Independent Jewish Film & Video in America

By Deborah Kaufman

From 3rd Edition--

It has been 20 years since the movement of independent American cinema and video began. Aided by the breakthroughs in light-weight synch-sound film equipment, the invention of video, and the creation of federal and state arts funding agencies in the 1970s, artists and political activists translated their visions into images that reflected and defined a generation. Free from the constraints of Hollywood studios or network television, directors produced original, provocative works, albeit on a small scale, that challenged not only the forms of Hollywood “product,” but also the industry’s thematic conventions.

An independent work is loosely defined as one where the director has creative control, and where financing and distribution are independent of the major studios, networks, or similar corporate entities driven by the profit imperative. Ironically, the independent feature world has become so profitable that Hollywood and television have become significant sources for investment and distribution. As a result, the definition of “independent” has expanded to include films which receive partial studio support and distribution. What was always essential to independent film remains: uniqueness of vision and creative control by the director.

Since the start of the independent movement, American Jews contributed their share of self-reflective and identity-based film and video work in genres that ranged from traditional narrative to the most experimental of documentaries. This search for identity, in particular Jewish identity, can be viewed as a reaction to assimilation by the post-war generation or to self-denial - a demand for leftist internationalism by 1960s youth. The new work breaks free of old norms and reflects the concerns of personal and group identity. But this strength comes with limits.

In reviewing scores of works produced in the last 20 years, I believe that aside from some notable exceptions, independent Jewish work as a whole does not reflect broader social and political realities of the multicultural world within which Jews live. These works fail to address broader, more universalist themes historically emphasized in Jewish socialist and secular thinking – not surprising given current identity politics with its emphasis on the separation of cultures. The question this article addresses is whether the new body of independent Jewish work signifies a reactionary retreat from the world, or a jumping-off point for a new engagement with the world.

In the last 20 years, scores of film and videomakers have given voice to enduring Jewish themes of historic oppression, resistance, and exile. Some independent feature films have reached much broader audiences, especially when they situate specifically Jewish characters in romantic and/or comedic stories. But what might characterize independent Jewish cinema most is its lack of unifying discourse. If the major signifiers of Jewish life in the post-World War II era continue to be Judaism as religion, the Holocaust, and Israel, independent American Jewish cinema seems to subvert that triumvirate with images of hybrid identities, interfaith romance, oppositional politics, and jump-cut collective memories.

Even the “classic” directors of the independent Jewish pantheon have not played by established rules. Brooklyn-based director Josh Waletzky single-handedly overturned the sweet and fuzzy shtetl iconography of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and YENTL with his documentary masterpieces on Eastern European Jewry, IMAGE BEFORE MY EYES and PARTISANS OF VILNA. Joan Micklin Silver ignored male dominated Jewish literary and Hollywood traditions by making American Jewish women and their independent choices the catalysts for action in HESTER STREET and CROSSING DELANCEY. These films mirrored women’s changing roles, and subtly suggested the struggles for equality that continue to be waged inside the Jewish community.

In both fiction and documentary genres, Jewish women directors countered established rules by honoring left-wing political traditions, perhaps as a paean to their own outsider status as women within Judaism, or perhaps because they inherited the left-wing tradition of the immigrant period. With her trademark charm and humor, Boston filmmaker Marlene Booth documented the 100 year history of the socialist, Yiddish newspaper THE FORWARD. With discernment and tenderness Lee Grant directed Melvyn Douglas and Lila Kedrova, a pair of aging, Jewish Communists who rekindle their love in the film adaptation of Tillie Olsen’s book, TELL ME A RIDDLE. In FOREVER ACTIVISTS, Bay Area Oscar nominee Judy Montell, with guts and passion, told the story of the “premature anti-fascists” - mostly Jewish veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who, as both Jews and as leftists, fought against Franco in Spain. This double or hybrid identity is rearticulated later by gay and lesbian Jewish directors.

Many independent Jewish directors have used film and video either with the explicit intention of redefining Jewish identity, or in order to bend filmmaking genres. In KADDISH, New York filmmaker Steven Brand follows Jewish anti-hero Yossi Klein, the son of a Holocaust survivor, as he is repeatedly arrested for protests on behalf of Soviet Jews, as he starts an underground Jewish newspaper that features stories about the shared apocalyptic visions of punk rockers and Hasids, and as he goes through several depressions. At the 1978 survivors’ reunion in Jerusalem, Yossi declares that the Holocaust is over - that Jews can no longer define themselves as victims. It is a stunning retort to the multimillion dollar Holocaust memorial industry. In one of the defining moments of independent Jewish cinema, Yossi articulates an alternative to victim identification, “A Jew is someone who is always on the edge - on the verge of annihilation, on the verge of revelation.”

 

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Independent Jewish Film & Video in America

Articles:
Introduction
Producing Your Own Film Festival
Independent Jewish Film in America
Sephardic Cinema
Israeli Cinema
Film & The Holocaust
The SFJFF In Moscow