Smeared Type

By Ellis Goodman

Roman Vishniac, who died in 1990, became, in the words of the literary editor of The New Republic, “the official mortuary photographer of Eastern European Jewry.”  His book of photographs entitled, “A Vanished World,” brilliantly illustrated the life of poor and persecuted Jews in the years leading up to the Second World War.  Vishniac’s work is recognized as the last photographic record of Jewish life before the catastrophe of the Holocaust. 

Vishniac’s book is full poignant scenes, but it now turns out that most of these scenes and linked narrative were created and not factual.  Many of the pictures in the book came from different rolls of film, probably shot in different towns.  His vast archive of work provides a fascinating set of ambiguities and unanswered questions. 

The truth has been uncovered by a 34-year-old curator named Maya Benton, recently in a New York Times magazine article.  She has discovered that Vishniac released over the course of nearly 50 years only a small selection of his work for public consumption, and the images that were released showed that the villages of Eastern Europe were largely populated by poor, pious and embattled Jews.  Vishniac was able to create, with his concentration on poverty and piety, the impression of an unchanging and authentic society.

Benton, however, discovered Vishniac had claimed that he’d gone to Eastern Europe to photograph this disappearing society, without reward or financial support.  It transpired, however, that the Joint Distribution Committee (A Jewish charity) in Berlin had commissioned Vishniac, whose photographic work was well known in the 1930’s, to travel around Eastern Europe, to document daily Jewish life in these small villages, and to focus on the most needy and poorest areas solely for a fund-raising project.  This may well have been a noble cause, but was certainly entirely different from how he later represented his work.

Vishniac was undoubtedly an extremely talented photographer – perhaps one of the best of his age.  Hopefully, one day we will get an opportunity to see a full range of his work.  But it is regrettable that he created “images” to suit his assignment, and also his audiences’ in-built attachment to those images of Jewish suffering as being the facts on the ground at the time – which in many cases they were not.

It is so easy for the public’s concepts of factual images to be manipulated through technology or realignment, until we believe entirely in the image we see, even though it is false.  One wonders how often this happens, particularly in our modern high-tech image creating world.

 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

By  Ellis Goodman

Early this year, a book about the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II by Charles Pellegrino – “The Last Train From Hiroshima” – won excellent reviews, including a description in The New York Times – as being a “gleaming, popular, war time history.”  The acclaimed novel prompted “Avatar” Director, James Cameron, to option it for a possible movie. 

The book included testimony from a source – Joseph Fuoco – who claimed to be a last-minute replacement on an observation plane which accompanied the Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima in August, 1945.  However, it turned out that Mr. Fuoco, who died in 2008 at the age of 84, was an imposter discredited by scientists, historians, veterans, and the family of the actual flight engineer who was with the crew.

The plot thickened when it appeared that, even though Mr. Pelligrino admitted his mistake, his publisher, Henry Holt & Company, had additional questions about other characters quoted in the book, and whether Mr. Pellegrino’s Doctorate was legitimate.  The President of Henry Holt announced that the book would be withdrawn and stated, “Without the confidence that we can stand behind the work in its entirety, we cannot continue to sell this product to our customers.”

Pellegrino fought back, saying he had used pseudonyms to protect certain of his characters’ identities, but had forgotten to acknowledge that in his book.  As to his Doctorate – a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand – he subsequently stated his degree had been revoked years ago in a dispute, but had later been reinstated.  The University said they had no record of his PhD.

This whole issue is interesting because it follows the plagiarism claim against the young German author, Helene Hegemann, nominated for an award at the Leipzig Book Fair, who acknowledged that she had used other people’s work, but saw nothing wrong in doing that.  It is reasonable to expect that the content of memoirs, biographies, or autobiographies would be written from a particular and sometimes personal point of view.  Readers may dispute, from their own knowledge, some of the content of such works, and it is not uncommon and perhaps even expected that memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies will be slanted by the writer to present the best face to the audience.  However, there is a difference between this massaging of the facts, to fictionalizing events or not doing adequate research to make sure that facts are correct before passing them off as a legitimate piece of history.

In this fast moving age of instant information, it is a challenge to maintain an ethical balance when writing non-fiction which the reader is entitled to believe is an accurate description of actual events of the day.  But if publishers or the media in general do not maintain vigilance and the highest standards, the public is in danger of being manipulated through false information.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

By  Ellis Goodman

It is not uncommon to feel little shakes and trembling of the earth at our home in the Desert near Palm Springs in Southern California.  Sometimes, these rattles feel like you are listening to a large truck passing your front door, but even though these may register in the region of a 4.5 magnitude, they do not really have the feel of an earthquake. Yesterday was different.

