Reviews

Having grown up in 1950's Hungary (I left during the '56 Revolution), I remember very clearly the great 6:3 win against England, the first time the English national team had ever lost on their home field. I also recall the political period, though I was a child, with my parents drawing dark curtains while we huddled over the big radio, trying to listen to Radio Free Europe.

This film manages to capture beautifully both the excitement about the Hungarian soccer team and the drabness of the economic and political situation. The story begins in contemporary Hungary when a garbage man is asked by an attractive young woman to clean out a house she inherited from her grandfather. To his amazement, the room is filled with soccer memorabilia, featuring that grand national team of the 50s, starring Puskas, Kocsis, and his (and my) favorite--Hidegkuti. When he finds Hidegkuti's game jersey, he puts it on and literally swoons back in time to the day of the 6:3 match. It is also the day of his birth, and what he knows--the final score of the match--is combined with what he does not know--his birth mother's identity.

The film then stays in the past, in turn hilarious and somber, as Tutti runs from radio to radio to listen and anticipate the historic moments of the game. In the process, he makes friends and enemies, indirectly exposing the meanness and stupidity of the Rakosi communist period, especially its informers. In a touching moment, Tutti proudly begins to sing the Hungarian National Anthem, not realizing that national pride during this period has been forced underground. Without missing a beat, Tutti switches into the Internationale, the unifying song for the proletariat. At times surrealistic and always entertaining, 6:3 is a wonderful trip into the Hungarian past where one would hardly want to visit much less live!

This experimental film, also identified as a documentary, needs all of its 66 minutes as well as the time it takes for the credits to run to establish some coherence. Working backwards from the credits, the audience will understand that this is an Arab + Israeli collaboration, that it is funded by various sources from the University of Michigan, that among the many walls it depicts, the Apartheid Wall is also included, and many other tidbits of information that help clarify the film's point of view. Specifically, it is anti-war, anti-occupation, and ultimately anti-Israel, its imagery carefully connecting all who in the film's view are or have been oppressed, from South Africa to "Palestine." Though independent of the image, the sound strategy works with it, alternating and blending readings and pronouncements in English, Hebrew, and Arabic that generally address the plight of children and the physical destruction wrought by war.

When viewers approach this film (as all but reviewers or students will), only once and from the beginning, they will access the point of view but search in vain for an intellectual argument in defense of that point of view. The visual and aural presentation of filmic material here is not designed to "document" an argument. Moving slowly from image to black to image again, the film does, in fact, submit a dazzling variety of cinematic manipulations for a viewer's consideration: flashes, cut-outs, animation, 3D projections, drawings, and lettering. There are moments when the point of view is manifest, as when the painting or poster of Arafat gazes from the wall or when the word "Palestine" is clearly printed in Roman lettering within many words scrawled in Arabic. Also, the recurring presence of lovely and mysterious folded paper birds is eventually explained by one of the readings. But such moments of appeal to the intellect are occasional. For most of its minutes, the film's appeal is non-verbal and emotional, documenting only how the filmmaker feels, not how or why she believes in the cause. How one feels is unassailable and thus not debatable, but a film that offers no argument is self expression, more "fiction" than "documentary," experimental or not. If categorized as an installation project, it could play continuously in an art gallery or museum, offering often poetic images of walls, both constructed and natural, and in such a space, be very much appreciated for its art and deep convictions.

Calling this playful and hilarious film "Panic" is the first of many entertaining misdirections offered by writer/director Attila Till. Using the conventions of the mystery, the horror, the romance, the domestic drama, and a half dozen other genres, he concocts a consistently amusing film. That one cannot help being drawn into the melodramatic concerns of the characters, no matter how obvious and cartoon-like, is also part of Till's joke. Even as he (and his audience) laughs at the dramatics, he also mocks film-making (and himself) at its ability to manipulate the audience.

The title's obvious reference is to the condition of its main character, the beautiful Agi Gubik, a successful executive who has checked herself into an exclusive therapy spa to cope with her panic attacks. Ordered about by the strident but cheerful therapist (Judit Schell), she suffers through wacky sessions, from Western Siberian Spitting Therapy to American Note Reading Sessions. But her bizarre encounters are more than matched by the insanity outside the spa. Her bored mother (veteran actress Ildiko Bansagi) sets false fire alarms that lead to coffee and cake with the firemen. Her brother is convinced that people are being inhabited by aliens vulnerable only to water. Two gay cops struggle to reconcile their generational differences as they train for the SWAT competition in Orlando. The family friend predicts deaths in the family and shops for used sex toys, while her daughter anxiously tests her baby's breathing with a tissue on a regular basis. In short, people are in a panic, in and out of asylums, but not about international relations, global warming, energy shortages, or financial collapse. Rather, they are paralyzed by fears of the most personal, the most mundane, and the most ordinary concerns as they live soap opera lives.

Till's editing creates the most wonderful and witty juxtapositions, exploiting the alternate narration strategy to its fullest, sometimes cutting not only from scene to scene but also from genre to genre and between fantasy and reality, with scenes just seconds in length complete with their corresponding and appropriate soundtrack and musical background. Rather than confusing, this pace is exhilarating and absolutely coherent. His transitions are equally clever, spinning from a barrel bottom to a mixer, from brick to a painting above a bed, from a tilted photo to a slanted fantasy representing a panic attack. On a practical level, given our financially challenged time, he inserts himself in a cameo, a la Hitchcock, as an MC pitching a product in a mall and suggests a new career for unemployed writers with the role of Alex, who is hired by a man to do the actual breaking up with a girl friend. As the ex-lover explains, in a crisis, one needs a professional to speak for you.

This is a truly droll film, lovingly teasing all of us who have been deceived by the magic of film to live our lives as if they being projected on the silver screen for an audience's approval.

