This year’s Graduation films of the Ma’aleh Film school’s Ultra-orthodox track

In the framework of the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, I went to see the graduating films of the Ultra-orthodox women filmmakers who have been studying at Ma’aleh.  The films were varied – documentary and fiction – and dealt with a wide range of subjects. Seven short films were screened.  All of them were compelling and provocative and succeeded in portraying important issues.

An award for outstanding student filmmaker was presented to Esti Viye.  She directed two films that were screened today:

• ·       Happily Ever After (13 minutes, drama) – Shira is a young mother who has left her kids with her parents and has organized a romantic anniversary getaway with her husband, who is a reserve soldier. She is excited to see him and is terribly disappointed as reality sets in and their time together is cut short.  Shira is finding it hard to hold it together.  This film really talked to me because there were so many miluim families in Israel who were traumatized and severely affected by the demands of the war of the last two years.
• ·       The Lifeguard (13 minutes, documentary) – Esti’s father is a lifeguard and he loves the water.  But Esti finds it difficult to enter the pool or the sea.  In trying to reconnect with her father over a past trauma, she realizes she must overcome her fear of the water.

There were two films by filmmaker Bat Sheva Haddad:

• ·       Houses of Silence (20 minutes, documentary) – The filmmaker and her daughter go on a personal journey documenting the homes in their neighborhood in Gedera which are hiding terrible secrets about babies who were kidnapped during the early years of the State.
• ·       He’s Coming (8 minutes, drama) – A story about abuse in the home. Before their father comes home, we can already feel that the mother and two daughters are afraid of him.  When he arrives, the 12-year-old takes her younger sister and runs away, while in the background we hear the father abusively yelling at their mother.

There were two films by filmmaker Sarah Libah Hanfling:

• ·       The Bride (15 minutes, drama) -– In the weeks leading up to her wedding, a woman, who has been previously married and traumatized, is grappling with her fears.
• ·       Still Here (14 minutes, drama) – A young mother is exhausted, depressed and overworked and finds herself pregnant again.  Out of despair, she contemplates suicide. A stunning performance by the actress, Tamar Diskin.

One more film was directed by Chayaleh Arnster:

• ·       Unacceptable (15 minutes, drama) -- Moishe is a yeshiva student and he loves music.  His parents are arranging a match for him but he only has eyes for Ayala.  In a world in which you can only get married by shidduch, he has to come up with a plan.

 

 

 

The Missing Children – a terrible chapter of our history

 Another documentary that premiered this week at the Jerusalem Film Festival -- 

Looking for Yadida, directed by Israela Shaer Meoded, is about the missing children chapter of our history. This is a tragic and terrible part of Israel’s history from the years of mass immigration just after the establishment of the state.

Looking for evidence of what happened to her own aunt (who disappeared as an infant in the early part of 1950), the director becomes involved, perhaps obsessed, with her research.  It leads her to expose a silenced trauma, one which involves the condescending attitude of a nation vis-à-vis the Yemenite and Mizrachi communities.  Because it was generally believed that the mothers of the babies of these immigrant communities were not capable of taking care of their multiple children, the babies were hustled away and placed in baby housing facilities, which were staffed by professional but overworked nurses.  Anyone with a brain would know that these babies would have been infinitely better off being cuddled, fed and loved by their own mothers.  So many of these babies died, and so many were kidnapped and disappeared into the hands of shady adoption deals.  The enormity of the tragedy is hard to bear.

The filmmaker uncovers testimonies in front of legal commissions, documents which have been doctored, unbelievable photographs of dozens and dozens of children housed in these WIZO baby  institutions, and chilling testimonies by doctors about medical research performed on dead babies.

Looking for Yadida (documentary, 64 minutes) is available from Stav Meron at Pardes Films, stav.meron750@gmail.com

On the same subject, I would recommend the fiction book by Ayelet Tsabari, entitled Songs for the Broken Hearted. The book tells the story of Zohara, a recently divorced academic, working towards her doctorate at NYU in literature.  When her mother passes away, Zohara returns from abroad to Petach Tikva.  As she discovers that her mother had not only a secret romance as a young woman, and that she was a second wife in a traditional Yemenite family, but that also her mother was a wonderful singer and wrote her own songs about unrequited love, Zohara finds herself drawn to her Yemenite roots. This is a book about family stories, about questioning your own identity and about the lost Yemenite and Mizrahi children who were kidnapped by “well-meaning” medical staff.  The story takes place on the background of two historical periods – 1950s ma’abarot and 1995 Oslo accords and anti-peace demonstrations leading to the incitement and ultimate violence that led to the assassination of Rabin. 

 

 

A Critical Look at the Story of Sephardi Jews in Israel

 Searching for a better life and dreaming of playing their part in the Zionist enterprise, hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries came to Israel during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. This film presents a story of how their rights to a better life were denied them by the Israeli government and its policies.