I was standing in the living room at 3:40 p.m.  We had just returned home from an Easter Sunday brunch in downtown Palm Desert. The wind had come up, and I suddenly heard a whoosh.  I noticed that an outdoor ceiling fan was whirring around and the water was sloshing in the swimming pool.  Suddenly, the building started to shake and my wife called out, “I think it’s an earthquake!”  We ran to each other and stood under a doorway, which is what I had seen as instructions to the public during an earthquake.  The violent trembling continued, paintings on our walls went askew, some books and papers fell off of our bookshelf, a couple of sculptures, including a birthday gift from my daughter three weeks ago, fell over,  and then it was gone.  The trembling stopped, and we checked the house for damage.  Luckily there was none.  

Of course on reflection, we should have run outside of the house as soon as the shaking started, but it’s hard to react so quickly for an event that probably didn’t last more than twenty seconds. But as we reviewed the television news and our computers, we found we had suffered a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, with an epicenter in Baja California, about 100 miles from we are located, some 50 miles from the Mexican border.

On the United States side of the border, there was scattered property damage, particularly in the San Diego area.  In our location we saw on the news, damage to our local Barnes & Noble bookstore and food items scattered all over one of our local supermarkets.  Luckily, there was no loss of  life, or even injuries from what it now transpires was the strongest  quake to hit southern California in nearly 20 years.  Unfortunately, there were two deaths and more than a hundred people injured in Mexico.

It made us think of the severity of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile.  It must terrifying to wake up to a major earthquake in the middle of the night in a high-rise apartment building.  The shaking of a building is frightening and trying to get to safety when your home is shaking under your feet, power has failed, and the trembling continues for maybe forty seconds or more must be a horrifying experience.  

For my wife and I, it was all over quickly with no damage and no after-effects.  We feel lucky but can now appreciate the forces of nature that can change one’s life in a few seconds.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

 

I’ve always been a movie buff, as is my wife.  She is even more serious than I am, having watched 40 films at this year’s Palm Springs International Film Festival.  She loves watching the Oscars.  I’m not always as keen, because I think the process over the years has become rather boring and predictable.  This year however was, to my mind, considerably more entertaining.  The double act of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin – while not Martin and Lewis, or Abbott and Costello – was certainly entertaining, and their patter at the expense of many of the big stars was slick and amusing.  The opening number, which was more Las Vegas than Hollywood led by Neil Patrick Harris, provided the necessary grand spectacle, although Harris was no Gene Kelly. 

What has however become increasingly interesting about the Oscars is, that the awards are handed out year-after-year to the “small films,” those low-budget often foreign-made movies, with superb acting, outstanding direction and for the most part, a lack of special effects and hundreds of millions of marketing dollars.  Films like recent winners, “Slumdog Millionaire” and “The Queen” are good examples. 

Movies are nevertheless mass entertainment.  They were created for that purpose, and that is the basis on which Hollywood was built.  It is interesting therefore that the Academy would choose “The Hurt Locker,” a small budget picture with virtually unknown actors and a director who had limited success to date, over “Avatar,” which within a few months has become the most financially successful movie of all time, based upon its innovative special effects and the first successful use of a 3-D process. 

Other “small” movies to be recognized included “Precious,” a dark painful look into the very realistic lives of the black underclass in America.  However, a movie such as “Up in the Air,” with the star power of George Clooney, a worthy entry for many of the award categories, failed to win even one Oscar. 

So the Academy is, to my mind, doing its job.  It is handing out awards for quality production, direction, story, music and acting.  The movies that it honors however are not the movies which bring in the big bucks for the industry, or to which the public flocks every weekend.

I suppose James Cameron can take some comfort in his defeat for Best Picture and Best Director by his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, in the fact that Avatar so far has taken $2.5 billion in world-wide sales against the “Hurt Locker’s” ticket sales of $19 million. 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

In the rapidly changing world of the internet, streaming, blogging, Kindle, and instant headlines, it appears that what was considered unforgivable sins in the literary world of the past, is now acceptable technique.  I read an interesting article in the Sunday New York Times by Randy Kennedy on the modern view of plagiarism.

