! Soon, we’ll have other plans to share.

Learn more about the film’s premiere at NMAJH.

Image via Facebook.

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Showing later this week as part of America’s largest documentary film festival, DOC NYC, Supergirl tells the story of Naomi Kutin, a 95-pound, Orthodox Jewish girl who, at age nine, started breaking records in competitive powerlifting. We caught up with director Jessie Auritt to find out more about this cool project.

Jewcy: How did you hear about Naomi, and what interested you about this subject?

I came across an article in the Jewish Daily Forward about Naomi in January of 2013 and I was really intrigued, not only because there’s a young girl participating in this male-dominated sport and beating women 3-4 times her age, but mostly that she was Orthodox Jewish. I wanted to understand and explore deeper about what it looked like for her to be participating in this sport and observing pretty traditional conservative laws of Orthodox Judaism.

Jewcy: The family’s observance doesn’t come up too much during the movie – were there other obstacles to her competing, and did anyone in her community object?

The Kutins are pretty observant as far as Modern Orthodox standards go. They observe Shabbat and keep kosher, and Naomi is always dressed modestly when she’s not powerlifting. I’m Jewish but wasn’t raised religious, and I was very interested in this. We filmed them observing the rituals, doing things like eating only kosher foods out of the back of their car because they couldn’t find anything else. They always travel with their own food wherever they go since powerlifting communities aren’t usually in Jewish areas. We also filmed them getting up at 4am Sunday so that they can get to a competition since they couldn’t travel there on Shabbat. We filmed a lot, and most didn’t make it into the film. Part of me wanted to include it because a lot of people who aren’t Jewish don’t know that these things exist. If you are Jewish or do have some understanding, you know. You might think that there’s not much conflict, but there actually is. She never competes on Saturday or trains on Saturday, and she actually misses out on a lot of competitions. Sunday is usually the day that men lift, and sometimes they’ll make exceptions and she’ll be the only woman lifting.

Jewcy: Was there anything that surprised you about this intersection of the two worlds?

The one thing that surprised me was that I thought that things might be more black-and-white and that they would have received more opposition in her Orthodox community for her powerlifting because people might think that she’s not modest, since she has to wear spandex to compete. She has to wear something form-fitting that shows the shape of her body so that it shows that she’s doing the lift properly. That was non-negotiable for Naomi to compete in the sport. I was surprised that both her family and her community, including her rabbi, were wholeheartedly supportive of her doing this sport. I thought there would be criticism of her for not following the rules, but there was a great fluidity in this spectrum of Judaism.

Jewcy: Do you think you’ll return to either of these worlds in future projects?

I’m always intrigued by people who are going outside the norm and breaking stereotypes. For me, that’s what exciting in filmmaking. You take something people wouldn’t expect or believe and bring that to light. There’s something particularly intriguing about the juxtaposition of contradictory things like a young Orthodox Jewish girl and a powerlifter. It’s really interesting to see how they interact. I have a few projects in early development, and they definitely resolve around that sort of idea.

Jewcy: How do you think this film will go over with non-Jewish audiences?

Even though Naomi has this extraordinary talent, this is really a relatable, heartfelt coming-of-age story about what it’s like to find yourself while going through adolescence, something that we’ve all been through. We’ve found that people of all walks of life and ages have really enjoyed.

Jewcy: Is there anyone who thinks that you’ve made a movie about an alien from Krypton?

There is some confusion at first, but it’s the nickname her parents gave her. It’s actually very fitting for the film. Naomi does have these two dual sides of her personality, like Superman or Supergirl. She’s a typical, slight Jewish girl and, on the other side, she’s this other strong power lifter. You can easily confuse the two.

Supergirl is screening at the SVA Theatre in New York City this Sunday, November 13th at 4:30pm as part of DOC NYC and having its Philadelphia premiere earlier that day at 1:30pm at the Gershman Y as part of the Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival.tan

Image from Supergirl

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Director Stephen Apkon’s first film, Disturbing the Peace, spotlights a group of Israelis and Palestinians formerly entrenched in violence that has come together to advocate and protest for peace. Jewcy got a chance to talk to Apkon about his eye-opening documentary.

Jewcy: What interested you in this topic? How did it come about?

I’ve always had a strong connection to the region and I’ve spent a lot of time there. Three or four years ago, I was in the process of creating a new nonprofit aimed at looking at the ways in which we’re creating the world we’re living in and the choices we make collectively and individually. I’m interested in how we get stuck in these national or personal narratives. That coincided with an invitation I had to make a film that would deal with the conflict in the region. Quite frankly, I felt that there was nothing new to say but agreed to go on a listening tour with my partner, Andy Young. We met with people all over the political spectrum.

At one point in the trip, I felt like indeed there was nothing new to say. Then we met these men and women from Combatants for Peace – that was a real awakening. I asked one of their members, Chen Alon, what is this organization really about? He replied, “We’re a community of people taking responsibility for our creation.” That was extraordinary. As far as I know, they are the only group of enemy combatants working together bi-nationally without arms during an ongoing armed conflict. It’s really incredible and transcendent.