In her new film, The Forgotten Ones, filmmaker Michale Boganim presents us with two parallel stories – one is the story of her own father who came to Israel as an immigrant from Morocco in the 1960s.  The other is a road trip through Israeli peripheral towns, exposing stories of Mizrachi Jews of the first, second and third generations, who talk about the imbalance created within Israeli society between Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews.  These two levels – the individual stories and the personal story of the filmmaker -- are interwoven as Boganim takes us back in history to the founding of town such as Yerucham and Dimona, where new immigrants from Muslim lands were plopped down in the middle of desolate places which prevented their real absorption into Israeli society.

In Lod, Erez Biton talks about his immigration from Algeria in 1949 and how they were moved into abandoned Arab houses. In Ashkelon, Carmel tells the story of her parents who came from Morocco.  She talks about how the children of the immigrants had no choice about their education and were forced into vocational schools in order to obtain a trade and thus “they stole generations of dreams from the children of immigrants.”  Placement in remote development towns, separation from the rest of society, and being forced into vocational training are all presented as part of the policies of discrimination on the part of the government leadership who were consciously creating a working under-class.

A major story is told about the kidnapping of Yemenite children from children’s hospital wards, where they were taken away and never heard from again, supposedly for the good of the children!!!  This is a tragedy that is currently being explored within the Israeli media, making it another example in the condescending and discriminatory practices of the early years of the State.

Reuven Abergel, born in 1942, talks about his family’s aliyah in 1948 and the humiliation of being sprayed with DDT upon their arrival, since the authorities were worried that they would bring diseases into the country.  His family was sent to Musrara in Jerusalem, a war-torn border neighborhood.

Boganim’s family story is interwoven, creatively told in voice-over by the filmmaker herself.  Her father, Charlie, frustrated and disillusioned by the failures of his life in Israel, joined the Black Panthers in 1970.  In archival footage, we hear them shouting “enough racism, enough discrimination, enough of sleeping 10 in a room.”  But the political leadership, Golda Meir in particular, reacted with disdain, condescension, and police brutality.

The Yom Kippur war apparently absorbed these immigrants and united us but erased the social struggles of the Black Panthers.  Thus, Boganim’s family decided to leave Israel and go to live on the outskirts of Paris, where they were surrounded by immigrants from Arab lands.  Unable to fully find their place there, they eventually return to Israel.

The discomfort and disillusionment exist still today in the third generation. The story of the well-known singer, Neta Elkayam, is particularly poignant.  Born in 1980 in Netivot, a development town in the Negev, south of Beersheba, she is third generation Moroccan.  Her grandparents were the immigrants and her parents were the generation that tried desperately to assimilate within Israeli society.  Today, Elkayam has come full circle. Together with Amit Hai Cohen, her life partner, she performs North African music and has become drawn to return to visit Morocco and to learn more about its culture. 

Kobi’s parents are from Morocco and were sent in 1955 as new immigrants to help found the town of Dimona.  Now at the age of 37, Kobi has left Israel to “return” to Morocco where he says he feels more at home and has taken up Moroccan citizenship.

During the discussion following the screening of the film last week at the Other Israel Film Festival at the JCC in Manhattan, Michale Boganim stated “I discovered that there was a new generation of racism in the periphery. The racism is not only a subject of the past.  It still exists today.”   For me, this was a sharp indictment of Israeli governments in the past, especially during the long reign of the Labor party in Israel, until 1977 (a political party which barely exists anymore today).

The Forgotten Ones (documentary, 93 minutes) is a serious and critical look at the story of the hundreds of thousands of Mizrachi Jews who came to Israel to be part of the Zionist dream and found themselves severely discriminated against and forced to live on the periphery of Israeli society – both physically and socially.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Queen Khantarisha

Queen Khantarisha, directed by Israela Shaer Meoded (2009) is a fascinating documentary portrait of two creative, expressive and articulate women, both mature writers of Yemenite background. It is also a film about self-expression, feminism and gender issues of the older religious generation, about love, disappointment, the boundaries of sexuality and the burden of being a woman in a traditional society.

Nomi Amrani writes the lyrics for popular love songs in the Yemenite language for a pop singer who performs at weddings and clubs. While her husband lingers in the background, she talks openly about having been married at the age of 9, while she was still at school and still playing jump-rope. She says she never experienced love and she writes her songs out of disappointment rather than experience.

Bracha Seri is a poet and writer who talks about the loss of her academic and intellectual dreams when she had her two children. She writes about rape, rebellion, fantasy and sexuality. Together with her daughter, Nitzi (with whom she has a stormy yet loving relationship), she performs a public reading of an alternative Purim shpiel (play) that she has written. The title of her shpiel is Queen Khantarisha – The Ridiculous Queen.

The film was screened in the category "In the Spirit of Freedom" at the Jerusalem International Film Festival (July 2009) and won an award in the documentary competition at the International Women's Film Festival held in Rehovot, Israel (September 2009).

A documentary, 53 minutes, the film is available from the producer, Osnat Trabelsi, at Trabelsi Productions.

Thank you to Ellen Simon for drawing my attention to this very special film!