Over the past hundred years or so in modern literature from around the world, copying passages from another author was unforgivable.   But now, a new sensational German teenage novelist, Helene Hegemann, has been named as a finalist for a prestigious literary prize for her book about Berlin’s club scene.  The announcement prompted a blogger and another novelist to inform the world in general that Ms. Hegemann had included chunks of other people’s work in her book. When faced with these accusations, she announced that appropriating passages from other people’s books had always been her plan.  So, there was not the usual remorse on being accused of plagiarism.

Ms. Hegemann’s claim is that she believes that she has the right to use anything at hand to help her in her creative process, and she believes that her generation, bombarded with instant resources of information, should take advantage of the information age and not be bothered about original sources.  So far not unexpectedly, her ideas of communal creativity is not shared by either those from whom she has borrowed, or the literary world in general.

There are those who will argue that “borrowing” prose, ideas, and historical announcements, has been the foundation of writing throughout the centuries, and many in Ms. Hegemann’s generation will argue that creative writing is years behind other creative arts, who appropriate ideas, scenes and real life props into their work.

There are of course legitimate arguments in this area, particularly in the visual arts of, say, Andy Warhol’s use of a Campbell’s soup can, the pirating of classical music for modern pop, and many a legal battle has been fought over plagiarism in the literary world.. 

Sometimes, the use of other people’s writings or information is hard to avoid.  I personally was extremely upset when Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose historical biographies I had always enjoyed, was accused of plagiarism in her writings about Roosevelt.  When one is writing either fact or fiction, it is sometimes difficult to know whether thoughts that are written down are original or are based on something one has read or heard in the past.

There is going to be a considerable amount of soul searching on these issues from an ethics and legal point of view.  My personal view is that to attach your name to any literary work provides you with an obligation to be responsible for its creative originality. 

 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

 

In my espionage novel, “Bear Any Burden,” set in Poland in 1983, Sir Alex Campbell and Anna Kaluza, working for the British Secret Intelligence Services (MI6) were helping Professor Erik Keller, a world-renowned nuclear physicist to defect to the West.  MI6 had provided Alex Campbell with false passports for Professor and Mrs. Keller.  These were stamped and dog-eared documents that raised no questions when crossing borders.

In the recent assassination in Dubai of a Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, eleven suspects traveling under European passports are being sought.  In this intriguing but inexplicable assassination, we have been told that the alleged assassins were traveling under legitimate passports – stolen or illegally created – from British, Irish and French citizens.  In today’s world, a false passport is unlikely to pass border security.  The swiping of passport identification sets up an immediate world-wide response which would highlight any irregularities. Thus, the use of legitimate citizen’s passport information is essential if would-be assassins are to move from country to country.

There are however a number of intriguing questions relating to this assassination.  If, as has been alleged, this was an Israeli Secret Service (Mossad) action, it appears to have been a very heavy-handed one. Why were eleven people necessary to carryout, what appears to be a simple killing of an unprotected individual?  Why was this well-known alleged Hamas terrorist and arms supplier traveling without bodyguards?  Why did the Israelis resort to crude disguises, knowing that surveillance cameras were everywhere?  What was the objective of having disguises in the first place? Knowing that the hotel, airport and other areas would have surveillance cameras, why were the alleged assassins so casual appearing before those cameras with their target?  When did the assassins leave the hotel?  Was it the day of the assassination or the following morning?  Given all the surveillance cameras located at the hotel and airport, which flights did the assassins take out of the country – individually or collectively – and where did they go?

On the face of it, given the sophistication and reputation of Mossad, if they are indeed the perpetrators, the mission was handled very ineptly.  Perhaps the Israelis underestimated the capabilities of the Dubai police in tracking down their operatives, or maybe the Israelis wanted the world to know that they can reach out and assassinate Hamas and other terrorists.

Finally, Hamas are now asserting that two former officers from the rival Fatah organization were involved in the assassination.  We’re told that the Dubai police have two unidentified Palestinians in custody in connection with the killing.  So perhaps, this was not a Mossad operation at all, but yet another Palestinian faction fight. 

There are a lot of unanswered questions and we may never know the truth.  However, as is often the case, fact can be stranger than fiction.

 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

 

 

My daughter who, with her family has been living in Paris for the past 3 ½, years recently sent me the attached, a compilation of observations from friends and ex-pats.  She assures me it is a pretty accurate assessment, which I think is quite an amusing commentary on the French way of life – pluses and minuses.

You know you are living in France…………..

When you give your children ‘snails’ for dinner and they adore them!!

When you kiss “hello” to everyone you meet!!