The name of the murder victim found with a candle in his mouth suggests that he is an outsider in Hungary. The lead detective, Lieutenant Sapphire, is a gypsy, who despite being adopted and raised by "regular" Hungarians, has his nose rubbed in his minority status every day. His sidekick is Jewish, the prime suspect is another gypsy sleeping with the murdered man's wife, and for good measure, there are despised Romanians among the petty criminals and potential witnesses. These are some of the principals in Gabor Detter's brilliant examination of a society brimming with ethnic resentments, told within the conventions of a police procedural.

The murder mystery, however, is no mere excuse for some sort of sociological polemic about the tensions in Hungarian post-communist society. Rather, whatever we learn about the frictions between outsiders and "real" Hungarians as embodied by Kocsis, the precinct captain, emerges naturally from the investigation: the interrogations, the footwork, and the speculation among the cops, witnesses, and suspects. The lanky Lt. Sapphire, with his hangdog face, is as tough as any hardboiled American detective , but as he is also an Eastern European, he is emotional, loving, wracked by self-doubt, and in love with his vegetarian wife Eva, whose dirty talk is in English and who walks around in the natural as often as she can. And if the case were not complicated enough, why not shelter the teenage gypsy girl who had been sold by her own sister to the murdered man and is the subject of an intense search? Ultimately, "Tableau" is an exhilarating ride for all of its 120 minutes, containing a surprising amount of spoken English, an incredible number of scatological references, significant nudity, and terse, exciting dialogue that is translated into wonderfully idiomatic English subtitles. Also impressive is Detter's visual strategy between scenes, where he puts an extra jump into jump cuts by moving characters magically, an approach that pays off in a beautifully rendered final shot. As for his cinematography, look for a scene in which silvery, rustling tree branches become part of the interior space of the police car where Lt. Sapphire talks with teenage gypsy girl. The image is so perfectly integrated with mood, story and character that it will bring tears to your eyes!

Avi Belkin's "Elephant Graveyard" is a tour de force, an English language film made in Israel, depicting an American icon.

The fictional film imagines the final days of Johnny Weissmuller, the original Tarzan, inter-cutting black and white scenes from his first film with color scenes of his days at the hospital. The film is elegiac rather than sad, filled with ironic contrasts. It is striking, for example, that fewer words are spoken in the contemporary scenes than in the inter-cut scenes, though those early films still skirted the days of the silent era! Equally striking is the difference between the slow shuffle of the aged film star and his flights in the jungle. And at the end, Weissmuller is alone, no chimp, no Jane, no jungle, not even bad guys, just age. The actor playing Weissmuller achieves a dignity and solemnity that denies pity and makes his decision believable. Though the film ends in silence, what resonates at the end is the defiant, curling yell of the Tarzan, prince of the jungle. In an interesting comment on our verbal society, sound dominates words.

Speaking of words, the Israeli filmmaker is quite successful at evoking American English, with a few notable exceptions. The rhythms of the narrator meant to recreate the typical news broadcaster is not quite native, a person would "wander" in the jungle, not "wonder," and the contraction for "you are" is "you're," not "your." Of course, given the gradual erosion of correctness in the United States, the errors may argue for the filmmaker's even greater familiarity with American culture!

This short film from Hungary addresses the theme of personal indifference to the drama of others suffering in an unusual way. Director Laszlo Nemes Jeles risks extreme close ups and soft focus, refuses action, and limits movement, making "Patience" (the festival title is "With A Little Patence") a rather daring approach to the topic.

The film offers an epigram from T.S. Eliot about neither seeing nor hearing, but the appropriate thematic guidelines for this film are Breughel's "Fall of Icarus" and W. H. Auden's discussion of the painting in "Musee des Beaux Arts." In short, those in the painting—the plowman, the shepherd, and the people aboard the sailing ship--continue with their lives as the unfortunate youth's white legs disappear into the Aegean. So too, the buttoned clerk in "Patience" works through her routine, relieving her boredom with the broach she slips out of a breast pocket, and in a stunning finale, closes her window to a scene beyond her office that is horrific not for what it depicts but for what we know it tells us about historical events.

There is much to admire in the concept and technique of this award winning film that was also nominated for the Golden Lion at Cannes in 2008. The sound is wonderfully evocative, combining ambient office noise with an unidentifiable but elegiac aria and the incessant click-clack of the many typewriters that is like the initial appearance of a toothache; we are too aware of it though it has not yet become painful. The closed yet expressive face of the clerk is recaptured in the feminine figure contained within the military cut of her shirt, a subtle connection to the scene outside the busy office. And yet, the long set up of the drab office, the repetitive activities, and the too dark interior are perhaps too great a price to pay for the brilliant and stunning outdoor scene and the final shot of the closed windows that look like prison bars.

This short film from Hungary uses an inventive strategy to dramatize the theme of personal indifference to the suffering of others.

Daniel Erdelyi's approach is to fill the 4 minute "411-Z" with action. While one of the characters remains blind to the drama around him, another works furiously to help. Unfortunately, it is the captain, the person in charge, who sets the ship's till on automatic and leaves the pilothouse to warm and eat his soup, and it is a mere sailor who notices a body and then a survivor in the waters. The sailor runs from aft to fore to engage the attention of his captain, but given the length of the ship and the time it takes to navigate it, the sight of the people in the river is momentarily lost, and the captain fails to act. The sailor's continued attempt to save the swimmer, the captain's total self-absorption, and the reality of a long ship that presents different perspectives is a wonderful metaphor for the inaction of leaders who steer the ships of state. Erdelyi establishes this picture of passivity in "411-Z" not by imitating it but by denying it with narrative and action.

Interestingly, another short from Hungary, the award winning "Turelem" or "With a Little Patience," addresses the same theme but approaches it very differently. They both worth seeing!

