Combining the Personal and National

One of my favorite documentary film styles is the personal documentary which combines the personal and the national.

In her new prizewinning film, Wall, filmmaker Moran Ifergan combines her own personal story with so many of the issues that divide us in contemporary Israel.  A graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, Ifergan is from a traditional, religious, Moroccan family in Beersheba.  She herself was religious until the age of 18. Two of Moran Ifergan’s previous documentary films were reviewed on this blog.

Ifergan has made an interesting artistic decision to combine a personal soundtrack of phone-calls, discussions and What’s App messages together with visuals, mostly from the women’s section at the Kotel.  She spent a full year filming at the Kotel, around the clock, searching for meaningful and life-transforming events.  Why the Kotel?  She admits that the film deals with faith, gender issues, problems of young couples, loneliness, and family – on the personal level.  And with issues of holiness, religion, politics, and nationalism -- on the national level. What better venue could be chosen to talk about questions of religion in her life and issues of nationalism -- and combine it all with the intimacy and confessional nature of talking about her own personal story. 

And why is the soundtrack the only place where the personal exists in the film, creating a distance and making it so that we never see the filmmaker, only hear her conversations throughout?  She offers two reasons for this: “I use my personal story to talk about something more universal. Also, I wanted to deal with how a personality can be represented by sound and not by picture.”  It’s amazing how well this technique succeeds, creating two parallel stories – one in the soundtrack and one in the visual.

Ifergan is a young mother going through a divorce.  Her recorded conversations are with her mother, her sister, and her close friend.  Her traditional and old-fashioned mother does not approve of her life choices – not of her filmmaking and not of her splitting with her husband of three years.  On the other hand, her best friend relates to her loneliness and lifestyle crisis honestly and openly in their recorded conversations. 

One night, along comes a religious woman who tells her that she can see in her eyes that she is missing inner peace.  And she proceeds to tell her all about mikveh, and the spirit of God that you can let into your life by fulfilling the laws of family purity. This dialogue is an example of the filmmaker’s letting us in to encounter her own grappling with religion and a religious lifestyle. She also draws our attention to the ultra-nationalism of Jerusalem Day with its flag waving and its indoctrination of our young people.  We catch a glimpse of the military ceremonies at the Kotel and the tears of Memorial Day.  But most importantly we become involved up close and intimate with dozens of young girls and women praying at the Kotel.

Wall (documentary, 64 minutes) provides a fascinating look at issues that are important to us – how we relate to Jerusalem, to the Kotel, to a religious lifestyle, to anti-Arab feeling and fanatic nationalism.  The film is available from Cinephil.

Sentimental Comedy

From the trailer, you might think that Maktub, directed by Oded Raz, is a low-brow comedy about crime and violence.  But surprisingly, it is a sentimental story about good deeds and helping make people’s wishes come true!

Our two main characters are thugs who make a living collecting protection money from Jerusalem restaurants.  After surviving a life-transforming event, they decide to change their lives and do good deeds, helping grant people their wishes.  They set out to read the notes that people put into the Kotel (Western Wall), and then to figure out how to help them.  They put on a fancy bar mitzvah party for a single Russian Mom who can’t otherwise afford it.  They help a fellow put sparks back into his marriage.  And they help a woman who is having trouble getting pregnant. 

The film draws attention to so many issues in our contemporary world, including immigrants, cross-dressers, underworld criminals, chef restaurants, parental responsibility and lingering superstition. 

Our two main characters (played by Guy Amir and Hanan Savyon) are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they are loyal friends, sentimental, and good-hearted.  As Sephardi stereotypes, they sprinkle their vocabulary with a lot of Arabic slang.  The title of the film, “maktub”, means "fate".  We can interpret it to mean that it was fate or destiny that the people who put prayers into the Kotel would be helped by these two guys!!

Maktub is entertaining, and the violence is over-the-top, making it mostly not realistic (which is certainly preferable!). I certainly enjoyed this film!

Student Films from Ma'aleh

Just last week, I had the opportunity of attending the screening of this year's graduation films from the Ma'aleh Film School.    I love viewing and analyzing student films because they provide us with a window into the subjects that are of concern to the younger generation.  If you are doing film programming, take note of this year's group of six films which are of particularly high quality and definitely worthwhile!  There are three short dramas, one video-art and two documentaries.

Three Short Dramas

Muktzeh

short drama, 28 min., Dir: Alon Rabinovich

Valdimir is the lighting technician at the Jerusalem Theater, but he dreams of much more -- he wants to be an actor and play Shylock on the stage.  This is an interesting and authentic drama about Jewish identity, about who is a Jew, and about who has a monopoly on being Jewish. 

Riding his bike to work one day, Vladimir meets an old friend from Russia who has become haredi and is helping people put on tefillin on Ben Yehuda St.  His friend puts the tefillin on him and Vladimir is quite moved by the experience.  But he finds it a challenge to discuss with his wife the changes that he is feeling.   The story develops and it is interesting to see how the couple eventually finds their way.

The Little Dictator

short drama, 29 min., Dir: Nurit Cohn

Yossi is a nerdy professor whose area of specialization is totalitarian leadership.  Unappreciated by his students, Yossi goes home at the end of the day to a domineering wife and three children.  At a family weekend where the extended family is celebrating Grandma's 90th birthday, he finds himself in a surreal situation, but is able to vindicate himself.  A tour-de-force in acting and directing. 

The French Revolution

short drama, 21 min., Dir: Hai Afik

A noisy street disturbance bursts into the home of a young couple as two hooligans barge in and destroy their well-being.  A very hard-hitting film about cruelty, humiliation and self-respect.

Video-Art

Wall, Crevice, Tear 

video-art, 11 min., no language, Dir.: Tehila Ra'anan

A poetic visit to the Kotel (Western Wall).  This is a film of beauty and yearning,  filmed during different seasons of the year, expressing  feelings about the meaning of the Kotel for both the pious and the secular. 

About Disabilities - Two documentaries

Hannah is Beautiful

doc., 22 min., Dir.: Shira Meisher

Hannah is a 37-year-old woman with mental challenges, who lives in an apartment sponsored by the non-profit organization, Shekel.  This is a touching look at a woman who desperately wishes she could find love.  She works full-time in a government cafeteria and is terribly disappointed when she is refused a raise.  She takes great care with what she wears, her make-up, how she looks.  On the one hand, we've seen films like this before.  On the other, it is a poignant portrait of a wonderful woman who believes that she has to make the best of what life has given her.  

Mazal Means Luck

doc., 29 min., Dir: Mazal Ben-Yishai

The filmmaker's parents are mentally challenged and the filmmaker was brought up in one household by both her parents and grandparents.  In fact, the film beautifully integrates old family movies in order to tell the story of this remarkable family.  Now that her grandparents are getting older, they are grappling with where her parents will go to live when the grandparents are gone.  Is it the young woman's responsibility to live with her parents, sacrificing her life to them in order to take care of them?