A Jewish Film Festival in Moscow
By
Barbara Shulgasser
From 3rd Edition--
In 1990, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival went to Moscow in an
effort to test the limits of Gorbachev’s “glasnost.” Would Russia’s
new spirit of openness be extended to Soviet Jews? The Festival - the
first public celebration of Jewish culture in the Soviet Union in 65
years - was allowed to proceed after several tense weeks of contentious
negotiations with Soviet authorities, who finally granted permission
only 48 hours before the Festival’s opening event. Sponsored as a joint
venture with the country’s Cinematographers Union, the Moscow JFF was
a watershed event in the lives of Soviet Jews, with over 50,000 attending.
The following article is a reflection upon that experience by Barbara
Shulgasser, film critic for the San Francisco Examiner.
Felix Andreyev is the deputy editor-in-chief of Soviet Screen, a movie
magazine with a circulation of two million. It used to be higher but
because of the chronic paper shortage in Russia, the government ordered
a cutback. Andreyev, an affable, Santa Claus look-alike, tried to sum
up the gestalt of his country for a group of foreign filmmakers who
brought films to Moscow for the Jewish Film Festival.
“If the Sahara desert were in Russia,” he said in perfect English, “there
would be a shortage of sand.”
What Russia has no shortage of is contradictions. People will knock
you down in the street, on the stairs of the subway, or as you wait
to pass through a doorway. But the same guy who elbows you in the ribs
in the market place will welcome you into his house. He will top off
your vodka glass the moment a micro-drop evaporates. He will shovel
food into your plate and toast you and your aged aunts with gusto and
sincerity.
And this is despite a meat shortage, the non-existence of any fresh
vegetable that is not a cucumber, and, most egregious of all, the vodka
rationing. One woman, upon receiving a meager gift of several bars of
scented soap, showed her guest a hand-lettered sign she stole from a
local store. She translated: “No shampoo, no shaving cream, no razors,
no soap.” Then, looking up, she shook her head and added, “Thanks to
perestroika.”
Contradiction also characterized the Muscovite response to the Festival’s
30 films, which included first showings in the Soviet Union of Louis
Malle’s AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS, Joan Micklin Silver’s CROSSING DELANCEY,
Josh Waletsky’s PARTISANS OF VILNA and Paul Mazursky’s ENEMIES, A LOVE
STORY.
“They’d sit there in total silence through the screenings,” observed
Deborah Kaufman, then-Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival,
”but then they’d surround the filmmakers after the screening and not
let them go.”
Kaufman was especially struck by the reaction to French director Vera
Belmont’s RED KISS. The film depicts an awakening to the brutality of
Stalinism among a group of idealistic Communist Polish refugees. In
the film, the characters were appalled when a recently released gulag
inmate heaved a vodka bottle at a portrait of Stalin. In the theatre,
the audience cheered.
“I didn’t expect it,” said Kaufman. “I had chills. That’s what is so
great about doing this festival. It shattered my pre-conceived notions.”
For many of the filmmakers, the festival proved a spiritual homecoming.
Joan Silver and Vera Belmont announced their Eastern European heritage
to packed theaters before screenings of their films. Marlene Booth,
an American who directed THE FORWARD, about a Yiddish newspaper published
in New York, said, “I spoke to a young Russian man who’s seen several
films at the festival. He said he was surprised that the filmmakers
needed translators because all of their faces looked so Russian.”
Paul Mazursky, referring to Moscow’s overwhelming dreariness, expressed
what everyone seemed to be thinking. “I have a grandfather from Kiev,”
he said. “He left there in 1905. He jumped off a train, like any good
Jew would, and he deserted the Russian army. So I’m here today to thank
him.”
Perhaps the most appropriate response came from Agnieszka Holland, Polish
director of ANGRY HARVEST. “It sounded so absurd,” she said. “A Jewish
Film Festival, in Moscow? Arranged by people in San Francisco? I had
to come.” Kaufman founded the festival in Berkeley in 1981 to give “unaffiliated
Jews,” as she called them, a cultural rallying point. “I was alienated
from my own heritage,” said Kaufman of her Zionist upbringing. “I couldn’t
relate to the things that were important to my parents in the same way
that they did. I don’t believe that all Jews should emigrate to Israel.
Or that all Jews are inherently outsiders. I relate to secular Jewish
culture, Jewish art, Jewish humor, Jewish psychology. And I don’t relate
to Jews who identify themselves as victims.”
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A
Jewish Film Festival in Moscow
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Articles:
Introduction
Producing Your Own Film Festival
Independent Jewish Film in America
Sephardic Cinema
Israeli Cinema
Film & The Holocaust
The SFJFF In Moscow