Dror Sabo, director of No Exit, has described his film as a comment on Israeli society that tries to divert itself from its painful daily reality by turning to daily "Reality Shows." In fact, though the film does condemn cultures that can be manipulated by shrewd entrepreneurs to live their lives through broadcast programs, its satire is directed at the men and women of the TV industry, particularly the "reality" segment. The theater audience is also targeted. We might think we are in on the joke, but in fact we are part of the joke—the beautiful people and melodramatic moments seduce us into enjoying the essentially corrupt world depicted in No Exit.

The story begins when the creator of a reality show in need of fresh ideas cynically co-opts the work of a documentary filmmaker, his former student. Promising funds, he convinces Yehuda to merge his film about the rehabilitation of a blind soldier into the reality show "Choice of Heart," and to do so without revealing to the 10 beautiful contestants that the man wooing them is blind. Once Yehuda accepts the offer to direct the reality show, his downward spiral begins. The system succeeds via fakery, dishonesty, and manipulation, and Yehuda becomes a willing practitioner of these dark arts. The pacifist subject of his documentary agrees to be turned into a war hero and to play along with the blindness swindle. Yael, his therapist and Yehuda's girl friend, is pulled in as well. And presiding above it all is the snake in the Garden, the grand manipulator, Zachy, the creator of the show. Not that anyone else is pure. Becky Romano, one of the 10 girls in the show, is a master contriver herself, and the other girls who are chosen shed previous lovers and ideals without hesitation, ready to marry the blind man if they "win."

But the film deals with the important ethical issues about power, truth, and fidelity with a sharp and entertaining satire. As most successful commercial television, No Exit attracts as it repels, with its beautiful, sexy women, melodramatic twists of the plot, self-centered yet larger than life characters, and grand gestures. As it condemns voyeurism, it makes us all into voyeurs, pulling us into a guilty enjoyment of the spectacle even as we condemn the shenanigans of amoral individuals. Sabo, however, is always in control of his material. His framing visually emphasizes the theme with rectangular and multiple screens, windows, and openings, reminding us constantly that we are watching a film. Although he gives Zachy, the grand stage manager, a successful end to his show, Sabo clearly condemns the manipulative industry and the society that allows itself to be suckered by it. And if there is an exit in this hell of corrupt people, he sits at the gateway to the lot---Michal, the only Orthodox character in the film whose digital recordings see and hear all and whose purity actually makes some of the character aware of their shortcomings.

Gabor Herendi's first film, the delightful Valami Amerika, featured three brothers and their inability to see a visitor to Hungary for who he really is. The narrative bounced effortlessly among different points of view and worked music and song seamlessly worked into the storyline.In Herendi's new film, Lora, two brothers are in love with the same woman. Making one of the brothers a performing musician enables Herendi to continue exploring the use of actual (not sound track) music in the narrative process. The narrative, as in his first film, is all about seeing, but where the characters in the first film could not penetrate an identity,the title character in this film is blind to her entire world--she has been struck by hysterical blindness after a tragic event. Her condition is both real and symbolic. Even while she could see, she was blind to her lover's infidelities, her friend's betrayal, and above all, the genuine love of the "other" brother. What makes this second film a more mature, a more complex, a more substantial film is Herendi's ability to show how his character, amidst her blindness, learns finally to see.

The film opens and closes with Lora at the psychiatrist's office, prepared to be hypnotized for a final attempt at freeing her from her self-imposed blindness, and the narrative stays mostly in the present, as the former museum guide manages a successful second career as a wine expert. But as Herendi tells blind Lora's story, he intertwines with it the back-story—how she came to her blindness. The "before" and "after" stories merge smoothly, often with matched cuts between past and present. While there are moments of surprise as Lora opens a door in the present and we find her with a character in the earlier story, there is no disorientation. The narrative is smooth despite the periodic switches into the back-story, enabling him to present the past dramatically. While technically flashbacks, the scenes retain setting, sound (especially music as live performance), action, and other elements in both time frames, creating this uninterrupted narrative.

The film is described as a comedy, and it is characterized by many moments of genuine humor, especially in the banter among the members of the group that includes Lora's great admirer and near-lover, her boyfriend's younger brother. There are also moments of black humor that involve an urn, repeated gags about the father's apartment, and rather sweet exchanges between the musician brother and Lora. Herendi handled visual gags well in Valami Amerika, and he offers some variations here of what worked earlier. A favorite is punishing the uninvited visitor by shocking her. In all, the romantic story is handled well. Though blind, Lora is a feisty, self-sufficient character who generates admiration rather than pity. If anything, she manages almost too well, needing to decide if in fact real sight was not the factor that had prevented insight! The apparently ambiguous ending can actually be deciphered fairly easily and in no way prevents the viewer from feeling completely satisfied by the film. The supporting acting is uniformly excellent, from the sexual predator of the older brother (a reprise from the earlier film), to the faithful younger brother, the grieving father, the faithless girl friend, Lora's boss and hopeful swain, and others. The subtitles are excellent, with one quibble: Hungarian curses are varied and legend, but the translation aims for the English idiom with its "screw you" or "F you," abandoning the delight of the carefully crafted Hungarian maledictions.

The success of Avni and Bacha's Encounter Point at Tribeca and other venues may be attributable to its refusal to take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It follows both Israeli and Palestinian members of an unfortunate "club"—--parents who have lost sons and daughters in the hostilities between the warring groups. They have formed a group that is attempting reconciliation among its own members first and then reaching out to bring about understanding on a national scale.

