tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1583299872064742482024-03-20T23:03:01.586-07:00Film ReviewsGail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-17509976908516835202022-10-22T13:42:00.002-07:002022-10-22T13:45:54.479-07:0034th Annual Boston Jewish Film Festival 2022<p><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">In theaters: November 2–9; Virtual: November 10–13; v</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 13.333333px;">isit: bostonjfilm.org for the full program</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif">Attachment</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif">, dir. Gabriel Bier Gislason, 2022, 105 min.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">November 5, 9:15 pm, Brattle Theatre<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Boston Premiere<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPviRCa45ALFUSCTF81O8FRZI-z9dSgBDPi_c7CmXSSxgbOfrjXwcQ5STn_roSzlQciGQaMR715M99AnXvTidIX96J2RYbrzX9GhEaJq1Q1cBD7SzY9VCwthHwgJ_RBRwAGIWBiiakcDLuwJ0yLWJv1Z--EJ_gioeYhWVZR_GHQJljnV12tc3M0hrq" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="1920" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjPviRCa45ALFUSCTF81O8FRZI-z9dSgBDPi_c7CmXSSxgbOfrjXwcQ5STn_roSzlQciGQaMR715M99AnXvTidIX96J2RYbrzX9GhEaJq1Q1cBD7SzY9VCwthHwgJ_RBRwAGIWBiiakcDLuwJ0yLWJv1Z--EJ_gioeYhWVZR_GHQJljnV12tc3M0hrq=w404-h269" width="404" /></a></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Attachment</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> is a modern-day thriller/horror film with no violence or blood, just fear of the supernatural lurking in the atmosphere. The story involves Jewish mysticism—what non-mystics would call superstitions to ward off demons and evil. The only way to talk about the film risks a spoiler, for the plot’s clues are so subtly woven into the action as to be missed. Be forewarned: unless you keep an unswerving eye on the camera’s focus and listen acutely to the dialogues’ subtext, puzzlement may result. And the epilogue’s playful twist only adds to audience uncertainty. At the same time, it is this very eeriness about the presence of invisible evil that disturbs us in a marvelous way. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">The film moves briskly and features three female protagonists, two of them—Maja and Chana—antagonists for the love of the third, Leah. Chana is Leah’s Jewish mother and Maya is Leah’s non-Jewish lover. A fourth character, Lev, Chana’s Orthodox brother-in-law and religious bookstore owner, is a scholar of the Kabbalah—Jewish mysticism that has, as Lev tells us, “the power to unlock the secrets of the universe and ward off evil.” Chana also knows and practices the Kabbalah’s esoteric rituals that include amulets, heaps of salt in the corners of rooms, candles lit at night, and soup concoctions made with chants to activate their magical powers—incantations like those of the witches in <i>Macbeth</i>, their cauldron bubbling with portentous vapors. We meet shopkeepers in London’s Orthodox neighborhood, home to Leah, Chana, and Lev. These vendors also know the mystic traditions and secretly sell Chana the sacred ingredients she needs for the rituals she performs for Leah, her lovely and charismatic daughter.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUdwH_HZtmqk79SqdXDR0UfV7u_oZwg5MMvfcwboPhk9sc903kArtwE55ZlOKCtcnHCndlAesfx1P_I28ueQKK15_f9ayHbFNmq2f4F3tSeRDkCGPVKVpoHN7cgrWXXPirDfMILJzkR1zdwqYoh-jtMEoQO2WypDyThFuYNyioNMVDXDRdWhmf6sTr" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="1000" height="260" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiUdwH_HZtmqk79SqdXDR0UfV7u_oZwg5MMvfcwboPhk9sc903kArtwE55ZlOKCtcnHCndlAesfx1P_I28ueQKK15_f9ayHbFNmq2f4F3tSeRDkCGPVKVpoHN7cgrWXXPirDfMILJzkR1zdwqYoh-jtMEoQO2WypDyThFuYNyioNMVDXDRdWhmf6sTr=w390-h260" width="390" /></a></div></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">The film begins with Leah, a graduate student, meeting Maja during a research trip to Denmark. The two fall in love and return to Leah’s London flat, located above her mother Chana’s flat. The plot then takes off with sinister and suspenseful sounds and inexplicable happenings. Lev shows Maja a book from his shop about “the other side.” He turns the pages, pointing out supernatural beings who are evil, such as the Dybbuk, the tortured soul of a dead person who possesses a living person’s body, causing that person derangement and death—unless the Dybbuk can be expelled. Secret rituals can attempt to exorcise a Dybbuk, Lev tells Maja, but they are life threatening to those who perform them, and “nowadays out of favor, deemed dangerous. The Talmud forbids black magic and sorcery.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsKGKivzjZTWh9xJChU6GUarLOOOoM21jlGB5qHC3RKajJNNyE7qpwDKmDmPDbYmM7E9JEeB9eOTvlffNj7lChHVCxEJ0mk1YgT0PLK47HZf5Qfxvskfi4SXV8D9JauKtbwfPK1MQUkysJ4nEWXM8LCJdMf0p0T7CEayGShoV1PfRudg5Vl3NCGQOK" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjsKGKivzjZTWh9xJChU6GUarLOOOoM21jlGB5qHC3RKajJNNyE7qpwDKmDmPDbYmM7E9JEeB9eOTvlffNj7lChHVCxEJ0mk1YgT0PLK47HZf5Qfxvskfi4SXV8D9JauKtbwfPK1MQUkysJ4nEWXM8LCJdMf0p0T7CEayGShoV1PfRudg5Vl3NCGQOK=w436-h245" width="436" /></a></div><br /><span face="Calibri, sans-serif">L</span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">eah’s increasingly strange condition and her mother’s even </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">stranger behavior, feeds the suspense and mystery of the movie. Catastrophe looms in the atmosphere. Uncertainty rivets each ticking minute: Who is good, who is evil? Is Chana a witch? Is Lev dangerous? What is going on that we do not yet understand? And can Maja—the only innocent one in this scary coterie—save her beloved from the invisible evil clutches moving in at an ever faster rate? </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Attachment</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> offers viewers a fabulous, bated-breath film journey.</span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHQOXOxlLW2qlsLXT2VuhqduJWjDxxzDVx-nlxE0zRvw0LVI97VozWslWW0_G8lr-OG8nxUy1xmsn3DFKiBXLnGu8fE71HpXw57dpwltfpZ5De4Dx0xm-NEgUG_igtH3Ndpc6qjcgkPnwQH33XS__QkN2TEUEw2F4ysq0xzmFCScdwcy2NbzirgndV" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjHQOXOxlLW2qlsLXT2VuhqduJWjDxxzDVx-nlxE0zRvw0LVI97VozWslWW0_G8lr-OG8nxUy1xmsn3DFKiBXLnGu8fE71HpXw57dpwltfpZ5De4Dx0xm-NEgUG_igtH3Ndpc6qjcgkPnwQH33XS__QkN2TEUEw2F4ysq0xzmFCScdwcy2NbzirgndV=w437-h291" width="437" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">Sofie Grabol (Chana) deserves special note for her role as Leah’s mother. She fully embodies Chana’s deep psychic pain for the life of her daughter. Every detail of Chana’s internal, turmoiled state brims in her facial expressions, her movements and speech. It is as if she herself is possessed by a terrible power slowly destroying her. <i>Attachment </i>eschews back story—we learn little about the characters before the film’s present moment, and that is all we need to be in the grip of this thrilling tale.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;">For those interested in past Dybbuk films, check out my review of two that screened in Boston in 2018 and may be available for streaming: gailspilsbury.blogspot.com/2018/04.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 10pt;">Dybbuk etching by Ephraim Moses Lillien (1874–1925). </span></p><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJCDVQ1cvegCpUBmdDc-MJkNAwT0Ms0qW0M1su9hyx0PXs4-eBXKeikYqnWN8SeIXLUwO9rMKXjZvHKx2u1opUDyMPCwpYRLH9q_RY1cmGsvP5LZyc3H9GCXwKtZlU1iiUAzSpiqA8l_pkS0lVdlNWg68mVoNkad6NZEDLlkDHsCP6U-tDqyXVv5m6" style="clear: left; display: inline; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="305" data-original-width="400" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjJCDVQ1cvegCpUBmdDc-MJkNAwT0Ms0qW0M1su9hyx0PXs4-eBXKeikYqnWN8SeIXLUwO9rMKXjZvHKx2u1opUDyMPCwpYRLH9q_RY1cmGsvP5LZyc3H9GCXwKtZlU1iiUAzSpiqA8l_pkS0lVdlNWg68mVoNkad6NZEDLlkDHsCP6U-tDqyXVv5m6=w423-h322" width="423" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Contributed to the <i>Boston City Paper</i>, by Gail Spilsbury, www.bergamotbooks.com</span></p>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-47437158077357870212022-10-08T16:38:00.006-07:002022-10-08T16:44:53.162-07:00"Shorts" at the Boston Palestine Film Festival<p>October 14–23, 2022</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 6pt 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">For the festival’s complete program of documentaries, shorts, and feature films visit </span><a href="https://bostonpalestinefilmfest.org/" style="color: #954f72;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">https://bostonpalestinefilmfest.org</span></a><span class="MsoHyperlink" style="color: #0563c1; text-decoration: underline;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">.</span></span><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Palestinian family traditions, particularly as they affect women, feature strongly in this year’s festival shorts. Young women, and in one case a young man, face the dilemma of needing to pursue their own life choices versus those involving the traditions of their elders, which the younger generation also respect.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Short films have the power to convey deeply felt personal stories in just a few minutes. The facial expressions of each character, the tension in silences, and the snippets of conversation not only capture an entire story, but also an emotional situation rife with inner unease—something audiences identify with at once and that words can rarely express.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">This year’s shorts bravely connect us to our inner, hidden selves of fear, pain, love, anger, and self-doubt. Talented directors of both sexes have created these difficult family and cultural situations with such truth that our audience response is one of understanding and empathy—responses so often missing in our busy, me-first lives. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Me and You</span></i></b><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">, </span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">dir.<b> </b>Alexandra Muhawi-Ho, 2020, 17 min., USA<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">In </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Me and You</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">, Amira, an Arab school teacher raised in the United States, juggles two lives—the one at home with her traditional mother who needs medical and emotional care, and the one in the outer world with an American culture that includes far more freedom for a woman, especially romantically. Love and duty keep Amira faithful to her mother, but also hiding her dating life with a colleague and her own discontent with Islamic traditions. Her home life looks and feels dark and curtained, while her outer life in the open and in school has freedom, choices. The stress of living two lives creates tension in all Amira’s relationships. Can she resolve her dilemma? Can she ever have a separate life from her mother’s? Her problem is driven home when her mother flings impassioned words at her: “May God keep you with me!” </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhdolL6PzYTO9cuSgYcb6ciUNlRd0gmm_piR9OSe4kK8h1DtKQ_YVE1SZcRbShyO4-ModoC-TSkOfxUj0XzhO9kxBvaTwy7Yed1lBoHZKelfLFU_xKH5sFUMdy8MbaxCCgi4qFp3R63gSCJQ0hSG12hbWSYTEuPJB67JVhzQwzAljeIpYw-5GA_Tfku" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="808" data-original-width="1366" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhdolL6PzYTO9cuSgYcb6ciUNlRd0gmm_piR9OSe4kK8h1DtKQ_YVE1SZcRbShyO4-ModoC-TSkOfxUj0XzhO9kxBvaTwy7Yed1lBoHZKelfLFU_xKH5sFUMdy8MbaxCCgi4qFp3R63gSCJQ0hSG12hbWSYTEuPJB67JVhzQwzAljeIpYw-5GA_Tfku" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Hush</span></i></b><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">, </span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">dir. Samar Qupty, 2021, 20 min., Palestine, Israel</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">World premiere<o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Two friends, Nadine and Nour, band together to find out if Nour is pregnant—a problem that would be of severe consequence to her life. The film follows the young women on their quest to obtain a pregnancy test, which leads to a life-changing visit to a gynecologist Nadine’s dad knows, one who can supposedly be trusted to keep a secret. The young women’s journey for help within a society of prohibitive rules for women—despite the protagonists’ educated, bourgeois background—leads to Nadine’s awakening and resistance to such patriarchy. A low, ominous tone of warning sounds whenever one of the “helpful” male characters offers assistance to the women—a marvelous touch!</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWU5deGJxt8z7LVdL7e_6VYTunZ9WbY5idl5Za3B5i0rNnedv00tl4yNIXThoNF8j5MP0pBUT7NbZaRdesIt_4hQp50RWA5Y8naICPcWE0nhFn_DKH77e3xgA7yjzG7fJfdN25ovJP_GRFREaIJNBJ9r5pYyGHlrJyEacrkkXfSeL0hXWZ8WwusxxS" style="clear: left; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; font-weight: 700; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="1696" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgWU5deGJxt8z7LVdL7e_6VYTunZ9WbY5idl5Za3B5i0rNnedv00tl4yNIXThoNF8j5MP0pBUT7NbZaRdesIt_4hQp50RWA5Y8naICPcWE0nhFn_DKH77e3xgA7yjzG7fJfdN25ovJP_GRFREaIJNBJ9r5pYyGHlrJyEacrkkXfSeL0hXWZ8WwusxxS" width="320" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">The Woman from Bar Blue</span></i></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">, dir. </span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" lang="IT" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Jalal Masarwa, 2021, 14 min., Palestine, Israel, <b>Boston premiere</b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Familial conflict strikes and hurts at every turn in this relationship-packed short film. From the unhappy mother’s frost and spite meeting her son’s fiancée, to the son’s grandmother taking absurd revenge on the young woman for wrongs done to her by her deceased husband, to the father and son behaving passively, we witness one family living the extremes of ancestral wounds that cause dysfunction in next-generation relationships. The predicament that unleashes havoc at this family’s gathering springs from social class divisions, rules for sexual activity, and personal vendettas. Private griping soon leads to overt insults and on to destructive behavior. Like all wars on earth, only after irrevocable damage has been done, is a truce the only solution.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6qDXFMvZpOMwg0KQF319dy-KttTJkNqe6iMGx-MRuq2y2r6WTETHfIgUNjZoNgPxwGnnm5D_jc1GGvoJNVlnZAFNsHCeqyBVFK7wXl7eHTDNaMTKhjsOQQoseKk8AP1DpRLY-xdVk-Re0Xk_xRSZ97IFNA5Uc9eM2JgA0x-iSsj9uTIzT7Zc_r26T" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="813" data-original-width="1920" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh6qDXFMvZpOMwg0KQF319dy-KttTJkNqe6iMGx-MRuq2y2r6WTETHfIgUNjZoNgPxwGnnm5D_jc1GGvoJNVlnZAFNsHCeqyBVFK7wXl7eHTDNaMTKhjsOQQoseKk8AP1DpRLY-xdVk-Re0Xk_xRSZ97IFNA5Uc9eM2JgA0x-iSsj9uTIzT7Zc_r26T" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Borekas</span></i></b><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">, </span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">dir. Saleh Saadi, 2020, 15 min., Palestine</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Borekas</span></i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> is a quintessential father and son film, every second pulsing with the tension of opposites and the suspense of how the problem will be resolved. The son has to make his plane back to Germany, and his father has insisted on driving him to the distant airport. Unfortunately, the car breaks down in the middle of nowhere. The father takes an easy-going attitude toward the problem, while the son’s anger mounts as the minutes tick away. The past relationship between father and son slowly comes out— how they both feel hurt by the other and for the distance between them. Then, the father brings up his son’s secret, and in so doing opens a bridge to their reconnection and healing.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQ46NOh_qNY7iKr8hL-CBvpq02ZS6FYhhnG-y4XGNMnE6AlGQw1aDovB3G0zyXXAuUS_eYvknknqU36TGno3SGw45EMTyxz5FXAEH14bEh7KXTTGFQ5rCDAufNw5Kp7Qpz9NfpSU8b_TmNlUlZe8liIVmKcE7AyFE43euxyrpolJFOD5NnGhlZcfl_" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="2011" data-original-width="3837" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjQ46NOh_qNY7iKr8hL-CBvpq02ZS6FYhhnG-y4XGNMnE6AlGQw1aDovB3G0zyXXAuUS_eYvknknqU36TGno3SGw45EMTyxz5FXAEH14bEh7KXTTGFQ5rCDAufNw5Kp7Qpz9NfpSU8b_TmNlUlZe8liIVmKcE7AyFE43euxyrpolJFOD5NnGhlZcfl_" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 6pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span></i></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Be Good</span></i></b><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">,</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> dir. Jessica Damouni, 2021, 13 min., USA</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Boston premiere</span></b><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;">What a brave, powerful, and wholly educational film by Jessica Damouni. </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10.5pt;">Be Good</i><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> takes viewers into the deep mental hell of bulimia. We witness Lelia’s psychic pain about her body image that causes her to live as two personalities: the friendly, “everything is fine” person with her friends who phone about a birthday party that day, and the one who hangs up only to reenter the dark, terrifying world of her mind’s disorder. The latter state dominates her life, and Leila’s portrayal in a small bedroom attached to a bathroom becomes a perfect visual metaphor for the hidden, locked-in state that has taken possession of her mind.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4Bi9xIdJnBHwPaUvKLvxG5bRVJJKvpIZT_nnYmGcTf7RYkfxFC5SFIeFpFVhnb1tKqHWsMKLUG90-ekcF1ByggfthpRz9cd2KtYhft64bDAShq6YTOivrPBMVa9Kv79mSuYB8c6CilbNsFYyciOgKPlfCcYYWRFLCWJ6DJNIv7EnlJdT_RpETySNo" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh4Bi9xIdJnBHwPaUvKLvxG5bRVJJKvpIZT_nnYmGcTf7RYkfxFC5SFIeFpFVhnb1tKqHWsMKLUG90-ekcF1ByggfthpRz9cd2KtYhft64bDAShq6YTOivrPBMVa9Kv79mSuYB8c6CilbNsFYyciOgKPlfCcYYWRFLCWJ6DJNIv7EnlJdT_RpETySNo" width="320" /></a></span></div><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><br /></span><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;">Contributed to the <i>Boston City Paper</i> by G.D. Spilsbury</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span face="Arial, sans-serif" style="font-size: 9pt;">www.bergamotbooks.com</span> </p>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-62836134868862344442021-12-09T06:12:00.003-08:002021-12-09T06:30:48.345-08:00The Remarkable Realm of Shorts<div class="separator"><p style="color: #1f4e79; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Short Films at the Boston Jewish Film Festival, November 7–21, 2021</p><p style="color: #1f4e79; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">bostonjfilm.org</p><p style="color: #1f4e79; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Short films capture a complete story in a matter of minutes, sometimes as few as five. Their ability to immediately pull the viewer in often relies on emotion conveyed through facial expressions. The characters also handle a dilemma, conflict, moral issue, or obstacle, carrying the audience along with them, as if present in the scene itself. This year’s shorts line-up at the Boston Jewish Film Festival includes narratives, documentaries, animation, and brilliant creations born out of Covid’s lockdown.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In Devek, a teenage boy takes his seriously ill mother to visit a medium, hoping to receive encouraging news about her prognosis. Instead, the medium shares the sad truth with him in private, and the boy’s face, digesting what this means for his life and hers, moves through an array of unspoken, deep feelings that pierce the heart of those watching. Here are just two of those memorable moments.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNwq_FyheZlyR6SYDRMSHXRH4cKbELSCvFfiMZGbYKL2H00BN_gI4yiBvYqzym9quv-nMNOmE1ej49wG4NwBrW89TtcxD6QCxim-Mj2S6CgHuHuElz_5dqPc5fK_i20kVKOEEb1wUjb4s/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="798" data-original-width="932" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNwq_FyheZlyR6SYDRMSHXRH4cKbELSCvFfiMZGbYKL2H00BN_gI4yiBvYqzym9quv-nMNOmE1ej49wG4NwBrW89TtcxD6QCxim-Mj2S6CgHuHuElz_5dqPc5fK_i20kVKOEEb1wUjb4s/w200-h171/son+1.png" width="200" /> </a><img data-original-height="764" data-original-width="1052" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGL2dWijh3xbBvRdUE6Zp5TbZzMoMvKrFKQqnsUJrnX2rte-uq_Gf0ZIDYNJ7YzosCMMPLqiG2Hql886Re-kQMiVitVA3d_b12n-qR9tLqDyBpKXWnic5TuStGtf16sziUejodeuVuArs/w200-h145/son+2.png" width="200" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;">Devek, Dir. Uriya Hertz (2021, Israel, 14 min.)</i></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Nominated for the Ophir Award for Best Short film,</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-align: left; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Massachusetts premiere</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Voices from the Balconies movingly captures older people’s loneliness, not as much from their worn faces as from the visual imagery of their dwelling places in innocuous, high-rise apartment buildings, their lives like a sea of windows. The film’s mind-blowing photography delivers the full impact of the aged, who speak a line or two about their “aloneness.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhEUdxhkDfceQYlWQq9GJLjzsE0a7hNvjNZrw442uuWoXC2J1_ddFu5_1967zPRDwAuRRi5Xg2_879b9p8xCg1lnwVvcWamfF6Y6jEfEbt3nahFj4bv43_DHypqCHrlAqsWoTECYML8Y/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="1062" data-original-width="1890" height="113" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQhEUdxhkDfceQYlWQq9GJLjzsE0a7hNvjNZrw442uuWoXC2J1_ddFu5_1967zPRDwAuRRi5Xg2_879b9p8xCg1lnwVvcWamfF6Y6jEfEbt3nahFj4bv43_DHypqCHrlAqsWoTECYML8Y/w200-h113/balcony.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">Voices from the Balconies, Dir. Manya Lozovskaya (2020, Israel, 6 min.)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">US premiere</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><b> </b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Separated by Covid, Gil in Israel and Nira in New York have kept a long-distance relationship going via Zoom calls, which occasionally include long-distance sex. This film’s call involves a conflict for the couple to resolve, which Zoom, as their only medium of intimacy, impedes.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4He4UDqdqbNCAbB5jGbGPm4Gpx39D_ioJFMyF04RK71E6vwNGR0CjX8gzeN4Pg_4KZsObZqu-7iSNASDYYlxJpG_1iSlWnWhb1ek9DGUld24wt6_X8Y6eCFMeileaSMQm7lew76rDdo/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="702" data-original-width="1926" height="73" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG4He4UDqdqbNCAbB5jGbGPm4Gpx39D_ioJFMyF04RK71E6vwNGR0CjX8gzeN4Pg_4KZsObZqu-7iSNASDYYlxJpG_1iSlWnWhb1ek9DGUld24wt6_X8Y6eCFMeileaSMQm7lew76rDdo/w200-h73/long+distance.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">Long Distance, Dir. Asaph Polonsky (2020, Israel, 16 min.)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>North American Premiere</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The sinister face and body language of a shameless, deceitful character grips us the moment this movie opens, as we feel his evil intent. He’s hunting Jewish artworks in Paris, 1942, and his interactions with two art collecting families sustains upsetting suspense. The ending, though, delivers a twist!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE890LSIYcZJvT64xIomr_XGw4kR8GBgAHdpSE8ykjfrxfB6ZOFuhKlW-pZFAgE6lI0hv7M7_-VyG1FkFyek1VLLAf1LxbF3xq0j9JRDGzlY9GIh9R8N0Hm1zgy_oPEnI2-3M_-HT5CpI/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="912" data-original-width="1892" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE890LSIYcZJvT64xIomr_XGw4kR8GBgAHdpSE8ykjfrxfB6ZOFuhKlW-pZFAgE6lI0hv7M7_-VyG1FkFyek1VLLAf1LxbF3xq0j9JRDGzlY9GIh9R8N0Hm1zgy_oPEnI2-3M_-HT5CpI/w200-h96/sinister.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>T</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">The Collection, Dir. Emmanuel Blanchard (2019, France, 13 min.)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>New England premiere</i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i> </i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The uninhibited expressions on a little girl’s face as her vivid imagination moves this tale along, complements the unfolding of human behaviors and histories, and how they shift and affect relationships.