Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Adam Kossoff about his documentary The Anarchist Rabbi at TJFF
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
When we talk about protests against the police, we think Baltimore, Maryland or Ferguson, Missouri.
But how about London, England a hundred years ago? Probably not. We don’t realize London, and particularly it’s impoverished East End was a seething cauldron of protest, unrest, and even revolution. Much of it
centred on Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who fought internal battles, as religion and politics competed for dominance.
A new film documents this history with an impressionistic examination of London, then and now. Period photos and recordings share the screen with contemporary, sepia-toned shots of London’s East End. It’s having its
Canadian debut today at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival.
Its called The Anarchist Rabbi, and is narrated by actor/writer Stephen Berkoff, and written and directed by Adam Kossoff. Adam is a writer, artist and filmmaker who explores historically separate but site-specific videos.
I reached Adam by telephone in London. He talks about anarcho-syndicalism, Rudolph Rocker (1873-1958), London’s East End, strikes, revolution, Russian immigrants, his grandfather, Arbeter Fraynd, history, politics, the use of colour in film, memorials, Kropotkin, Emma Goldmann… and more!
Now and Then. Films reviewed: Going Clear, Bulgarian Rhapsody, Phoenix
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
How often do you see movies? Frequently? Or just now and then? If your answer is “now and then” I have some good movies for you. This week: two dramas from “then”, and a documentary from “now”. A coming-of-age set in wartime Bulgaria; a dark melodrama set in postwar Berlin; and a documentary set in present-day L.A.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief
Dir: Alex Gibney
L Ron Hubbard was an extremely prolific writer who churned out over a thousand fantasy and sci-fi stories for pulp fiction magazines. He spent time in the US Navy. But he’s best known now as the creator of a system of pseudo-scientific psychological analyses known as “Dianetics”.
Followers undergo “auditing” – a process where they confess their darkest experiences and most
painful feelings so their bodies can get rid of them. As they speak, they hold onto metal tubes which detect changes in their system – sort of an elaborate lie detector. They speak their confessions, one-on-one, to an “Auditor” – sort of an analyst – who records what they say and files it away. Followers then pass through a complex, multileveled system – including paid courses required at each level. Their goal? Someday freeing their mind and bodies from from anxiety and pain in an eternal, space-age nirvana. This process forms the basis of Scientology, a self-described religion with thousands of followers.
This documentary speaks to former members, advocates and high-level administrators of Scientology, and what they say is not pretty. Members are said to undergo brutal training sessions, deprived of food and sleep and kept separate from their friends; celebrity members – like Tom Cruise and John Travolta – are blackmailed or bribed to keep them within the group; and ex-members are stalked and attacked. 
Apparently, Scientology attained its tax-free status in the US by targeting hundreds of individual IRS agents and harassing them until the government just gave up.
But the strangest part of this movie is the bizarre, flashy Vegas style conventions they have. Members dress in fake Navy uniforms, complete with medals and ranks. And this is all led by its current leader, the handsome but diminutive David Miscavige, a member of the group since he was a child. He is portrayed as a paranoid, egotistical megalomaniac aiming for absolute power and wealth.
This is an amazing movie, alternating razzle-dazzle footage with shocking revelations. In a nutshell, it says Scientology is a for-profit corporation disguised as a religion based on science fiction… that’s run by nuts.
Bulgarian Rhapsody
Dir: Ivan Nichev
It’s the 1940s in Sofia, Bulgaria. WWII is in full swing but daily life continues, almost as if nothing is happening. Moni and Giogio are teenaged boys, best friends and neighbours. They both come from motherless homes, raised by their widowed fathers. Moni (Kristiyan Makarov) is thoughtful and introspective. He loves music, literature and drawing political cartoons. Giogio (Stefan Popov) is full of bravado and popular with the girls. He vows to find a pretty girlfriend for Moni. The problem? Bulgaria is an ally of Nazi Germany, and follows its harsh Nuremberg laws, placing severe restrictions on Jews. Moni is Jewish, while Giogio’s dad is a driver for the government department set up specifically to persecute the Jews. Can friendship prevail?
On a family trip to Kavala, a picturesque seaside town in Macedonian 
Greece (granted to Bulgaria by Germany), he meets the beautiful and charming Shelli (Anjela Nedyalkova). He has life-changing experiences on the beach, falls in love and confesses it all to Giogio back in Sofia. But when the three of them get together at Moni’s sister’s wedding, Shelli becomes the object of both of their affections. Will this drive a wedge between the two friends? Is it all true love or just a summer beach fantasy?
