Prototype Issue
LA Jewish Film Festival, 2008
By Robin Menken
(page 1 of 4)For its third annual festival, this year year LAJFF Executive Director Hilary Helstein (also known as the director of the film As Seen Through These Eyes) programmed a sprightly festival celebrating the worldwide diversity of the Jewish Experience.
The opening night premiere film was Lynn Roth’s The Little Traitor which is set in Israel in 1947 just before it becomes an independent state. It stars Alfred Molina, Ido Port and Theodore Bikel who was honored at the opening ceremony with a special award for his achievement in promoting Jewish culture in media.
Also honored at the Skirball Cultural Center before the screenings began by LAJFF and the Morningstar Commission was comedienne Joan Rivers, given the Marlene Adler Marks Woman of Inspiration Award. Legendary Comedy writer Treva Silverman (Mary Tyler Moore show) presented the award. Said Silverman (River’s first comedy writer): “Jewish women in films and television came in two versions: invisible or irritating. Rivers, surprisingly warm for all her surgically barbed humor, fielded questions from the audience and tossed off some zingers.
(In the late 90’s Hadassah formed The Morningstar Commission, a group of industry movers and shakers which advocates for positive images of Jewish women in media and mentors young writers, actors and agents, raising their consciousness about image.)
The ceremony included the Los Angeles premiere of Making Trouble: Three Generations of Funny Jewish Women. Rachel Talbot’s delightful documentary is a tribute to six groundbreaking female Jewish comedians: Yiddish theater star Molly Picon; Ziegfeld star “funny girl” Fanny Brice; the bawdy “Last Of the Red Hot Mama’s” Sophie Tucker; standup pioneer Joan Rivers; SNL’s beloved Gilda Radner; and playwright Wendy Wasserstein. Segueways with standups Judy Gold, Jackie Hoffman, Cory Kahaney and Jessica Kirson, fressing and kibutzing at New York’s Katz’s Delicatessen, give an inkling of the effect these barnstormers had on the women who follow in their footsteps. The archival footage is wonderful (I wish there had been more actual footage of Sophie Tucker and less of the actress who performs her act!) Produced by the Jewish Women’s Archive. A MUST SEE
Other highlights included three fascinating documentaries: Marco De Stefanis & Tonino Boniotti’s Tulip Time traces the lives of “Trio Lescano,” the Dutch Jewish sisters Leschan, daughters of a Jewish mother (also a singer), and a Hungarian clown/ contortionist who became Europe’s first Girl Group. Renamed Alessandra, Giuditta and Caterina Lescano, discovered and coached by famous bandleader Carlo Prato, “Trio Lescano” were the toast of Fascist Italy. In a time when Radio stars were more important that film stars, their masterful harmonies (described as a charming “meow”) were Italy’s answer to America’s swinging Andrew Sisters. Mussolini once stopped a parade under their balcony to bow to them. Dancing with Caterina, Benito whispered, “why not join the Party?” At their heyday they made 1000 liras a day and were feted by the cream of society.
In 1943, because of their mother’s Jewish origins, they were fired from the radio and imprisoned as spies. Their songs supposedly contained coded messages for the enemy. After the war Caterina was replaced and the new Trio toured South America, briefly re-experiencing their life in the limelight. The film includes interviews with Sandra Lescano and Caterina’s replacement.
David Vyorst’s documentary The First Basket is a slam-dunk. Dr. Luther Gulick, head of Physical Education at the School for Christian Workers, gave James Naismith two weeks to create an indoor game that would provide an “athletic distraction” for a rowdy class through the brutal New England winter. It all started with two peach baskets and a soccer ball in a YMCA “
The game spread through the YMCA system and the New York Settlement Houses. Young people, lured to the Settlement houses by athletic activities, learned to speak English. The new game of basketball stressed teamwork, strategy and fair play, all qualities deemed important for assimilation. Young Jewish boys welcomed this athletic world (a chance to belong to their new society) so different from the European Jewish experience, which stressed learning and reflection. Their shows of strength and expertise wiped away the stereotypes of “bookish” Jews.
They developed on the small gymnasium floors of the Settlement houses a style known for years as “Jew Ball” or “City Style,” which relied on fast passes, fast footwork, dodges and misdirection. New Yorkers became avid fans, rooting for neighborhood semi-pro teams such as the Dux (from the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn); the South Philadelphia Hebrew All Stars (SPHAs); and local college teams such as CCNY (City College of New York); LIU (Long Island University), and St. John’s. Stars from the first NY teams became the pioneer coaches and strategists of the game when it went pro, dominating the game’s history.
