Movies from the 2023 JxJ Film Festival [SPOILERS]

 

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I have purchased a pass for the Washington Jewish Film Festival (or JxJ Festival) for several years (read my blog posts from 2017, 2018, and 2019). Of course the festival didn't happen in 2020 or 2021, and while it did take place last year, I guess I was lazy and didn't write about it. But I'm back to my film reviews this time around!

In total, I was able to see eight films. The festival just happened to fall during a time when I was already busy supporting the arts in other ways. (I saw the play Here There Are Blueberries at the Shakespeare Theatre Company, caught Hunter Hayes in concert at Sixth & I, and watched a production about RBG at the Lincoln Theatre in the same week.*) Here are my thoughts about the movies I saw.

Karaoke

This was my first movie of the festival... and it wasn't my favorite. It's mostly about a middle-aged couple who isn't very happy, and then they meet a "cool" new neighbor. In a way, that character inspires them to be more open and free, but he's also a bad influence, causing jealousy and other bad behavior (plus, he does hard drugs). In general I didn't find the characters likeable, although I can appreciate the way the couple was realistically portrayed after two people are married for several decades. I just can't say I would ever watch this movie again or recommend it to anyone else.

Bella

One of my favorite parts about the JxJ Film Festival is the fact that they show a lot of documentaries about Jewish women who did incredible things with their lives. Bella is just that. This film is about Bella Lewitsky, who was an American dancer and choreographer who really put modern dance on the map for the West Coast (dance used to be seen as an East Coast thing, with New York snubbing their nose at L.A. for not having any culture). Even though modern dance is not my cup-of-tea, I do appreciate the arts, and I admire women who have a great impact on the arts and try to protect them for the future. It was cool watching her dance and learning about her career, from dancer to choreographer to having her own dance company. I also appreciate that she was a woman of principle. Her dance company was going to receive a grant from the National Endowment of the Arts, but there was a clause saying that in accepting the grant, the company couldn't create any art that could be interpreted as pornography. She felt like that was a kind of censorship, an attack on the First Amendment, and so she did not accept the grant, but rather sued the National Endowment. She was putting her own dancers and company at risk, but it was for the greater good. And she achieved all this success despite being blacklisted for many years during the Red Scare relating to communism. I really enjoyed learning about Bella and her life, and as a supporter of the arts, I can now have admiration for her and her work, too. 

Haute Couture

This film is mostly about an older woman whose career in the Dior atelier is ending, and her relationship with a street urchin (if you will) whom she takes under her wing to help give her a better life. They meet when the young woman and her friend rob the seamstress (and then return the belongings). The young girl lives in a bad part of town and takes care of her mother who has mental health issues; the seamstress wants to introduce this girl to a new world of possibilities, of learning a skill and being surrounded by beauty. While their relationship has ups and downs, they both grow as people in knowing one another. I love fashion, so I enjoyed that part of the movie, and there were surprisingly many ASMR moments, like hair play and touching fabrics and flowers; I was feeling those tingles! I think my least favorite parts were the sex scenes, because the actress looks too young to be having sex, but that's just me being a prude!

Story of Annette Zelman

This movie is based on a true story, and I really enjoyed that it focused on the love story aspect. Although the title mentions Annette Zelman, the film doesn't just follow her, but also the man she falls in love with and hopes to marry. His father is against the match, and he speaks to higher-ups in the German army to break up the couple. He didn't intend her any harm, but of course she is arrested for no reason other than being Jewish; she spends over a year in two different prisons before reaching her demise in Auschwitz. The film does show her in the first two prisons (and her fiancé's visits at the second one), but they do not show her transport to Auschwitz or her short time there. We follow her lover's quest to save her, mainly hoping his powerful father can help without knowing that his father did this to Annette in the first place; he eventually goes to the front hoping to find her and is killed in the war. The movie ends showing Annette's younger sister (who also acts as the narrator of the film) getting married and dancing at her wedding; the scene flips back and forth between that couple dancing and Annette and her fiancé dancing, if only they had had the chance to get married. The boy's father attends this wedding, and I cannot imagine the guilt he felt for destroying Annette's life, causing such pain to her family, and disappointing and in the end losing his only son. I thought this was one of the better movies I saw at the festival this year.

Shadow of the Day

I don't understand the title of this film, but that's the least of my concerns. This movie was SO boring: in two hours, the only interesting thing that happened was one murder. The majority of the film just shows people working in a restaurant, and occasionally interesting people come in; and of course there's the cliché of hiding a Jew during World War II. And when the movie wasn't boring, it was weird. A couple of times there were scenes of schoolgirls in their uniforms doing rhythmic gym exercises, like with hula hoops or on roller skates; it was as if they were putting on a show for the restaurant specifically, and it just so happened that no one else was in the square at that same time. Huh? If I thought I didn't like the movie Karaoke, I certainly thought this film was worse, and I honestly couldn't wait for it to be over. 

Schächten

I saw this movie with my boyfriend as "date night." But... it was not very romantic. This film is meant to be based on a true story, but some parts of it were so dramatic that I wasn't sure which parts were based on reality. Essentially a young man named Victor (played by Jeff Wilbusch, who looks like Paul Rudd) lived in the wilderness and saw his family get slaughtered by Nazis on horseback. So he has made it his goal to get revenge, especially when one particular Nazi gets acquitted in court. He harasses the man and his wife, and even though Victor is beaten and threatened, he continues after the man, until in the end he kidnaps the Nazi's wife (using her as bait) and then traps the Nazi in a cave in the woods leaving nothing in the cave except for a knife. So it sort of makes sense that the movie is called schächten, which translates to shechita, which is a Jewish ritual of slaughtering animals with a knife. It's a long movie with a couple of particularly gory parts (I covered my eyes), and I can't say I'm glad that I saw it.

