ReelAbilities Film Festival: New York
Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan online
Through May 5, $12 per virtual film, $45 for in-person comedy night reelabilities.org/newyork
“Everybody has crutches,” multidisciplinary artist and performer Bill Shannon says in Crutch, screening at the thirteenth annual ReelAbilities Film Festival. “Some of them you can see; some of them are invisible.” Founded in 2007 by the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, the festival is “dedicated to promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories, and artistic expressions of people with disabilities.” Running through May 5, it opened April 29 with Michael Parks Randa and Lauren Smitelli’s Best Summer Ever at the Queens Drive-In at the New York Hall of Science, with appearances by Itzhak Perlman and Lachi, and will be virtual the rest of the way (with one notable exception), consisting of eighteen programs, from panel discussions and Q&As to shorts and full-length films as well as a comedy night. The eight feature documentaries can be streamed throughout the festival; each will also have a live Q&A with the filmmakers and/or subjects. Among the topics explored in the works are disabling injury (Ahead of the Curve), Down syndrome (The Special), blindness (Maricarmen), amputation (Augmented), mental health (The World Is Bright), autism (In a Different Key), and ALS (closing-night selection Not Going Quietly, with Temple Grandin participating in the Q&A).
There will also be a Gamechanger talk about authentic storytelling with Lauren Ridloff and Katherine Croft, “Black Future Month: Legacy, Present & Afro-Futurism” with Keith Jones, CJ Jones, Tameka Citchen-Spruce, Safiya Eshe Gyasi, Diana Elizabeth Jordan, and Trelanda R. Lowe, “Fashion, Beauty, and Disability” with KR Liu, Natalie Trevonne, Dana Zumbo, and Aubrie Lee, an author talk with Jodi Samuels about parenting children with disabilities and her book Chutzpah, Wisdom and Wine: The Journey of an Unstoppable Woman, as well as four collections of shorts. In addition, there will be a live reading of the pilot script for the unproduced television series Disgraced with writers Julie Klausner and Alex Scordelis and star Shannon DeVido along with Amy Sedaris, Larry Wilmore, Jackie Hoffman, Chris Gethard, Sasheer Zamata, and others, and a live, hybrid comedy show with Maysoon Zayid, Tina Friml, Martin Phillips, Jenny Cavallero, and Ryan Haddad, hosted by Pamela Schuller, taking place in person on the JCC Manhattan rooftop ($45) and online ($15).
The New York Jewish Film Festival might not be celebrating its thirtieth anniversary in quite the style it was hoping, but it’s still hosting a stylish two weeks of fiction and nonfiction shorts and features as well as panel discussions and Q&As. Presented by the Jewish Museum and Film at Lincoln Center, the festival kicked off January 13 with Nir Bergman’s Here We Are (available through January 16), about divorced parents dealing with their grown autistic son; Bergman will participate in a free talk on January 14 at 2:00.
The 2021 centerpiece selection is Anders Østergaard and Erzsébet Rácz’s Winter Journey (available January 21), starring the great Bruno Ganz in his final role, playing flutist Günther “George” Goldschmidt, father of radio commentator Martin Goldsmith, who portrays himself in the film, based on his memoir, The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany. Østergaard and Martin Goldsmith will discuss the film in a free talk on January 22 at 2:00.
The virtual festival concludes with another family affair, Susan Fanshel and Veronica Selver’s documentary Irmi (January 26), about German Jewish refugee Irmi Selver, Veronica’s mother, with Hanna Schygulla reading narration from Irmi’s memoirs. There will be a free talk with the directors January 27 at 2:00.
Among the other films to look out for are Judith Helfand’s Love & Stuff and Absolutely No Spitting (January 22), about the director’s adoption of a daughter when she was fifty, followed by the death of her mother; Ruthy Pribar’s Asia (January 15), with Unorthodox breakout star Shira Haas playing a teenager living with her single mother (Alena Yiv); and Oren Jacoby’s On Broadway (January 22), honoring the Great White Way with archival footage and interviews with Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren, Hugh Jackman, Christine Baranski, John Lithgow, and others. (You can watch Jacoby’s On Broadway: Give My Regard to Broadway, a short about Covid-19’s impact on theater, for free here.)