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnK_TZ3X5wjsng2gRwFdQW3_YCeOGEksiXMq7Zp6269cI-0MQ4yLkgLAuj4FssqxTSgDA4SdJAI1gi-mWbBtTF_CfLdWI6tLg8hbPsurz0LQybLOfpdl9efkCW8tIUcx1m8GelkyVubs/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img data-original-height="744" data-original-width="1490" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHnK_TZ3X5wjsng2gRwFdQW3_YCeOGEksiXMq7Zp6269cI-0MQ4yLkgLAuj4FssqxTSgDA4SdJAI1gi-mWbBtTF_CfLdWI6tLg8hbPsurz0LQybLOfpdl9efkCW8tIUcx1m8GelkyVubs/w200-h100/little+girl.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">Ganef, Dir. Mark Rosenblatt (2020, UK, 14 min.)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Massachusetts premiere</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Two worlds meet in this film about a creative, Orthodox young man from Brooklyn, who finds a place for his inner soul and talent outside of his cultural domain. When his success as a stand-up comedian in nightclubs grows, he faces the dilemma of where he truly belongs, or if it’s possible to inhabit two worlds, two cultures, in one person.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu82XUnUaBeLQzLeSG8vDNqNMQ_MyEzd-_6lsFuozG-UOXQElAiSc_jSk_YEjARCRNoeplXXLwxw4CbgBCmktooc6IleA9U4o73DaztoJwZJbyBGTxbVaELW2YHd-LT3TGHOOqjrPw6-A/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><img data-original-height="1044" data-original-width="1896" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu82XUnUaBeLQzLeSG8vDNqNMQ_MyEzd-_6lsFuozG-UOXQElAiSc_jSk_YEjARCRNoeplXXLwxw4CbgBCmktooc6IleA9U4o73DaztoJwZJbyBGTxbVaELW2YHd-LT3TGHOOqjrPw6-A/w200-h110/Jew+in+Bar.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;"><br /></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; text-indent: -0.5in;">A Jew Walks into a Bar, Dir. Jonathan Leo Miller (2018, USA, 24 min.)</i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt 0.5in; text-indent: -0.5in;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">New England premiere</i></p></div>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-86557009557126791792020-01-16T15:09:00.000-08:002020-01-21T07:51:25.128-08:00Praxis Stage Presents Shakespeare’s "King John"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<i>Actor Michael Underhill and Director Kimberly Gaughan</i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Boston’s culture aficionados are in for a rare treat this winter with Praxis Stage’s production of</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial;">King John</i><span style="font-family: "arial";">, Shakespeare’s obscurest play about the medieval king’s embattled succession to the English throne. Today, King John is remembered as the tyrannical king in Robin Hood tales, though he also signed the Magna Carta.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">In Shakespeare’s <i>King John</i> (the poet’s “most explicitly political play”), Praxis’s director Kimberly Gaughan seeks something different for her focus. Her eye for truth about human behavior draws out the deeper John, the fully present John, so that audiences can feel a connection to him, a personal identification to his moods, his decisions, his strengths and weaknesses, and even his cruelty—for the bottom line is, he’s human, just like the rest of us. Political mayhem may indeed dominate the play’s twists and turns, but the Praxis production focuses on John, the man, the human being, and Gaughan brings her love and understanding for this character to his new incarnation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">To realize her vision of John, Gaughan asked native Bostonian actor, Michael Underhill, to play the role. The two had worked together on Commonwealth Shakespeare Company Stage2’s production of <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>last spring. Gaughan, the show’s assistant director, had been taken with Underhill’s sensitive portrayal of Tybalt—in fact, he was the best Tybalt she’d ever seen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial";">King John</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial";"> is now in rehearsal and opens January 30 at the Boston Center for the Arts, Calderwood Pavilion, for a two-week run. At a recent rehearsal at the Cottage House in Dorchester, Gaughan and Underhill talked about their experience, or their “journey,” delving ever deeper into this “whacky, weird play,” as Gaughan says, or as Underhill quips, “how does all of this happen in the same play?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">GS:</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial";"> <b>Kim, how did you feel taking on a play with such a richness of timeless themes, but at the same time of such magnitude that your audience might grope for understanding?</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">KG</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial";">: </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">Actually, when I read the play, I was entranced and enamored with parts of it and not the whole. It seems like Shakespeare was starting and stopping, like he was writing scenes without continuity—he was all over the place. So, I was interested in that challenge—stitching together this series of vignettes. And I was worried about the history aspect, because in Shakespeare’s time, the audience understood the family trees and that whole world of the play, but here, today, we just don’t have that knowledge, we don’t have that understanding of “Plantagenets.” I knew that we needed to do very clear things that would make that background available to audiences, and we’re using some theatrical elements to tell the story—we’re telling it physically as much as with text, and trying to connect it to how humans relate to one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">What I realized when I was working with the play and getting into the rehearsals, was that there was no sense in trying to rail on the play’s historicity. We had to make it about the actual humans who were involved. So, finding those parallels—and Shakespeare’s so timeless—finding those moments that seem so contemporary despite the language. That’s really what I focus on in breaking this down. And of course, I’ve cut a lot, I’ve streamlined a lot, to make it more cohesive. That being said, it’s still a jumble, but it’s really resonating as we work through it in rehearsals. There are all kinds of interpersonal connections and relationships that you can identify in any family. In many ways, it feels like a family drama and I want to explore that as much as possible. As for the play’s political parallels to today, the text itself is political enough and the parallels are there. I’ve never been one to beat down on a topic. I think subtlety is more incendiary in the long run.</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">GS: What’s been your process for directing the play?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial";"> Well, there’s been </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">a lot of reflection, of course. And this is my first time directing on my own. In the past, I’ve assisted, and in those situations, I was working on something that I had already worked on in some capacity, or seen many times. For instance, I was the assistant director on <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, which Michael was in—that’s how we met—and that was a play I have a lot of opinions about and feel really close to, and if I were to do it, I already have a vision of it in my head. With <i>King John</i>, I didn’t have anything in place, and this is actually freeing, even though it’s also a bit overwhelming because there are so many possibilities. Even though the play might feel chaotic when you first encounter it, there’s actually a beautiful simplicity to it. It has a lot of complexity and moving parts, but within that there’s a thread running through it. The emotional journey these characters go on is complex, and no one in the play is “black or white,” but rather living in a gray area throughout the course of the show. We’re handling these characters with the sympathy and kindness that the productions I’ve looked at haven’t, and for me, the through line is that people are complicated. You can’t cast them aside for one thing or the other that they’ve done. We have to take everyone as they are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">So, back to my process, I read the play. I watched what versions were available to me. I read it again. I traveled a lot this summer on trains, which gave me time to sit and storyboard a few things, ideas that were then thrown out. I spent time thinking about who these people were. All of the productions I had seen were traditionally Shakespearean—very old guys talking in crisp voices about politics. I wasn’t connecting to them, I felt there was more in the play, an underbelly. I knew that John was going to be my focus. He’s my favorite character. I felt there’s always been an unsympathetic approach to him—such as his portrayal in Robin Hood—and even the Arden edition’s commentary—it’s quite snarky about John. I knew I needed someone who could give him a vulnerability and a sensitivity despite all the things that happen in the play. I was working with Michael on <i>Romeo and Juliet </i>when the <i>King John</i> project came up. He was playing Tybalt, and Michael’s Tybalt was the best Tybalt I’ve ever seen. And he didn’t have a lot of text; we didn’t focus on that story arc in the play. He brought such a sensitivity to his role—a care to it. I thought: he’d be a perfect King John. So, a lot of my process was finding John and what his world would be like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">GS: How did you discover your passion for directing and do you enjoy it more than acting?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="font-family: "arial";"> I really enjoy acting when it’s a part I’m excited about, which doesn’t happen much </span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">anymore. There are some roles I would jump at, but I find that directing is more satisfying. I’m a bit of a control freak, and as an actor, I’ve often been on the sidelines thinking, “Oh, I know what this scene needs! So, I finally got to explore that side of myself, and it’s been really fulfilling. I also had become a little disheartened, because I’d been in a lot of situations where I felt like the process of the play got away from the art, and that the people were more interested in the power dynamics of the project than the art. So, I was interested in creating an environment of kindness where people could explore their creativity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: How are you bringing your personal vision to the play?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> The play’s contemporary, but it also has many influences going into it. Everyone’s bringing something to the table. Each actor brings something different, artistically, which changes and shifts everything. And from my perspective, I’m really interested in theater as a medium—how it’s different from film, how it’s different from television, and how we’re doing something that’s extremely theatrical that can remind people we’re in a communal space together. We’re sharing a moment—audience and actor—and there’s not the pretense of a fourth wall up between us. I’m really interested in how we can create a shared energy together. And so, my directing is not necessarily “how can we set this in 2020 and make it picture perfect with our contemporary times,” but instead, how can we evoke atmosphere, mood, and feeling that audiences can tie into with the willing suspension of disbelief. We want to create a cognitive experience where we set out to do one thing with a scene, but audience members see it and are reminded of something from their own lives—like a past experience of loss or grief. We have to remember that audiences are smart and the things that we do trigger ideas in them, so I’m interested in that creative sharing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: What’s it like to direct Shakespeare in comparison to other playwrights?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> I think Shakespeare is, in many ways, easier for me because I’ve spent so much of my acting career doing it. I feel I have a very strong base—I’m confident doing Shakespeare. But I also feel with Shakespeare that we have so many notions, preconceived ideas about what it should be or what it needs to be, and these are very elevated. But I find many things in the plays that aren’t highbrow, that are just economical and simple, even though there’s all of the language, the poetry. So, resisting the urge to succumb to that, to what we think it is, is difficult. Directing any play is hard. You read it, you make an idea about it, and you think “this is what it is.” Then you get in the rehearsal room, and you have five bodies all talking, all contributing, and it’s totally different. So, it’s always hard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: What’s it been like to work with your actors?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> It’s been a dream. We really put together an incredible group of people. I’ve worked with Michael before, so I knew that was going to go well, and I’m working again with David Picariello (he plays several roles in <i>King John</i>), with whom I had just been in <i>Trayf</i> this past fall with the New Repertory Theatre. Then, Daniel Boudreau and I quickly established a positive working relationship. So out of the eight were three I already knew and felt good about. I cast the others based on their auditions, and we really picked the most creative bunch of people I could’ve hoped for. Everybody jumps in all the time with wonderful ideas, and they’re so game to try new things. We have a really wonderful group.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: Michael, what’s it like to be an actor in the play, and the title role?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">MU:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> I think a really challenging aspect of directing is the balance between having a strong artistic vision while also providing freedom and flexibility to the other artistic collaborators in the room, and that is the strength of this process with Kim. Everyone does have a voice, and we all know what field we’re playing on. Kim has set that vision for us. It’s a rarity to have that. I feel we have a really strong ensemble for this play, and there’s really no “lead role” in our production, partly because we have such a small cast and everyone shares the load equally. Everyone gets their moments to carry the play. One of the best characters in the play doesn’t even have a name—he’s “the citizen.” This sharing has been a delight for me, as it’s a lot to take on a title role. Yet it’s also been a blessing to jump into a process where I have more to do, where I’ve been lucky enough to work with a lot of larger theaters in town, in more ensemble type roles, with the opportunity to learn from a lot of artists I consider role models. To be able to take that learning and put it into practice is liberating. It’s been so great to work with King John, and with Kim’s guidance and blessing to really find the human being in him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">In some of my first broad strokes, my first-draft versions of John, he was unsympathetic—not someone that you’d want to spend two hours with. And now, I really do want to spend two hours with him, and I want to be sure audiences do too, and really take this journey with him and confront the same challenging situations and decisions he has to make throughout the play, whether the audience agrees with him or not. And that’s been a really fun challenge for me to play.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">I also came to the play with no preconceived notion of King John, including his negative portrayal in Robin Hood. It’s really thrilling to do that, to come to a character without preconceived ideas. There’s something that you’re playing against with characters that have been done a million times. I definitely empathize with John. I think he embodies things that a lot of us deal with, such as the imposter syndrome, where you’re constantly seeking validation for what you’re doing, for the choices or decisions you’re making—wanting to know you’re worthy of your place and your time. We can all relate to that and empathize with John. That’s my job—to find the human in him, figure out <i>why</i> he makes certain decisions, not just <i>what</i>those decisions end up being.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: Could you share a bit about your acting career?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">MU:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> Sure, I’ve been acting since I was fourteen. I grew up in Norwood and went to Northeastern University, graduating in 2010, and have been really fortunate to be working continuously in the area for the last decade. Lately I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to do a lot of Shakespeare, and it’s something I’ve really developed a strong attachment to, a kinship to, a relationship to the language and to the plays, and also bringing it to audiences. Two shows before <i>King John</i> that have been highlights for me were <i>Cymbeline</i> and <i>Richard III</i> for “Shakespeare on the Common,” for 5,000 people each night—an experience you won’t get anywhere else. Everyone has his or her own journey as an artist, as an actor, as whatever you’re pursuing, and it’s something that feels like home—when you’re in the rehearsal room or in the theater—that’s what you’re doing it all for—finding your way home. This is how I’ve approached my fifteen years of acting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: What do you hope is the audience’s take-away watching this play?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">MU:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> Well, <i>King John</i> is a play that not many in the audience have read of seen, or come to with any preconceived notions. I hope they come with curiosity and learn something about this play and the characters in it. I hope they have opinions about the characters and develop relationships with them—that they’re going on this journey with us, because there are so many things that happen in the play, so many surprises, so many left turns out of nowhere, and so many surprising decisions that the characters make. I just hope the audience is able to experience the same thing that we all experienced the first time we read through it and the first time we went through it in rehearsal and thought, “Oh my god, how does all of this happen in the same play?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">GS: Kim, what about you, do you have a special take-away for the audience?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">KG:</span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"> My biggest question when we started this was, does <i>King John</i> work as a play? A few months ago, I was with another theater artist before we started rehearsals, and I mentioned I would be directing <i>John</i> in the winter. He said, “That play doesn’t have an ending!” He was right, and so, I was dealing with those sorts of concerns. So, my big thing is, does <i>King John</i> work? I’m interested to hear what audiences think. Is it a play that’s worth doing? I feel it is. It’s a weird, whacky journey, but at the same time, it so simply confronts and explores humanity’s desire to connect. I want audiences to experience theater. I want it to be worth it for somebody to come to the theater and say, “That was a night well spent!” It should be different from sitting at home and watching a movie on TV. I want people to feel like it was a worthwhile endeavor, because they got something that they’re not going to get anywhere else. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">Tickets and Information<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/King-John/" style="color: #954f72;">www.bostontheatrescene.com/season/King-John/</a></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><a href="http://www.praxisstage.com/" style="color: #954f72;">www.praxisstage.com</a></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">(617) 933-8600</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">Praxis Stage<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">Praxis Stage seeks to link theater with activism and produce plays that enter the current cultural and political conversations. The company cultivates a core of artists who burn to tell stories that both address injustice and imagine a more equitable and truly democratic society, while also pulling in new artists to enrich the programs. Praxis pays particular attention to productions with a diversity of identity and that showcase Boston’s born-and-raised talent. Its artists create enthralling theater that affects, moves, challenges, troubles, delights, and ultimately inspires audiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-25832250530457829732019-12-23T03:15:00.001-08:002019-12-23T11:45:50.166-08:00Marriage Story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Marriage Story</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">, written and directed by Noah Baumbach, stirs a lot of thoughts for audiences. It gives a realistic depiction of a youngish couple with a child going through divorce. Adam Driver plays the husband Charlie, a rising-star, theater director in New York, and Scarlett Johansson plays his wife Nicole, a talented actress in his plays. Laura Dern plays Nicole’s tough L.A. divorce lawyer. Released by Netflix, the movie is billed as a drama/comedy, but there is no comedy in this film’s sad, realistic portrayal of two decent persons’ drifting apart, with one of them deciding to leave. After the separation, horrendous acrimony slowly builds until a final, emotional blow-up shatters everyone—the couple and the audience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Whose point of view tells this story? The man’s or the woman’s? Or, was the take-away for a man watching this film different from the take-away for a woman? Having thoroughly experienced the couple’s feelings, I, a woman, left the theater wondering if a man had experienced the characters’ heartbreak differently from me. I felt it must be so, for the film’s point of view lacked clarity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">I called a friend, a male and a millennial psychologist, and indeed his take-away was wholly different from mine. I identified and sympathized with Nicole’s stunted potential in a marriage where she served her rising-star husband, who loved her and their family life, but had no true interest in her “being,” who she was, as his passion and focus were totally on himself and his work and ambition. Everything else was rote for him and done according to the book of what was right and currently “enlightened,” such as how to be a good father, a considerate household partner, and a good, fair, and beloved director to his troupe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">When, as happens in long marriages, Nicole lost interest in sex, Charlie found sex with the stage manager of his company. No, he didn’t love her, he just needed that kind of intimacy and ego-gratification. He is god in his world. But the affair isn’t why Nicole leaves. She leaves because at age 40ish, she realizes she isn’t fulfilling her own life, her own gifts, her own passion, and she will never be able to if she stays with Charlie to serve his life and his success, which includes receiving a MacArthur grant for $600,000 to further advance his talent. Moreover, his new play is going to Broadway. His power and recognition are only going to keep growing while she stays as she is—his dependable wife, his actress in second place, his competent family partner, his solace and safety when home in the nest she provides.