My attempt to make the summary above sound objective is clearly a failure. Even the summary takes sides. "Conflict" to many Israelis is too mild a word to describe what they term "acts of terrorism." When death comes from the gun of an Israeli soldier, it is a casualty of war from the Israeli point of view, but Palestinians see it as cold-blooded murder. Thus, when I use "warring," I am taking sides. And while I do not describe the group's aims as "forgiveness," "settlement," "compromise," or "appeasement," by adopting the film's use of the term "reconciliation," I am suggesting equivalence between the two positions.

The fact is that, as all documentaries, Encounter Point takes a position and is unmistakable in its sympathies. Despite that, viewers who disagree with the attitude will still find much to interest them in the film. If the point of view was responsible for its booking, the film's actual interviews are what make it worth seeing. To their credit, if they chose deliberately, and to the credit of their artistic temperament if they chose instinctively, the filmmakers provide unforgettable moments of clarity. A Palestinian member of the group takes the filmmakers to meet his mother in Arab Jerusalem. She urges him to tell the story of his arrest as a young man. He tells of being in a room with two young men who were building bombs. When the bombs exploded prematurely, he too was arrested and imprisoned for a decade. Interrupts the mother, "He wasn't even in the room. He was outside, getting a haircut." The son gently but firmly corrects her, admitting he was in the room but insisting he was minding his own business. What a seminal moment, with mother's love and memory combining to offer a palatable version of events.

A similar moment of clarity emerges during an interview on Israeli television. The group's representative urges Israelis to question the efficacy of a policy toward Palestinians that has created 50 years of hate. The moderator responds by asking the representative to consider the possibility that the hate has no basis, that Palestinians want them dead without a specific provocation. And the representative raises his shoulder in the classic Jewish response that non-verbally says, "Who knows." Unfortunately, that shrug of doubt undercuts the optimism that animates the movement toward peace.

Ultimately, the strength of this film does not lie in its hopeful presentation of the group's aims but in its accurate rendition of the group members with all their human sadness, determination, and naiveté. Their stories, Israeli and Palestinian, are heart rending.

In Nuzhat al-Fuad, Judd Ne'eman has managed the impossible. While making a film about art (fiction, music, painting) that concerns itself with such intellectual questions as the relationship between the real and the imagined and the ability of human beings to defy fate, death, and God, he has created a visually stunning, emotionally wrenching, and wholly unforgettable film. It is amazing to watch a film that deliberately insists on reminding its audience that this is an artifice, a created piece, an invention, nevertheless engage the emotions of its audience so completely.

That we should see the film as storytelling rather than as eavesdropping on Life is urged on us repeatedly. We are told that one of the many pre-texts to the film is the story (and music) of Scheherazade, the young woman who keeps her execution at bay by telling intertwined stories with no end. We are shown a troupe of players emerging from a building, costumed, made-up, and ready to entertain. Iraqi storytellers and players in traditional costume are shown reenacting scenes. Actors play multiple roles. Characters dead in one scene seem to live in others. One of the story arcs is about a young woman whose scripts for an ongoing soap opera are, Pirandello-like, protested by her actors (and characters) as tyranny. But despite these constant reminders that this is at most a world of "magical realism," the narrative proves so absorbing and the acting so affecting, that the viewer falls willingly into the emotional details of the mythical (and melodramatic) tale.

At its simplest, the story poses the interesting question whether Cervantes lives because he has created Don Quixote or if Don Quixote owes his immortality to Cervantes. And the film answers the question in favor of Don Quixote. It argues that as the created—Don Quixote has made Cervantes immortal, so does the art of the storyteller, the painter, the singer, and the musician lend immortality to the artists. But the film that teaches this lesson is lush, detailed, and evocative. There are visually stunning moments such as the two young women on either side of a glass window, the painter and paintings in the hospice, the scenes on the beach where the story of a family's disintegration and its effect on the individuals is presented with a few powerful images. With the aural and visual splendor of The Arabian Nights and the tradition of Iraqi storytelling in the background, the film tells the story of two young women. One writes the scripts for the TV serial that features the other. The actress is fiercely independent. When she finds herself pregnant, she calmly decides to abort. The married scriptwriter, competing with and loving her father at the same time, is in the hospital at the same time dealing with complications to her pregnancy. The two young women do not like each other, but are destined to have their stories parallel and sometimes intersect. One faces madness, the other life-threatening illness. Yes, we know it is not real, we are constantly reminded that even the illnesses are symbolic, we realize that this is very much like a soap opera, but so powerful is the acting and so skillfully wrapped in the mythic dimensions of the ancient tale that we are entranced by their stories.

In Nuzhat al-Faud (the title comes from the story reenacted from The Arabian Nights) Ne'eman combines the high art of the philosopher with the low art of daily melodrama to create an absorbing, breathtaking experience. The sound track is particularly marvelous, utilizing voice-over, ambient sounds, and classical music, punctuated by the conventions of the ancient storyteller.

Adrian Sitaru's Waves is a tidy, succinct film shot in bright sunshine but filled with the dark side of everyday life. We are on a beach packed with vacationers. The comfortable Romanian family sneers at the frolicking May-December couple on the blanket next to them. The gypsy boy (for Romanians and Hungarians he is the underclass, the person you avoid by crossing the street) approaches, on the make, settles suspiciously close to the young and beautiful mother and her child. Then the mother takes the inner tube and asks the boy to watch her child while she goes swimming. Reminiscent of the best of David Lynch, Sitaru presents the dark side indirectly, without exclamations, in the brightest of light. In this moral tale about responsibility, he shocks us into realigning our definitions and expectations.

Some gay/lesbian writers who are also Jewish have described themselves as being twice blessed, referring to their dual outsider status and the energy that has brought to their art and lives.