In addition, the festival has teamed up with the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan for a special MLK Day event, a live Q&A on January 18 at 2:00 with Dr. Shari Rogers about her documentary Shared Legacies, part of the JCC’s Cinematters: NY Social Justice Film Festival, which runs January 14-18. The film can be accessed beginning January 16 at 10:00 am here. Keep watching this space for select reviews as NYJFF 2021 continues.
THE SIGN PAINTER (CITY ON THE RIVER) (Viestur Kairish, 2020)
Available January 19 (ticket comes with director Q&A) virtual.filmlinc.org
Latvian theater, opera, and film director Viestur Kairish’s The Sign Painter is in some ways a miniature Little Big Man meets Forrest Gump, where the audience watches history unfold through the eyes of a person who doesn’t really take an active part in what’s happening around him. Dāvis Suharevskis stars as Ansis, a tall, thin, gangly young man who works as a sign painter in a small Latvian village during the tumultuous decade before and during World War II, a town that changes leadership and primary color from the green of authoritarian dictator Kārlis Ulmanis to the red of Stalin’s Soviet Union to the black of Nazi Germany. Ansis has steady work: Each time a new regime takes over, he has to update street names and symbols, and he does so with a calm expertise, avoiding any personal political involvement. However, his true love, Zisele (Brigita Cmuntová), the daughter of pharmacist Bernshtein (Gundars Āboliņš) and who is reading Alexandra Kollontai’s Free Love, does get caught up in the tumult, taking up with German soldier Andreas (Aidas Jurgaitis) while Ansis is pursued by Naiga (Agnese Cīrule), as blond and Christian as Zisele is brunette and Jewish.
Ansis (Dāvis Suharevskis) is ever on the lookout for the next regime in The Sign Painter
Early on, aboard the small boat the White Swan, Ansis asks the captain, “May I steer?” It’s the only time he actively asserts being in charge of his direction. He wants to be a fine artist, and he is extremely talented at landscapes and portraits, but he carries on with his sign painting as revolution swirls about him.
Kairish (aka Viesturs Kairišs), who has made numerous documentaries in addition to the features Leaving by the Way,The Dark Deer, and The Chronicles of Melanie, and cinematographer Gints Bērziņš shoot nearly the entire film at a skewed angle, as if the characters can just fall off the screen in this continually upended world. They frame each shot with an artist’s eye; in one scene, Ansis speaks with Bernshtein while holding an empty picture frame, a spatial void that Zisele walks into. The story combines forbidden romance with religious, political, and military upheaval as one man continues to survive in dangerous times essentially despite himself, reminiscent of Jack Crabb in Little Big Man and Forrest Gump, who keep on keeping on. Based on a novel by Finnish-Latvian writer Gunars Janovskis, The Sign Painter is a beautifully rendered film about European collaboration, true love, regime change, and simple, everyday life.
Jewish Austrian American auteur Edgar G. Ulmer is most well known for his atmospheric horror and crime films, including 1934’s satanic The Black Cat, which pits Boris Karloff against Béla Lugosi, 1944’s Bluebeard, with John Carradine as the multiple wife murderer, and 1945’s cult noir Detour, a genre favorite that was added to the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry in 1992. But Ulmer, who apprenticed with F. W. Murnau, also made a series of Yiddish shtetl films (Green Fields, The Singing Blacksmith) about life in poor Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, and the NYJFF is presenting the world premiere of one of them, the National Center of Jewish Film’s new 4K digital restoration of 1939’s The Light Ahead, beginning January 25.