Bulgarian Rhapsody is a tender, coming of age drama played out beneath the looming shadow of the Holocaust. And it was Bulgaria’s entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar.
Phoenix
Dir: Christian Petzold
Nelly (Nina Hoss) is a German-Jewish woman who survives WWII in a Nazi concentration camp, but is left with a horribly disfigured face. With the help of her best friend Lene (Nina Kuntzendorf), she has plastic surgery. Now she looks similar to, but not exactly like she used to. Her only wish is to reconnect with her husband Johnnie (Ronald Zehrfeld) and let him know she’s still alive. She frequents the Berlin cabarets where they used to perform – he’s a piano player, and she
August .2013
Dreharbeiten zum CHRISTIAN PETOLD Film PHÖNIX
mit Nina Hoss , Ronald Zehrfeld und Nina Kunzendorf
Verwendung der Fotos nur in Zusammenhang mit dem Film PHÖNIX von Christian Petzold
( Model release No ) © Christian Schulz
Mobil 01723917694
used to sing with him.
But when they do meet – at a bar called Phoenix – it’s not like she expected. He approaches her, because he says, she looks a lot like a woman he knows: his wife who died in the war. If she helps him get his dead wife’s war reparations from the government, he says he’ll give her half. He has no idea who she really is. But he promises to train her until she can convincingly impersonate his late wife. Basically, she has to learn to imitate herself! Talk about “meta”…
She agrees to act in this bizarre charade, only because she wants to know whether Johnnie ever loved her, or if it was always just a ruse. And if so, was he was the one who turned her in to the Nazis?
This is the latest episode of star Nina Hoss and director Christian Petzold’s look at Germany, and it’s the best by far. I saw Phoenix at TIFF last fall and it was one of my absolute favourites last year. The plot sounds silly, melodramatic, simplistic, and it is all these things, but it’s so much more. It teeters on the tightrope between German Expressionistic absurd comedy and real, heartbreaking passion, but never trips or falls off that rope. And the final scene is so perfect, it had me tearing up, almost weeping 10 minutes after it was over.
Amazing movie.
Going Clear and Phoenix both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Bulgarian Rhapsody had its Canadian premier at Toronto’s Jewish Film Festival. The Festival continues showing fascinating movies through the weekend, in both downtown and North Toronto locations. Go to tjff.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Love without Marriage. Movies reviewed: Auf das Leben! To Life!, Sailing a Sinking Sea, Far From the Madding Crowd
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM. Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage … right? This week I’m looking at three movies about love and affection that may not lead to marriage. There’s a romance set in Victorian England about a strong-willed woman who doesn’t want to jump into marriage; a documentary – at Hot Docs — about a seafaring people in Southeast Asia who believe in mermaids, not wedding ceremonies; and a German drama – playing at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival – about an older woman who has lost her will to live. 
Auf das Leben! To Life! Dir: Uwe Janson
Ruth Weintraub (Hannelore Elsner) is a retired cabaret singer in Germany who now repairs musical instruments. Once a popular Yiddish singer in the 70s, something terrible happened, and now she’s a lonely woman with no friends or family. She reaches rock bottom when she’s forcibly relocated from her apartment of 30 years. So she’s shocked to see the young labourer packing up her stuff is a doppelganger for a lost love from her distant past. Johan (Max Riemelt) lives out of an old VW bus, picking up odd jobs. His only release is a daily run through the park. Clearly, he’s running away from something, but won’t say what. When he saves her from suicide and loses his bus in the process they are forced together. While Ruth 
is locked up in a mental ward, Johan is watching old film reels he finds in her apartment, which gradually reveal her past. This is a nice, low-key German portrayal of an unusual pair of friends. While there’s a sweet, younger/older bond, don’t expect a new Harold and Maude. It’s simple, not quirky, and the characters are endearing, not complex. But I enjoyed it as a good TV drama, including the bouncy, passionate singing by Sharon Brauner as the young Ruth. 
