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As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched the following movie as part of this volunteer effort.

“I Shot My Love” follows the dual love story of a man towards his partner and his mother. The documentary follows how Tomer met and fell in love with Wieland, a German dancer, how their quick love affair turned into a full relationship when Wieland moved to Israel too. It also shows how Tomer’s mother reacted to him being a German how she felt that 4 out of his 5 sons decided to leave Israel where she brought them up.

It’s obvious that Tomer, the director, writer and cameraman of the movie, is in love with Wieland as most of the shots of him are at least warm if not sensual. It is also evident that he loves his mother very much, although his camerawork seems less enthusiastic then. The angles he shot her from are not always the most flattering and the same applies to the editing. But this just shows the natural differences between what romantic and filial love.

The movie as a whole was sweet and often touching. But I believe the intention was to convey a more universal, depersonalized message, in which it failed; as it ended up being not much more then a well edited home-movie with some social reflections. The whole movie has a black frame around it as if we’d see an archive footage or through the lens of a single old film frame. I was simply annoyed by this technique as I wanted to see more. Brecht’s influence on Wieland–who recites his poetry several times–and on Tomer–who muses about his own use of the camera as a separator between himself and his subjects–is showing. I think the filmamker intended the movie to follow the footsteps of Brecht, but for that he was too much involved in the process.

Description at the filmmaker’s website:

Seventy years after his grandfather escapes from Nazi Germany to Palestine, Israeli documentary director Tomer Heymann returns to the country of his ancestors to present his film “Paper Dolls” at the Berlin International Film Festival, and there meets a man who will change his life.

This 48-hour love affair, originating in Berghain Panorama Bar, develops into a significant relationship between Tomer and Andreas Merk, a German dancer. When Andreas decides to move to Tel-Aviv, he not only has to cope with a new partner, but to manage the complex realities of life in Israel and his personal connection to it as a German citizen.

Tomer’s mother, descendent of German immigrants was born and lived all her life in a small Israeli village, where she raised five sons. One by one, she watches her children leave the country she and her family helped to build, and now cannot help but try to influence the life of Tomer, the one son who remains.

I SHOT MY LOVE tells a personal but universal love story and follows the triangular relationship between Tomer, his German boyfriend, and his intensely Israeli mother.

Trailer

As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched the following movie as part of this volunteer effort.

“Children Without a Shadow”, or as its original title in French says “Les Enfants Sans Ombre,” is a documentary about a person and his story is an example to understand an external and an internal series of events. The person is a Shaul Harel a pediatrist , who was born in Belgium, as a Jewish child was hidden by righteous gentiles during World War II and later emigrated to Israel, where he is living ever since. The external events I referred to were, what happened to him and other hidden children during the war, how they survived and how their lives later evolved in Israel. This is told trough photos, interviews and a revisiting of the places where he lived or stayed in the old country.

A main focus of the film is the psychology of how the above effected him and others in his situation. It explores what happens when you are told as a child that right now and from now on you have to hide who you were and where you came from. This on-demand request has affects that lasted almost a whole life. They ended up hiding so successfully that they hid their own past from themselves too and later from their children and children’s children.

My own grandparents were not children during the war, but they also hid their personal experiences from their descendants for most of their lives. They had different reasons and circumstances than the people in this film, but the results were similar: “second and third generation Holocaust syndrome.” To some extent I have this too, that’s why I found this movie so fascinating.

At one point in the movie a psychologist talks about having a hidden path being like lacking one’s own shadow and the necessity of rebuilding it. Towards the end fo the movie this line of thinking is summed up with these words:

“The paradox for hidden children is that their story is told to them. Sixty years later, they find photos, archives, testimonies. They are told about the childhood that they themselves have denied or rejected, because it was unbearable. It is belated resilience.”

The description at the distributor’s site reads:

The story of Prof. Shaul Harel is the tale of resilience of all the hidden Jews in Belgium. This gentle film allows a peek at a very personal story which embodies the courage and perseverance of those who survived the Holocaust. The story of the Jewish community in Belgium has not been previously explored and in this touching film we meet adults who survived the war and went on to become successful –and even happy adults. A remarkable story told through the experiences of a remarkable man.

As a member of the Jewish Film Festival, organized by the Jewish Community Center, Sonoma County, I preview movies to help decide which ones to play at the Festival. I watched the following movie as part of this volunteer effort.

“From Tel Aviv” is one-woman movie about searching for identity and understanding of a country and city. Naruna Kaplan de Macedo moved to Israel following her Israeli boyfriend and started to shoot a movie in her acculturation process. She has an open mind, an inquiring spirit and a focused camera as she learns to live and explore her new homeland. She doesn’t shy away the rabid fans of various soccer teams, the ecstasy of young Zionist celebrating their country. Instead of narrating through these images, which were the most memorable in the movie for me, she chose the visuals to speak for themselves and adds her own thoughts only after we, the viewers, were immersed too long into these emotionally charged scenes.

The bulk of the narration revolves around her reflections and reactions to what she sees. The constant self-analysis is the theme/message of the movie, so it is at least as much about her as about Tel Aviv. I personally found her thinking schematic and formulaic. but I learned never to argue with other people’s experiences. It is always real to them, even if I see the patterns that shows how their interpretation lacks individuality.

The last bit of narration in the movie sums up her conclusions

“War doesn’t hide here. We live with it, within it and it can never be set aside. And through the fear I decide I need to get ready. To get ready for war. Not the declared conflict, which so worried me when I was in Europe. One must prepare for the other war. The day-to-day war. The permanent war. I am searching. The end of the world is moving forward. I will not run away. I will fight.”

And as you can see in her (French language) blog she is still searching and fighting.

The description at the distributor’s site reads:

“I am Jewish because my mother’s mother was Jewish.
I am Jewish because, as my grandfather once told me, “Kaplan means Jewish”. It’s in the name.

I did not know Israel, did not understand Israel: it was confusing and terrifying. Israel meant war, the conflict, images of disaster.

Then one day, in Paris, I meet Nadav. He is Israeli. We fall in love and I understand that I have to know Israel if I am ever going to understand him.

I go to his home, to Tel-Aviv. As I walk through the streets of the city I wonder if I can ever make it my own, my home. In order to protect myself I turn to the familiar, to what I know: the camera. I start filming from Tel-Aviv, searching for identity – the city’s and my own.”

Trailer