The film is a heart-tugging melodrama about the fraught romance between a young blind woman, Hodel (Helen Beverley), and the lame Fishke (David Opatoshu), who earns a pittance by calling people to the baths in the tiny village of Glupsk. The town is thriving, with a fat surplus that the community leaders are deciding how to spend, but Reb Mendele (Izidore Cashier) and others have their own suggestions. The youngsters’ dream is to live in Odessa, the big city, but there’s not much chance of a bright future and times are dark, as is J. Burgi Contner and Edward Hyland’s cinematography, cast in a shadowy black-and-white.
Hodel (Helen Beverley) and Fishke (David Opatoshu) dream of a better future in The Light Ahead
The Light Ahead begins with a vaudeville-like comedy scene between Reb Mendele, Reb Alter (Leon Seidenberg), and Reb Isaak (Yudel Dubinsky) before turning serious. Most of the film depicts the people barely getting by as they deal with cholera, God’s will, prayer, and Galaganska chickens.
“What, I ask you, is the Jew’s life, anyway? An old story repeated over and over,” Mendele soliloquizes. “The form changes in every age. But the story remains the same. All the calamities, adversities, hardships, curses. All the troubles, afflictions, miseries, disasters. Every village has its rich, its paupers, its wise men, scholars, fools, ignoramuses, its stirrers of pots, its leading citizens, its innocent lambs and insolent ruffians. But always it’s the same old story.” It’s a story — inspired by a tale by Mendele Mokher Sforim, the Grandfather of Yiddish Literature — that Ulmer tells in charming, bittersweet ways, with intimate camerawork that sometimes makes it feel like a silent film.
The Light Ahead was made just before the start of WWII and the Holocaust, which destroyed so much of Eastern European shtetl life, so to watch it now is to experience a piece of erased history. The cast, made up of members of New York’s Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters, is led by Opatoshu in his first film; he would go on to appear in dozens of movies and television shows as well as on Broadway, including memorable TV roles on The Twilight Zone,The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,Star Trek, and The Outer Limits. There will be a members-only discussion about the film with J. Hoberman and Dan Sullivan on January 26 at 6:00; you can find out more here.
Amos Nachoum searches for the elusive polar bear in Picture of His Life
Who: Dani Menkin, Amos Nachoum What: Live Q&A about Picture of His Life (Yonatan Nir & Dani Menkin, 2019) Where:Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan When: Tuesday, June 23, free with advance RSVP, 8:30 Why: Captain Ahab had his great white whale in Moby-Dick, Captain Quint had his great white shark in Jaws, and Timothy Treadwell had his grizzly bear in Grizzly Man. People have been obsessed with animals in the wild since the dawn of humanity, as prey, for food, for sport, and for companionship. In Picture of His Life, directors Yonatan Nir and Dani Menkin track legendary Israeli-American underwater photographer Amos Nachoum as he attempts to cap his remarkable career by capturing, on film, a polar bear — “the world’s largest land carnivore,” opening text points out — while swimming with it in its native habitat. “I’ve been dreaming of this moment for a long time. After all these years of photographing in the wild, there is one subject that eludes me: that is photographing the polar bear in the water,” Nachoum admits.
So the filmmakers join Nachoum, his Emmy-winning cinematographer, Adam Ravetch, local Inuit guide Joe Kaludjak, and a few others on a five-day journey in the gorgeous Canadian Arctic. Nachoum, who turned seventy this year, is a Hemingway-esque figure, ruggedly handsome, introspective, a man of few words, devoted to his mission. “Amos, to me, is one of the best ambassadors of the ocean. There’s a message in every one of his pictures. Sometimes he takes huge amounts of risks to bring those images which nobody else has been able to capture,” says oceanographic explorer Jean Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques Cousteau. “Amos is like a scientist, observing carefully, and then reporting honestly,” National Geographic explorer in residence Dr. Sylvia Earle notes. “He doesn’t have a normal life,” explains underwater photographer Javier Mendoza, adding, “He’s married to the ocean.”