In Such Great Joy the only blessing is the truncated and incorrect prayer over the wine. The first of the twists and turns that would choke a feature film much less a 14 minute short is the opening in which a young man and woman appear to be buying an engagement ring. The privileged audience understands he is not buying the ring for her, but the aunt who sees them misunderstands (and inexplicably, the young woman does not clarify or at least keep her from jumping to the wrong conclusion.) Later that evening, the young woman brings her girl friend home for Sabbath dinner, intending to announce in one breath not only that she is gay but also that she is engaged to Christina, her obviously non-Jewish girlfriend. When "coming out" stories constitute a major story line for so many of the LOGO films, how likely is it that with the first mention of her sexuality, the Jewish daughter Megan(!) will also announce her engagement, and to a non-Jewish girl! But this unrealistic plot element is both necessary for Michelle Kramer's storytelling, and unfortunately, but another of the contrived misunderstandings and pratfalls that include a surprise engagement party, the belief that the young woman is pregnant, and a fight that brings the door down to reveal the two lovers in bed.

But what struck me above all, is that except for the confused old aunt, this was the most non-Jewish family and Sabbath meal I have ever witnessed. There is not the slightest sense of ethnicity in either looks or behavior (though there might have been an "oy"), and the very sympathetic and insightful father, in fact, turns out to have been non-Jewish though he is given a Hebrew word or two for the sake of verisimilitude. And yet Kramer insists on the Jewish significance, with the daughter reassuring her girl friend that she would be handling all the prayers, with the example of the mixed marriage of her parents to assure acceptance, and with the aunt's voice over the credits expressing the hope that Christina would hopefully convert.

So those viewers who enjoy Gothic convolutions and fairy tale resolutions will no doubt feel blessed. I, for one, would have liked a grain or two of authenticity to flavor this rather flat family dinner. Friday nights deserve richer meals and brighter lights.

In the midst of a documentary about his parents, the filmmaker's mother dies, but he continues making the documentary, discovering a story he did not anticipate. The result is an absorbing drama that has the quality of fiction in the best sense of that word, where a likable but unknowing narrator unwittingly privileges the audience. The narrative thus has a double weave, the story of the documentary and the story of the documentary-maker.

Our admiration is with the filmmaker, not only for doggedly pursuing his story though it risks his entire notion of his parents' relationship, but also for never giving in to sensationalism or melodrama. Although the stuff of Hollywood lurks in the details, Doug Block treats the story as he would everyday life. For those of us who have always speculated about our parents' life before we came on the scene (or after we arrived, but while we were too self- absorbed to notice they had a life independent of ourselves), 51 Birch Street gives fair warning: There are wondrous things back there in fatherland, but beware if you choose to enter there.

But that caution is for the audience to go slow wandering about in the details of their parents' past. It is not a warning for those offered a glimpse into the life of Block's parents. The film is a marvel at making the mother come alive as a vibrant and passionate yet introspective person who makes her own conscious decisions during the 50's. The filmmaker's particular success is to make the viewers actually see the young woman behind the elderly parent and grandparent. We all know our parents were once young and vigorous, but in 51 Birch Street, the mother is. The father who has been distant while the filmmaker and his sister were growing up ultimately remains distant in the film, but that is due more to his own elusive nature than to his portrayal. This biography turned autobiography is dramatic, intense, and unforgettable, sure to send viewers scurrying for a closer look at their own family albums but more hesitant about looking at the backs of those photographs.

The hospital calls that the elderly man in their care, a father and grandfather, has taken a turn for the worse. The nurse's voice suggests that it might be a good time to visit.

This simple call begins Things Behind the Sun, Yuval Shafferman's wonderfully detailed and excellently acted family drama. This dysfunctional family manages to stay together and even create harmony within its dissonance because it holds its secrets dear. Didush, the youngest daughter does not reveal her ability to understand the English her parents use in private conversation or that she has begun visiting the hospital. The older daughter, played by the always-excellent Tali Sharon, is so good at concealing her lesbianism that she even hides it from herself. The 30-year-old son pretends to participate in life, but for reasons unclear to all of us but fully accepted by his family, basically stays in his PJs all day. Itzchak, the father, will not talk about the visits he begins with his father, whose death seems suddenly less imminent. The wife, an artist on the verge of her first major show, has neglected to inform her family just how fully she has utilized them in various nude forms as subjects for her art. And no one discusses the reasons why the man in the hospital, once an integral part of the family, has been estranged from everyone for more than ten years.

But as the family members begin to talk to each other, what was hidden is revealed. The process by which the pretenses dissolve is entertaining and fascinating, without a single morbid moment. Every member of the cast has the opportunity to display a range of emotions, with each other as well as in scenes with Hilla Vidor who is delightful every moment she is on the screen, as a self-confident waitress, as the daughter's amused lover, and as the entire family's casual friend. The only politics in this family's world is lower case family politics, as the mother's long awaited debut is scheduled for the same week as the grandfather's death and the family tries to calculate the cost of supporting her with their own images on her canvases.

If forced, perhaps one can make a case that the family is a metaphor for the State, different factions unable to work together for the common happiness of all when crisis threatens, but Things Behind the Sun is peopled with memorable individuals who can stand without the prop of "greater meaning." This is an impressive debut by a first time filmmaker, ably assisted by a veteran cast.

The narrative in Empathy moves backwards and forwards in time as it shows the interaction of four groups of people: a young Israeli woman, an Arab family, a married lawyer with a wife and mentally and physically handicapped son, and four Russian thugs, with the youngest still living with his father and thus not yet a full-fledged member of the gang. Some of the initial events are trivial—drunken pedestrians, an irritated driver, and some significant—an accident, a separation. All are shown to be related, with the film also accounting for the circumstances that led to these moments and eventually closing off if not always resolving the stories.

The title suggests that an affinity exists among the events and the people responsible for the events, but that connection is like the attraction between the spheres, at once both powerful and invisible. As in life, the precipitating movements are set up by fleeting moments, and Empathy captures those moments beautifully. The burglar's actual encounter with the object of his friends' desires, the spinning turtle, the handicapped young man in his room, the sharp click of the switchblade are brilliant captures of these slices in the story.

