Toronto Jewish Film Festival
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival's
ninth season had, as usual, a variety
of films, centred on pre-war shtetl life,
the Holocaust, Israel, political
themes and, this year, a larger than usual number
treating artists and
musicians. The opening documentary feature (which
also launched the
Montreal Jewish Film Festival and closed the Vancouver
Festival) was The
Travellers: This Land is Your Land, by Robert Cohen,
about the well-known
Canadian singing group. Since The Travellers...
has special meaning for the
Jewish left, it will be reviewed in a separate article
in a forthcoming
issue. I was able to see eighteen films of various
lengths, some of which
crossed boundaries.
One film, the British entry Simon
Magus by Ben Hopkins, deals with pre-war
antisemitism in an unnamed shtetl. The title character
is a sort of local
idiot who talks to himself and makes up his own
prayers, thus earning the
wrath of the rabbi. Yet in the long run he becomes
the saviour of the Jews.
Simon is spat upon and is the
target of the children's stones, and is
thus driven into the hands of a scheming Gentile,
Hase, who competes with a young Jew for a property on which to develop
a market along a new railroad
line. Simon actually begins to prepare for conversion
to Christianity, and
Hase involves him, unwittingly, in his plot to exploit
the Passover blood
libel for his own economic gain. Eventually, however,
Simon substitutes a
rabbit for the dead child he is to carry in a box
into the synagogue, and
the burning down of the temple is thwarted.
A secondary theme is a subtle satire
on the position of women, especially
educated ones, in traditional Jewish society. The
film counterpoises two
non-Jews, the friendly poet-squire, who owns the
site of the future market,
and the nefarious Hase. Beautifully filmed, it uses
sombre bluish tints
when Simon appears, and more natural colour
for the majority of the other
scenes.
The blood libels, and other anti-Jewish
frame-ups spread throughout Europe
by authoritarian and fascist regimes, led directly
to the unspeakable
horrors of the Holocaust. Year in, year out, new
representations in film
and video try to grapple with its meaning. Dan Setton
and Tor Ben Mayor's
documentary, Kapo, deals with the phenomenon of
the Jewish collaborators
who served as camp commanders, police, and in special
units in slave labour and death camps.
When Adolf Eichmann was being tried
in 1961 for his role in the "Final
Solution", Jews who aided the Nazis in exterminating,
or beating and
maiming their own, were also facing charges. In
Kapo, a police
investigator, Michael Gilad, a special investigator
into Jewish criminal
activity under the Nazis, provides continuity. Himself
a survivor, he
expresses satisfaction that he did not succumb to
the privileges offered
the "Kapos", or camp police.
Yet former Jewish commanders, especially
of women's units at Auschwitz,
justify their activities as "helping to save lives",
one even claiming she
took her job "to feel more like a human being"!
Witnesses, however, tell of
the bestiality of these hirelings of the Nazis,
most of whom perished
themselves, although somewhat later than most of
the victims.
Gilad explains that as material conditions
in the camps and ghettoes
worsened, "Jewish solidarity was further weakened."
But he adds, "No
situation, no matter how horrible, can justify you
killing me." After the
war, Jewish collaborators blended in with the victims.
Some hid, some went
to the West; and 400 ended up in Israel. These latter
were often recognized
on the streets and other public places, evoking
the wrath of former
inmates. One, orchestra conductor Hanoch Barenblatt,
a wartime police chief
in a camp, was sighted at a concert in Tel Aviv
and brought to trial in
1959. He received a five-year sentence for his brutality
in kidnapping
orphans, and forcing the separation of siblings.
He eventually left Israel
to resume his musical career in ... Germany!
A former prisoner says, "Without Jewish
collaborators, the Nazis would not
have succeeded!" Whether true or not, some collaborators
try to "explain"
their behaviour. But Michael Gilad says, "I am grateful
I preserved my
human dignity." What is missing in this film is
some insight into the
social strata from which were recruited the "Kapos"
and the "Judenratler"
(members of the Jewish councils set up by the Nazis
in the ghettoes), and
their ideological orientation.
I was able to see three Israeli films:
Sleeping with the Enemy: An
Israeli-Palestinian Journey to Japan, by Dov Gil-Har,
and two videos
centred on rock music, Vulcan Junction and Psychedelic
Zion.
Sleeping... follows a group of Israelis and
Palestinians who took part
last year in the annual joint trip sponsored by
Japan's Foreign Ministry.
(Having economic interests in the Middle East, especially
in oil, Japan
sees the easing of tensions between the two groups
as vital.) Included were
men and women, young and middle-aged, from various
walks of life, including
security personnel from both camps, who begin to
break the ice after their
first encounters.
The title refers to the visitors being
thrown together in a dormitory
during one stop, eliciting remarks like "We sleep
side by side ... freedom
fighters and policemen." Another says of the Israelis,
"I have seen them at
times as the enemy to be eliminated." The travelers
feel freer abroad to
discuss divisive issues like discrimination against
Arab Israelis, Golda
Meir's denial of the existence of "Palestinians",
the future of Jerusalem,
the two-state solution, boundaries, etc. Israeli
policeman Benny Henner
says, referring to an Arab, "He's an integral
part of the State of
Israel", then adds quickly, "a somewhat underprivileged
part"! One man
sums it up: "One way or another, Palestinian needs
will be recognized, and
those of the Israeli people preserved. This is our
common future."