Nir (My Hero Brother, The Essential Link: The Story of Wilfrid Israel) and Menkin (39 Pounds of Love,On the Map), who previously collaborated on Dolphin Boy, about an Arab teenager who finds help from dolphins after being horrifically beaten, also speak with Scuba Diving Hall of Famer Howard Rosenstein, photographer J. Michael, Whitaker, The Blue Planet director Andy Byatt, shark expert Avi Klepfer, and Nachoum’s two sisters, Ilana Nachoum and Michal Gilboa, who discuss Amos’s difficult relationship with their father; some of his fellow soldiers talk about how serving in an elite commando unit in the 1973 Yom Kippur War affected them all. A self-described “soldier of the sea,” Nachoum is shown sitting alone in a dark room, projecting his wildlife photos from a carousel the way families look at vacation pictures together. “The polar bear for Amos is personal; it symbolizes something that makes it more than a picture of the polar bear. It’s a picture of his life,” Mendoza says.
The film is spectacularly photographed by Nir aboveground and Ravetch underwater; the small expedition seems to have the entire world all to itself. Editors Taly Goldenberg, Martin Singer, and Shlomi Shalom cut from the Canadian Arctic to Nachoum’s remarkable wildlife photos, from archival war footage to old snapshots and video of Nachoum as a boy and a young man. Nir manages to catch Nachoum, the 2019 SeaKeeper of the Year, several times by himself, lying on a rock, looking up at the sky or out at the ocean, a strong but quiet man still searching for purpose, still seeking approval as he risks his life yet again for what for him is more than just a photograph, a different kind of old man and the sea. Picture of His Life can be streamed via the Angelika or the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan; Menkin and Nachoum will participate in a live Q&A through the JCC on June 23 at 8:30 that is free with advance RSVP here.
The life and times of Aulcie Perry on and off the court are documented in Israel Film Center Festival closer
Who: Dani Menkin, Nancy Spielberg What: Closing night of Israel Film Center Festival film screening and live Q&A Where:Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan When: Sunday, June 14, $8, 6:00 Why: The eighth annual Israel Film Center Festival comes to a close June 14 with Dani Menkin’s Aulcie, followed by a live Zoom Q&A with Menkin and producer Nancy Spielberg. Israeli director Menkin followed up his 2016 documentary, On the Map, about Maccabi Elite Tel Aviv’s unlikely victory in the 1976-77 European Champions Cup, with this inside look into the life of one of its stars, Aulcie Perry. After being the last man cut from the New York Knicks in 1976, Newark native Perry was recruited to play for Maccabi in Israel, where the 6-10 black man — an unusual sight in the Land of Milk and Honey — quickly became a superstar, helping the team to championships, falling in love with top model Tami Ben Ami, and hanging out in hot clubs, living the high life. But it all came tumbling down in a haze of drugs, and Menkin traces Perry’s attempt to put it all back together, primarily by finding the daughter he has not seen since she was a baby.
The film is set up as Perry’s confession to that daughter, Cierra Musungay. “I always knew one thing: that I wanted to tell you my story, the way it is, with the good and the bad,” he says at the beginning. “So where do I start? People say you start at the beginning. But I wanted to start at the end, or when I thought the end was coming.” He was inspired to track her down after facing a serious health scare. “I think, that only when I almost died, I started to really live. And that’s when I wanted to find you and, maybe in some ways, find myself,” he adds.
Menkin goes back and forth between archival footage, animation by Assaf Zellner, and interviews with Aulcie’s sister Bernadine Lewis, his friends Wayne Tyre and Roy Young, his ex-girlfriend Juanita Jackson, his son Aulcie Perry Jr., and many men from his Maccabi family, including former teammates Earl Williams and Tal Brody, team president Shimon Mizrahi, co-owner Oudi Recanati, coach Zvi Sherf, and manager Shamluk Maharovsky, who was like a father to him. “In Israel, there wasn’t that much prejudice against black players, and he felt at home here,” NBA commentator Simmy Reguer says. “Aulcie came in like a blessing from the gods,” fellow Jersey native and team captain Brody recalls. And Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff explains, “At Maccabi Tel Aviv, Aulcie Perry was Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar rolled into one.”