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">As in all marriages that begin in the mid-twenties, the partners evolve with time and their risk of not evolving together is high. Charlie and Nicole clearly love and care about each other, but the marriage is over for Nicole if she wants to live, if she wants an authentic, fulfilling life. She returns to her mother’s home in L.A. when a pilot TV series offers her a role. She takes their son Henry along. It’s not certain the show will take-off, so the trip is presented as short-term to see what happens. Once there, however, life feels so good to Nicole—her true identity is able to emerge, not only as an actress free </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">from the shadow of her husband’s greatness, but also as a future director herself, which is her dream. Henry also loves living in L.A. with Nicole’s active, extended family life that includes cousins. The only problem is, Charlie’s life is in New York, so that his career and ambition become bombed by Nicole’s decision to remain in L.A. when the pilot succeeds. But it’s not just the pilot that makes her stay. It’s her good feelings about herself, about having a meaningful life, her right just as much as his. In L.A., she’s not Charlie’s appendage anymore, which was fine in her twenties when she worshiped him and came under his wing, but it’s not fine now in her maturity. She has her own developed talent, equal to his when freed from its cage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">My male friend’s take-away was different. He saw Charlie as the victim of Nicole’s manipulations. She left New York knowing her L.A. stint was going to be permanent. She tricked him, and now has the child legally in L.A. causing a custody suit. Her character was shallow while his was deep. Not only that, but Adam Driver was a far better actor than Scarlett Johansson. And Nora, the aggressive L.A. lawyer, was creepy, hideous—he shuddered just remembering her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">I want to pause here and say that Nora, portrayed as L.A.’s toughest, man-gouging divorce lawyer for women, also affected me as a female viewer. She’s groomed pejoratively: slinky, skin-revealing clothes (like a gross sex object), long blond hair incongruous with her aging face, and a fake way of communicating with her new client, all saccharine in order to win her business. Why was Nora presented this way? Perhaps to mock L.A./Hollywood culture when it comes to divorce, for Charlie’s L.A. male lawyer is even worse. These characters are driven by money and how much you can get from your future ex-spouse; no concern for damage done to children and the parents in such an antagonistic, bitter, and volatile tug of war. It’s crass and tragic.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">But there’s more to consider. Everything that spouts from Nora’s smart, fighter lips about the double standard is true. Who is listening to her? Perhaps some members of the female audience. I heard her and as a result, overlooked her unappealing traits because she spoke the truth about male-female relationships and how society condones men and condemns women in the same situation. My male friend couldn’t tolerate her, and because of her money-grasping and exterior traits, he felt even more that Nicole was a conniving manipulator and Charlie a victim. Again, the film’s point of view comes up. Was everything Nicole said to Charlie about her deepest feelings and why she was leaving, and Nora’s pronouncements about the double standard, part of the script for the truth they told or part of the script to mock women in favor of Charlie the battered hero?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">It would be interesting to set up a poll to compare the male and female responses to this movie—and I welcome hearing from you. The film ends nicely, because Nicole and Charlie are able to go back to their original, honest and caring roots and dump the lawyers in their divorce. And Charlie accepts the reality that Nicole is not coming back and figures out a way to make fruitful changes in his professional life in order to be near his son. But what is the film’s point of view about that, about Charlie making changes to accommodate the divorce? My point of view is: good solution. My friend’s point of view might be: she forced him to wreck his career, give up his New York life and passion. Nora the lawyer might say: This film perpetuates the way society has always viewed women as demons; it upholds the superior integrity and value of men. And the film? We don’t leave the theater knowing the film’s point of view, but my closest guess is: Charlie’s beleaguered treatment deserves our support. Hopefully it’s a wrong guess.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com48tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-13569777018410284942019-12-09T16:43:00.000-08:002019-12-09T16:45:11.120-08:00The Cranes Are Flying<br />
Dir. <span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt;">Mikhail Kalatozov (Russia,1957)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial";"><span style="caret-color: rgb(13, 13, 13);">December 15, 2019, 3:00 pm, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The Cranes Are Flying</span></i><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt;"> takes place in Soviet Moscow during World War II, when the Russians declare war on Germany. Shot in black-and-white, in possibly the best cinematography in that medium, the film cries, bleeds, with feeling, most of it portrayed through the central character’s facial expressions. She is young, vivacious, Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova), whose heart skips and soars with love for twenty-five-year-old Boris (Aleksey Batalov), a factory engineer and son of a prominent doctor. Handsome, concert-pianist Mark (Aleksandr Shvorin) also lives with Boris’s family and is in love with Veronica, but she adamantly rejects him in favor of Boris, whom she plans to marry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt;">The movie opens with the lovers traipsing along the embankment of the Moscow River. They’re as carefree and exuberant as children, for such is the feeling of being in love. Suddenly, Veronica stops and watches a formation of cranes flying overhead. Her face shows total awe and the camera focuses on her feeling. From then on, throughout the movie, life’s deepest feelings are shown through the characters’ faces, especially Veronica’s, for it’s her story. The camera work connects us, the audience, to those same innermost feelings that words can never convey.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Intentionally or not, the cranes in formation have a flip side and portend the coming war and fighter jets on their way to bomb cities and humanity; the miracle of nature juxtaposes the villainy of humanity. The cranes in flight bookend the movie—appearing just before and just after the war. Another bookend also frames the story: Veronica fighting her way through throngs of cheering Muscovites as they send their soldiers off to war, and then, when they greet them home again. In these crowd-scene bookends, Veronica is first trying to find Boris to say farewell, and then, trying to find him among the returning soldiers. When the cranes fly overhead in this last scene, they convey through Veronica’s facial expression the inexplicable coexistence of “wondrous life” and “imperfect humanity,” for she has learned Boris is dead. She has no choice but to carry on after war’s death, destruction, and grief—such is life.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">The story is like a fairy tale, a parable, or a morality play. The characters are stock: young lovers, family patriarch, dishonest cousin, judgmental sister, wise grandmother. We don’t need unique personalities or witty dialogues for this story to deliver its breathtaking magic. Nor does its dated morality impinge on its art. What the film delivers in camera work by Sergey Urusevsky attains a peak of visual art, and of course depends somewhat on Samoilova’s talent for expressing her character’s inner states through only physical and facial movements. The camera’s “subjective style” takes us into her unconscious mind’s image-experience of traumatic events, such as her rape by Mark, her panic in the mob, her discovery of her parents’ bombing death, and her final reawakening to hope, humanity, and love. As one Russian critic wrote when the film came out, “You don’t know whether the image of Veronica owes her charm to Samoilova’s talent and sincerity or to Urusevsky’s art, able to catch in the turn of a head, a momentary pose, the blink of eyelashes, the helplessness and obstinacy, the tenderness and pride of this particular woman’s character.”</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt; text-indent: 0.5in;">Urusevsky achieves this same powerful hold on us when Boris, fighting on the swampy front, is hit by a bullet. We die with him, we experience his last, unconscious mind’s images, not his thoughts, before he keels over backward into the sloshing mud. The camera twirls and swirls and collides with images we feel, we relate to, that are beyond verbal communication. On a side note, one marvels at the terrifying risk Samoilova (or her double) takes during the first mob scene when she runs blindly through rolling army tanks looking for Boris as the Soviet forces leave Moscow for the front.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11.5pt;">Our values, our way of living, our morality, and our artistic renderings have changed since <i>The</i> <i>Cranes Are Flying </i>was made. We no longer portray new love in an idealized, ultra-sentimental way, even if we actually feel that way when newly in love. Our Western society has become open and conscious of gender and minority equalities. The shame and ostracism placed on Veronica because she marries Mark after he violently rapes and mentally crushes her wouldn’t happen today. The movie’s attitude toward war has also changed. When the German invasion occurs, Boris and his friends automatically rush to sign up: fighting for the homeland is their responsibility. One thing has not changed about the movie: what it achieved in 1957 with its cinematic portrayal of our innermost feelings remains. For film art lovers, <i>Cranes</i> is a must see.</span><br />
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Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-83192836284950347152019-11-22T00:40:00.000-08:002019-11-22T00:41:59.359-08:00The Announcement (Turkey/Bulgaria, 2018)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBEj_G7XbABr9zPW9MfX19Sw6KWOUvZQDQXN1TyYi7LuUxyhGGuRoXBZzpmQMeoQ_Khr3pqqS4ovNEWrTwh7VAtqAUpBW4sTI8ZSekVWkoUqE8SaX8Zvu0F-edbBz6REx2XynHl7OMDg/s1600/The+Announcement+-+OPENING+FILM.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="172" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBEj_G7XbABr9zPW9MfX19Sw6KWOUvZQDQXN1TyYi7LuUxyhGGuRoXBZzpmQMeoQ_Khr3pqqS4ovNEWrTwh7VAtqAUpBW4sTI8ZSekVWkoUqE8SaX8Zvu0F-edbBz6REx2XynHl7OMDg/s320/The+Announcement+-+OPENING+FILM.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Art</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">house</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">film</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">lovers</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">can</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">sit</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">back</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">thoroughly savor</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">every</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">nuance</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">of</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">this</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">meticulously</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">executed</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">movie </span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";">that</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">doesn</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">’</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">t</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">fit into a single</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">genre</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">but</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">draws</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">from</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">several. It opens with film noir</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">’</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">s</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">suspense</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> mystery but soon fleshes out to </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">theater</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">of</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">the</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">absurd</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">, </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">existentialism,</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> satire, </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> at times, </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">the sense of</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">dystopia</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">. </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">This </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">mixed </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">offering</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">works</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">seamlessly</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">and</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">ingeniously</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">from</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">start</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">to</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">finish, coming from the hand of</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">an obvious </span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><span style="font-family: "arial";">master,</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">Mahmut</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">Fazil</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">Coşkun</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">There is much nighttime driving in this movie, much standing and sitting around waiting, much silence and guarded watching, while the clock ticks and the central characters—military officers—cogitate on the time running out for their attempted coup in a fictionalized Turkey in 1963. The period props are marvelous—cars, phones, offices, radio equipment, and a hospital. It’s 1963, but we’re in some retro world that’s so long gone, so technologically archaic, that we can’t remember having lived in such a world ourselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The middle-aged characters carrying out the coup—Reha (Ali Seçkiner Alici) Şinasi (Tarhan Karagöz, Kemal (Murat Kiliç), and Rifat (Şencan Güleryüz)—are stuck in an unending nightmare. They go from one dead end to the next, in their effort to announce from Istanbul Radio that their coup has been a success and the country is now in better, safer hands. This single night of one detour after another in the officers’ mission never alters their deadpan faces, while outlandish or absurd incidents keep occurring, such as two cold-blooded killings and finding an unexpected use for the latest Frigidaire model that one of the officers is hoping to market on the side. The audience is kept in suspense despite the deliberately humdrum pace of the story. Other details and scenes have acute humor, such as the blasé attitude of the local citizens toward the coup. When called upon to help the perpetrators in their thwarted mission, the locals comply willingly, indifferent to who or what they’re helping. Coups are just an everyday event in their lives with no personally threatening impact. The citizens just want to be helpful.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">As things escalate in their low-key, non-happening way, Radio Ankara begins to make broadcasts, while the coup plotters drive around in a bakery van trying to resolve their technical problems with Radio Istanbul. The officers maintain their same deadpan faces as they listen to their mission beginning to fail from the Ankara position. Nothing can faze these guys. Are the people in this movie inured to the political superstructure overarching their lives but never really affecting them? This viewpoint is another of the movie’s ironies, and possibly a statement on contemporary Turkey. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial";">The Announcement</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial";"> comes full circle by the end of the film, with an image of the uniformed protagonists, back to ordinary life, as if their grand plan was nothing in particular—just a bit of hopeful excitement for a change, a perk for their deadened egos—but now regular, mundane existence resumes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Watch for screenings of <i>The Announcement</i> at 2019–2020 film festivals and in art house theaters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-52420519984377666042019-11-19T05:29:00.000-08:002019-11-20T01:50:53.143-08:00Boston Jewish Film Festival '19<br />
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KxidxhjdkNenBOePeszr4lyDsED3cSL0nhyRIcRWkawVEErG0QuPzHyT_LwfEPQa9Meh22xFNXIK6InAYzeUDMsRVGGIdkbBGUVdxdcWvoy_OohEAU4KnRSMit6yizJgdvGpC30tH78/s1600/Fig+Tree.jpeg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2KxidxhjdkNenBOePeszr4lyDsED3cSL0nhyRIcRWkawVEErG0QuPzHyT_LwfEPQa9Meh22xFNXIK6InAYzeUDMsRVGGIdkbBGUVdxdcWvoy_OohEAU4KnRSMit6yizJgdvGpC30tH78/s400/Fig+Tree.jpeg" width="400" /></a></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "arial";">Fig Tree (2018)<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Dir. Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Director </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Aäläm-Wärqe Davidian drops you right into daily life in Ethiopia’s capital </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">Addis Ababa during the long Ethiopian Civil War. The year is 1989, and American audiences plunge into a completely new culture with the backdrop of a chaotic war, where teenage boys are “kidnapped” to supply the government’s army.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">The protagonist Mina (</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "arial";">Betalehem Asmamawe</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">), 16, is Jewish and lives with her grandmother </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">(Weyenshiet Belachew)</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;"> and her brother Rata (19), who has lost his arm in the war. A Christian woman and her son, Eli </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">(Yohanes Muse)</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; text-indent: 0.5in;">, also live with the family. Mina grew up with Eli, and now, in adolescence, they are in love. The family goes to great lengths to hide Eli from the constant army raids to round up boys. When her chores are done, Mina steals away to meet Eli at their trysting spot, a giant fig tree.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">A wheeling-dealing government official arranges papers and transportation for Jewish citizens to immigrate to Israel, and Mina’s grandmother has been working with the woman to arrange the family’s escape. Mina’s mother is already in Israel. But Mina’s distraught—how can they leave Eli and his mother behind?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The film captures “first love”—its childlike innocence awakening to sexual desire. These beautiful scenes between Mina and Eli, more than anything else in the movie, bring us into the family circle and the terrible ordeals the members endure. We experience what it really feels like to witness a son or your love being snatched by the enemy—being captive and abused to face what horrible fate?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Because we dive straight into the lives of Mina's family without any back story or exposition, we have to work fast to learn the characters’ names, their customs, the war situation, and the plot. This full-immersion method of storytelling is the most effective way for an audience to experience a foreign world and crisis situation as if in it themselves.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">In <i>Fig Tree</i>, women play a strong role. They absorb all the tragedies occurring around them; they keep life going for everyone else. They’re the bulwark and the source of wisdom for children and men to depend on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The movie’s cinematography also tells the story (and won Israel's equivalent of an Oscar). Even though we’re in a tense, scary, unpredictable war zone, the film is quiet, told more through the actors’ faces and the scenery than through their dialogue. We become familiar with this setting and its culture; we become part of the community. Mina’s family could be ours; we know the members that well, We easily identify with one character’s anguished words, “I can’t deal with all their evil anymore!”</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt;">Fig Tree</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt;"> is a beautiful, honest look at our world and the violence and cruelty that pervades it.</span></div>
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<b><span style="background-color: white; color: #3e4849; font-family: "arial";">My Polish Honeymoon</span></b><span style="background-color: white; color: #3e4849; font-family: "arial";"> (Lune de Miel, 2019)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3e4849; font-family: "arial";"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(62, 72, 73);">Dir. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial";">É</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">lise Otzenberger</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7dMTQeT7cJHjA09lfVV5KJr-58cf5whLq68dWpZFcpEykME2wJyFC6fPVhiL9cIQXtLT6aAXiKK0B6CzHwW-O8X-eoZHEYELkKU1SxcDt9BplvnzU0NS_uk2Ayb-Xvio2PHy1N-QQYJ0/s1600/lune-de-miel1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7dMTQeT7cJHjA09lfVV5KJr-58cf5whLq68dWpZFcpEykME2wJyFC6fPVhiL9cIQXtLT6aAXiKK0B6CzHwW-O8X-eoZHEYELkKU1SxcDt9BplvnzU0NS_uk2Ayb-Xvio2PHy1N-QQYJ0/s400/lune-de-miel1.jpg" width="300" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial";">É</span><span style="font-family: "arial";">lise Otzenberger’s film <i>My Polish Honeymoon</i> offers audiences an enjoyable time-out for its quirky characters, honest realism, humor, and poignant moments. The structure is a road trip. The film opens with thirty-year-old Anna (Judith Chemla) in a high-anxiety state just before her departure for Poland with her husband Adam (Arthur Igual). They are Parisians, but Poland’s the homeland of both their grandparents who were Jews during the Holocaust. Anna’s grandmother survived and settled in Paris, but Adam’s grandfather was among those in Zgierz, north of </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">Łódź, </span><span style="font-family: "arial";">where not one Jew remained after the war. The trip centers on a commemorative ceremony for the murdered families of Zgierz.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Anna’s parents arrive to babysit six-month-old Simon, while Anna and Adam take a postponed “honeymoon” to Poland. Both the film’s title and the honeymoon idea have several connotations to ponder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">In the opening scenes, as the couple tries to get out of their apartment for the airport, Anna’s high-voltage personality that controls everyone and everything sets the stage for striking realism in the story. Her behavior is somewhat off-putting at first—she barks orders and rudenesses to her loved ones—but actually, this style of family communication is what goes on inside most people’s homes. Ultimately, Anna’s histrionic behavior, her swings from exuberance to total collapse, warm us to her, for she also comes across as authentic, likeable, sincere, deep, and human. In this way, the film imparts truth about how individuals love and care for each other despite daily annoyances, grievances, and friction. The most intense scene between Anna and Adam—a shattering, pain-inflicting argument—is a universal with couples and an achievement of the film for capturing it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Another achievement is the movie’s funny moments. They, too, are so real. While the film is dealing with an overall heavy subject—close relatives who have or have not survived genocide and what that means for their descendants—it simultaneously lets us enjoy present-day, hilarious moments. My favorite scene is when Anna arrives in Krakow, overflowing with excitement for discovering her family’s homeland and culture. It’s cold outside. She goes into a shop to buy socks from a pretty Polish woman her own age. Immediately they hit it off, babbling away in their own languages—French and Polish—with lots of hand motions and laughter. The Polish woman “understands perfectly” what Anna wants (socks) and brings out a samovar. They go on talking and agreeing on everything with the aid of their exuberant sign language—“Yes, of course, exactly, I know just what you mean!” They hug goodbye with effusive appreciation for their encounter. This is a marvelous “real moment” in the movie, capturing how people can communicate their warmth and innate humanity without understanding each other’s language. Adam witnesses the scene with a baffled face: “Is this for real?” Yes, Adam, it happens.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The movie’s central theme is remembrance. A survivor of the concentration camps gives a talk to adolescents in a plundered Jewish cemetery. She shows them a photograph of herself as a child imprisoned in Bergen-Bergen. She says, “I bear witness. Look at me in this photograph and don’t believe anyone who tells you the Holocaust didn’t happen.” <i>Remember</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Adam sees a jolly-looking tour bus for Auschwitz, along with souvenir kiosks. He says it’s like Disney—offensive commercialization of the Holocaust. He has a point. And yet, to get multitudes to the site and its horrors, so that they <i>remember,</i> and honor remembrance, buses might be needed, and perhaps the souvenirs touch the heart and memory long after the visit. It would help if the buses’ sides weren’t blazoned with “Auschwitz” and “Schindler,” turning the Holocaust a money-making industry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The movie doesn’t exonerate present-day Poland. It judges it, or allows its characters to judge the place, the people, the past. Anna’s grandmother’s house in Kazimierz is gone. Its place in a line of other houses is an empty, overgrown lot, as if her house alone was swiped from the landscape—her past, her aberrant Jewishness eradicated. Why is the lot still empty? Almost a century has passed. It’s like a symbol of the erasure, in a bad way, not a memorializing way. We’re told that once she settled in Paris, she was “over being Polish, over being Jewish. She was now a good French woman, a Parisian.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Although Anna had brought her son’s foreskin to Poland, thinking she might bury it in the homeland, she instead takes it back to Paris, where Adam buries it in one of their potted plants on the apartment’s window ledge. They are Parisians. They are Jewish-Parisians. Paris, not Poland, is home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The movie’s soundtrack by David Sztanke (p</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial";">ianist, singer, arranger, composer, and performer) is notable.</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"> Lots of Chopin (Szopen was a Pole), and all of the music expertly matched to the mood of each scene. When soft and tender, when touching loss and grief, the music never slips into sentimentality; it always hits the accurate feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-31925491125059239062019-07-08T18:17:00.000-07:002019-07-14T12:16:58.866-07:00Hamlet, outdoor summer theater