When you open your windows in the morning to ‘air’ everything!!

When you take off your shoes when you go to someone’s house!!

When you 9 year-old son asks if he can have a snack and comes out of the fridge with cheese and olives

When you see a car parked, facing the wrong way, on a one-way street

When your 4 year old son brings home a recreation of a Matisse

When you make a quick dinner for your daughter and she asks if it’s the ‘premier plat’

When you smile at someone in the street & they don’t smile back

When the boulanger takes an extra 5 minutes to wrap up your pastry selection in a box with a bow and their logo sticker DESPITE there being a long line of customers waiting to be served.

When you can place items in your bag while shopping to be paid for at the register WITHOUT being accused of shoplifting.

When you are asked by the doctor to disrobe and he/she doesn’t give you some sort of cover-up to put on during the examination!

When a man asks you out without being in the slightest bit concerned that you have a husband!

When you visit the butcher, the cheese shop, the wine shop, the bakery, and the fruit & veg market all in a one block radius of your house

When you wouldn’t dare leaving the house in tennis shoes or a sweatshirt

When you see the scarves come out as soon as the temps plummet to 15C/60F

When the waiters leave you alone and don’t refill your glass or ask “how is everything” every 5 minutes

When only close friends call you by your first name

When you walk into a pharmacy that sells lotions, pills and tinctures for” Jambes Lourd” (what the heck is that?)

When you might just see the whole animal in the butcher’s window

When there is a charity to send poor people on vacation

When someone pushes you on the bus/metro a couple of minutes before the stop in order to be the first off, and the offender is at least 90 years old

When there is no shame (or fear) in unemployment

When if you don’t like one doctor you can just pick another and see them without having to go through your insurance provider first

When you can invite people over for just an aperitif

When you can give your dinner guests the stinkiest cheese in the world and they will still congratulate you on the meal!!!

When you walk out of your GYN’s office with your pap smear in your purse to take to the post office to mail to the lab

When you finally get the kids to the park to find it’s been closed

When you jump the queue because you’re pregnant

When you are walking your dog and stop to pick up his poo and one of your kids steps in someone else’s dog’s poo

When your daughter says “oh la la” when she drops something

When you can ride a bike in a skirt and heels

When every time you see the Eiffel Tower sparkling it gives you shivers

When you go to the fruit seller and you are asked whether it’s to be eaten today or tomorrow

When you have to ask 3 or 4 times for the check at a restaurant

When the elevator only fits 2 people

When you go into a shop to buy something, but they refuse to ring you up because it’s 5 min. to closing

When you go to the butchers & you’re told exactly how to cook the meat you’ve bought

When you suddenly become popular and have houseguests all the time

When a man calls to your house to tell you for a fee he will sharpen all your kitchen knives

When the shop assistants offer to gift wrap your purchases, even when it’s not Christmas

When buying a bottle of wine, the wine merchant asks you what you plan to eat with it

When even if you’re first in the queue at the bus stop, that doesn’t mean you’ll be first onto the bus

When you walk into the ladies’ room at work while the cleaning man is there and you both say hello and go on with your business

When you consider slipping quietly out of a party so you don’t have to kiss 25 people goodbye (whom you already kissed hello).

When the best ice cream shop in the city is closed during the entire month of August

When the same shop is open all through winter

When your 6yo corrects your pronunciation coz she can do that ‘r’

When dogs are allowed in restaurants but not in the parks

When you find yourself doing that shoulder shrug combined with the “pfff” sound

When the only employee at the doctor’s office is the doctor! He/she answers the phones, schedules the appointments, weighs/measures/takes blood pressure, gives shots, and spends a minimum of 30 minutes with you and it costs you next-to-nothing

When doctors still make housecalls

When you’re served champagne at a 3-yr-old’s birthday party

When the perfectly coiffed chic woman ahead of you in line wearing high heeled shoes, a tight little skirt and equally tight top on her trim little body, turns around and is older than your grandmother.

When anything above size 36 is considered a Plus size

When coffee at breakfast time is served in a cereal bowl

When there are 8 days in a week, and 15 in a fortnight

When children go to the “canteen” at school and are served a full four course meal, with starter, main course, cheese course and dessert

When you look both ways when crossing a one-way street

When you call your paediatrician with a sick child at 8am, he answers the phone himself, and gives you an appointment for 11am that same morning

When the dustbin-men come 5 times a week

When neither adults nor teenagers get drunk at parties or sports events because it’s “unattractive”

When you see groups of police men/women (usually groups of 3) in uniform kissing each other hello/good-bye on the street

When you can use the shrugging of shoulders to explain numerous things!! And “ça va” for everything else

When men’s swim trunks are forbidden at swimming pools

When bare breasts greet you perkily in a 10ft tall soap ad plastered across the metro station walls.