Now sixty-nine, Perry is honest and forthright throughout, admitting his failings and wanting to make up for lost time. He makes no excuses for his precipitous fall, and he’s not seeking sympathy. He’s a man who made mistakes and wants a chance to set things right. Aulcie is a cautionary tale of redemption with heart and soul, focusing on the need to be part of a family, no matter how different and unexpected it may be.
Real-life dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Zina Zinchenko star in Boaz Yakin’s Aviva
Who: Boaz Yakin, Bobbi Jene Smith, Zina Zinchenko, Or Schraiber, Tyler Phillips What: Virtual theatrical release of Aviva (Boaz Yakin, 2019), with live Q&As Where:Angelika Film Center, $11.99 to rent film; Q&As free When: Streaming begins June 12; Q&A with director Boaz Yakin and cast members and choreographers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, moderated by Robert Rosenberg, June 13 & 20, free with RSVP, 7:00; with Yakin and cast members Zina Zinchenko and Tyler Phillips, moderated by Rosenberg, June 14, free with RSVP, 7:00; with filmmakers June 18, Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan,free with RSVP, 8:30 Why: “There’s nothing more depressing or lonely than being alone in New York City,” a character says in voice-over early on in Boaz Yakin’s intensely intimate and sexual Aviva, an SXSW2020 selection that is being released virtually June 12 through the Angelika online here in New York. A few moments later, the character adds, “And so we created an imaginary space together, a space outside of time and space, shared only by us.” Aviva is a tantalizing, introspective film seemingly made for the time of coronavirus, with so many people still sheltering in place, facing isolation and loneliness, seeking connections via new spaces such as Zoom.
Yakin, a New York-based Israeli American writer, director, and producer who previously made Fresh, Remember the Titans, and Max, collaborated extensively with dancer-choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith on the film, which uses an array of beautiful bodies — nearly every actor is introduced in the nude — to express ideas of personal identity, traditional gender roles, love, friendship, boundaries, and creativity. Zina Zinchenko plays Aviva, a free-spirited Jewish dancer in Paris who is set up with Eden (Tyler Phillips), a relatively uncommunicative and ultraserious New Yorker. In Hebrew, Aviva means springlike and innocent, while Eden is named after the Garden of Eden, particularly the promise that turns into a fall from grace.
Yakin brilliantly explores the masculine-feminine contradictions in us all by also having Smith portray Eden as a woman, and her real-life husband, Or Schraiber, play Aviva as a man. The other characters recognize the two Edens and two Avivas, speaking with them as if there is nothing odd about the situation. In addition, the four speak to each other, arguing and debating the state of their desires, which becomes especially intriguing, and confusing, in the numerous graphic sexual scenes that sometimes involve multiple men and women. Dances are intricately placed throughout the film as part of the drama; the actors don’t simply break out into song a la Hollywood musicals so much as the movement usually develops more organically as characters get close, touch hands, and then come together in gorgeously choreographed solos and pas de deux, as well as a fun, freewheeling scene in a club. Yakin regularly breaks the fourth wall as characters speak directly at the viewer and, occasionally, the boom mic and the cameramen enter shots; there is no reason for him to hide that this is a movie, and that it is about dance, among other things.
Smith and Aviva co-choreographer Schraiber are both veterans of Ohad Naharin’s storied Israeli troupe Batsheva; the former teaches Gaga, Naharin’s unique physical language, and her parents are mimes who teach movement for actors at Juilliard; the real lives of Smith and Schraiber were detailed in the extraordinary 2017 documentary Bobbi Jene. Smith, Schraiber, and Zinchenko have also appeared together in such Batsheva pieces as The Last Work, while Zinchenko and Phillips are both veterans of Sleep No More. The four protagonists’ familiarity with one another adds another level of intimacy; we sometimes feel like we’re intruding on real life, which contrasts effectively with Bobbi Gene, which is framed like a fiction film.