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"> <span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: large;">A tour de force from Boston's Praxis Stage</span></span></span></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0r5Bcryv1dCS00lT3yVNp4Ix-ezo1MJ-729WJPcovOIlwJf0q6WXtj516t9FQn6CL6INy3tT2vbrKFAy5Dl5sE6rKbQBQHMWAs4fGgYDYweaPOZJlL8icrhLM5qrIpZGXOiRHPfGYKw/s1600/0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="798" data-original-width="600" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf0r5Bcryv1dCS00lT3yVNp4Ix-ezo1MJ-729WJPcovOIlwJf0q6WXtj516t9FQn6CL6INy3tT2vbrKFAy5Dl5sE6rKbQBQHMWAs4fGgYDYweaPOZJlL8icrhLM5qrIpZGXOiRHPfGYKw/s400/0.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">A rare and wonderful <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i> for our times is playing in two Cambridge parks, Thursdays
thru Sundays, and note that the Sunday performance is at 4:00, and all others
at 7:00 pm. Seating is on the grass, take beach chairs or a blanket. For more
information visit <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Praxis Stage</b> on
Facebook or </span><a href="https://www.praxisstage.com/"><span style="font-family: Arial;">https://www.praxisstage.com/</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talent infuses
Praxis Stage’s production of Shake-speare’s famous tragedy. Each character
lives and breathes right in front of us; it never occurs that we’re watching a
performance. We’re immersed in pummeling reality—Hamlet’s. That is, until we
turn on our minds for just a second and think: How can Eric McGowan be manic right
before our eyes when he’s actually acting? In retrospect, he’s like Kevin Kline,
Johnny Depp, or any of those greats who are born to become, wholly, another
person for our benefit as viewers.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why does
this particular <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hamlet</i> reach us so
poignantly in the depths of our souls? It feels like a story from our own times—we’re
watching the people we know from our own lives. And yet, the lines are the Bard’s
from 1600. And, miraculously, or because of the players’ passion and talent,
the lines in this production are clearly, purely heard and understood.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Praxis’s
artistic director, </span><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Daniel Boudreau, says that the
company formed the day after Trump’s election, and that it “seeks to link
theater with activism” by producing works that reflect current political issues
and cultural conversations.</span><b><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></b><span style="font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">“We are
artists who burn to tell stories that address injustice and that imagine a more
equitable and truly democratic society. We pay particular attention to forging
productions with a richness in diversity and, particularly, with Boston-born
and raised talent gracing our stages.”</span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNts5l-LLX3t8Y0Bx0w2vAYFYyjycLGXJ7RJ-XYmXUV83O8RysEPsTUV4eE-PTT2ONKvT48gqDQV1qUYJVPyeIX6zaw7J9v9mBSCHsgkBWrme1IQAm6MvCVINPR51wdCoI-EJIh22shA/s1600/61503643_2378743265517679_3230724878801829888_o.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="340" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzNts5l-LLX3t8Y0Bx0w2vAYFYyjycLGXJ7RJ-XYmXUV83O8RysEPsTUV4eE-PTT2ONKvT48gqDQV1qUYJVPyeIX6zaw7J9v9mBSCHsgkBWrme1IQAm6MvCVINPR51wdCoI-EJIh22shA/s320/61503643_2378743265517679_3230724878801829888_o.jpg" width="276" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;">Eric </span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes; mso-themecolor: text1;">McGowan has us in his grip as Hamlet, a
Hamlet <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>for today.</span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes; mso-themecolor: text1;"> </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">Praxis Stage performs throughout the year, offering
one Shakespeare play every summer. “We want to keep that immortal genius in our
mouths, in your ears, and on as many minds as possible, as one route to the
betterment of this world,” says Boudreau.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why the
name Praxis? “It’s a philosophical concept we embrace,” says Boudreau. “Praxis embodies
cultural, intellectual, and artistic reflection and action directed at the
oppressive structures that must be transformed, if we are to live in a
liberated society. Through <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">praxis,</i>
oppressed people can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition and
transform the world.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> That is why this Hamlet—the play and the man—are utterly real to us seated on the lawn. We watch in horror and disbelief as Hamlet's life descends into the hell of our own real lives—chaos, tyranny, crime, greed, corruption, evil, and grief. Hamlet's not insane, he's beside himself with the irremediable condition of our world and humanity.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .25in; mso-add-space: auto; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial;"> </span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 等线; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><br /><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span><span style="color: black; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-no-proof: yes; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 等线; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"></span>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-87221696829396172712019-06-18T11:41:00.000-07:002019-06-18T11:41:13.603-07:00A Fortunate Man, directed by Bille August<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEaR-cZ4GYOjIsIXiuotlRxxXINEueaSiL9dHQg4qnOhHmreG1V2j11m0NFBMeKqUuQMSd4sDsnKU8g_rw0C3mFpTEIThDB1YO_Prw2C7cueswOYQKsW3tup7efPMxqvxFlCtQYm-Z32Q/s1600/fortunate+man+1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="528" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEaR-cZ4GYOjIsIXiuotlRxxXINEueaSiL9dHQg4qnOhHmreG1V2j11m0NFBMeKqUuQMSd4sDsnKU8g_rw0C3mFpTEIThDB1YO_Prw2C7cueswOYQKsW3tup7efPMxqvxFlCtQYm-Z32Q/s320/fortunate+man+1.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Award-winning
Danish director Bille August’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A
Fortunate Man</i>, based on Henrik Pontoppidan’s Nobel Prize–winning novel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lucky Per</i> (1898–1904), is a feast for
the eyes and mind. Whatever the camera focuses on in this richly conceived
drama about young, ambitious, and fiery-tempered Peter Andreas Sidenius (Esben
Smed), captivates our eyes, from the opening scene of a windswept heath
overlooking Jutland’s blue sea to the next scene of Copenhagen’s cobblestone
streets in the late 19th-century. One of the loveliest settings is the wealthy Salomons’
home with its soft refinement. Every detail has been considered and captured by
the camera—costumes, period furnishings, lifestyles, mores, and the actors’
faces. The film is a visual, atmospheric emporium, and Peter’s life story a
saga of epic, psychological proportions, this latter aspect most compelling.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Beginning with the film’s opening scenes in a
backward region of Denmark, we witness Peter’s dire need to escape his authoritarian
father who’s the local vicar. Peter’s nineteen and receives an acceptance
letter to the university in Copenhagen—his ticket to freedom. Penniless,
hungry, but full of ambition for his hydroelectric power inventions that have
the potential to transform Denmark’s standing in the world, Peter grasps any
opportunity for an entrée into the city’s echelons of power. This means he uses
people to advance his progress. But don’t we all in our career choices? Still,
judgment creeps into our audience view of Peter, particularly when his
manipulations involve women, first a soft-hearted waitress who feeds him, then
Jakobe Salomon (Katrine Greis-Rosenthal), because she’s a rich heiress, albeit
with an enlightened mind that he also admires. But it’s her financial position
in the family that first catches his attention.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter’s extremely good-looking, with an ingenuous
side that contrasts favorably to Copenhagen’s sophistication and class divisions.
His freshness and enthusiasm for his groundbreaking ideas amplify his appeal. His
dark side also surfaces—his deep-seated anger for his father and his severe religious
upbringing. His inner rage plays a role in his fate. As his story moves along,
gaining successful steps toward the realization of his dreams, his intolerance
for others’ unfair, unjust, or superior behavior thwart his achievement. His
character flaw is his stubborn adherence to truth. But is that a character flaw?
Should jealous, condescending people from the elite class who control jobs and
infrastructure, also control his path to success? Peter is ripped apart by his success
or defeat being controlled by vindictive types. These concerns of his have far more
importance to him than his closest relationships.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The movie, which is long because it’s a saga,
keeps up tension from the beginning, when Ivan Salomon—Peter’s Jewish peer and entrée
into the monied world he needs for his inventions—says to Peter, “You’re a
fortunate man!” We are instantly braced for the demise of that fortunate man.
All goes brilliantly for a while. Ivan takes Peter home to meet the Salomon family,
which includes his two beautiful sisters, Jakobe and Nanny. The Salomons’
luxurious lifestyle intoxicates Peter, so does the free-flowing wine. The dignified
elders who control the family’s investments welcome hearing Peter’s ideas and
treat him graciously, despite his obvious difference in social etiquette. At
one point, Uncle Delft says to Peter, “Fortune favors fools.” And toward the
end of the movie, when Peter’s arc has played out from a manic climb to success
to a descent into loss and despair, Uncle Delft again states a proverb to him:
“Pride goes before a fall.” These three sayings match the arc points in Peter’s
story: a fortunate man, fortune favors fools, pride before a fall.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Peter’s mental torment that began in childhood under
a ruthless father grows with age and disappointment. His story reminds us of
how so many young people with creative plans for their lives, soon find doors
closed to them because of the guarded power of the rich and connected. Peter experiences
a universal: Lost dreams cause the slow sadness, bitterness, and depression we
see on late-middle-aged faces; life often delves out more sadness than joy. Peter
also grapples with more than the average seeker. He’s a genius-inventor barred
from the only social stratum that can bring his contributions to fruition.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Despite his defeat, Peter’s mind won’t, or
can’t, stop its pursuits. He returns to Jutland, marries, and has children, but
these most important relationships mean less to him than his mind’s unstoppable
quest. He’s unable to assume financial responsibilities for the family because
of his innate drive to invent.</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DengXian; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">One day, at the family
dinner table, he awakens to his reality—his authentic self—and abruptly leaves
the table. The film then cuts to a decade later, with Peter living like a
hermit in a rustic cottage on the heath near the sea. He’s bearded, physically
neglected, but working with his same total absorption on his inventions.
Whether from his childhood trauma or his genius genes, or a combination of
both, he’s constructed to live a solitary life with his creativity, and he
accepts it. Witnessing his humble surrender to his true self evokes our audience
compassion in the deepest way. His last, emotional conversation with ever-faithful
Jakobe transcends melodrama. It’s one of the most beautiful endings to a
tormented life story because of its heartbreaking honesty.</span>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-80260510294174526532019-06-18T11:33:00.000-07:002019-06-18T11:33:01.156-07:00Leona, directed by Isaac Cherem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6RU3bWyB8FjNSH8c2C-f63nTdOQuAhzHCZnMYQkabXsJcosqW2GRXYvKhkLYdfRTZ14c7rQcGQ6N_Njape67ifeS8Z8bkCxgJb6GIU8G0Bq4j7f0yvK0eLM7mtD1cWUwKTS7t3rPL98/s1600/Leona+image.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="625" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6RU3bWyB8FjNSH8c2C-f63nTdOQuAhzHCZnMYQkabXsJcosqW2GRXYvKhkLYdfRTZ14c7rQcGQ6N_Njape67ifeS8Z8bkCxgJb6GIU8G0Bq4j7f0yvK0eLM7mtD1cWUwKTS7t3rPL98/s320/Leona+image.jpeg" width="281" /></a></div>
<br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Leona</span></i><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">, a feature film debut by Mexican
director Isaac Cherem, opens in dreamy, sensual slow motion. Seen through a
billowing, diaphanous curtain, a young woman removes her robe and lowers
herself into an elegantly tiled pool surrounded by potted flowers and decorative
trees. As the camera glides through the curtain into this opulent pool setting,
a throng of beautifully dressed women—daughters and mothers—stand by the pool
with joyful faces. A voice recites ritual words to their friend in the water: “Rebeca,
now that heavenly water bathes your body . . . your soul is clean to unite with
the soul of the man you chose as your partner.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Out of this cluster of women, steps Ariela (</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Naian
González Norvind), the film’s 25-year-old protagonist,</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;"> who looks different from the other
women with her light, rippled hair, watchful face, and simpler gown. She dips a
silver pitcher into the water and pours it over Rebeca. When the celebration
ends, Rebeca says to her: “</span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">May you find someone soon,
Ariela.” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Finding that life-partner
within the tightly knit framework of Ariela’s Jewish “community,” as her elders
call it, in Mexico City, becomes the film’s driving theme. It entails Ariela’s
coming of age and figuring out who she truly is within the narrow scope of her upper-class
family and religious-cultural heritage. A subtle soundtrack complements every
emotional nuance in this story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">As soon as Ariela
leaves the bridal party and gets into her car, she pulls off her wealthy
woman’s gown and pulls on jeans and a T-shirt. She drives to her current job as
a mural painter and sets up her equipment. Later, while still on this job, she
meets Ivan (Christian Vásquez), a young Mexican man who stops to watch her work.
One thing leads to another, and they fall in love, even though Ariela knows
dating a non-Jew is forbidden in her community.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Time passes and Ariela
meets Ivan’s artistic, educated, and well-off family, but she’s not able to reciprocate
by introducing him to her side—in fact, the family has discovered her secret
and told her he’s not welcome, nor is she if she continues to date him. The
rabbi kindly explains that she’s breaking community rules.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Ariela goes her
own way, moving out of her mother’s apartment and into her own place, though
she continues to share Friday night Shabbat and other traditional events with
the extended family, all of whom love and support her dearly but refuse to
accept her love life. The clan is fiercely loyal, a trait that keeps them separate
and insulated from the greater society they inhabit.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Months pass in
this way, and Ivan’s love erodes because of his rejection by Ariela’s family. He
can’t accept her living two lives, one with him and one that excludes him in a
major way. They break up.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In the montage
that follows, Ariela dates men recommended by the family or the matchmaker, but
none of them are possibilities for her way of living and thinking. On each
date, she’s forced to wonder who she is and what future can she make for
herself? Her best friends, her family, and the men she dates all speak and act
differently from her. Her daily mural work is the one thing that keeps her from
feeling lost. And the artwork is fantastic, creative, therapeutic. She now
signs the intricate images as Leona, because Ariela mean lioness in Hebrew.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10.0pt;">At this juncture, Ariela
connects again with Ivan. They meet and talk. He tells her he has a new
girlfriend. They make love, and he invites her to his BBQ later that week. She
goes, meets his new girlfriend, and finds the situation so awkward that she
leaves, as if stumbling blinding inside her mind. She faces the truth that her
choice about her “significant life relationship” can’t be happily solved. How
can she possibly say goodbye to her family of cherished loved ones, even if
they’re so different from herself? And how can she face life within that clan as
an outsider, even with the satisfaction of her creative work? Can she really exist
alone for life? The movie ends without a clear answer, but Ariela’s courage throughout
the movie to be true to herself and identify with her Hebrew name Leona, gives hope
that her future within her difficult circumstances, will find stability.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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-->Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-87672150003318584012019-03-25T14:54:00.000-07:002019-03-25T14:54:32.726-07:00Zama, directed by Lucretia Martel
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">5 Women Filmmakers</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">March 3–March
20, 2019</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">In celebration of Women’s History Month, the Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, and the Boston Women’s Film Festival co-present five new films by
contemporary women. Visit mfa.org for information.</span></i></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In a blend of
fable, parable, legend, and magical realism, Lucretia Martel’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>Zama</u></i> tantalizes the literary,
art-loving filmgoer with unending sensory and intellectual stimulation. Do you
love Kafka, Beckett, South American literature, surreal moments of the mind,
and stunningly creative use of music, sound, location, and cinematography? Zama
may have no competitor in recent film art.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
story jumps right in with both structure and moral truth, but takes a few
minutes to grasp its richly nuanced sequence. Humor periodically strikes
through the “voice” and leitmotif of Latin guitar music in a soundtrack that mainly
employs the language of natural sound: silence, cicadas, birds, eerie whistles
and rattles, barking, neighing, a lazily sweeping fan, children’s laughter or
squawks, and women’s intimate chatter. Then, there are the blasts of surreal
electronic dissonance that represent the human mind when it hears bad news. The
music mirrors the emotion, and sound carries the story along more than the
characters’ dialogue.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">South
American-born Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), in his late-thirties
and dressed in a red-velvet jacket and three-cornered hat, holds the
prestigious position of magistrate under Spain’s colonial governor, in a
backwater Paraguayan community in the 1700s. Don Diego does his job as “the
crown’s functionary,” but he longs for—and persistently requests—a transfer to Lerma,
a city near his wife and children. But years keep passing, along with new
governors and foiled efforts for a transfer. Don Diego exists in a slow-growing,
living nightmare, which can’t even end in death. It’s a simple storyline but an
endlessly rich brew, perhaps because it’s based on a highly regarded novel by Antonio
di Benedetto (1922–1986) and reimagined by a brilliant director.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
stage is set in one of the movie’s first scenes for an immersion in absurdity
and magical realism. An indigenous prisoner is set free by Don Diego, but instead
of leaving the rough-hewn office, the prisoner bends his head like a torpedo
and races straight into a wall in inexplicable self-destruction. Such scenes
occur throughout the film, eliciting astonishment on the faces of the witnesses,
but that’s all. They say and do nothing about such occurrences. In the case of
the prisoner, the witnesses are Don Diego, his Spanish deputy Ventura Prieto
(Juan Minujín), and their young scribe Fernández (Nahuel Cano). We then hear a voice
telling us a proverb that foreshadows Don Diego’s fate:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> "There’s a fish
that spends its life swimming to and fro, fighting water that seeks to cast it
upon dry land. Because the water rejects it. The water doesn’t want it. These
long-suffering fish . . . devote all their energies to remaining in place.