The intertwining stories are clear despite the narrative flourishes. Less clear though extremely intriguing is the casting decision in support of the story line which places "white" Israelis, especially Russian immigrants on one side, often as victimizers, and "people of color," including Sephardic Jews and Arabs, on the other as victims.

This film is a dramatic documentary that combines eyewitness testimony, recreated events, authentic documentation, and interviews with the offspring of people who were among the 930 or so refugees allowed into the US during WW II. President Roosevelt's intention was to return these refugees to Europe at the end of the war. For more than a year, these men, women, and children were housed (and essentially held virtual prisoners) at Ft. Ontario, an army base in Oswego NY. When immigration laws were changed by President Truman, these people were driven across the border to Canada, and were then readmitted as new refugees to live and prosper in the United States.

Please note that scriptwriter for this film is Thomas (Tom) Friedmann, who is not the Tom Friedman listed for Island of the Sharks. Friedmann has scripted the produced films Dr. John Haney Sessions, Highway Girl and Open Secrets and is the author of the novel Damaged Goods, the short story collection Hero Azriel, and a number of textbooks on composition and grammar.

Also, the co-writer for Prisoners of Freedom is Les Friedman, not Owen Shapiro. Les Friedman is the author and editor of various books on film. He has also co-scripted a documentary about Thomas Szasz, the psychiatrist who has argued against the insanity defense.

Though melodramatic possibilities abound in this film--a mad, bad, dead mother, a frustrated poet, thwarted lovers, baleful grandparents muttering in the dialect of their origins, a precocious child, and an engagement party that may never lead to a marriage— Zelda Hona tells this story of a young Sephardic woman gracefully and without sentimentality.

Though Lisa has not been married off at 13 like her mother had been, she has become a substitute mother to her family anyway. She is everyone's confidante and comforter, the one to be relied upon to arrange events or talk a jumper off the roof. But her writing talent presents her with the opportunity to escape the limitations of her culture. Will her poetry free her or merely chronicle her inescapable lot? In flowing verse she addresses her mother, attempts to communicate with her exhausted and silent father, and tries to resist the tug of her sister and brothers. The richness of the language is matched by the richness of the fabrics in this film, from the skirt that opens the film, to the tablecloths, carpets, wall hangings, curtains, tapestries, the opulence of the bejeweled and embroidered women's dresses, and the creamy nights and blue mornings of the village. The filmmaker weaves hands throughout the story, from the child's attempts to grasp the dancer's whirling skirt at the beginning, to the tender hands, the working hands, the hands raised in dance, and the hand that drives the poetry across the page, words she whispers in comment and explanation. In contrast to the lavish images and lush original score by Bardenashvili is the natural yet nuanced performance elicited from every actor, including non- speaking extras whose physical fit for their roles is remarkable. As both narrative and visual feast, Mother's Dance matches its lovely opening as it sets up its resolution: led by her defiant brother unto the dance floor, wearing her mother's dress, Lisa dances her mother's dance, letting her "look out of her eyes," admitting into herself the courage to accept her legacy and move beyond it.

The demure young girl in long skirt and white blouse slips through the hush of Sabbath Eve, turns the corner, and slides into the back seat of a waiting car. Crouching in the dark raucous with rock music, she feverishly transforms herself into a red bloused, shirt skirted young woman, ready for a night on the town with her friends Yael and Lilach, away from her religious neighborhood.

This opening scene alerts the audience that this is no conventional story of rebellion, with thwarted teens determined to slough off parental or religious restrictions. What accounts for Rachel's flight into the night is not the need to flee some repressive, circumscribed world of Orthodoxy, but the desire for something more and something else: adventure, the company of daring friends, a red blouse, and red lips, even if her forgotten make-up case has her substitute scarlet menstrual blood for lipstick. As the rock music on the radio is replaced by the seductive whispers of the DJ, Sabbath Entertainment identifies itself as a film about temptation, about choices, about risks. Signing off, the DJ's voice wishes Rachel and the twin sisters who are her friends, a peaceful Sabbath, a Sabbath clad in white, a royal Sabbath. The enticing tone on the radio promises more pleasure in the Sabbath Eve than in the girls' intended destination.

After Rachel's night out is cut short, and she returns to wake the next day into the Sabbath's calm, we look in vain for any repression to justify her escapade the night before.Co-writers and directors Brezis and Binnum weave the Sabbath sounds into a symphony of peace, protectiveness, and serenity. The mother prays softly, her rhythm echoed by similarly engaged voices from the outside. The father and son join voices as they practice cantillation. When asked to call Rachel to the Sabbath table, her brother maintains the tune of the cantillation and sings her to the table with a Biblical verse. After the chanting of the blessing over the wine, the family joins in song, the two sisters harmonizing. Rachel, the seeker of excitement, though worried about her twin friends after the accident that had aborted their adventure, is clearly comfortable in the world of the observant. It provides peace and safety she cannot find cocooned in her blanket or hidden beneath the make-up that hides her bruises from the night before. The Sabbath harmony of family and songs forms a magical circle that keeps the ringing phone from intruding. Even when she has to answer the door to insistent knocking and allow reality to enter, she tries to remain within the circle, hearing the faint singing of her family as she listens to the policeman's words. When she returns to the table, she attempts to pick up the thread of the songs in a vain attempt to retain the magic. But the make-up runs to reveal her bruised eye, her song falters, and the girl who had run eagerly from the Sabbath the night before, now leaves it reluctantly, crying for her lost paradise as much as for her lost friend.