A Pocketful of Miracles: A Tale of Two Siblings

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Unfortunately I was unable to find a trailer for this film, probably because it's so new. And while it does share the same title as an older film, they are not the same!

This is a documentary about a brother and sister, David and Helene, who survived World War II, separately, but they found each other. The Polish siblings were raised by a linguist mother and a father who was a successful businessman. They went into hiding when the Nazis began taking Jews to the trains, but they were found and all taken to the train station (except the grandmother, who was killed on-site, to which Helene said "was the best thing that could have happened," so that the grandmother didn't suffer in the camps). The rest of the family went on the train, but Helene had received a letter from her father telling her to go to another family's home. While she was only a teenager and wished to be with her family, she did go to the address, and she survived the war from moving from place to place without being caught. Her brother, on the other hand, went through most of the war in Auschwitz with their father by his side. The father helped protect David, but when David was sick and had to go to an infirmary, their father gave up, thinking his son was dead (they already knew the mother and younger sister had already been gassed, so the father felt like there was nothing to live for). But David did regain his health and escaped into the woods during one of the death marches. Through talking with Russian and American soldiers, and learning about his sister's survival (she had been recognized for giving apples to men walking on the marches and eventually was hired to work for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilition Administration (UNRRA), David was able to find her and the two reconnected, eventually making their way to America separately. And they both led successful, long lives until their passings.

Wolf Blitzer moderating a conversation with Aviva Kempner, the director of the film.

The movie was directed by Helene's daughter, Aviva Kempner, who is now 75 years old and a second generation survivor. The movie consists of family photos and videos, as well as pictures and clips from true events or from other films portraying the events of World War II (fifty sources!). The most moving footage are from interviews with her mother Helene and her Uncle David about their experiences. These primary sources were provided to the Shoah Foundation, which was created by Steven Spielberg after he was inspired by WWII Jewish survivors during the filming of Schindler's List. The stories of Helene and David were already amazing, but to hear and see them tell it themselves was even more incredible. She clearly was a charismatic, vivacious person who spoke her mind; her honesty of how she truly felt about different people brought the audience to laughter several times ("sorrow with humor" is common with Jews); at the beginning of the film she demands that "nothing be edited," which of course isn't possible! And David was so humble, even after becoming very successful to the point of meeting multiple presidents (actually both siblings knew the Carters). Even after what he has been through, he has such an optimistic viewpoint on life, believing that everything happens for a reason. Both siblings achieved the "American dream" after going through so much. 

After the screening, we had the chance to hear from the director who was in conversation with CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer. He also was the child of parents who survived the war; his family came to Buffalo, NY when he was a baby. His father provided an interview to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum so that those memories were not lost. Blitzer and Kempner discussed how they didn't ask their parents about the war because it wasn't something anyone talked about (or wanted to talk about). They discussed how important these survivor interviews are so that we don't forget what happen, and we have that proof to show Holocaust deniers. This was such a personal film that was so well done, and I'm glad I could see it as well as hear from the director herself.

Valeria is Getting Married

This was not the best movie for me to end the festival with. I didn't like any of the characters, and I felt like they brought the worst out in each other. A young woman from Ukraine, Christina, is betrothed to a man in Israel, and she brings her younger sister, Valeria, to Tel Aviv for her to meet a future husband as well; the first woman's fiancé, Michael, has arranged for the travel as well as the "marriage" between Valeria and Etian (who is paying Michael $5,000 for a "wife"). But Valeria doesn't like her betrothed and locks herself in the bathroom. Christina eventually goes in there with her, but Valeria tosses the key out the window, and now both women are locked in the bathroom while the two men are awkwardly waiting in the living room. Eventually they do come out, and despite the weirdness of the situation, Christina takes Valeria to the airport to go home, and that's how it ends.

The characters were just so unlikeable:

• Christina is being selfish in bringing her sister to Israel; it's simply that she's lonely and doesn't have many friends, so she wants Valeria there with her, even if it's in an unhappy marriage.
• Valeria is being very rude and immature when locking herself in the bathroom instead of handling the situation like an adult.
• Michael is only thinking about the money he is getting paid and doesn't care if Valeria is happy in the marriage or not. He's also rude to Christina, threatening that he could send her back to Ukraine so she wouldn't get her Israeli citizenship.
• Etian comes on WAY too strong with Valeria even though they have only skyped a few times before their meeting. And when he is rejected, he insists that he doesn't want any other woman, that she's the one, and that he loves her. He barely knows her! So he comes off like some sort of psycho, and then you're glad Valeria doesn't want to be with him. 

So... I wasn't a big fan of this year's festival. There were films, mainly the documentaries, that I thought were good, but in general there were too many films I didn't like for me to fully enjoy myself. This will probably be my last year buying a full festival pass, since I felt like I not only didn't get my money's worth, but also wasted several hours of my life that I'll never get back (especially on beautiful, sunny days in May!).

*Here are those related blog posts if you're interested:

• Play Review: Here There Are Blueberries
• Hunter Hayes Concert at Sixth & I
• All Things Equal: The Life & Trials of Ruth Bader Ginsburg