You’ll never find them in the central part of the river but always near the
banks." </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
camera then shifts from a scene of swarming fish in water to Don Diego standing
alone on his outpost’s desolate river embankment—“the long-suffering fish.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHskTetHXAyvm8uG_2avP3v6oBcx3Q9Gs95357_47kUPuVYu6QM9q_nryxaWtWf-5J__uYOn3AcrfSZIHd6s3RFl5rP8H94YPItRMYT679YO-Q5mjiovRkFY57BzBxPku7PNQlHmzXAsw/s1600/ZAMA-585x390.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="390" data-original-width="585" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHskTetHXAyvm8uG_2avP3v6oBcx3Q9Gs95357_47kUPuVYu6QM9q_nryxaWtWf-5J__uYOn3AcrfSZIHd6s3RFl5rP8H94YPItRMYT679YO-Q5mjiovRkFY57BzBxPku7PNQlHmzXAsw/s400/ZAMA-585x390.jpg" width="400" /></a> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ambiance
and mood define this movie—the tropical heat, languor, and ennui of an isolated,
primitive settlement. Time barely moves, torpor settles over everything, which nature’s
sounds magnify—the cicadas’ buzz, a horse’s shudder, a gull’s caw, the river’s eternal
lapping, and the sun’s relentless pulse. It’s barely tolerable for a non-native
and shares the oppressive quality of Herzog’s Aguirre on the Amazon. No wonder
Diego and others look for amusement in the “Oriental’s” cargo of brandy that
arrives, or in sensuous afternoons in bedrooms. (In a nice touch, the rough-and-ready
brandy shipment lands on “Getaway Beach.”)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
film moves through dreamlike, often hallucinatory settings and scenes. In one,</span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Diego wanders through disparate
rooms that feed through stalls to the object of his desire, Luciana </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Piñares
de Luenga (Lola Dueñas)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, the
elaborately wigged wife of the absent Minister of the Treasury. In this real
but unreal</span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">realm, animals
and humans coexist—goats, dogs, horses, lamas—and move around each other,
touching impersonally but familiarly. Diego’s mission in seeking out Do</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ña
Luciana</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is twofold: to
inform her of the Oriental’s brandy shipment and to advance his flirtation with
her. Do</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ñ</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">a
Luciana is a notorious paramour, but in mounting scenes she consistently
rejects Diego—“Let’s not be reckless,” she murmurs like a lover, leading him on.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
another hallucinatory scene, Diego searches for Dr. Palos because the Oriental
and his young son have succumbed to a tropical fever. Diego moves through a
hazy room where a cigar-smoking hag performs a spiritual rite with a ragtag
following. A naked baby crawls around the floor. Diego finally finds the doctor
sitting under a table in a dead stupor.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
another episode, the governor gallops on horseback into the municipal
courtyard, loses his temper when his horse doesn’t obey a command, and takes
instant revenge on the animal by shooting it. Bystanders, including Diego, stare
at the scene, but as usual say and do nothing, for it’s just another everyday occurrence
in their distorted cosmos.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Much
later in the film, a tribe of blind people wander through the mysterious night woods
where Diego and his fellow bounty hunters (of the legendary Vicuña) sleep. We
hear strange, haunting music. The campers lie still, watching these ghostly,
humming figures as they untie and steal the campers’ horses in their seamless
glide through the trees. Soon after, a warrior tribe with red-stained bodies
upend the posse in a series of surreal, violent scenes—mirroring the increased surrealness
of Diego’s mind. At this point, he simply accepts what comes, too beleaguered
and demoralized to care, or to try to rationalize human life. Everything we see
through his eyes is skewed, bizarre, corrupt, or inhumane, such as, early on,
the Oriental’s son being carried in a crude chair on the back of a slave. The
distance from shore to settlement isn’t far, but “class” has to be
distinguished in this cruel way. At Do</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ña Luciana’s house, a slave sits
utterly still like a bronze statue, pulling the rope of a sweeping fan for the
duration of his life. Its languid, perpetual rhythm with a monotonous squeak emphasizes
the human torture.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
film has a subplot of Vicuña Porto, a violent outlaw no one has ever seen. He’s
either alive or dead, real or mythical, and he’s a force to be reckoned with in
the colony’s life and adds a neat twist to Diego’s denouement. As the movie
winds up with the bounty hunters now starved and tattered after years of
fruitless search, one of them, “Gaspar Toledo,” who might actually be Vicuña, spits
at Diego, “It’s just a name, that’s all!” He means Vicuña’s a name that
embodies all the evil perpetrated by man.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like
Odysseus’s impediments to reaching Ithaca, Diego meets obstacle after obstacle
in his effort to transfer home to his wife and children. The first governor,
who has put him off for years, punishes Diego for getting into a brawl with his
deputy Ventura, a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">real </i>Spaniard
working for the crown, not an American Spaniard like Diego, or as the governor
hurls at him: “an American passing for Spaniard.” A lama brushes against Diego
as he gets this news, absurdly, but also grouping Diego in the animal’s lower
status. The next governor spends his time gambling and playing games. When
forced, he pays sadistic lip service to helping Diego. Meanwhile Diego’s psychic
and physical states continue to decline. He’s demoted to filthy, decrepit housing
near the indigenous people, including Emilia, mother of his illegitimate
toddler. In his new room, one of his wooden crates of belongings suddenly moves
across the floor. He’s told by his scribe Fernández that there’s a boy inside. Oh,
that explains it—a boy inside. Nothing unusual. At this juncture, Diego’s
official jacket has become ragged, his hat tattered, and his face worn. By the
time the next governor arrives, which is years later, Diego is gray-bearded with
dead eyes. He has lost faith but still retains a drop of hope that he might yet
escape by joining the richly clad governor’s “posse” heading out to capture the
mythical villain Vicuña.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
last scene is apocalyptic. A dazzling sight beholds us—a river covered in ultra-verdant
aquatic moss and studded with fantastical trees. It’s unnatural. It could be
paradise or purgatory. Diego, an ashen corpse but not quite dead, floats in the
river’s viscous green in a rudimentary basin. An indigenous boy hovers above him, staring
in awe at Diego’s horrid, maimed condition. Finally the boy asks harshly, “Do
you want to live?” It’s the movie’s essential question to us all. We have just
journeyed through a true rendition of life, of the human condition and its
inherent, incorrigible vileness—“Do we want to live?”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
floating boat reminds us of both Ophelia drifting down the river and of Charon
crossing the River Styx with his latest passenger bound for Hades. Diego may be
caught between two worlds—the sticky unreality of the green “non-paradise” that
symbolizes “reaching home,” and the black depth of human souls desiccated and
decayed from their class hubris, their greed, power, and inhumanity. As a last
touch, the folksy, ironic Latin guitar music pipes in, laughing at all of us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBPsFOy-vMGQgW_B1ZmtOd9NFvxV7_h9cwtqpFaONRxwtcP5DY0UksHriDiRKVB9BbKErizjgMu8xzWPnX3YX1CXG9hEzy_ElhkbD_VaOg4VQBPaHz-k9cMq4Tkyvy-UUh3BwA9dGRFaA/s1600/Ophelia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1054" data-original-width="1536" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBPsFOy-vMGQgW_B1ZmtOd9NFvxV7_h9cwtqpFaONRxwtcP5DY0UksHriDiRKVB9BbKErizjgMu8xzWPnX3YX1CXG9hEzy_ElhkbD_VaOg4VQBPaHz-k9cMq4Tkyvy-UUh3BwA9dGRFaA/s400/Ophelia.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ophelia</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
(1851–1852), Sir John Everett Millais, Tate</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></u></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvw9ZeDivG_kmj3QYLG1nk8odOnlMmdO0_9L8YfSpr5mu_5eeo9V5_JHfQ4eldeE_L79mtUYlURNEypbVWfs45rp7Q5lnwd2Y2NNdjkkL5IMgGxzRGJS_4UKXQNqlrDIGtcusYWOwgGHc/s1600/River+Styx.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="577" data-original-width="770" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvw9ZeDivG_kmj3QYLG1nk8odOnlMmdO0_9L8YfSpr5mu_5eeo9V5_JHfQ4eldeE_L79mtUYlURNEypbVWfs45rp7Q5lnwd2Y2NNdjkkL5IMgGxzRGJS_4UKXQNqlrDIGtcusYWOwgGHc/s400/River+Styx.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><h3>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Charon on River Styx</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">, Soumyajit Dey, India</span></h3>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-21161554884981383962019-03-25T12:25:00.000-07:002019-03-25T12:26:10.378-07:00Sibel, Boston Turkish Film Festival<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">March
21–April 7, 2019</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">At the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, mfa.org</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizoDCpVwCCsjgWuAK0eXfD3DlITlvF1K0IZvKS7di2F0L1qeCTMuObriZHGdnuCSSuRdOWl2YlT_TiZg_2rlAcRvNQYYOQrZU-PoL3ynkkVw1DgkMGx4y7V6uIDeyuoHq4hFfbZsXsAng/s1600/sibelsfw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="420" data-original-width="560" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizoDCpVwCCsjgWuAK0eXfD3DlITlvF1K0IZvKS7di2F0L1qeCTMuObriZHGdnuCSSuRdOWl2YlT_TiZg_2rlAcRvNQYYOQrZU-PoL3ynkkVw1DgkMGx4y7V6uIDeyuoHq4hFfbZsXsAng/s320/sibelsfw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Filmed
in Turkey’s beautiful, fresh-air mountains high above the Black Sea, the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sibel</i> uses the whistled language of </span>Kuşköy,
also known as “Village of the Birds.”<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> The protagonist Sibel (</span>Damla Sönmez)<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a mute young
woman and the elder daughter of the town’s leader Emin (Emin G</span><span class="hide-when-compact"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ü</span></span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">rsoy). She
communicates with family and community through the ancient whistling language
of the region. Even though everyone else in the village also whistles this
language (it’s especially useful when working in the tea fields), they treat Sibel
as an outcast because of her muteness that renders her unmarriageable. Her
peers, including her younger sister Fatma (Elit I</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ş</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">can), ridicule her and refuse to allow her to participate in
their schoolmate </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Çiçek’s
engagement celebration.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Besides capturing </span>Kuşköy<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">’s breathtaking scenery and cultural history, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sibel</i> tells both a fairy tale and a
contemporary story. Sibel, a veritable “</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Diana of the woods,” hunts a never-seen
wolf that plagues the village, apparently for generations. Sibel looks and acts
like the mythical heroes who pursue evil dragons. During her forest forages, her
eyes are wild and her ears fine-tuned for prey. Sometimes she checks in on old
and crazy Narin, who lives in a mountain hut. During each visit, Narin laments
the loss of her teenage sweetheart, Fuat, who disappeared half-a-century before, “but is sure to be back
soon.” Narin represents Sibel’s fate as an unmarriageable pariah.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sibel collects bones, believing they
belong to the wolf. She hopes that one day she can prove the wolf is dead by
presenting its complete skeleton to the villagers, thereby gaining their
respect. We later learn that the bones are probably Fuat’s, and that he was
killed in front of Narin for their illicit relationship with her. This information
explains her insanity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One day, Sibel’s deep pit to trap
the wolf captures a handsome young fugitive. His name is Ali (</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Erkan Kolçak Köstendil)</span><span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> and he’s
badly wounded. Sibel drags him to her hunting shack, and in the days that
follow she heals his wounds with medicinal plants. Ultimately, they form a
close relationship. In the movie’s “contemporary story,” the government and
media frame Ali as a terrorist on the loose, but in reality, as he whistles to
Sibel, he’s a conscientious objector being hunted down by the authorities.
Eventually the pair is discovered, and Ali vanishes to a fate we never learn, a possible shortcoming of the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11.5pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The contemporary side of the movie also
involves village traditions, in particular the ones that relate to women being ruled
by men. Because of Sibel’s unauthorized relationship with Ali in the mountain
hideout, her sister Fatma’s engagement is called off. The groom-to-be’s family refuses
to be associated with such disgrace. Sibel then demonstrates her courage by walking
through the village with her sister. Her head is held high and her huntress
eyes are defiant. She sees </span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Çiçek
standing in the tea fields watching the despised sisters pass by. Their eyes
meet in a moment of woman-to-woman recognition. Çiçek, now the wife of a man
she never chose and probably abhors, makes a movement with her mouth that sends a message of
approval and envy to Sibel: It’s better to be independent and a pariah than an
enslaved woman.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Some years ago, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sibel</i>’s
directors visited </span>Kuşköy,<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
and their fascination for the local whistling language led to creating the
movie. </span>This<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> “bird
language” uses Turkish syllables expressed as piercing tones. The directors’ sought
out </span>Damla Sönmez<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
for Sibel’s role, and</span> inspired by the story, the actress devoted herself
to learning the whistling language. She spent time with the villagers and later
with a trainer. What she whistles in the film is exactly what the subtitles
say. Her vivid performance fulfills perfectly Sibel’s folkloric persona. As
a contemporary story, the film captures a place in the world that’s caught
between an obsolete and unjust social order and the more advanced democracies
of today, however flawed.</div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Featured at the ReelAbilities
Film Festival</span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Screening Wednesday
March 27, 6:30 pm, </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">at the O’Keefe Auditorium, Massachusetts General Hospital, with a prescreening
reception at 6 pm. A discussion with Chamique Holdsclaw follows.</span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Free admission, www.reelabilities.org/boston</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Copresented
with the Massachusetts General Hospital Department of Psychiatry, Center for
Diversity</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjly1DlhAH8N46h9s9WCS-VPIw0wwzLhfNhymwQhzfQECX6wts3DIIxTTDsUKgsHG0LdDhPL2SimvYbJ2Djd4BlMsrN4yJhRaJQZKEXBhUUuaow1V39RS-zEWRx99YGFtwCtQrVRvFG0/s1600/images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="183" data-original-width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjly1DlhAH8N46h9s9WCS-VPIw0wwzLhfNhymwQhzfQECX6wts3DIIxTTDsUKgsHG0LdDhPL2SimvYbJ2Djd4BlMsrN4yJhRaJQZKEXBhUUuaow1V39RS-zEWRx99YGFtwCtQrVRvFG0/s1600/images.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The story of basketball
superstar Chamique Holdsclaw goes a long way toward helping to destigmatize mental
illness. This riveting documentary about her life—<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mind/Game</i> (directed by Rick Goldsmith)—also examines how athletes,
in particular, avoid getting help when they feel depressed, because part of
being an athlete is not showing weakness or vulnerability.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">From
age eleven, Chamique loved the movement and art of playing basketball. Though
she didn’t realize it at the time, the game also vented her pain, anger, and frustration
caused mainly by her difficult family life—an alcoholic mother, a father with
mental illness, and her own care for mother and younger siblings. At ten she
went to live with her grandmother, who put love, encouragement, self-discipline,
and stability into her life. “Take out your aggression on the court,” her
grandmother told her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Years
later, after suffering the ups and downs of clinically diagnosed depression, Chamique
realized that it was actually mania that partly fueled her college and WNBA
stardom. The drive, the aggression, the feeling of omnipotence came from a mood
high. Unfortunately, her bipolar diagnosis didn’t come until a manic episode in
2012 resulted in violence and Chamique’s arrest. In the end, the injured
party—her former teammate and girlfriend—dropped the charges, spurring Chamique
to make a lifetime commitment to both her well-being and her advocacy for greater
and global mental health awareness. As she tells the camera honestly, with a
touch of wistfulness in her eyes, mania’s edge has powerful allure. It
makes her and others “want to feel life!” The meds that keep her stable,
healthy, and productive take that thrilling high down a peg or two. But that’s
okay, for as a psychiatrist in the film tells us, the majority of people with
mental illness who get help return to work and lead highly productive lives. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
her advocacy work, Chamique points out important truths, such as in minority
communities like hers—African American—mental health isn’t an accepted topic
and thus not helped enough. Chamique now works with kids from minority enclaves,
teaching them life skills and the acceptability, the value healthwise, in
opening up, speaking out about personal issues.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chamique
has journeyed from her magazine-cover celebrity of the early 2000s—often compared
to Michael Jordan’s—to her mental health advocacy work of today. Her honesty
and openness to talk to the world about her experience, coupled with her appealing
sincerity, make us listen and learn. Her story is one of the keys to
transforming social attitudes.</span></div>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-75010234099308673432019-02-24T05:15:00.000-08:002019-02-24T05:15:27.334-08:00Boston Festival of Films from IranJanurary 17–27, 2019<br />
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<br />
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<b>The Charmer</b></div>
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Directed by Milad Alami</div>
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January 24 & 27</div>
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Poignant, often heart-wrenching immigration movies come to
theaters every year, and this year, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Charmer,</i> by Swedish-Iranian director Milad Alami, offers a new slant—the mental
impact on a young Iranian man hustling in Copenhagen for a Danish wife, a
“paper marriage,” in order to escape his dead-end life at home. What Esmail
(Ardalan Esmaili) experiences in the city’s glamorous singles bars slowly
builds to detritus in his mind. The audience never knows him fully—not his
background or his innermost thoughts—but his face shows constant digesting of
the moments that happen to him, as well as his deeper, secret preoccupations. The
script by the director and Ingeborg Topsoe appears to move slowly along, but
actually works quickly and masterfully with a surprising plot. Shortly into the
film, we’re able to gauge that Esmail is basically a decent person, although currently
helpless, hapless, dealing in deception, and approaching desperation. He skypes
his family now and then, sends money home from his work as a moving hand, and shows
respectful behavior to all. But his dark side also shows in his face—the
mounting confusion of living a double life. Even as “a charmer” on the outside,
he can’t completely conceal his inner turmoil. It’s a feat on the actor’s
part to show innocence and darkness at once in the character’s face—Dr. Jekyll
and Mr. Hyde.</div>
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Each day Esmail takes meticulous
care of his only dress suit and shirt, which he wears to the high-end bars (far
from his own immigrant housing), where he hopes to attract women. We witness a
chain of his romantic efforts that lead nowhere, with his visa limit ticking
down. It’s painful to watch his flirtation and sex devolve into mere robotic programming,
ultimately revolting even to himself. His basic moral compass has become too
compromised, and we feel the increasing tangle of his mind and emotions. Perfectly
rendered music, camera imagery, and the protagonist’s facial acting convey these
deep emotional states.</div>
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A Persian-Danish family draws Esmail
into their circle through lovely Sara (Soho Rezanejad), whom he meets at the
bar one night, and who challenges him with his true motives for being there.