This is as perfect a short film as I have seen. The performances are flawless, the language, thanks to a wonderful translation from the Hebrew, colloquial yet poetic, and the sound track a marvel as it both tells the story and underlines it. A story filled with large themes and events is told clearly yet with restraint, even the lyrical sexual moment appropriately understated. Without sentimentalizing the religious world, the filmmakers show us the price Rachel pays as she moves from the house to the street, from the sacred to the profane, and from innocence to experience.

If you limit yourself to just one documentary, make it One Shot. You will be rewarded with two unforgettable films—one consciously created by director Nurit Kedar and another one that emerges despite her intentions.

The film by Kedar, scriptwriter/editor Tali Halter-Shenkar, and Yoni Zigler, director of the opening segment, is shocking and accusatory as it interviews and comments on snipers that accompany most regular Israel Defense Force squads. The opening begins the indictment, depicting ritualized movements by masked men wielding scythes. The clothes, the khaffiya-draped heads, and the ceremonial routines are reminiscent of archival photos of terrorists in training camps but these angels of death are Israelis. The Hebrew lettering of their insignias is translated as "You can run but you can't hide," presenting the soldiers who carry out "targeted killings" as faceless dealers of death. These images of anonymous purveyors of death return throughout the film, countering the personal interviews which insist on the men's individuality. The agenda of the filmmakers is clear; Israeli snipers are murderers. The symbolism of the scythes is augmented by the blurred green light of night vision goggles worn by actual soldiers and by a host of other images: monochromatic, war torn buildings in "refugee" camps, a solitary Palestinian schoolboy, the silent and beautiful sunset, the sunbathing Arab child. Add the restrained sound of chanting Imams and even the flurry of stones thrown at Israeli police is reduced to innocence by the insistent rattle of gunfire. When these images are alternated with the actual interviews, and we hear the snipers' words about the joy of killing, the sense of power, and the "game" of death, even defenders of Israel are shaken. And for those who come to the film already condemning Israel and its policies, the words and images confirm that these men are cold blooded killers and make it easy to level at them the accusation hurled at Nazis, namely that they were moral barbarians, manipulating the tools of a technologically advanced civilization against the helpless.

But there is another film here, one that may explain the IDF's cooperation in the making of One Shot. Stalin was purported to have said that death of millions will be ignored more easily than the death of one because a million is but a statistic. Journalists, documentary filmmakers, and storytellers fight the namelessness of statistics by focusing on individuals, making the death of a specific person real. The strategy works just as well in reverse; it is easier to condemn a group than an individual. And in introducing us to a few individual snipers, Kedar succeeds in humanizing them. Whatever their initial comments, as they speak, the men reveal themselves to be soul-searching, often conscience stricken, always articulate and intelligent people. It becomes clear that the club of Nazism, a favorite stick of Zionism bashers, simply cannot be wielded here. These haunted ex-soldiers will never hide behind claims of "We were just following orders," and turn into old men lying to themselves about their innocence. All of them demonstrate an awareness of the significance of life and are clearly committed to preserving it in the future. They might complain about the restrictions the IDF had placed on them during missions, such as firing only at legs or targeting only the specific person and withholding the shot if it may hurt someone else, but in retrospect they are pleased that the restrictions limited killings and protected those who were not targets. Though the images attempt to point viewers in one direction, the words defy the attempt. There are no madmen here, declaring it sweet and glorious to kill for one's country. There are only young men clearly struggling to find the right thing to do among the conflicting demands of country, morality, and the imperative to survive.

Image and language are both hypnotic in One Shot, whether in the service of the view presented or the view that emerges. The Israel Defense Force was either very foolish for allowing the interviews and ignoring the powerful, pro-Palestinian visual context or incredibly optimistic in its belief that the essential humanity of the men will triumph over the filmmakers' point of view. List me as one left with the belief that if this is the worst of the Israeli fighters, the possibility of eventual rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians is likely because these designated "assassins" lack anger, are devoid of hatred, and free of self-justification and rationalization.

In Avi Nesher's warm and humorous film, very British Indians settle in a dry town near the desert and must learn to cope with their French speaking Moroccan neighbors. That they are all Jews helps little; there are major differences in language, customs, and attitudes. Set in 1968 and narrated by Sarah, the teenage daughter from Bombay, the film deals gently but genuinely with the problems of adolescent angst as well as more serious issues of struggling immigrants dumped by the bureaucracy in a remote border town. Despite the insistence of Nicole, Sarah's friend and the sixteen year old town beauty, that nothing locally is worth chronicling, the film is particularly adept at depicting the greatest passions in the most ordinary people. Though the narrator is not always aware of it, there are love affairs, labor unrest, tragic illness, jealousies, and other personal dramas. The larger issues include a strike at the bottling plant, the town's only employer, and a visit by the championship cricket team, arranged by the British consulate. Although the Moroccan Jews initially jeer this "child's game," they eventually join the Indian ex pats for the match, with predictably hilarious and disastrous results. By the time adulthood arrives with the girls receiving their notice for the Army, we have a sense how new Israelis are formed from their varied ethnic backgrounds.

Nesher's casting is impeccable, down to the smallest role. Particularly wonderful is the way he matches the tall, statuesque Moroccan wife with her short, older, balding husband, and makes their caring relationship totally believable. The fact is that all the characters are memorable, from the sexy widow upstairs, to the handsome Indian dance teacher, to the Tel Aviv poet, teaching high school in the desert. Despite its mixture of spoken Hebrew, English, French, pidgin, and gestures, the excellent subtitles manage to convey even puns effectively. This polyglot of languages, as the clashing customs, reminds us just how very diverse Jews are, how the cultures of their birth countries create a Jewishness that is never monolithic, until, perhaps, it is transformed into "Israeliness."

