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.

 

 

 

Through the Wall by Rama Burshtein

Through the Wall, directed by the religious filmmaker, Rama Burshtein, is a new comedy drama, an impressive film about providence, faith, matchmaking, and a woman’s desire for marriage, all on the backdrop of life within the haredi (ultra-orthodox) community in Israel.   Michal is a 32-year-old single woman, religious-by-choice, living within the haredi community and hunting for her intended already for many years.   She is obviously a unique person since she makes a living by traveling around in her little mini-van, taking her petting zoo to birthday parties.  This gives a quirky feel to the entire film!

When Michal’s new fiancé changes his mind about their engagement, instead of cancelling the hall and the wedding dress, she declares that her faith in God tells her that she will have a groom on the date originally planned. 

Of course, you can’t leave things to chance, or to God’s providence, you have to help a bit, and she sets out looking for her groom.  First she seeks out help from a religious woman who offers a superstitious ceremony in order to help Michal find her intended. Instead of becoming a ridiculously comic scene, it takes a turn for the serious when the woman forces Michal to admit what it is she’s looking for.  This scene provides a series of wonderful and touching revelations and we discover that, in addition to the obvious things -- marriage, love, and companionship – she is also looking for status as a married woman within the community and for the opportunity to entertain others at her own Friday night dinner table.   

Don’t you feel sorry for those young haredi men on the street who keep their eyes down and are unable to look at women passersby?  Michal goes on dates arranged by matchmakers and one of the dates is with a seemingly lovely young man, but he is unable to look at her.  He explains that the woman he marries will be more beautiful because she will be the only woman he looks at!  Michal is appalled at this.

She even travels as far as Oman.  While praying and crying at the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, a surprising experience brings her some hope.  You might think that Michal is willing to marry just about anyone, as long as he will agree to show up on the date planned, but it’s not true.  She is apparently quite careful, and turns so many men away as a result of her sense of humor, her insight and her biting tongue.

To those who remember Rama Burshtein’s award-winning debut film, Fill the Void, this is similar in that it is a feel-good story that takes place within the haredi community.  It is also about marriage and matchmaking, and it has wonderful pacing and a complex story.  This film differs from the other in that Fill the Void was a serious drama and Through the Wall is a comedy drama.  The main characters, and even some of the secondary ones, are portrayed in a compelling and in-depth manner, but some are comic characters. The script has quirky elements and you just love Michal and her sisters. 

Through the Wall (aka The Wedding Plan) is available from The Match Factory.

Fill the Void

This week, Fill the Void, directed by Rama Burshtein, opened in Israel.  The film was screened in the competition at the Venice Film Festival, 2012, just recently, where the lead actress, Hadas Yaron, won an award for best actress.

The first scene sets the context and the theme -- the audience watches as 18-year-old Shira and her mother are eyeing Shira's intended as he nervously stands by the dairy counter in a supermarket.  The context  is an ultra-orthodox Hassidic community and the theme is arranged marriages.   

If we truly value diversity and pluralism, then it is surprising that we haven't seen more films that provide us with greater understanding and empathy for the ultra-orthodox  community, especially ones with so much charm!  Although there have been many films in recent years that offer a window into this world -- Kadosh (Amos Gitai), Ushpizin (Gidi Dar),  Secrets (Avi Nesher), Eyes Wide Open (Haim Tabakman), God's Neighbors (Meni Yaesh) -- all of them have been critical or poked fun at the world that they portray.  Different from the others, Fill the Void provides an intimate, loving  and sensitive look at the community.  

Although not didactic in any way, the filmmaker, Rama Burshtein, herself an ultra-orthodox woman, has  included many scenes that provide the viewer with an introduction to this community, its religious beliefs and practices, including ritual washing of the hands, giving tzedakah (charity) at Purim, consoling the bereaved, and wedding preparations -- and offer a glimpse at their problems, often confusing and sometimes trying.  This is a unique and tight-knit community in which people go to ask their rabbi for advice and girls dream only of marrying their bashert (promised match). 

Not a complex film -- although the story does have some twists and turns -- this is a romantic drama  --charming, well-made, somewhat artistic  (lots of traditional music, constant use of close-up) and highly recommended!  Also, it offers a welcome relief from the usual screen offerings which include so much  vulgarity and violence!  

Fill the Void is available from Norma Productions.

The filmmaker is quoted talking about the haredi world in a Reuters report that appeared in Ha'aretz on Sept. 3, 2012 --
"People don't know much about this world, so it's not a question of celebration or criticism -- it's a window into this world," said New York-born Burshtein, who grew up in a secular family but became ultra-Orthodox.  "I Love this world, I come from it, I chose it, I was not born in it  But I think we hear many voices (in the film), I think it's open," she added.

The Matchmaker

Avi Nesher's new feature film, The Matchmaker (Hebrew title: Once I Was), is a story about love – searching for love, coming-of-age love and tragic love, all in the context of post-Holocaust Israel, where survivors were still hesitant to talk about their experiences.

It is the summer of 1968, right after the Six Day War. Arik is 16 years-old. His best friend's cousin, Tamara, comes to visit for the summer. She is an American girl, espousing free love and rock 'n roll.

The film follows two parallel, poignant and intersecting stories – Arik's summer job with Yankele, who works as a marriage broker and deals in smuggled goods; and Arik's first love affair with Tamara.

Yankele is a Holocaust survivor whose office is in the Lower City of Haifa, where Arik quickly learns about prostitution and illegal gambling. Arik is living in two disparate worlds. He is growing up in a middle class neighborhood high up the mountain in Haifa, where he goes to youth movement meetings with Ashkenazi and Sephardi friends; and he has a summer job in the seedy Lower City where he is meeting all kinds of people, learning about love and crime.

Yankele -- whose face is badly scarred – a metaphor for the terrible suffering that he underwent "over there" -- is in love with Clara, a fragile and elegant woman who is so hurt inside by her experiences that she is unable to love. This is the tragedy of Yankele's story.

Arik's father remembers Yankele from his childhood. He too is a Holocaust survivor, but he never talks about it. This is a time when Israelis still think that all survivors obviously did something terrible in order to survive – as if all the women were prostitutes and all the men were kapos. And what if some of them did do terrible things to survive a terrible time and place? Should we respect them any less?

An additional plot element: Yankele's office is located in a run-down part of Haifa behind a movie theater, run by a family of dwarfs, survivors of Mengele's medical experiments. Poignantly, their movie theater plays only love stories. One of them, a beautiful woman named Sylvie, who is short statured and also a Holocaust survivor -- is searching for love through Yankele's matchmaking for unhappy souls.

This is a remarkable coming of age story, filled with emotion – love, despair and malice -- combining young love with Holocaust memory, vivid and quirky characters in a time when Israelis were still unable to grapple with or talk about the Holocaust. Looking back on this, it is amazing to me that in the late 1960's, the Holocaust was still a taboo subject in Israeli culture. So much has changed since then. But this film chose to only hint at the subject without hitting you in the face with it, in a very sensitive and sincere way.

The film is a partial literary adaptation, inspired by When Eagles Fly by Amir Gutfreund, well-known Israeli author of Our Holocaust. Avi Nesher is well-known for his other films: Dizengoff 99, The Troupe (Sing Your Heart Out), and more recently, Turn Left at the End of the World and Secrets.

The Matchmaker is distributed internationally by 6 Sales