Their relationship naturally grows with each encounter, bringing a sunnier,
more authentic side to Esmail’s character—he’s not only with “his people,” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his homeland’s culture and food, but also with
a woman who truly allures him. They fall in love, and sadly the presence of true love
becomes the breaking point for Esmail’s psyche. In his half-maddened state, he
says to Sara but really to himself: “This wasn’t the plan.”</div>
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We never know what Esmail’s “plan”
was—was it to marry only in order to remain working in Denmark to support
family back home? After some months or a year, would he divorce? How could he escape
the inevitable mental turmoil of juggling two families unknown to each other? Where
would his identity and self-worth be in such a scenario? It all crashes in on
him and creates a powerful message about the individual’s experience as an
immigrant looking for a lucky break, especially about a young person with an
entire future ahead, who faces the monolithic “make-it or crumble” reality of a
foreign, stratified world.</div>
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The great beauty in this story is its
cinematically evoked depiction of Esmail’s mental state—its erosion caused by
venturing out in hopes of a better future (the stunning cinematography is by
Sophia Olsson). Esmail’s meltdown and failure aren’t ultimately failures, for
when his internal eruption settles down, he is given the opportunity to recover
his basic values, and he has gained wisdom. Rather than failing, he has lost at
a gambling game, and one that comes with a heavy emotional toll.</div>
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The movie ends with Esmail selling
his upper-class suit to a young, excited Iranian man, and we the audience probably
share the same thoughts as Esmail, as he watches the young man’s masculine
pride showing off the new goods: He’s setting off with the same dream of opportunity
abroad; he has the same hope for his looks, his charm, but soon he’ll discover the
reality of his chances, the reality of the world. Or, maybe he’ll be the one in
a million to luck out, while I’m back here to grow old.</div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">For Dystopian Lovers</b></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invasion</i>, directed
by Shakram Mokri</div>
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January 20 & 23</div>
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If you liked last year’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Simulation</i>
by Abed Abest at the MFA’s Iranian film festival, then be sure to catch this
year’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Invasion</i>, by Shakram Mokri.
It’s another dystopian film with the added dimension of futuristic vampires.
The foggy, metallic, dungeon-like cinematography, complementary music, and
mind-bending plot sustain attention, and for many, wonder.</div>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-56071303060443838952018-11-06T11:17:00.001-08:002021-08-19T12:27:33.645-07:00The Boston Jewish Film Festival
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">November 7–19,
2018</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Full program and schedule at Bostonjfilm.org</span></b></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Interpreter</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">dir. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Martin Šulík</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">, Massachusetts premiere</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;">In this film<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>two older men go on a road trip to
learn about their mutual but polar-opposite past. They are Slovak Holocaust
survivor Ali Ungár (Jirí Menzel) and Georg </span><span class="st"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Graubner</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"> (Peter Simonischek), son of the Austrian Nazi
who murdered Ali’s family. Besides war atrocities, character barriers separate
the men—Georg’s blasé, irresponsible lifestyle and Ali’s hatred for the enemy.
But over the course of the trip’s painful discoveries, the men find unexpected openings
for compassion, personal growth, and resolution. The film shows how hands-on
education about human barbarity has the power to transform a person’s inherited
attitudes. Two universals overarch the movie: the psychic pain of boys without
fathers and the question Georg asks: Is it easier to be the son of a murderer or
the son of a victim? </span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Chasing Portraits</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, documentary</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Massachusetts
premiere, The Museum of Fine Arts, followed by a conversation with the director</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Tears accompany
nearly every heartfelt moment in Elizabeth Rynecki’s documentary about her
family, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chasing Portraits</i>. She grew
up in California, deeply affected by her father Alex Rynecki’s Holocaust
experience and her great-grandfather Moshe Rynecki’s murder by the Nazis, as
well as Moshe’s legacy as a painter of Poland’s lost Jewish culture—scenes of working
people, weddings, rabbis, and other community traditions. These paintings hung
on the walls of her Bay Area home and her grandparents’ home in Northern
California.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
1939, Elizabeth’s father was three when his parents and grandmother (Moshe’s
wife) obtained Catholic identities in order to live outside the Warsaw ghetto,
which allowed them to survive the Holocaust. But Moshe chose to remain with his
fellow Jews locked in the ghetto and died at the Majdanek concentration camp.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Out
of Moshe’s oeuvre of some 800 paintings bundled and hidden for safety as the
war approached, only 120 were recovered by Moshe’s wife after the war. Haunted
by these paintings that surrounded her, and the family history embedded in them
that her father was unable to talk about, Elizabeth grew up wanting to find out
more about Moshe, his art, and the fate of his lost paintings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">When
Elizabeth’s grandfather George Rynecki died, she read his typed memoir, which
encouraged her to actively seek answers about her great-grandfather Moshe. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chasing Portraits</i> follows Elizabeth’s
quest in Poland, Israel, Canada, and the United States. She gives talks that soon
spread the word about her mission to find Moshe’s lost art; she meets museum
curators and private collectors; and she wrestles with the moral issue of
rightful ownership of stolen art. With pain, she talks about her choices: whether
to accept the situation as it is, with meaningful, personal, and valuable
family property now in the hands of strangers and institutions, or suing for
restitution. Her film involves us in the emotions inherent in the situation of lost
family art (stolen art) that has resulted from war and mass murder. An Israeli
lawyer advises her: Some of those people purchased the artwork having no idea about
its provenance, so unless you have evidence, they bought the art in good faith.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">We
know, though, and the expert also knows, that in reality those local people,
however rural or ignorant, knew about Jewish property and possessions being
sold from hand to hand. The art wasn’t purchased or traded innocently; farmers,
flea markets, collectors, and museums could easily see that the images focused
on Jewish life that had just been annihilated.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Elizabeth’s
journey involves this painful acceptance of loss and powerlessness to reclaim,
but she also experiences moments of redemption when beautiful encounters occur,
such as her visit to collector Edward Napiorkowski who willingly gives her his
painting by Moshe. The museums, though, are not letting go of their treasures.
Moshe’s work is steeped in Jewish heritage and history. In the end, Elizabeth
focuses on the greatest legacy her great-grandfather’s work has brought her: a
closer and cherished relationship with her father. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chasing Portraits</i> is a model for anyone seeking permanence of a
relative’s legacy.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPEUsc1AYMJPmqFrz1Ai63e6jJZItinZ0wygN3WOHZ1O13WLAmVXsBDBZUSdPKreu7WyEmYLfbfCFWvnERM5C-gqJYaA6M6YvfJ9HamdBnm08V7cM5XFG5gFP0-uhyphenhyphenXwOBjwkq4xrQRw/s1600/The+Hero.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="500" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSPEUsc1AYMJPmqFrz1Ai63e6jJZItinZ0wygN3WOHZ1O13WLAmVXsBDBZUSdPKreu7WyEmYLfbfCFWvnERM5C-gqJYaA6M6YvfJ9HamdBnm08V7cM5XFG5gFP0-uhyphenhyphenXwOBjwkq4xrQRw/s400/The+Hero.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</style></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi;"></span><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Hero (de Held)</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, written and directed by Menno Meyjes</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Based on the
novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">De Held</i> by Jessica Durlacher</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Subtitles move
swiftly at the beginning of this contemporary film set in Holland with
Dutch-speaking characters. Sara Silverstein, her husband Jacob, and their
teenage children Mich and Tess leave their lives in L.A. to return to Sara’s parents’
home in Holland for a long-term stay. They rent a house near Sara’s parents, for
living under the same roof as her difficult father Herman—who survived
Auschwitz as a child—would be impossible. As a young woman, Sara had to get
away from him, but now, in mid-life, homesickness has brought her back.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Hero</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a thriller with a step-by-step plot and
a few moments of Hitchcockian suspense. Juxtaposed to Sara is Anton Raaymakers,
whose grandfather was the Nazi sergeant who sent the Silversteins to Auschwitz.
As a boy, Anton suffered unforgivable humiliation when Herman rejected his
father’s apology for his own Nazi father’s cruelty. Sara witnessed the rejection
in the background and several times met Anton’s eyes—a social and ethical
barrier forever separating them. As a result of this traumatic scene for Anton,
he grew up to become a psychopath seeking revenge on the Silversteins.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In
addition to the thriller component, the film offers an in-depth portrait of a
woman—Sara—whose behavior is at times realistic and at other times unbelievable.
Her educated, well-to-do background, as well as her twenty years in L.A.’s
trendy, cosmopolitan milieu, makes it hard to believe that she would hide Anton’s
terrifying assaults. But her voice-over tells us: “If you don’t tell, it didn’t
happen.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">There
are other moments in the film when the viewer’s “willing suspension of disbelief”
also wavers—No, Sara would not go to a proven psychopath’s house all alone at
night to attempt vigilante justice. However, the serpentine plot, which overall
is a good one, needs such scenes to arrive at its denouement. While Hitchcock
succeeds at carrying us along with full, terrified belief, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hero</i> has several iffy moments: How did Herman regain his family’s
upper-class home after WWII—the home Sara grew up in as early as the 1960s—when
World War II property restitution happened decades later? How did the family pistol
Herman tried to use on Sergeant Raaymakers back in 1942 manage to survive in Herman’s
hands? Why would Herman hire his enemy Anton to build his enclosed porch that
then intentionally leaks? And what was that upsetting business call Herman had at
the beginning of the movie that never connected afterward to the plot?</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
movie explores several interesting themes, including Herman’s way of dealing
with his horrific war experience as a twelve year old. He imagines a different
story for his family from what really happened, and we see this story, and
later the truth, in intercut, black-and-white flashbacks that work well. Then,
the age-old story of feuding families and generational vendettas gives the film
depth. Herman takes revenge on the Raaymakers for murdering his family; Anton
must pay back Herman for humiliating the Raaymakers and for contributing to his
father’s subsequent suicide; Sara attempts to take revenge on Anton for his
crimes; another member of her family has no reservations about taking that
action. The revenge and vendettas lead to final thinking points in the movie: how
Sara’s extreme adoration of her son Mich has to be reconciled with who he
decides to be, rather than who she wants him to be; and how killing always leads
to more killing. This is a great tangle of a movie.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cast: Sara
Silverstein–Monic Hendrickx; Anton Raaymakers–Daan Schuurmans; Herman
Silverstein–Hans Croiset; Jacob Edelman–Fedja van Huêt; Mich Edelman–Thijs
Boermans</span></b></div>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-49932548451782968432018-10-15T10:44:00.000-07:002018-10-15T10:44:28.925-07:00The Boston Palestine Film Festival (BPFF)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Co-presented with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston<br />
October 19–28, 2018<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Beginning with
opening night’s </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Reports
on Sarah and Saleem</span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (dir.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;"> Muayad Alayan</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">), which includes an after party with
filmgoers, directors, organizers, music, and dancing, this year’s Boston Palestine
Film Festival offers an amazing range of award-winning films on the pressing
subject of human rights. For the full program visit<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> bostonpalestinefilmfest.org</b>.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59Hi6EBb0PKJHmjpKLnY6Qgcs9K-klXAcsbvWS5gXd2KcrpmsUl9ASOF_fkVTQxotJq1ytOrXWPhloMuXOYhvJItCshl7ic2Yhhyphenhyphend3QXjsP6ABjpJeapjyIKTYgGY9jQq-oNN-ua7pCs/s1600/Salam+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="889" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg59Hi6EBb0PKJHmjpKLnY6Qgcs9K-klXAcsbvWS5gXd2KcrpmsUl9ASOF_fkVTQxotJq1ytOrXWPhloMuXOYhvJItCshl7ic2Yhhyphenhyphend3QXjsP6ABjpJeapjyIKTYgGY9jQq-oNN-ua7pCs/s400/Salam+pic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The overriding
message that comes through the documentaries, shorts, and features in this
year’s Palestine Film Festival is the power of “nationality.” The films delve
into the psychology of nationhood and the nearly insurmountable plight of
displaced people who essentially don’t “exist” if they aren’t citizens of an
extant nation. Many live for generations in refugee camps devoid of average
employment opportunities and basic social services.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Another
nugget in this program is the film art of the shorts in particular. It’s mind-boggling
to experience a complete statement, a perfect story, in five to twenty-five
minutes through a visual medium. The shorts don’t rely on dialogue but on
interior emotions conveyed by the protagonists’ faces, enhanced by the creative
film techniques and sound.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
“Shorts II” series screens October 28 and focuses on the immigrant experience.
Again, it’s the emotions of the central characters in these six films that tell
a gripping, usually unfathomable story for American audiences, or those who
aren’t recent immigrants themselves. In only 14 tension-filled minutes, we
absorb the young woman Salam (</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hana
Chamoun), a Syrian immigrant in New York, earning a living as a Lyft driver.
With only a few lines of dialogue, we understand that she lives with her
brother Rashad’s family but her fiancé Musel is stuck in Syria and is now in
the hospital with serious head wounds as a result of the war. Much of the movie
involves a Lyft ride with Salam’s opposite: a young, blond American</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> woman named Audrey who has little worry
about money but serious problems in her relationship. During the course of the
women’s entire night’s drive—Upstate and back—they bond, but only as sympathetic
women, for their deeper feelings are “too complicated,” they say, to share. They
mean “too painful” for words. Audrey returns to her dreary love life while
Salam overflows with joy when she receives a call from Musel—alive! We
understand like never before the value of a human life. (Actress Hana Chamoun attends
the MFA screening of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Salam </i>on October
28.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">All
of the festival’s shorts drive home the meaning of families and of missing or
losing a loved one. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rupture</i> (dir.
Yassmina Karajah), we spend a few hours (18-minutes film time) with teenage
siblings, Salim and Leila, newly arrived Syrians to a peaceful, middle-class Vancouver
suburb. Wearing a headset, Salim listens to an English pronunciation lesson. In
another room, his younger sister’s headset plays music, their faces showing
their different personalities: he’s ultra-serious and she’s lively. Salim
overhears his mother on the phone in the kitchen. She’s hysterical over the
news that her eldest child Hany has been shot and is in the hospital: “We
should never have left him there! He’s my son! Send us a photo of him! I want
my boy!” The trauma rocks through the house, through Salim’s stunned face, and
through us, the audience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The
rest of the day goes on with Salim in a distracted state that tells all when he
looks at Hany’s photo on his phone. What is it like to get the news that your
older brother has been shot because of a senseless war and may be dying too far
away to reach, to see, to hold the hand of? Or your son? Salim and Leila’s
faces show us what it’s like. We don’t need, and don’t receive, much
dialogue—it’s not necessary. Watching these children, we experience how the
most painful emotions are always wordless. The only consolation, which barely touches
the grief, is the physical and psychological presence of another family member,
in this case brother and sister.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Catherine
Prowse and Hannah Quinn’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Laymun</i>
tells an entire world in five animated minutes. Colors in this war-torn village
are muted, life sucked out of them. Surviving townsfolk huddle together while a
soundtrack drops bombs. A woman delivers the only living green thing to a
neighbor’s doorstep—a lemon tree seedling. It feels as if the home has just experienced
a death and the plant pays community respect. Lemon trees also symbolize
healing: the cleansing and restoring of the mind, body, and spirit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">With
a shift to guitar music we are in the woman’s greenhouse where she cultivates lots
of lemon seedlings as if to propagate life and goodness to serve as a
counterforce to the violence and destruction. She looks at a picture of herself
with a man, presumably lost to her in the war. A bomb shatters the greenhouse.
The next day, the villagers are on a bus being evacuated. The woman takes a last
surviving lemon from her bag and gives it to a young girl. It glows like the
girl’s smile and symbolizes hope for the girl’s future. In a mostly brown
movie, the bright yellow lemon is a seedling for the life that inhumanity has
nearly obliterated.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">These
are just a few of the visually and intellectually outstanding short films
screening at the festival. The longer documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Soufra</i> (dir. Thomas Morgan) is a triumphal story about enterprising
women in Beirut’s Bourj el-Barjneh refugee camp. Johny Karam’s photography of fresh
food preparation, laughing cooks’ faces, and abundant, sizzling and succulent Middle
Eastern cuisine brings color, vivacity, and the good things in life to a movie
about families devoid of hope for viable employment and a future for their kids.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Palestinian
Mariam Shaar was born in the camp, which began in 1948. Her childhood dreams for
a good education and fulfilling career ended when she had to drop out of school
to support the family. In the film, she wants to do something about the camp’s dire
situation. She tells us that in Lebanon, doors to refugees have always remained
open, but once settled in a camp, there’s almost no chance of upward mobility. Laws
prevent renting housing outside the camp, and generally those without a
“nationality,” such as Palestinians, face employment and social restrictions. Their
situation feels synonymous with nonexistence.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mariam
starts Soufra, a high-quality catering business run by women that ultimately
succeeds outside the camp’s boundaries, promising hope for some families for
the future, and also setting a precedent for more entrepreneurial initiatives
that contribute to Lebanon’s economy and ethnic integration. The legal road to
Mariam’s goal is arduous, and the film travels with each of her steps to
achievement—registering a business, getting licenses and work permits, and buying
a food truck. Throughout the movie, Alexander Seaver’s music is light, gentle,
and hopeful, and embodies the unwavering strength of the working women. Over
the months, the project offers them more than financial stability; it changes
their lives and how they feel about themselves: “You realize your worth,” one
of the cooks says. “What we’re doing benefits ourselves, not just our families.
We learn something new every day. We get out, meet people, see different places.