Sailing a Sinking Sea Dir: Olivia Wyatt
When the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in 2004, over 200,000 people in Southeast Asia were swept away in a just a few minutes. But one group, the Moken people, who live on the Andaman sea between Thailand and Burma managed to survive almost unharmed. The Moken say they have no last names, don’t keep track of age and don’t use numbers. They are born on boats, have sex with mermaids, and can sing to the fish. Ghosts don’t scare them but monkeys do. They won’t kill Sea Cows, because they are too close to humans, but aren’t past making them cry to collect their tears for love potions. Marriage means a woman can grow breasts and a man 
builds a boat; no wedding or special ceremony, they just move in together. This is an amazing, delightful documentary, its stories and songs told entirely in their language. Filled with gorgeous, Nemo-like underwater scenes of men hunting with spears deep in the water with women overhead on the boats. 
Far From the Madding Crowd Dir: Thomas Vinterberg (based on Thomas Hardy’s novel)
Bathsheba Everdene (Carey Mulligan) is a free spirit. She rides horses lying on her back. She’s well-educated but penniless since her parents died and lives in a little farmhouse in 19th century Dorset, England. Her nearest neighbour, farmer Gabriel Oak (Matthias Schoenaerts), is plain-spoken but honest and loyal. He’s a young man with a flock of sheep and is heading for a prosperous future. Will you marry me? he asks her. She cannot. Soon after, there’s a reversal of fortune. He loses his farm while she inherits a manor and the huge country estate that surrounds it. She decides to manage it herself – unheard of for a woman. She meets resistance selling her crop – the men at the exchange won’t even acknowledge her. But the way she handles herself catches the eye of Mr Boldwood (Michael Sheen), a very rich and 
eligible bachelor. He has turned all the other women away, but this one intrigues him. Many years her senior, he can still carry a tune with the best of them. Their two farms put together would make a fine plot of land. And passing through town is the dashing, mustachioed Francis Troy (Tom Sturridge), a sergeant in Queen Victoria’s army. Brash and impulsive, he dresses like a Mountie, complete with redcoat, sword and riding crop. He was left waiting at the altar by the love of his life, so he’s on the lookout for someone new. And stalwart 
Gabriel Oak, her erstwhile suitor, is now her employee. He’d still marry her in a minute. What to do? What to do? This is a wonderful, classic romance about a woman controlling her own fate. The cast is amazing – especially Flemish actor Christian Schoenaerts (Rust and Bone) and Carey Mulligan (An Education) as Bathsheba. Danish director Vinterberg (The Hunt) presents it all as a straightforward record of life in the lush English countryside (far from the city’s madding crowd.) It takes a leisurely pace, and is heavy on the cultural details… but is never boring. And now that Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters have been done to death (complete with zombies and sea monsters) are we looking at a Thomas Hardy boom?
Far from the Madding Crowd opens today in Toronto; check your local listings. You can find Sailing a Sinking Sea at hotdocs.ca; and Auf Das Leben! To Life! is at tjff.com.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Women in Movies for Mothers’ Day. Films Reviewed: Under the Skin, Ida, The German Doctor
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Happy Mother’s Day to all mothers of the past present and future. While all women aren’t mothers, all mothers are women. So, this week, I’m looking at three fascinating movies with girls or women as the main characters.
Two of the movies are historical dramas set in the early sixties, under the shadow of WWII. From Poland comes a drama about a young woman in a convent who discovers her past; from Argentina, a dramatic thriller about a 12-year-old girl who discovers secrets in an unusual village; and from the UK comes a science fiction / art film about a woman with a strange way of meeting men.
Under the Skin
Dir: Jonathan Glazer
Laura (Scarlett Johannson) is a beautiful woman with black hair who lives in a rundown farmhouse. But she’s not from there. She likes going for drives in her white van, in the rolling hills and rocky roads of rural Scotland. She’s on the lookout for fit young men who are single and live alone. It doesn’t matter that she can’t understand a word they say. She asks for directions and then offers them a lift to some unspecified place down the road. And to no one’s surprise, they end up at her place for some impromptu casual sex.
Simple, right? No. This is where it gets weird, otherworldly, surreal. Basically, after they undress, she lures them across a 
shiny, black floor. She walks on the surface, but the men gradually sink down into a black pool, their bodies and minds suspended in a silent limbo. Not dead, but trapped somewhere.
Who is she? What is she? Laura speaks like an alien or a robot or a psychopath. It’s like she was handed an instruction booklet on how to 
talk like a human being. Her face and body were borrowed from someone else – she’s just a visitor. She doesn’t seem motivated by evil, and she’s not a cannibal or anything. She doesn’t even eat.