When the bus driver stops the bus, gets out and lights up a cigarette while all the passengers wait patiently inside

When you can’t recognize English words when French people use them

When the toilet in your local cafe resembles a shower stall with two little stands on it for your feet

When you still find a way to get your undies from M&S/Target, no matter what

When your husband’s company doesn’t make the monthly deposit because the accountant was on vacation

When people talk about how British humour is so wonderful…and then you realise that they mean either Benny Hill or Mr. Bean

When perfume is also for men

When you’re told you can have something “right away: 10 days, two weeks at most”

When you are fatter than everyone else, but back in the UK/US you are the skinniest

When meat and fish are being sold outdoors

When you treat your plumber like a king for fear he will drop you as a client

When the driver of the car ahead of you whom you have just given way to out of courtesy, looks at you as though you’re crazy

 

So, if you are moving to France, be prepared!

 

 Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

 

Today in Illinois, there are a number of primary elections taking place.  There will undoubtedly be a tough battle in November for the Senate seat occupied in 2008 by Barack Obama, and then the controversial Roland Burris, who is not going to seek re-election.  Mark Kirk is a republican congressman for the northern suburbs of Chicago, and appears to be a strong favorite to get this seat.  His Congressional seat may go to the democratic candidate, Dan Seals, who has failed on two previous occasions to dislodge Kirk.

The campaigning has been very active from all participants over the past few months and, regrettably as we have got nearer to polling day, we have had a continuous blast of radio and television negative advertising.  These ads tell us that the opposing candidates are dishonest, incompetent, too young, or inexperienced.  Both sides use the same tactics and, as we all know from past experience in the U.S. democracy, negative advertising works.

But how democratic is our system today? We are told that we must protect free speech so anybody can say anything about anyone, without fear of retribution.  We have sophisticated pollsters, focus groups, political ad-men, lobbyists, and politically funded and motivated organizations, representing every special interest you can think of – all of whom know how to reach a particular section of the public with just the sort of ads that will turn them into a supporter of a particular candidate or against an opposing candidate.  Is this sort of manipulated propaganda through the airways truly free speech or democratic?  I don’t think so.  It has led us to the position where it takes one and a half-billion dollars to elect a President of the United States, and billions of dollars to elect our representatives in Congress and the Senate.  In order to be successful, candidates recognize they have to lead the charge to raise money for their campaign.  This inevitably leads to donations from special interest groups who obviously expect something in return.  As the amounts increase, and the lobbyist and special interests play an ever-increasing role, so the candidates are more and more beholden to those that donate.  I don’t call this democracy – I call it corruption.

Our elected representatives have to start campaigning the day after they take their seats.  An endless stream of fundraisers, dinners, speaking engagements, and private meetings with major donors, lobbyists, or special interests becomes the norm.  No wonder they have little time to read or understand proposed legislation or indeed even attend the meetings in Congress or the Senate. Our representatives now have a three-and-a-half-day working week doing “the work of the people.”  So perhaps it isn’t too surprising that nothing is getting done in Congress.  Everything becomes a fight, and our elected officials are more interested in keeping special interests and campaign donors happy, so as they can get adequate funding to run and succeed in the next campaign, than agreeing on legislation to help America overcome some of the largest problems it has faced for nearly a century.

Without a dramatic change in campaign finance regulation, this situation can only get worse until we arrive in the position of electing a puppet president whose “strings” are manipulated and pulled by faceless powerful leaders of global corporations or political interests. The recent decision by the Supreme Court to open the floodgates for corporate, special interests or other political donors on both sides of the aisle to spend freely is to my mind, disastrous. I believe that President Obama was right to highlight this during his State of the Union speech.  We can only hope that Congress will introduce a bill that will negate this decision, but if recent performance is anything to go by, I have my doubts.   

 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

Of the many movies that I saw at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, two docu/dramas stand out.  These are listed under the True Stories section of the Film Festival.  Both of them were Holocaust stories, but with completely different angles.