Women can do anything, especially in these times.” The women’s men are glad for
the help that contributes to a better home life. “And she’s happy, she likes
her crew,” one husband says. The women come from different
backgrounds—Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese—and learn about each other’s food,
traditions, and personal lives. It’s a warm and supportive “women-for-women”
enclave. One cook informs us: “I tell my daughters not to rely on anyone.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2udqJ09DUOwQX2LWFyNEUhtHCCrRzc11tGEMm5dzkYjCIKP16cLkfPHhUqeCvq47C1dW18PamnM9i5T8omhRwAlnUike43umTby0-4UCx0W4O7GGtdMdcMLao9dhHE3DLsjVzjVMPhr4/s1600/soufra+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="1600" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2udqJ09DUOwQX2LWFyNEUhtHCCrRzc11tGEMm5dzkYjCIKP16cLkfPHhUqeCvq47C1dW18PamnM9i5T8omhRwAlnUike43umTby0-4UCx0W4O7GGtdMdcMLao9dhHE3DLsjVzjVMPhr4/s400/soufra+pic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Soufra means a big fancy table with a variety of delicious foods.</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mariam
concludes the film with her persevering and positive energy: “We hope for a
better life in the future. I hope refugees stop being associated with security
threats. Terrorism has no nationality. There is the good and the bad
everywhere. I hope that the children, who are the pillars of the future, live a
healthy life, to be beneficial to others.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">May
Mariam’s initiative and success speak to the whole world.</span></div>
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<br />Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-25062256102504563122018-09-28T09:17:00.000-07:002018-09-28T09:17:14.296-07:00I Am Not a Witch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Directed by Rungana Nyoni</div>
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Featured at the First Annual Boston Women<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">’</span>s Film Festival</div>
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at the Museum of Fine Arts</div>
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September 29 and October 3–31, 2018</div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Zambian-born director
Rungano Nyoni has made an unusual film that combines a real-life tragedy for
some women on the planet—enslavement as purported “witches”—with a fantastical fairy
tale about a nine-year-old orphan who’s declared a witch for staring
catatonically at villagers. The worn-out, field-working women of the witch encampment
welcome their new member and name her Shula (Margaret Mulubwa). Shula quickly
becomes the mascot witch of Tembo (John Tembo), the village’s highest official
under a nasty “royal highness,” who looks and acts like the story’s true witch.
The well-fed Tembo, whose luxurious, gated kingdom is surrounded by everyone
else’s poverty, has a sexy wife, or concubine, who was once a witch-slave but
gained a modicum of freedom through her attachment to the “worldly wise” Tembo.
Thus, we have the perfect set-up and characters for a children’s tale: wicked
queen, greedy henchman, enslaved women doing back-breaking work for the lords,
and a little girl caught in the nightmare and needing a way out. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The fairy tale is full of scenery,
costumes, and imagination. The witches wear harnesses with long billowing
ribbons that attach to giant spools on the truck that delivers them to the
fields. They can roam only as far as their ribbons unwind, and when it’s time
to return to their encampment, exhausted, they’re spooled in.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">The spool of thread symbol obviously relates
to women’s sphere, which is the second, serious layer of the movie. Real witch
encampments exist in Ghana, and Nyoni researched them for her movie. Innocent women
accused of witchcraft are housed in primitive camps, in part to protect them from
superstitious villagers who would otherwise harm or kill them. In the movie,
with its satirical Disney-like story, the witches wearing face paint are
trucked to a tourist location, parked behind a fence, and forced to leer and
act crazy for Western tourists with cameras, who marvel at these human specimen
as if they’re exotic animals in a zoo.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">As Shula’s brief odyssey with the witches
unfolds, episodes of random accusation and justice take place. Shula, Tembo’s
pet-witch, dresses in ceremonial witch regalia in order to identify the man in
a row of suspects who has stolen someone’s valuables. With a few comic twists on
Tembo’s part, Shula points to the criminal. Justice is thus laughable, based on
superstition and a witch’s special nose. In this fairy tale, and in some real-life
communities, witches are believed, and though they are kept separately and in
cruel conditions because they aren’t “human,” their magical powers are vital to
the community’s safety. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">For imagination, cinematography, and a
taste of African folklore, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I Am Not a
Witch</i> sustains attention. The incorporation of piercing classical music clashes
with the primitive setting and style of story, although it’s likely intentional
for this very reason. However, another choice of soundtrack might have had
stronger impact. Much praise goes to Nyoni’s creative approach to the theme of
women’s treatment. Shula, captured and condemned, begins her village life with
the choice of becoming a witch or a goat (a goat that will be eaten), and her
story ends with the same bad choices. Nice statement and luckily mostly a fairy
tale. #</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">On Her Shoulders</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">, directed by Sundance award-winner
Alexandria Bombach, plays in the Women’s Festival on September 30. It is a
must-see documentary for feeling the emotional devastation of genocide. Twenty-three-year-old
Nadia Murad’s story of surviving ISIL’s murder and exile of her Yazidi people of
the Sinjar region in northern Iraq in 2014, and the abduction of Yazidi women to
sell in slave markets, turns this mostly neglected “foreign news story” into a first-hand,
personally experienced tragedy. Nadia, traumatized by terror, torture, rape,
and family grief, still finds inner strength to speak publicly and continuously
for international action to stop ISIL and to help restore a future for the
hundreds of thousands of Yazidis now living in refugee camps.</span></div>
Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-23835872342791615662018-07-25T18:00:00.000-07:002018-07-25T18:00:04.726-07:00The Oslo Diaries
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Directed by <span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mor
Loushy and Daniel Sivan </span>(2018)</div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Featured
in the </span>Boston Jewish Film Festival’s Summer Cinemateque</div>
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This eye-opening film by Mor Loushy and Daniel Sivan tells
the story of Israel and the PLO’s peace negotiations in Norway during the early
to late 1990s. It integrates historic footage, film actors reenacting the talks,
and recent interviews with the real-life participants, such as Israel’s then
foreign minister Shimon Peres and the PLO’s chief negotiator <span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Abu
Ala. The interviewees’ passion for their experience hammering out acceptable
terms of peace is palpable, as is their current sadness for the accords’ ultimate
failure</span><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">. The
film’s structure also includes voice-over readings from the politicians’</span>
diaries, adding a thoughtful, personal touch to the documentary.</div>
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The story of the Oslo accords
involves the complicated history of Israel vs. the Palestinians—seen differently
from each side—which many Americans will need to follow-up on after seeing this
movie. But the history isn’t essential to gaining the filmmakers’ two main points
about the experience of the accords. First, when rounds of negotiations take
place between countries that are archenemies, it is individuals, not nations,
who interact during those countless days of talks. A strange, inarticulate “humanization”
of the mutual hatred takes place, as the participants slowly learn about each
others’ families and personal lives. Nevertheless, as one interviewee reflects,
“It’s impossible to translate this humanization to the public.” And so, the
several stages of the Oslo peace agreements meet with virulent controversy from
conservatives on both sides, with more violence breaking out, including the
Hebron mosque massacre and Rabin’s assassination.</div>
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The movie makers’ second emphasis is
the effect of Netanyahu’s intolerant political platform that precludes any
chance of peace during his leadership. The film’s footage of his vitriolic speeches
over the years portrays him as a demagogue. The audience, having experienced
the “human side” of the talks, feels sickened at his destructive force. Like
the negotiators, we have come through the years of talks believing both sides
of the conflict can achieve better understanding and coexistence in the future.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Oslo Diaries</i> is moving. It shows us—again, through our own involvement in
the talks—how hatred can slowly dissolve through rounds of communication
between mutually trusting, respecting people. But, if politicians not involved
in the “humanizing, peace-seeking component” deliver thundering speeches to the
contrary that sway the less-informed public, then nothing toward neighborly
peace can be achieved. The movie makes you wonder: What if Netanyahu had
participated in the years of talks?</div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DengXian; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">The film<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>more or less ends with Rabin’s
assassination by a Jewish extremist and Netanyahu spewing from the podium
anti-Palestinian slogans. The audience leaves the theater feeling the defeat,
as well as the sad truth that diametric forces are always present in societies,
ensuring that wars and violence will never end. Who will watch this movie? It’s
doubtful those who could benefit from its message about the power of
negotiations for world peace. In the meantime, generations keep passing.</span>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-29301981561966493852018-07-25T17:54:00.000-07:002018-07-25T17:54:05.077-07:00Memoir of War (La Douleur)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Directed
by </span>Emmanuel Finkiel (2017)</div>
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</div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Featured
in the </span>Boston Jewish Film Festival’s Summer Cinemateque</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Xd19inzhpWaHu_1gmekBSNNhneWheCGnkkjNctpgFdWfgibN40VgNMSryAr5oYBDApdJGJUm2xji68Voc9dWZiQZZ1AUcvopMN2VfV5P0fSqQoHYxOGITocs5udiKSsy8RBjXxb8FCc/s1600/Memoir+of+War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="563" data-original-width="1000" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2Xd19inzhpWaHu_1gmekBSNNhneWheCGnkkjNctpgFdWfgibN40VgNMSryAr5oYBDApdJGJUm2xji68Voc9dWZiQZZ1AUcvopMN2VfV5P0fSqQoHYxOGITocs5udiKSsy8RBjXxb8FCc/s400/Memoir+of+War.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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</div>
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<span style="mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">This
beautifully wrought adaptation of <span class="st">Marguerite Duras’s war memoir,
with </span></span>Mélanie Thierry playing Duras, explores the human mind when
waiting day after day, month after month, year after year, for news of a family
member deported to a Nazi concentration camp. When the war ends, the waiting
goes on, as trains bring back survivors but never the loved one.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
This debilitating state of waiting happens
to the protagonist Marguerite, who waits for her husband Robert, arrested for
his resistance activities. It also happens to Mrs. Katz, boarding with
Marguerite, who waits for her handicapped daughter, even after she learns the
Nazis sadistically eliminated “cripples.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
Marguerite keeps a diary of her
mental state while waiting for Robert, and her surreal feelings, verging on
madness and spoken in voice-over, parallel the camera’s imagery, which blurs
with illusion, delusion, and hallucination. The background music becomes cacophonous,
and we the audience physically experience the mind’s demise into disconnection
to the living world, as a result of unmitigated waiting and fear. The film’s
crowning achievement is how the camera, sound, and scripting mirror the person’s
interior world when severed from reality and relationships. The long silences
with just Marguerite’s face on the screen (always smoking in deep reflection), convey
the depth of her psychic pain, which includes fear for her own life. Many
observations about the war and anti-Semitism intersperse the film, as well as a
plot involving a French cop working for the Germans, but the film’s poetic
essence is its study of human emotions.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
One small criticism: the film’s ending
comes as a jolt and lacks clarity, particularly when Marguerite’s earlier,
delirious vision of a newborn baby reemerges as a truth in the final scene and without
adequate explanation. Additionally, when Marguerite tells Robert (who barely survives
Dachau) that “I want a divorce, I want Dionys baby, nothing has changed in two
years,” more confusion arises. All through the movie Marguerite’s been waiting
for Robert’s return—it’s the entire study of the movie—although we do wonder at
times about her relationship to Dionys, a fellow resistance worker. So, to hear
her say she wants a divorce and Dionys baby, and nothing has changed in two
years, suggests that before Robert was dragged off to Dachau, Marguerite wanted
a divorce in order to be with Dionys. This muddled ending doesn’t quite fit the
story we’ve been so deeply a part of—waiting with Marguerite for her beloved Robert
to survive the war. It may be that Duras’s memoir sheds light on these last
details.</div>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-70648027540226220192018-07-05T09:46:00.002-07:002018-07-05T09:46:54.077-07:0012 Days
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Directed by
Raymond Depardon (2017)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">At the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, Annual French Film Festival, July 13 & 14 </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Special to the
<i>Boston City Paper</i> by Joseph Spilsbury</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSC4Ix7PBJ-prGMXKGhSEgrTtvfhxnaZkmzDoUlZMDNejTw70gdsUUYkXI8w3Y2V94L20KHoKx_7yy6ifNxXnDnX2Eiy9Ib2sz1KhQeudsSRPbQrYKMhPGKP1O0Ymb_J51m3GiR1-2NnE/s1600/ep2-depardon-img-header.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="759" data-original-width="1440" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSC4Ix7PBJ-prGMXKGhSEgrTtvfhxnaZkmzDoUlZMDNejTw70gdsUUYkXI8w3Y2V94L20KHoKx_7yy6ifNxXnDnX2Eiy9Ib2sz1KhQeudsSRPbQrYKMhPGKP1O0Ymb_J51m3GiR1-2NnE/s400/ep2-depardon-img-header.jpeg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span>This beautifully captured
documentary film by Raymond Depardon was truly sad to watch. I felt a deep
empathic emptiness, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness, like how I
imagine the patients must feel as they take their turns sitting before the
judge, again and again, accompanied by lawyers, and getting shut down each
time. Not one is released, and many have been locked up for months or years. I
felt more striking sadness watching this film than I do on a daily basis
working as a therapist at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Having worked at
one of the only remaining Massachusetts state hospitals for one year, as well
as two private acute inpatient psychiatric hospitals since, there is much to
compare between how things are dealt with clinically and legally.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
For one, the
patients in the film are locked up for 12 days (that is a long initial time frame)
before they even have the right to see a judge and present their case; and as
the film portrays, they seemingly are always kept for further evaluation and
treatment. The judge already knows the verdict, though still asks the patients,
and their lawyers, for their thoughts, before deliberating the conclusions that
the psychiatrists have already made beforehand. In the film, not one patient is
released during this court-like process. The torment is palpable.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Here in Boston,
and in the State of Massachusetts, almost all patients are brought to inpatient
hospitals on a Section 12, which can be done by a police officer, social worker,
or psychiatrist. This section implies that the person is a danger to themselves
or others: that they have likely attempted suicide, had an overdose, threatened
to take their life to a family member, or maybe discussed the idea or a plan
with a therapist; or simply stated it at the wrong time and place, oftentimes
under the influence. A Section 12 is basically one of two things, suicidal
ideation or homicidal ideation, and it is usually in the hands of the police to
make the judgement call and get the person to an ER for a clinical evaluation.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
Under a Section
12, once a person gets to the psychiatric hospital, they have three days (one
quarter of the length of time shown in the French hospital in the film) before
they have to sign a “conditional voluntary,” stating they will work with the
treatment team, comply with medications, go to group therapy, and meet with
their social worker to figure out a plan for discharge. This can be an
extremely complicated process, and messy. The majority of patients retaliate
against treatment and sign a “three-day notice,” because they do not want to be
kept locked up; they often want to leave immediately. The patients have the option
to “rescind” their three-day notice and sign the conditional voluntary; but if
they don’t, then the psychiatrist is bound by law to take them to a court
commitment hearing, which if they lose (oftentimes the case), they are legally
bound to the hospital for up to six months—and if they don’t get discharged
before that allotted time, they are sent to a state hospital.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
12 days is a long
time to wait before hearing any judgment on an individual’s case. The average
total length of stay at my hospital is about two weeks. Some come in and out in
a few days or a week, some a few more weeks, and occasionally we have a
treatment-resistant person who ends up living in our walls for months on end.
In the three years I have worked at my current hospital, I have seen only three
patients stay the entire six months and get transferred to a state hospital.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
With the
demographic I work with, racially and ethnically diverse, though a generally
low socio-economic status, many people come from very complex traumatic
backgrounds, have experienced physical and sexual abuse from a young age, grew
up in gangs or with violence on the streets, and in many cases, have
significant criminal backgrounds. Though we are not a licensed “dual diagnosis”
unit, still 80–90 percent of all patients I encounter are addicts, and many are
poly-substance abusers. A decent percentage are homeless, with no roof over
their heads on the outside, with nowhere to go, which makes the job of the
social workers challenging.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
We try to set up a
safe discharge plan and get them out of the hospital as soon as they are stable
and can care for themselves. This is the ideal, but it is not sustainable.
Mental illness is chronic, and unless individuals are aware and in full
acceptance of their condition, they will likely be noncompliant with treatment
as soon as they are released. We try our best from a multidisciplinary team
approach, with the medications and the therapy; and the social workers often
set up further “step-down” treatment options, at various types of outpatient
programs, clinics, and rehabilitation centers, in which the patients can attend
groups and have structure during the day, continue with their medication
regiment, but be free in the evenings. Sadly, too often, we can’t get an
outpatient program to accept a patient, or vice-versa (the patient won’t
comply, or quits after a few days), and many people unfortunately go straight
to homeless shelters; basically back where they came from.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
In more than three
years at one hospital, I have seen countless faces return—three, four, five
times, in some cases more, and that is just on my unit, one of six. Sometimes
these individuals walk out the door and are back in a few days or weeks. I look
into every patient’s record that I work with, and some have had 40, 50, 60
“episodes,” or inpatient stays, just at my hospital alone. We call it the
“revolving door.” These patients are “in the system” for life. They are even
sometimes referred to as “professional patients.”</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
So, while the
legality and structure of the hospital care in the United States, or in Massachusetts,
is different from France’s system, it is not necessarily better or worse. We
try our best to get patients stable, so they can leave, but the support system
and safety net is not systemically strong enough yet, and it often feels
hopeless and helpless in the same way the film portrayed patients being locked
up.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
One noticeable
difference, from a humanitarian perspective, was the sterility of the hospital
in the French documentary—almost as if no life existed between the walls and
behind closed doors. It looked and felt like a prison, a holding cell. Where
were the patients? Where were the groups? The treatment? The doctors? Or is it
just a holding cell? At my hospital, it is a bustling ecosystem, with 24
patients on a single unit, sometimes 6, 8, or 10 attending each of my four
therapy groups per day. They go downstairs as a unit for three meals a day
(unless unit restricted), and they go outside to the courtyard as a group twice
a day. We have music therapy, art therapy, occupational therapy, and activity
groups, as well as a front day-room with a kitchen, and a back day-room, and
two TVs (turned off during group therapy), and a sensory room, and a quiet
room. Not that this presents a “normal” or “free life” for them, but in
contrast, the film portrayed no life inside the walls of the Edouard Herriott
Hospital. It was slightly disturbing. I’ll say it again, it gave me a feeling
of deep emptiness, a striking sadness, that these poor patients have nothing to
live for and keep getting shot down every single time they go before the judge.
It’s like a sadistic joke by the end of the film. At least in my experience
working inpatient, I have seen many (even if a small percentage) beat the
psychiatrist in their court commitment hearings. I am sometimes secretly
rooting for them, even though I am on the same treatment team as the doctor.