But her routine gradually goes astray. She gets corralled into a nightclub. She picks up an incredibly ugly man on the road. She loses her vehicle and is forced to take a bus. She meets another man who seems kind and cares for her, not just out for a quick roll in the hay. And she senses danger from a suspicious man wearing a jumpsuit. And then there’s the man on a motorcycle who follows her around: is he cleaning up after her mistakes? Or is he trying to stop her? It’s all very confusing.
Under the Skin is one weird movie. I liked it a lot, but beware: this is an experimental “art film” not a mainstream sci-fi pic. Modern, disturbing music, wonderful cinematography… and a baffling story.
Ida
Dir: Pawel Pawlikowski
Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a WWII orphan raised in a nunnery near Lodz. She wears a plain grey dress and covers her hair. She’s quiet and obedient. Now 16, she’s ready to take her vows as a nun, but the mother superior insists she first meet her only known relative, her aunt Wanda (Agata Kulesza). But why?
Wanda is a woman of the world. She wears lipstick, smokes cigarettes and listens to jazz. And she sleeps with younger men she picks up in bars. She’s cold, cynical and bitter. She used to be a high-ranked communist party prosecutor, but has lost her status. And she’s Jewish. And that means Anna is, too. And, Wanda tells her, her real name is Ida.
Ida wants to see her parents’ grave. Wanda laughs: what grave? But they head out to the small town. The family living in 
her home denies Jews ever lived there and has never heard of her parents.
Wanda delves deeper as Ida discovers her own hidden history. Wanda warms toward her – she’s like her dead sister, with her red hair, and three dimples when she smiles. Ida dips her toe into the real world (jazz, alcohol, cigarettes, men). Will she live in cosmopolitan urban Poland or in a cloistered life behind the convent walls?
Ida is black & white, and only 80 minutes long. It’s subtle, compact, minimalist and exquisite. The two Polish actresses are both fantastic, with their subtle, contrasting personalities gradually melding. This is a perfect movie.
The German Doctor
Dir: Lucia Puenzo (Based on her novel)
12-year-old Lilith (Florencia Bado) lives in a barren and dusty part of Argentine Patagonia with her two brothers. Tiny Lilith is 12 but looks younger, and still plays with a doll given to her by her dad (Diego Peretti) — a professional doll maker. He makes handcrafted figures, each one unique. They’re moving to Ushuaia, an area with a large German population, to run a family hotel owned by her pregnant mom (Natalia Oreiro). Though Argentinian, her mom went to a German school. She shows Lilith old school photos filled with swastika flags.
The hotel is a beautiful chateau in the woods, overlooking a clear, blue lake against stark snow-covered mountains. 
Positively Alpine. And their first guest is a kindly, German man with a mustache (Alex Brendemuhl). He’s a doctor, but works injecting cattle with growth hormones. Heredity is everything he says, and he wants to create a perfect breed.
So when Lilith is teased and bullied at school he offers experimental hormone injections to help her grow. Lilith loves whatever is forbidden. She is entranced by the doctor, even though there’s something wrong, something sinister about him. And he offers Enzo, her dad – who objects to his experiments with Lilith – the chance to produce identical 
blond, blue-eyed dolls on a massive scale. Only Nora (Elena Roger), the mysterious school archivist, suspects he’s the notorious Dr. Mengele, known for his cruel experiments in Auschwitz. Based on real-life characters, the German Doctor is a tender, but haunting, coming-of age story played out against an Argentina filled with clandestine war criminals.
Under the Skin and Ida both open today in Toronto; check your local listings. The German Doctor also opens and is playing at Toronto’s Jewish Film Festival this weekend, along with many other great movies. Go to TJFF.com for more info.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Exotica. Movies Reviewed: Hotel Lux, The Rabbi’s Cat, To the Wonder
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
Images and Toronto Jewish Film Festival continue on through this weekend, with Hot Docs just around the corner. This week I’m looking at movies about people travelling to exotic lands. There’s a German screwball comedy about an actor who escapes the Nazis only to find himself in the heart of Stalin’s Moscow; a French animated film about a group of travellers from Algiers looking for a lost city; and an American romance about a woman from Paris looking for love in America.
Hotel Lux
Dir: Leander Haussmann
It’s Berlin in the 1930s. The comedy team Zeisig and Meyer (Michael Herbig and Jurgen Vogel) work at a successful cabaret, playing Stalin and Hitler. But their livelihood is threatened when the Nazi’s come to power, and political satire is no longer tolerated. An undercover Dutch communist, Frida, suddenly appears, and Zeisig, a notorious lothario, is smitten. Meyer goes into hiding, but Zeisig sees no reason to run. But eventually he must. He flees Berlin with fake papers and the name of a Moscow landmark: the Hotel Lux. Outside, it’s a stately building with a spinning red star on the roof. Inside it’s a rat-infested heap. And what he doesn’t realize is it’s also the epicenter of Stalinism, a hotel filled with the hardcore German communists in exile.