New Yorkers will get a cathartic kick when the story travels to Coney Island and Central Park, recognizing such familiar sites as the Wonder Wheel and the Hans Christian Andersen statue, popular spots come spring and summer. It’s also no coincidence that children are front and center in those scenes. For those of us missing the connections that dance, sex, and going to the movies bring us, Aviva satisfies many of those needs. There will be free, live Q&As with Yakin and members of the cast on June 13, 14, 18, and 20; the film can be rented online for $11.99.
Unorthodox cocreator and writer Anna Winger will discuss the show at JCC Q&A
Who:Anna Winger What: Live Q&A with cocreator of Unorthodox series Where:Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan When: Monday, June 8, free with RSVP, noon Why: One of the runaway television hits of the pandemic has been Netflix’s Unorthodox, about a young married Orthodox woman in Brooklyn who runs away to Berlin to escape the suffocating life she is trapped in. The four-part series has led to the breakout success of Israeli actress Shira Haas, who has a smaller but critically significant role in the earlier Israeli series Shtisel, which also involves Orthodox marriage. Unorthodox was inspired by Deborah Feldman’s memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots; while the Brooklyn segments of the show are based on the book, the Berlin sections are fictional. One of the writers and creators of the show, Anna Winger, who also wrote and created Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86, was scheduled to do a live Q&A on May 28 as part of the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan’s Paul Feig z”l Tikkun Leil Shavuot, but the event was postponed because of the protests over the police killing of George Floyd. The free discussion is now taking place June 8 at noon. Judging by Winger’s Twitter feed, she will have a lot to say not only about Unorthodox but about what is happening in America today.
Unorthodox cocreator and writer Anna Winger will discuss the show during JCC overnight Shavuot celebration
Who: Anna Winger, many more What: Live Q&A with series creator of Unorthodox Where:Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan When: Thursday, May 28, free (donations accepted) with advance RSVP, midnight (Shavuot celebration runs May 28 at 9:00 pm to May 29 at 5:00 am) Why: One of the runaway television hits of the pandemic has been Netflix’s Unorthodox, about a young married Orthodox woman in Brooklyn who runs away to Berlin to escape the suffocating life she is trapped in. The four-part series has led to the breakout success of Israeli actress Shira Haas, who has a smaller but critically significant role in the earlier Israeli series Shtisel, which also involves Orthodox marriage. Unorthodox was inspired by Deborah Feldman’s memoir Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots; while the Brooklyn segments of the show are based on the book, the Berlin sections are fictional. On May 28 at midnight, one of the writers and creators of the show, Anna Winger, who also wrote and created Deutschland 83 and Deutschland 86, will participate in a live Q&A during the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan’s Paul Feig z”l Tikkun Leil Shavuot.
The celebration usually occurs overnight at the JCC on Amsterdam and Seventy-Sixth St. but has gone virtual in 2020. Among the dozens of other events, all free, are “Koolulam in Conversation” with Rabbi Joy Levitt at 9:00 pm, “Studying Harry Potter as a Sacred Text” with Casper ter Kuile at 10:00, “Reimaging Life, Loss, and Love during Covid-19: Text, Ritual, and Story to Lift Our Spirit” with Jeannie Blaustein, Rabbi Dr. Jenny Solomon, and Rabbi Sydney Mintz at 11:00, “Idan Raichel: Stories and Songs” at 1:00 am, “Franz Rosenzweig on the Notion of Revelation” with Rabbi Michael Paley at 2:00, “The History of Israeli Fashion: From the Kibbutz to Tel Aviv” with Liraz Cohen Mordechai at 3:00, and “Noa: A Closing Concert for Shavuot” at 4:00.