Sometimes the system inevitably feels sick.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in; text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Joseph Spilsbury is a clinical
mental health counselor and music therapist and works as a group therapist at
an inpatient psychiatric hospital. He is a multi-instrumentalist and composer,
as well as the co-founder and guitarist of the local Boston band, Miele
(Mielemusic.com). He is on the board of the Massachusetts Music Therapy
Alliance (MMTA).</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;"></span></div>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-91037062441767784332018-06-13T12:14:00.001-07:002018-06-13T12:16:52.169-07:00Beauty and the Dogs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Directed by
<span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kaouther Ben Hania</span></span>
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<span style="color: black; mso-themecolor: text1;"><a href="http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001E8uwSBNX3mr2pYtL_xUj7iNLmrraDSPRXZ7Rq8Ht_egqr6Fj9-_Pzi2MXyECAZ9oaNBil5rsL5s0DrdHS83BKnShUnsbcmH-GpT90ANy37t2ir2QKlqcDkCD291TGsvHVhGJPgEXG2WHbv0tKLcddqaxpJ-XdoLA1Jn-AbDQMa0CcUM7r8lybXIN3C_lzsGV3kLj_ZA7Cozdzqv_c0AnbQ==&c=MTW2HXIjIMuU6SvMSV03F5J68h04PVJsufv1Sbx3AkcP_xgm7QSlGg==&ch=_JLRn_R-lIbt3_VBaUpDZnn2kCWlyxOgPS-3U3fJ2HhyaTPPbQIYHA==" target="_blank"><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; text-decoration: none;">Arab Film Weekend 2018</span></a></span><span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, June 15–17</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">New films from Egypt,
Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, and Algeria</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: black; font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-themecolor: text1;">Visit mfa.org for the schedule </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLoEJGmQt5BIGDQA3zGEsX5NQzIVTFJ8Zsoy5fVoU7uR1Xk84KpZowzY2yaRXJE9byUYylGFPxOaprdtAPxZYn_jMD4z8necTWqbTR_cU-Z0Epah1KEZu-1C6DS45kW_mwwvlztZOW4M/s1600/1+Beauty%2526Dogs.jpg"><img border="0" data-original-height="576" data-original-width="1024" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLoEJGmQt5BIGDQA3zGEsX5NQzIVTFJ8Zsoy5fVoU7uR1Xk84KpZowzY2yaRXJE9byUYylGFPxOaprdtAPxZYn_jMD4z8necTWqbTR_cU-Z0Epah1KEZu-1C6DS45kW_mwwvlztZOW4M/s400/1+Beauty%2526Dogs.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beauty and the Dogs</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> takes us through one hellish night of a
young rape victim, Mariam (Mariam Al Ferjani). Her odyssey—a living nightmare—floors
us not only with her reality, but also with what we ourselves ignore when such heinous
actions don’t touch our lives personally. Set in Tunisia’s criminal justice
system, the film’s message pertains to the world, for everywhere on earth police
forces, courts, and governments can’t be relied on to uphold right from wrong. We
witness in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beauty and the Dogs</i> a pandemic
societal sickness: the dishonesty, bullying, intimidation, violence, and trauma
inflicted on anyone who can’t “afford justice.” Hypocrisy, chicanery, and
inhumanity rule the law. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Bright,
fun-loving Mariam organizes a dance at her college in Tunis. Her prim, high-collared
dress for the party tears, so her friend Naila lends her a low-cut, satin-blue,
slinky dress that Mariam reluctantly puts on, as she’s a fairly abiding Muslim
woman. The two friends leave the changing room and enter the low-lit, music-filled
party, with men and women dancing and flirting. Mariam immediately notices an
attractive man, Youssef (Ghanem Zrelli), who also notices her.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Beauty and the Dogs</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> is based on a true story published as a
novel in 2013, titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">G</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">uilty of Having Been Raped</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">.
Following the format of a book, the film develops in chapters, starting with
the party, and with subsequent episodes moving through a nightmarish maze of
Tunis’s private and public hospitals and its police stations, as Mariam tries
to press charges for her rape. Instead of being helped by doctors and police,
she’s turned away because those people who could (and should) help her fear for
their own safety, or, in the case of the police, they’re criminal and will find
reasons to arrest Mariam rather than their cohorts. It’s the verisimilitude of
Mariam’s terrifying odyssey that penetrates the viewer with the reality of our
world’s morality. The movie’s title suggests “beauty” stands for life and “dogs”
for human beings.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Youssef, Mariam’s new boyfriend,
whom the police handcuff in order to rape her, faces the same brutality as
Mariam, making the movie not solely about a Muslim woman’s plight, but about
people in general—the regular people and the minorities who face treachery and
ridicule when they seek justice. An elder policeman at the station, Chedly,
witnesses repeatedly his younger colleagues’ transgressions and ultimately
stands up for right over wrong, again, showing us that not all men are the vile
creatures we’re treated to in this movie—and they are very, very bad. Kudus to
the actors taking on such depraved roles.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mariam, though helped initially by
Youssef until he’s carted off to jail on false charges, faces an unimaginable
ordeal after just being raped. Her face and mechanical way of walking show her
trauma. It’s hard to imagine how she carries on after each door closes on her, leaving
her alone with the demons chasing her down. Ever onward she stumbles, insisting
she’ll bring the perpetrators to trial.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The most powerful scene in Mariam’s
odyssey is when she decides to call her father. She realizes that in order to press
charges her story will go public and her family will find out about her “disgrace.”
Mustering once more remarkable courage, this young college student calls her
father and asks him to please come to the station as fast as possible, “because
these people are frightening me.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The insanity of the night finally ends,
and Mariam steps out of the station into daylight, a seemingly more rational world.
But the air is heavy, clouded, unresolved. Her difficult future lies ahead—the
work, the sacrifice of life, to prove how justice is synonymous with bad guys,
crooks, corruption. Her story has deeply penetrated us. Do we get up, go home,
and forget this movie, or do we remember it and take action?</span></div>
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<br />Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-29218201822192576052018-04-24T11:55:00.000-07:002018-04-24T11:55:11.632-07:00The Prince and the Dybbuk (2017) and The Dybbuk (1937)
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The National Center for Jewish
Film's </span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">21st Annual Film Festival, May 2–13, 2018</span></div>
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</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Prince and the Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (2017), dir.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
Piotr Rosolowski and Elwira Niewiera</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (1937), dir. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Michał
Waszyński</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">May 6, 2:00 and
4:00, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">These two films—the
first a documentary related to the second, which is based on Yiddish theater—screen
back to back and should be seen together if possible.</span></div>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW9LES2ALMiIsBHMXEEMOQ-5j-xvPfyFsG97gjFljXy5HTE4N6NicpmH8jfp_NB4vgJaPVipiXsuMs6GZWEnGy1rtmUSYhYRRfyOq_Urg6tQvOObzpkZ_1pNpJHn7P8aRVatM9DF7uVZo/s1600/Waszyn%25CC%2581ski+1930+copy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1419" data-original-width="1476" height="307" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW9LES2ALMiIsBHMXEEMOQ-5j-xvPfyFsG97gjFljXy5HTE4N6NicpmH8jfp_NB4vgJaPVipiXsuMs6GZWEnGy1rtmUSYhYRRfyOq_Urg6tQvOObzpkZ_1pNpJHn7P8aRVatM9DF7uVZo/s320/Waszyn%25CC%2581ski+1930+copy.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN;">Waszyński, 1930</span><style><!--
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Prince and the Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (2017) and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dybbuk </i>(1937) are
chock-full of complexities that might take more than one viewing of each to
fully appreciate. Shot in black-and-white, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Dybbuk</i> surely ranks among film classics, partly for its Yiddish theater
legacy. It also embodies a dimension related to the personal life of its
director, “Prince” </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Michał Waszyński (1904–1965), that
would not be known were it not for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i>
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Prince
and the Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">
interpreting the material.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Waszyński, an aristocratic and admired
filmmaker from his young adulthood until his death, hid his shtetl and yeshiva
beginnings in Kovel, Ukraine, not only from the world but also from himself, as
those early memories bore too much pain. The haunting images we’re shown from
both his past life in Kovel and his post–World War II life in Italy involve his
repressed homosexuality that may have prompted <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his early flight to Warsaw and then Berlin, as
well as his conversion to Catholicism and his name change from Moshe Waks to Michał
Waszyński.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Later, memories of the Holocaust and
murder of his family and friends increasingly break through Waszyński’s efforts
to forget, leading to intolerable psychic pain, made worse by his inability to
share his story with others, not even with his adopted family in Rome, the
Dickmanns. However, one does wonder if just after the war he might have revealed
his past to the older, humanitarian Italian countess, Dolores Tarantini, who
helped him, married him, and promptly died, leaving him her fortune and palace
in Rome.</span></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">The Prince and the Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> uses traditional documentary techniques
to piece together </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Waszyński’s life, but it also takes off creatively for many
of its segments, integrating archival film footage of shtetl life, which
complement voice-over memories from Waszyński’s diary. A particularly painful scene
shows the Kovel synagogue today, first from the outside and then within, where
the central cavity under the square dome has become a clothing factory. A Kovel
survivor tells us how the Germans locked the town’s Jews, including the Waks
family, in the synagogue. There, waiting to be killed, they wrote last messages
on the walls. Archival stills show us individual faces—faces that could easily be
your own family members’ faces no matter what your religious background. These
captive faces are trying to make sense of being imminently killed. Voice-overs simultaneously
speak the lines we assume were written on the synagogue walls. It’s a difficult
moment in the film—incomprehensible pending murder—and yet, its reality is exactly
what Waszyński couldn’t erase from his memory.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The documentary links Waszyński’s obsession
with his film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dybbuk</i> to his own life, and integrates a
mystical cemetery scene from the film. Waszyński’s diary toward the end of his
life reveals how he’s tormented by a dybbuk who has possessed him. The film
interprets this spirit as a yeshiva student Waszyński might have loved, forcing
his flight from Kovel, his change of identity, and his inconsolable grief over the
Nazi genocide.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBwYCrV9IfPUlIIAU_GLC2Qf3_cSA5Wusw5CH_EO0GNti_rxdZ7svGVPzlGbw8lLfYbIKvIokpdl1CphdCem_Omok0alCpNYuOJgCxQwmveCrAsXREIktycW-7lPNzrXrFBdzkzMwfH0/s1600/Lili+%2526+Leon.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="720" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiBwYCrV9IfPUlIIAU_GLC2Qf3_cSA5Wusw5CH_EO0GNti_rxdZ7svGVPzlGbw8lLfYbIKvIokpdl1CphdCem_Omok0alCpNYuOJgCxQwmveCrAsXREIktycW-7lPNzrXrFBdzkzMwfH0/s400/Lili+%2526+Leon.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lili Liliana and Leon Liebgold in <i>The Dybbuk</i>, 1937</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of the documentary’s most
shocking scenes is of the Battle of Monte Cassino, which Anders’ Polish army
fought with the Allies. Waszyński was the troop’s filmmaker and recorded the cataclysmic
bombing, its towering clouds of smoke, and the ancient monastery’s destruction.
The army went on to liberate Rome, where Waszyński’s life and career came to
settle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Even without the insights and
enrichments of Rosolowski and Niewiera’s documentary, Waszyński’s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> The Dybbuk</i> stands alone as a film
classic. Besides capturing with beauty and perfection a lost culture—Eastern
Europe’s shtetl life and yeshiva study—it also preserves traditional Yiddish
theater and folklore or mythology. The film is based on S. Ansky’s 1914 play of
the same name. Its structure resembles Greek drama, and its story is a parable.
The sets, action, acting, and cultural atmosphere filled with religious music
all contribute to an outcome of extraordinary film art that shares an aesthetic
with Orson Welles.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ6Lml1-xXkGQw4W5cmQJKyZycNEkQtwdB67Kr0hrOPLcXB2ipvTGf58iEeOauHozo8yQfWEGUtSLSxPs9UJGcrfZqBjB9ikOqpklEYpxJ4pB9IOGNmUlbIGIFelaJxWu1Y1rNoem4KLE/s1600/Etching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="800" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ6Lml1-xXkGQw4W5cmQJKyZycNEkQtwdB67Kr0hrOPLcXB2ipvTGf58iEeOauHozo8yQfWEGUtSLSxPs9UJGcrfZqBjB9ikOqpklEYpxJ4pB9IOGNmUlbIGIFelaJxWu1Y1rNoem4KLE/s400/Etching.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Etching by Ephraim Moses Lillien (1874–1925). In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk is the evil spirit of a dead person that possesses another person. In <i>The Dybbuk</i>, a young shtetl woman is possessed by the spirit of the man she was to marry but her father rejected. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DengXian; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"></span>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-158329987206474248.post-46223917327866092942018-03-28T06:57:00.000-07:002018-04-05T10:12:02.796-07:00Sour Apples (Ekşi Elmalar)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Written and directed by </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Yilmaz Erdo</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ğ</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">an</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Featured March
30 & April 8 at the<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> 17th Annual Boston
Turkish Film Festival</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 12.0pt;"> </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRqGyTvqr1TVsqSfd9GfnFEhVhL5SjIG9_bAQnYRjGDr8LK8oXYMPtnpHUAQ9g-0hLBcqwSHEnAdTvgVBofvQbiovBT9-YIy8ePYe3HqJosLpklWE4PrdR9f5b0eL-4d8QsNMg1P56TM/s1600/eksi-elmalar-vizyona-girmek-icin-artik-gun-vrgw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="700" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRqGyTvqr1TVsqSfd9GfnFEhVhL5SjIG9_bAQnYRjGDr8LK8oXYMPtnpHUAQ9g-0hLBcqwSHEnAdTvgVBofvQbiovBT9-YIy8ePYe3HqJosLpklWE4PrdR9f5b0eL-4d8QsNMg1P56TM/s400/eksi-elmalar-vizyona-girmek-icin-artik-gun-vrgw.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Sour Apples</span></i><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> is a modern-day Shakespearean comedy
written and directed by Yilmaz Erdo</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ğ</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">an, who also stars in it as </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Hakkâri’s vain and
overbearing mayor. It’s 1977, and the mayor has just lost his election to a
third term, but until his dying day he will remain “the mayor,” severe and
unsmiling, dressed in tailored clothes, and driven about by his manservant,
Yusef. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">We know this is a lighthearted
comedy from the opening’s fun, farcical music, which also plays between scenes.
It’s snowing outside at the mayor’s house, which sits in front of a jagged
mountain peak in southeastern Turkey. Inside the dusky parlor, men listen to
the election results with their candidate seated before them as if on a throne.
They kiss his hand as they leave, expressing regret for his loss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Turkey’s turbulent politics of the
1970s and 80s thread through the background of this heartwarming love story,
narrated by the mayor’s youngest daughter Muazzez. She recalls the family’s
past to her aged father, who can no longer silence or punish her for what she tells
him because he has Alzheimer’s. We hear how her city was known for two things:
the mayor’s apple orchards and the mayor’s daughters</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">And oh, what daughters!—</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">T</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ü</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">rkan, Safiye, and Muazzez.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Their adolescent beauty,
flowing dresses and tresses, laughter and gaiety, and conniving plots to get
the men they want rather than their father’s choices, launch the movie in its
Shakespearean vein. The character Sino carries letters and messages between the
illicit lovers; the grotesque, traveling merchant, Etar, brings gossip to the
women; and lovable, blundering Hatip, in love with Safiye, can be counted on
for laughter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The women’s lives are so restricted that
Muazzez hasn’t learned to read or write, and yet this distressing state of
women is treated in a parodic way, keeping the story playful. When Muazzez
spies Özgür—a true Romeo—it’s love at first sight, with humor woven into the lovers’
action and dialogue. Özgür comes from cosmopolitan Ankara and asks Muazzez: How
can boys see girls in this town? She answers: You marry them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The story progresses and we watch
Muazzez’s two older sisters go through exactly that process of marrying before meeting
their patriarch’s choices for them. The girls’ mother Ayda is like one of the
sisters, having been betrothed at age fourteen. She often joins in her
daughters’ merrymaking and whispered schemes, showing how the women share a
secret world of romance novels, movie star pin-ups, and natural urges they have
to hide from their male authority.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">As the years pass, the unemployed
mayor can’t afford his lifestyle any longer, and if he marries off his last
daughter, his wife won’t be able to handle the housework on her own. He
suggests he take a second wife so Muazzez can marry, but leaves the decision to
Ayda and Muazzez. This is a wonderful moment in the movie, tense and meaningful
for both the women and the audience. It’s also the film’s turning point into
less comedy and more poignancy over life’s losses. However, in keeping with its
Shakespearean tradition, the story has placed key props along the way—the green
apples and the characters’ traits—that lead to a perfect, climatic ending.
All’s well that ends well, with much life experienced along the way.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cast: </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Yilmaz
Erdo</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ğ</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">an
(Mayor), Farah Zeynep Abdullah (Muazzez), Songül Öden (T</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">ü</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">rkan), </span><span class="itemprop"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Sükran
Ovali</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> (Safiye), </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Seher
Devrim Yakut (Ayda), Sükrü Özyildiz (Özgür), </span><span class="itemprop"><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Fatih
Artman (Hatip), </span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Ersin
Korkut (Sino).</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Dir. by Ferzan
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">At the17th Boston Turkish Film Festival</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">March 24 & 31, 2018 </span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston</span></div>
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<i>Rosso Istanbul,</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
directed by Ferzan Ozpetek and based on his 2013 novel by the same name, is a cinematic
meditation on his hometown and on life. Reality is not as pretty as our dreams,
the movie tells us. This review may have a spoiler.</span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Similar to Ozpetek’s Turkish baths movie of twenty years ago, <i>Steam</i>,
this new film conveys the inner side of human lives, and both movies include
endings with death. Both are also set in Istanbul but in different eras, <i>Rosso
Istanbul</i> in today’s excess of wealth and lifestyle. Current music blends
with traditional, evocative Eastern sounds and their feel of the elusive past,
the score by </span>Giuliano Taviani and Carmelo Travia. </div>
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The movie is slow because it
reflects on individual life experience, from childhood relationships that
impact psychology to successful careers that implode, like Deniz’s. Life
inevitably deteriorates, but it’s a person’s accumulated memories that lead to later-life
depression or despair.</div>
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Briefly, a London book editor,
Orhan Sahin (<strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Halit
Ergenc</span>)</strong>, returns to his hometown, Istanbul, to help his old
friend Deniz Soysal (<strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Nejat Isler</span>)</strong>, a famous filmmaker, finish his
autobiography. Orhan’s tragic face and the film’s other hints about his past eventually
reveal the cause for his leaving Turkey twenty years before. Mostly silent, he
speaks with his large blue eyes, and panning on all of the protagonists’ faces—their
long looks at each other<strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">—</span></strong>is overdone. In real life friends don’t hold each
other’s gazes for so long.</div>
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Deniz’s dissipated face and manic
behavior juxtapose Orhan’s passivity. The stunning Neval (<strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Tuba Buyukustun) forms a
female addition to the relationships</span></strong>, which also include
Deniz’s mentally tortured lover Jusef <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">(</b><strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Mehmet Gunsur). Neval
appears</span></strong> less depressed than the three men, until she says: “But
isn’t everyone unhappy?”</div>
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That line could be a subtitle for
the movie: People are unhappy.</div>
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Deniz disappears on the first night
of Orhan’s arrival and the rest of the movie takes on suspense about where he
is, while the characters’ back stories slowly fill in. Jusef’s angry character
is<strong> </strong><strong><span style="font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">the best role, partly because his gaze never lingers too long on any of his
adversaries.</span></strong></div>
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Audiences may appreciate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rosso Istanbul</i>’s study of life—human
life—or they may ask: What was the point of this movie? And the ending might
disappoint them—it’s ambiguous. Yet that ambiguity also offers a freedom to
interpret meaning, which works well with this dark, meditative genre.</div>
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The Bosporus’s upscale Karakoy
shoreline is the main setting of the film and plays a key role in the central
characters’ lives and the movie’s ending. As the story winds up, Jusef tells
Orhan that he and Deniz used to challenge each other to swim across the strait.
Jusef succeeded many times, despite the dangerous currents, but Deniz never
made it more than a few yards before turning back. The audience therefore assumes
Deniz, drunk the last time anyone saw him, took on the Bosporus feeling
omnipotent, or he committed suicide. Soon after, Jusef drowns in the waters,
probably suicide. In the last scene, Orhan sheds his clothes, dives into the
water, and begins swimming with a strong stroke. The screen goes black.</div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: DengXian; mso-fareast-language: ZH-CN; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">Over the course of the
movie, Orhan works through his past and frees himself from his dead condition
of twenty years. But what is his future? Does he have a new beginning in
Istanbul? Does he dive into the Bosphorus because life is dark and meaningless,
or does he dive in feeling empowered to reach the other side, a symbol of his
new strength? The viewer must decide an ending to this movie’s sad, but
realistic depiction of life.</span>
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</style>Gail Spilsburyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14824183223234322329noreply@blogger.com1