Every conversation is bugged. People are constantly dragged out of their rooms by a diminutive NKVD agent and accused of the worst possible crime: Trotskyism! And, due to a series of strange coincidences and mistaken identities, Zeisig, the Stalin impersonator, finds himself in meetings with Stalin himself. And his old friends, Meyer and Frida, both end up in Hotel Lux, too.
How will Zeisig get out if this mess? Will he have an influence on Stalin’s decisions? Will his true identity be discovered? And will Frida ever like him?
Like an Austrian comedy set in the same era, My Best Enemy, this movie doesn’t have any grave meanings or deep philisophyt to impart. Rather, it’s a fantasy set against a backdrop of the troubled thirties. Hotel Lux is just a cute, old-fashioned screwball comedy, with its history and politics filtered through the eyes of post-reunification Germany.
The Rabbi’s Cat
Dir: Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar (based on his graphic novels)
It’s 1920s in Algiers, part of the North African colony annexed by France. (It’s inhabited by Arabic-speaking Muslims and Jews, and their French speaking rulers.) Rabbi Safr lives with his beautiful but fiery daughter Zlabiya. But there normal life is interrupted by some strange things. His cat suddenly begins to speak, and wants to have religious debates. The dead body of a blond Russian man appears in a wooden crate of prayer books sent from Europe. And a cousin, who travels with a huge lion comes for a visit. The Rabbi Safr, accompanied by a Muslim sheikh, also named Safr, a Chagal-like artist, and an aristocratic white Russian, set off on a road journey in a Citroen. They are on a quest through northeast Africa to find an ancient hidden city, an African Jerusalem, the legendary land of giant Black- African Jews.
On their journey, they encounter nomads, Belgian colonists (in the form of a pink-skinned Tintin in a pith helmet), and pick up new members to join their group.
Joann Safr is a great, contemporary French cartoonist who creates fantastical imaginary worlds. This is the first animated version of his work I’ve seen, and it stays true to his comics. This is a great movie: funny, fantastical, and colourful, and featuring French-Algerian actors like Mohamed Fellag.
To the Wonder
Dir: Terrence Malick
Marina (Olga Kurylenko), a single mother, meets Neil (Ben Affleck), an American tourist who is visiting France. They fall in love in scenic spots. Their love affair is extended when he invites her (and her daughter) to follow him back to America. Ah, America. Calm, rich, honest, she thinks as she pirouettes around her new Oklahoma backyard. Her whispered thoughts are an ongoing narration to her new life there. Ah… l’amour, l’amour, she whispers, turning another pirouette. Je t’aime. Her life is an avalanche of tenderness. Neil doesn’t speak, he just nods or grunts and goes out to check an oil pump.
OK, just so you know, I was describing a typical scene. But the whole movie is like that. It’s like a two-hour-long movie trailer, an endless montage of a bumpy, depressing relationship in an Oklahoma suburb. With a non-stop voiceover of the most painful poetry, the most awful French doggerel ever inflicted on my ears in one dose. I kind of liked Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life from two years ago (he supposedly spent a decade making it) but this one is worthless. I’m not even mentioning the various sub plots — Marina’s depression, a priest who talks to poor people, marital infidelity — because they barely add anything to this meandering, dull story. Avoid this movie at all costs, unless you are looking for two hours of pointless, superficial Hallmark images and loads of false solemnity.
To the Wonder opens today, check your local listings; and The Rabbi’s Cat and Hotel Lux are both playing this weekend: go to TJFF.ca for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com .
Daniel Garber talks to Peter Sanders about his new documentary ALTINA
Altina Schinasi, a tobacco heiress born in a veritable palace in Manhattan, made her name as an artist, activist, designer, filmmaker, and as an openly-sexual woman, with four husbands over the course of her lifetime. Altina is a new documentary about this unknwon but fascinating character. Winner of the festival’s 2013 DAVID A. STEIN MEMORIAL AWARD, it’s having its Canadian premier at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival. And I am pleased to have the award-winning filmmaker, Peter Sanders to talk to me about the film and its fascinating subject with me by telephone from New York.
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