Distortion is a disturbing, haunting film, about life imitating art and art reflecting life. Haim Bouzaglo, the director of the film, plays the role of Haim Bouzaglo, artistically blocked and sexually impotent playwright, who finds inspiration in his suspicions about the subject of his girl friend's documentary. As an Arab suicide bomber, disguised in skullcap and American t-shirt, wanders through the landscape in search of his target and his nerves, Haim transcribes his girl friend's life as she films her documentary and incorporates himself and his actors' lives during rehearsals. But the bomber has already struck and Haim has left the restaurant just minutes earlier. Despite the manipulation of time and space, the story is crystal clear, comprehensive and absorbing, a brilliant commentary on the "distortion" of everyday Israeli life, where the political is intertwined with the personal, where everyone lives "on the edge," and people never know whether they are playing leading roles in their own lives or are merely dispensable bit players in someone else's dramatic narrative.

Bouzaglo plays with this notion of everyone being an actor in someone else's production brilliantly. We are always voyeurs, seeing what the fictional director sees illicitly but also what the "real" director chooses to reveal. To remind us that these glimpses are violations of privacy, Bouzaglo takes us into the bathroom and the bedroom (sometimes the bedroom is the street and rooftop), and repeatedly frames his views within TV, video, or security screens. Actors play the role of actors who represent the "real" characters played by actors. Of course, each of the actors is the star of his or her own production, only dimly aware of their diminished roles in their fellow actor's personal films. The detective hired by the playwright becomes a character in the play. The actor hired to play the role of the detective seeks out the detective for "tips" on how to play the role, is caught by the detective on surveillance tapes, and they attend a cast party as their real selves.

Despite this multiplicity of views, there is no mistaking the clear lines of this narrative: the playwright searches for subject matter, the bomber seeks a target, and the detective stalks the filmmaker. Nor is there any difficulty locating Bouzaglo's ultimate target—enervated and impotent Israel, fully conscious of the threatening peril but incapable of meaningful action. Israel is Bouzaglo, the impotent fictional playwright cannibalizing his own life for his play. Israel is also the bankrupt soldier-entrepreneur who is the subject of the filmmaker's documentary, the cheating actors and actresses, and the cuckolded husband. They are all Israel because they are all helpless, caught in inaction or aimless action, as the bomber scans the landscape for his best target. All the characters can do as another bombing is reported is have sex and keep "score" of victims.

There is personal triumph, vindication, perhaps revenge at the end of this play within a story within a film, but viewers will be left aching for the state of Israel even as they are filled with admiration for Bouzaglo's memorable rendition of a nation's plight within the telling of an individual's story.

The incantation that magically opens this Juliet's arms (and legs, if not her heart) is not "I love you," but "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Yes, it is the words of the old actor, it the little bob of his head, and it is the presidential timber of Ronald Reagan's voice that brings Julieta to orgasm. Pity the poor men in her life who are forced either to compete or imitate. They lack the patience or they lack the will, or they lack the ability. No wonder they fail with Julieta.

At this hilarious nexus of the personal and the political set in Spain, the personal dominates. While there is certainly a political statement in the symbolism of the manly American outscoring wimpy and effeminate European men, the delight in this short film is that the text remains lighthearted, while the subtext, should one wish to examine it, is available and interesting but not insistent. The ending is perfect and typical of the nuanced moments in the film. Ramon, the Romeo to Julieta, having used Ronald Raegan's magical phrases, lies sated, blissfully speaking of a future filled with love. His Juliet, while also replete with physical satisfaction, does not confuse it with love. "I 'm not even sure I like you," she sighs, knowing it was power that had made her world move, not romance.

Note that this apparently foreign film was shot in New York City.

More than a decade ago, Israel's leading female directors wrote and directed three short films about women called Tel Aviv Stories (1993). In the third tale, Tiki, a female traffic cop, catches sight of her runaway husband and begins to pursue him in an effort to force him to grant her a divorce. Without this formal divorce, she is an agunah, unable to remarry, and, as a moral and religious person, unwilling to violate the sanctity of this enforced state of marriage by having affairs. While ostensibly a comedy, Tiki's story is a sad one, although her refusal at the end of the film to accept the rabbinical compromise that would free her is a triumph. She will make her own decisions rather than live while the law persists, even if loopholes would allow her to escape its strictures. For the women in Sentenced to Marriage, 12 years after their plight was the subject of one of the biggest box office smashes in Israel, there is no triumph, real or symbolic. The documentary effectively portrays the limbo in which such women continue to find themselves.

The English translation of the Biblical quote that gives the film its title is supplied by the filmmaker, the interpretation a deliberate statement. The three young women in the documentary, rich and poor, observant and secular, are serving an endless sentence, while their husbands remain at large, even marrying with the approval of rabbis and siring children. In a remarkable display of fairness, the film lays the blame on the individual members of the rabbinic courts and on the elusive and vindictive husbands, rather than simply on the system that allows husbands to keep their abandoned wives imprisoned in their marriage vows. Where viewers inclined to find fault with the non-secular aspects of the modern State of Israel will focus on the religious laws that allow such gender inequalities, the more discerning audience will notice that Anat Zuria, the filmmaker, finds much to admire in the rabbinical advocates. This is a group of Orthodox women (some clearly American), who fight to obtain divorces on behalf of these wives and who engage in midnight raids and other derring-do in their attempts to locate and confront the husbands. Zuria also makes clear that the Law could declare the new offspring of these wayward husbands "bastards" and use various other devices to force their consent, but the corrupt, individual members of the rabbinical courts simply refuse to do so. The ultimate judgment of the filmmaker seems to be that in this battle of the genders, men will use anything at their disposal to gain their end. And because Rabbinical Courts consist of men, their inclination is to support other men in this war of the sexes. It is the great irony of modern Israel that the secular State remains in thrall to religious laws in "nothing" except birth, marriage, and death.