The early players, paid so little that they regularly played games for various teams during the week, continued to play at the Catskills. Working class boys (Jewish and African American) worked in the Jewish Alps as bellhops, busboys, waiters and ballroom dancers, while continuing to play ball. The Castkills basketball games began to be fixed by hotel chefs who paid off the players with big dinners. Gangsters realized they could get to all the important players during the Catskill resort season. The poorly paid players cut some deals and regularly threw games or shaved points. The 1951 point-shaving scandals resulted in the champion CCNY team being banned from Madison Square Garden, forcing the less popular “pro” teams to the forefront.
Archival footage and great anecdotes bring to life a fascinating gallery of characters: showmen and visionaries, coaches and players like Red Auerbach, Red Holzman, Dolph Schayes, Red Sarachek, Barney Sedran, Eddie Gottlieb, Abe Saperstein, Ossie Schectman, Ralph Kaplowitz, Sammy Kaplan and many more.
The story behind Francois Uzon’s Anne and the Reverend is the spiritual journey of a message of peace passed from one concerned person to another over decades, bringing to each messenger a vocation.
Francois Uzon was a student, backpacking through Japan, when a flyer at the Jewish Synagogue in Tokyo sent him of to visit The Holocaust Remembrance Center. Wandering through the town of Fukuyama, an hour north of Hiroshima, he saw a building with the “life” sign on the wall. A copy of a Polish synagogue, the center was a labor of love by Christian priest Makoto Otsuka. Entering the Center, Uzon was addressed by a Japanese man (Otsuka) speaking Hebrew. Uzon, a French Jew, spoke no Hebrew. The two communicated in English as they do in the film. Otsuka asked Uzon to spread the message, which led Uzon (currently a filmmaker for French television)to film school.
They developed on the small gymnasium floors of the Settlement houses a style known for years as "Jew Ball" or "City Style," which relied on fast passes, fast footwork, dodges and misdirection. New Yorkers became avid fans, rooting for neighborhood semi-pro teams
Otsuka, born in Hiroshima after the war, studied Hebrew in Jerusalem where he met the gentle, persuasive Otto Frank (Anne’s father). Frank asked if he had read his daughter’s diary, explaining he was the only member of his family who returned from the camps. That meeting lit a spark in Otsuka’s heart. Instead of becoming a diplomat or businessman, he dedicated himself to the church. He’s the priest of a 50-person congregation and a member of the Presbyterian sect called Japan Christian Friends of Israel, which supports the Center. The 3,000-member sect was started by Takeji Otsuki, who in 1938, while serving as a minister in Manchuria, received divine inspiration instructing him to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
Makota Otsuka began sending letters in Hebrew to Holocaust survivors worldwide. A Polish survivor, on the verge of donating his prisoner’s striped uniform to a large American Holocaust Museum, sent it to Otsuka. Bit by bit, he built the Center’s minimalist collection. In Washington DC. hundreds of victims’ shoes remind visitors of the horror of genocide. In Otsuka’s Room Of Remembrance, a lone child’s shoe, placed on an altar with the artistry of Ikebana (traditional flower arrangement) speaks volumes.
All the exhibits, photos and text are hung lower, so that children can see and understand. More than 40,000 Japanese schoolchildren have visited the Museum, and Otsuka travels and lectures at schools throughout Japan. Japanese schoolchildren are very familiar with Anne Frank (her story was a best seller in Japan) but the realities of Hitler’s racial purity laws and the “Final Solution” is not studied in school history books.
One room is dedicated to the late Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, Japan’s sole recipient of the honorific “Righteous Among the Nations.” In defiance of his superiors, Sugihara, Japan’s Vice Consul in Lithuania, saved 6,000 Jews in 1940 by issuing them transit visas. They escaped from Lithuania through Russia to Japan.
As Uzon says of the remarkable Otsuka, “This man plants Holocaust Museums like other men plant trees.” (The larger center was opened In October of 2007.) Otsuka, a charming modest man, takes Uzon to visit a fisherman’s village and the site of his larger museum.
At a Q&A following the film, Uzon, an equally modest man, urged audience members (some of them survivors) to send their precious objects to the Center in Japan. He said “I know it’s difficult to give these things away, but in Japan, which has no precious Holocaust Survivors to keep the message alive, objects must carry the message through time. Objects will do your job for you.” Then he suggested than any visitors to Japan go to the Center in Fukuyama and say “Hi to Otsuka for me.”
28-year-old Ariel Winograd’s Cara de Queso (Cheesehead: My First Ghetto) is a coming-of-age comedy set one summer in the Stag, a Jewish country club. Think of it as Argentina’s Revenge of the Nerds. It’s amazing how familiar this 90’s Jewish enclave seems to American audiences.
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