[Seen a good/bad movie at the Jewish Film Festival? Send us your kvetch/kvell and we'll post it to the intertubes!]

It’s that time of year again, where I surrender my active lifestyle for sitting still for two hour blocks, empty my wallet and embrace the high quality selection of films that screen in Sydney and Melbourne for the Jewish Film Festival.

If I were to hear about a Hollywood film featuring a suicide bomber roaming the streets of New York, who, on the verge of detonating his shrapnel-filled belt, encountered some locals who challenged his thought process; I would assume it’s another one of those romantic action blockbusters to put on the wait-’till-it-comes-on-TV list. The film For My Father, directed by Dror Zahavi, did not take place in New York but in Israel, and besides a couple of minor stereotypes, seemed very authentic.

Terek is a frustrated Palestinian who finds himself in a situation whereby the only solution he can foresee is to blow himself up to redeem his family’s honour. On the drive through the scenic Judean Hills to Tel Aviv, he appears tormented at the upcoming task ahead, yet resolute in his commitment. Once in Tel Aviv, he heads for the bustling shuk (market) and builds up the courage to do the deed, only to find the button doesn’t work.  He scrambles out of the shuk and meanders the back street alleys of Tel Aviv.  It is in this down trodden alley of Tel Aviv where he meets an elderly electrician and his wife who help him fix the detonator button, and an Israeli young woman who herself is marginalised by her Orthodox family.  Through these characters he develops a degree of compassion for the ’enemy’ and a peek at the complexities that envelope their lives.  With mounting pressure from his comrades back in the West Bank, and a new found affection for a few Israelis, he is forced to decide what his next move will be.

This powerful film had me captivated from woe to go, and elicited my tear reflex a couple of times.  It is refreshing to see humanistic approaches to the age-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  I had never before thought about the mental process that afflicts a suicide bomber in the days and minutes before their premature death.  Nor had I really imagined that a suicide bomber was a human being with positive emotions, a family and aspirations.

For My Father does not glorify terrorism, but it did force me to acknowledge my prejudices and recognise the human aspect of both sides of the story. Politics aside, we are all programmed with the same gamut of emotions.

*

For My Father is screening in Melbourne tonight. Click here for details.

Donny Donowitz, aka The Bear Jew (Eli Roth) and Aldo Raine, aka Aldo the Apache (Brad Pitt). Publicity photo.

By Anthony Frosh

WARNING: The following article is best suited to those who have already seen the film Inglourious Basterds, currently screening in Australian cinemas. The article (or follow-up comments) may contain spoilers; so if you have an intention to see the film and like both myself and Frank Costanza, you “like to go in fresh,” it might be best to postpone reading this article until after you’ve seen the film.

Inglourious Basterds, the new film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, has caused much fanfare, but also controversy. Perhaps the principal reason for this is that the film deliberately re-writes history. Indeed, last week the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation in association with the Research Unit in Film and Cultural Theory at Monash University held a well-attended panel discussion on this topic.

I found Inglourious Basterds, like most of Tarantino’s films, to be highly entertaining, with the entertainment primarily derived from the brilliantly written dialogue. Engaging dialogue has long been a great strength of Tarantino. Nevertheless, the film could have been so much more.

One of the big let-downs of the film was the under-development of its characters. We are teased with the introduction of what seem to be some very fascinating characters. For example, there is Hugo Stiglitz, a German who gains notoriety for killing 13 Gestapo officers. He joins the Basterds after they rescue him from his imprisonment by the Nazis. Nevertheless, we never find out his motives. Are his motives based on moral objection to the Nazi regime, or is he just a psychopath who enjoys killing authority figures?

Another example is Donny Donowitz, aka the Bear Jew, who is famous for clubbing Nazis to death with his baseball bat. Apparently there was originally a back story in the script where Donny has Jews from his hometown neighbourhood sign his bat. However, this back story never made the final cut of the film, so it is neither here nor there.

Even the lead character, Aldo Raine, aka Aldo the Apache, could have been far more developed. Here is this rather ‘uncultured’ officer from Tennesse (although admittedly, he does speak some “I-talian”) who is in command of a whole unit of Jews. Yet the interesting dynamic of having this ‘Mountain-Man’ in command of a motley bunch of mostly urban Jewish Americans is never exploited.

In terms of comparison, Spielberg’s Munich comes to mind, as this film also centres around a unit of Jews on a revenge mission. However, Munich is a film of superior depth (if not of superior entertainment value). The Jewish combatants of Munich were far more developed as characters, and far more Jewish in terms of their self-reflectivness. They cross-examine their own methods and actions, and the consequences of these, in a way that is typically Jewish. The typical Jewish character of this introspection can be evidenced simply by picking up a copy of an Israeli newspaper. However, there is none of that self-reflection in Inglourious Basterds. Furthermore, there is very little Jewish character to be displayed in any of the Jewish characters.

In case you haven’t already seen the movie but read this article anyway: See it if you like entertaining and enthralling Tarantino films with superb dialogue (as I do), but don’t expect to find anything particularly Jewish about this film. Better yet, go see the film so that you can come back to Galus and disagree with me!

Click here to view a video of the seminar.

By Alex Kats

Last week I was privileged to see the controversial film about Rebiya Kadeer at the Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF).

In the lead up to the festival, English director, Ken Loach, who had previously premiered a number of his films at the festival, announced that he would pull out of the festival if the festival continued to take support from the Israeli embassy. Luckily for the sake of sanity and morality, MIFF director, Richard Moore, called Loach’s bluff and announced that he would rather have Israeli films than Loach’s, and thus Loach pulled himself and his film out of the festival.

When another controversy reared its head, this time concerning China, Moore again stood up for what was right.

More than seven years ago, Jeff Daniels, an American (now living in Melbourne) teacher turned filmmaker, visited a friend in Beijing and came across the name of a people he had never heard of. The Uyghur people come from East Turkestan. Their province borders Tibet, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, and China, and about 60 years ago, China invaded and annexed the land.

They called it Xinjiang, which means ‘new territory’ and although it was intended to be an autonomous region, it has become one of the most oppressed regions in all of China. The Uyghur people have their own language, culture, heritage, religion and land, but all of these have been taken away or diluted since Chinese rule. Many thousands of people in the region have been murdered simply for their opinions; let alone for their actions.

On that journey, the curious filmmaker decided to make a documentary about the Uyghur people and in particular, about their charismatic and very vibrant leader, Rebiya Kadeer.

Kadeer became an activist for the rights of her people as a teenager. Over the years, she has also become one of the wealthiest women in China, but not without a lot of hardship. Her children were taken away from her and she was imprisoned for more than five years, spending most of that time in solitary confinement.

Now in exile in Washington, she is the president of the international Uyghur association.

Daniels, a Jew from the Bronx, had previously made small documentaries about Jewish identity and the struggle of minorities. For the past seven years he has been documenting the plight of the Uyghurs and the unadulterated drive of Kadeer.

The name of the film, The 10 Conditions of Love, comes from the conditions that Kadeer set herself when she went in search of a husband who would also be a partner in her work. (She found him and they are still together.) The title, however, also alludes to China’s 10 conditions for the transition to Communism.

Part of the story follows Kadeer’s advocacy in Washington on behalf of her people. When making representations to government, one of her strongest allies for a number of years was the late Tom Lantos. He was the only Congressman to have also been a Holocaust survivor, and as a Jew, like the filmmaker, he felt strongly about the passion of this minority leader.