The visit to Hiroshima is the most moving moment,
as members of both
communities contemplate the unspeakable disaster
of atomic annihilation.
The travelers dance and sing together, but
the narrator asks: "How many
durable friendships were really formed here? And
how will this help peace?"
One can't help wondering, watching this video in
the midst of the second
Intifada, where members from both sides stand today,
and whether any
contacts have survived.
There are few political echoes in
Psychedelic Zion, a documentary about the
Israeli youth drug culture, raves, police "busts",
etc., except for the
theme song, reflecting a vague state of anomie:
"In the 90's/Between
Netanyahu and Rabin/The Internet and fundamentalism/Peace
treaties and
bombs/Troops in Lebanon, and withdrawal from Lebanon..."
Three young people set up a company to organize raves, and attract thousands
before the police and the courts move in. Finally, one ends up in a New
York prison; the second, too, moves there; and the third returns to India.
The fictional Vulcan Junction, the
name of a bar, was directed by Eran
Riklis, who made the excellent Cup Final. There
he explored the ties that
develop between a PLO captor and his Jewish captive
in Lebanon in 1982, as
both cheer for Italy during the soccer world cup.
The new film deals with
the rise and fall of a rock group, "Genetic Code",
but also touches on
Israeli-Palestinian tensions on the eve of the Yom
Kippur War.
The soccer theme recurs. The Sephardi
star, Avi Elbaz, is about to leave
for Amsterdam and a world cup match. His lover,
Dalia, begins resenting his
macho attitudes and violence. They also argue over
the place of Arabs in
Israel. Dalia, who writes for a magazine edited
by Uri Avnery (today head
of the Gush Shalom peace movement), says,
"The Arab nation is fighting for
its identity. When you understand this, we'll have
peace. If not, there'll
be fire." She breaks up with Avi, and has a tryst
with singer Shelly. He
moves to the U.S., but fails in his quest for stardom.
Dalia works with
Avnery until his magazine folds, then becomes a
political columnist for an
unnamed daily. Avi retires from soccer, and serves
time in a Brazilian
jail.
Other documentaries, too, focused on performing artists. Two of these, The Komediant, and Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, dealt with the immense success, then troubled personal life, of U.S. artists Peisachke Burstein, and the title comedian, respectively. The Weintraubs Syncopators and The Jazzman from the Gulag highlight German-born musicians who fled the Nazis.
Burstein was a popular singer, actor,
and recording star who came out of
New York's Second Avenue Yiddish theatre that featured
melodrama, and
sometimes tasteless vulgarity. His fame spread to
pre-war Europe and South
America. In 1962, he produced high quality shows
like Itzik Manger's Di
Megille (The Book of Esther) in Israel. But in 1952,
his company there was
slapped with a tax on Yiddish theatre, considered
as being in a foreign
tongue. Burstein's wife, Lillian Lux, dreamed of
a higher level of theatre,
and his children, Mike and Susan, put on the stage
when still children,
found their father rigid and authoritarian.
Narrated by Robert De Niro, the Lenny
Bruce video traces the meteoric rise,
then tragic fall, of the stand-up comedian, who
was singled out by the
courts and authorities as "obscene," while other
performers were treated
with kid gloves for like "offences". According to
Robert B. Weide's
documentary, Bruce suffered because he thrashed
the hypocrisy of the
Catholic Church, ridiculed racism and its advocates,
attacked the Viet Nam
war, and offended judges by refusing to buy
them off. From being a
top-earning performer, Bruce sank into poverty,
drugs, and sexual
promiscuity. He foolishly decided to defend himself-against
the advice of
his lawyers who were sure they could get him off-and
didn't rally his large
following to his defence.
Weintraubs Syncopators were a highly
successful German-Jewish jazz and
circus-style band that drew huge crowds in the 20's
and 30's in their
homeland and abroad. They made a smashing eighteen-month
tour of the
U.S.S.R, starting in 1935, then went to Japan, where
they were also
acclaimed. With the rise of Nazism, they were forced
to leave Germany.
Several eventually landed in Australia where, like
German anti-fascists in
Canada, they were interned as enemy aliens.
One of the outstanding musicians in
the Syncopators was trumpeter Eddie
Rosner, the subject of The Jazzman from the Gulag,
a French-Dutch video
co-production by Pierre-Henry Salfati. His fame
spread world-wide, and jazz
greats Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman held him
in high esteem. While
performing in Poland, he met his first wife, Ruth,
daughter of famed
actress Ida Kaminska. When war struck Poland, Rosner
fled to the Soviet
side, dressed as a Nazi officer! He formed a large
jazz band, and played
for Red Army troops and even Stalin, but was later
labeled a "foreign spy"
and jailed in the Far East. His great musical skills
helped him survive the
"anti-cosmopolitanism" hysteria.
When I was hospitalized with dysentery
in 1955 in Leningrad, I heard daily
announcements on the radio about Rosner's reconstituted
band. Once
released, I saw posters throughout the city advertising
his shows. But it
was only through the video that I learned of his
terrible ordeal in the
camps, due to his refusal to confess to spying,
Because he was cleared of
spy charges but not officially "rehabilitated",
Rosner was refused an exit
visa to travel abroad. When he finally left for
West Germany, he had no
official papers, and thus was ineligible for a pension
for victims of
Naziism. It was only on August 9, 1976, the day
after he died, that the
pension was approved.