“Inside Hana’s Suitcase” tells the poignant story of two young children who grew up in pre- WWII Czechoslovakia and the terrible events that led to Hana’s death in Auschwitz.  In addition to tracing the lives of Hana Brady and her brother George who is the main narrator of the movie, (a beautiful performance from an 80-year-old man who now lives in Toronto Canada), the film covers the lives of their family during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  George is the only survivor. 

However the film also tells the present-day story of the “The Small Wings” a group of Japanese youngsters, and how their passionate and tenacious teacher, Fumiko Ishioka, helped them solve the mystery of Hana Brady, whose name was painted on an old battered suitcase that they received from Auschwitz – the notorious Nazi death camp.  The voices of children from Japan, Canada, and the Czech Republic contributed to the telling of Hana’s story. 

I thought the film was beautifully directed, narrated and dramatized and will undoubtedly garner numerous awards around the world.

A similar true story but one that has been made into a narrative film is “Broken Promise” which covers the young life of Martin Friedmann, a Jewish Slavic boy, who in 1939 is more concerned with refining his considerable soccer abilities than the fact that Czechoslovakia has become an ally of Nazi Germany.  His father, a poultry merchant, senses the problems to come and asks his nine children to swear that they will meet every year at Passover – whatever happens.  It is not a promise that the family members were able to keep.  Martin’s soccer skills and a considerable amount of luck, allow him to survive the concentration camp at Terizin and the transportation to Auschwitz that befell so many prisoners (including George and Hana Brady).  Amazingly, he gets transferred to a TB clinic, from which he talks his way into working in a Monastery; and, as the Russian armies advance in 1945, he joins a group of Soviet-led partisans, and despite some hair-raising events, survives the war.  Only one brother survives from his total family. 

Martin Friedmann was at the screening and spoke to the audience after the showing of this movie.  He is now an 85-year-old upright strong looking man, who became a civil engineer after the war and left Czechoslovakia when the Communists took control in1949 when he moved to Israel, to meet up with his sole surviving brother. 

An amazing story, which is beautifully done, and which may be on a short list for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com

I’ve just attended Palm Spring International Film Festival.  It is the now the largest Film Festival in the US, attracting more than 130,000 moviegoers who were able to enjoy this year, 190 films from 70 countries.  The films vary from US independent productions to foreign films, showcasing a variety of cultures, seeking awards and distribution in the US market. 

The Festival also highlighted films from Australia, and also broadly covers four different sectors of cinema excellence under the titles of New Voices/New Visions, World Cinema Now, Best Foreign Language Films and True Stories, which encompasses thirty unforgettable documentaries.  Of course, I was only able to see a fraction of the 190 films on offer, but these included some intriguing stories that provided me with some unique experiences.

The “White Ribbon” is a fascinating movie shot in black and white, in German with English subtitles.  This movie won the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’or.  It is a disturbing mystery that follows the escalating hateful behavior of a group of adults and children in a rural German village in the years before the First World War.  They live in a society of strict discipline, parental fear, and religious intolerance.  Their village was part of an agriculture community isolated from the militant mechanism that was sweeping the country at that time, and cleverly illustrates human behavior and particularly German behavior.  There were multiple threads of vengeful and just plain malicious deeds in this meticulous period piece, which draws the audience into an increasingly terrifying world. 

The Director has reminded us that the German adults of the Nazi era between 1933 and 1945 were children in the years prior to World War I, and perhaps one can see in this story the precursor to the brutal behavior and genocide of the World War II.

Another movie that I found to be as unique but completely different was a film from Kazakhstan called “Kelin.”  This movie was a remarkable visionary tale of love and desire set in the remote Altai mountains in the Second Century AD.   The film is completely without dialogue, but not without sound and a beautiful music score.  The exquisite photographic beauty of the winter scenes, birch forests, and the snow-clad hills is breathtaking. 

The story starts with two fur-clad hunter herders, bargaining with a father for the rights to his beautiful daughter.  Although the girl prefers the more handsome of the two men, she winds up with the one who pays the most.  “Kelin” (the name of the girl) accompanies her groom to his distant yurt, which he shares with his mother and teenage brother.  She soon adjusts to a life of hard work and sexually pleasing her husband, but one day the losing suitor shows up and kills his rival, and she prefers to follow her heart disgracing her mother-in-law and her husband’s younger brother with dire consequences.

Even though there was no dialogue, the story was clear, the acting was exquisite, and the scenery breathtaking.  There was screaming, singing, chanting and laughter in the film, and that together with the incredible music score made this movie an enchanting experience.

 

Ellis M. Goodman, author of Bear Any Burden: www.bearanyburden.com