Jewcy: This interview is taking place on American Election Day and we’re facing a country tomorrow where there will be people who disagree strongly and have to move forward. How does this film relate to that?

To me, this film speaks to all of us in an increasingly polarized world. It challenges us to ask the question, where are we willing to disturb our own peace? These narratives that we hold that dehumanize each other and prove our victimhood are held over other people. In this country, on Election Day, that same question comes up – how do we not see the other side as the other? As Lincoln once said: if you were born when they born, if you were taught what they were taught, you would believe what they would believe.

Jewcy: What surprised you about your interactions with the Combatants for Peace?

This project forced me to do my own work of looking at where my cultural narrative came from, my fears, and my identity and how they all play into my understanding of the conflict. It is challenging and painful work, but also extremely liberating. There were moments in which my own instinctual fears were triggered and I discovered the importance of working through that. I saw through the work of the Combatants for Peace a way of doing that – being willing to explore our perspectives through our own personal stories and experiences.

One thing that became very important to me in understanding all this felt very much like a very Jewish idea, the idea of integration as opposed to balance. The rabbis talk about Yetzer Hara and Yetzer Hatov, our inclinations to do evil or violence and our inclinations for kindness and compassion and love. It’s interesting the way that people often encounter the film, to look at it through their own lens and constantly be keeping score, to see whether it’s balanced. Have they portrayed our victimhood as much as the other so that we’re able to encounter the other story? What we think about as filmmakers is not whether it’s balanced but whether it’s integrated. When you think about balance, you think about a scale, as one side goes further out to the extreme, the other side does the same to compensate for it. As you get further and further out, it becomes more and more precarious, with potential for more and more chaos. The idea of integration is actually the understanding of the capacity for both of those extremes within ourselves.

Avner, a former elite Israeli soldier, said upon first meeting the Palestinians: “We had something in common, the willingness to kill people we don’t know.” What we share is a desire for peace. I understand those rabbinic teachings as the integration of both of those things, the recognition that we have the capacity for violence and we also have the capacity for compassion and love.

Jewcy: What resistance did you encounter in trying to make this movie?

It’s very interesting – the response to the film so far has been overwhelmingly positive, especially when people take the time to see it. Ultimately, it’s a very human story we can all connect with and experience the humanity of both peoples. That’s been very affirming, both within the region, in Israel and in Palestine, and in screenings in the United States and internationally. In addition to screening the film for mixed audiences, we have also shown it to only Jewish audiences and only Palestinian audiences. What’s fascinating about that is that the questions and fears that come up from each of those groups are essentially the same. Jews have an existential fear that they want to drive us into the sea, and it’s exactly the same fear that Palestinians express. Is there really someone on the other side who is a partner for peace, and is there anyone there who really cares about us?

Unfortunately, our leaders have perpetuated the sense, and the fear, that there isn’t a partner on the other side. I believe in many ways the international media has cooperated with that. When people see a different reality, it really connects to their longing, their desire, and their instinctual knowing that there is another way, both in this conflict and in so many other conflicts in our society.

Jewcy: For those inspired by the film, is there a way for them to get involved with the work of Combatants for Peace?

Absolutely. The response has been amazing with people who want to join in to this movement and are inspired to take action in their own lives. For the film to just be a feel-good film is not interesting. I’m gratified by the conversations that have been created and the actions being taken to work on this particular situation and to “disturb the peace,” in a sense, in regards to the other issues we care so deeply about to create a more just society. The title was very purposeful. Whose peace are they disturbing? It’s really the status quo. It’s the long legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, and suffragettes getting arrested and making themselves uncomfortable to achieve real change.

Jewcy: What’s next? Will you make another film?

We are so immersed in this film that it’s like we’re drinking from a firehose. There’s so much interest, especially in creating a larger conversation about it, that this is really where we’re focused. What inspires me within Reconsider, our nonprofit, is to continue to explore the systems that we choose to create and to inspire a conversation around the ways we relate to the experience of life and to explore it as a more creative experience. The first step to do that is taking responsibility for our own creation, which circles back to exactly the words first spoken in our first meeting with Combatants for Peace.

Jewcy: Is there anything else you would like Jewcy readers to know?

For me, one of the fundamental ways in which I understand Judaism is its emphasis on curiosity, on questioning, and on struggle, ultimately focused on justice. I believe that at the core of this film and the work of Combatants for Peace are those ideals, so wherever people might come from, or whatever perspectives they hold, I believe that even with this issue, which is so emotional for so many people, that we’re capable of having a more open conversation, and that’s what I hope this film helps create.

“Disturbing the Peace” opens theatrically this Friday at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and the Landmark Sunshine in New York City.

Images courtesy Stephen Apkon.

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