Fill The Void, a first feature film written and directed by Israeli Rama Burshstein, offers a view of a fictional Hasidic family and their community. The world may be an uncertain place but not in Rabbi Aheron’s well to do family. Everyone knows their place and rules are set down and tightly followed. Burshstein opens her film in a brightly lit supermarket, where Rivka Aheron (Irit Sheleg) and her daughter Shira (Hadas Yaorn) appear to be surreptitiously shopping for a husband. Eighteen year-old Shira is excited to get a peek at her equally young prospective husband Pinchas. Catching him wiping his glasses clean on his clothing, Shira practically squeals with delight. This is love at first sight.

In this Hasidic community marriage is arranged and the likely bride and groom usually do not know each other. An offer of marriage usually comes from the boy’s family. There are arranged marriages in many traditional cultures. What Burshstein wants us to see is that arranged marriage is not a cut and dry contract. Flesh and blood and, yes, sexual desire, beat inside these matches.

Tragedy turns the story. Shira’s older sister Esther (Renana Raz), nine months pregnant, falls into a coma and dies. The child, a boy, lives. There is a funeral and then a circumcision. The community is shown always by the family’s side. Burshstein shoots in small rooms filled with lots of caring people. Esther’s husband Yochay (Yiftag Klein) is now alone with a motherless child. Rivka is beside herself mourning her daughter. The community begins to worry about the baby and a potential new wife, a widow in Belgium, is found for Yochay. Rivka fears losing her grandchild and decides that young Shira should marry Yochay. Shira is shocked by this proposal.

We see Shira as strong in her resistance to her mother and father and at first she rejects Yochay. But whatever her objections, Shira and the audience understand that her options are limited by her sense of duty and devotion to her family. Shira wants to marry. The question is what are her choices. Burshstein softens Shira’s dilemma by making Yochay an attractive character. He is portrayed as a sensitive, tender man both with Shira, and in earlier scenes, with his now dead wife Esther. Open and honest with Shira, they slowly get to know each other. Shira and Yochay are eventually drawn to each other and there is as close to a sex scene as you can get in such a story. Shira finally concedes and Burshstein shoots her as a beatific bride. Alone together following the wedding, Shira and Yochay may or may not live happily ever after. If not, I am sure Burshstein will tell you that unarranged marriages do not do so well either.

All of the characters in the film are lovingly drawn. Rama Burshstein is a member of the community she portrays and she takes great pains not to offend. She makes no judgments and takes us cautiously inside a community that is usually secreted away. In a press screening via Skype she confesses that she only shows what is allowable. The fact that a mother might sacrifice the happiness of her daughter to keep a grandchild near is glossed over. The young women in her film are eager to become brides and there is shame connected to the single woman in the community. The film pays no attention to any aspirations these young women might have beyond their traditional roles. Yet, Burshstein appears to be ambitious for something more for herself and has shown some degree of courage making her film. She has made a good first film. I look forward to seeing her next effort.

Barbara Castro is a Family Mediator and is currently working on a film project to introduce divorcing families to the benefits of mediation rather than litigation.

Tweet

ARAF, written and directed by Turkish filmmaker Yesum Ustaoglu, is one of seven films at the New York Film Festival directed by women. This is Ustaoglu’s fifth film and her previous movie Pandora’s Box won the best actress and best film award at the San Sebastian Film Festival. I eagerly went to see this film because the director was a woman. Call me sexist, but with so few woman directors around I like to see and support women made films.

“Araf” means purgatory or limbo in Turkish. In her notes Ustaoglu explains, “I translated “araf” as “somewhere in between.” She sees the youth of her film caught in a state of limbo, “a state of waiting that is neither hell nor heaven; an uncertain, hopeless state, like purgatory.”

Zehra (Neslihan Ataguul) and Olgun (Baris Hacihan) work long hours in dead end jobs at a kitchen located at a truck stop. They live in the same small town and ride the bus together to work. Olgun is smitten with Zehra who does not reciprocate the feeling. Both of them have big dreams and want to escape the boredom and numbness of their lives. Zehra dreams she will leave and travel. Olgun longs to become a participant on a reality show and win money for a house and a car. Ustaoglu reinforces the dreariness of their lives with images of the gray, snowy Turkish winter landscape. Her scenes are long…her shots are beautiful… She tells her story with slow deliberateness.

Zehra and Olgun attend a wedding and here Zehra meets Mahur (Ozcan Deniz) a truck driver who Zehra naively envisions as her romantic way out. The film now takes on a dreamlike quality. Mahur is pictured as evil incarnate. He’s older than Zehra, drives a red truck, and never speaks. At the wedding the two engage in an erotic dance. Zehra is mesmerized and you sense that she is doomed. At first, Zehra is in love. All is right in her world. Her best friend Derya (Nihal Yalcin) who is older and wiser laughs at her and warns of the pain yet to come. Soon Zehra discovers she is pregnant and her lover is gone. The dreamy quality of the film abruptly changes. Olgun is also a kid in pain. He loves Zehra and when she tells him she is pregnant he cannot contain his anger, and winds up in prison. Both of these actors are beautiful and talented.

Zehra goes with Derya to a midwife who tells her she is now more than three months pregnant and wonders why she has waited so long. Now the film takes on another dimension. Is this film also going to deal with abortion? Is this where a woman director already known for her interest in social issues really shows her mettle and confronts the potential changing status of women in Turkey?

Abortion is presently legal in Turkey for pregnancies that are ten weeks or less. But last May, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called abortion murder and began a campaign to make abortion illegal. Unlike the women of the USA who seem passive while their freedom of choice is being threatened, Turkish women took to the streets to protest and fight for the right to choose. As of now the government has pulled back on the plan to limit abortions to the first month of pregnancy.

Spoiler alert. Zehra has a self induced miscarriage or abortion on screen in what seems like real time. Neslihan Ataguul gives a brilliant and harrowing performance in what may be a cinema first in any language. Zehra, who almost dies is changed.

Spring arrives and Ustaglu provides some more surprising twists. As the writer and director she shows great empathy for her young characters and she carefully brings them from their innocence to a more realistic and hopeful place.

At a press conference via Skype, Ustaoglu shares that the film was just about to open to audiences in Turkey. It will be interesting to see how the film is received.

Barbara Castro is a Family Mediator and is currently working on a film project to introduce divorcing families to the benefits of mediation rather than litigation.

Tweet

The New York Film Festival is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a large slate of films and will open September 28th and run through October 14th.

Two documentaries featured deal with the indelible effect of music on culture and history. I was particularly taken with The Savoy King: Chick Webb and the Music That Changed America, written and directed by Jeff Kaufman. The documentary relies mostly on first-hand accounts, some film clips (there is only a four second clip of Webb in existence today) and stills. The film tells the story of Chick Webb, a drummer who had his own band and his own style of Swing during the 1930’s. Webb was also documented in Ken Burn’s History of Jazz, but Kaufmann sets out to expand the story.

Born fatherless and poor in Baltimore, Chick Webb broke his back at age four and developed spinal tuberculosis leaving him hunchbacked with limited use of his legs. Drumming was suggested as a way to build up his upper body strength and the drum and jazz music became his life. His talent and drive were formidable. Early in his career Duke Ellington mentored Webb and helped him form his band.

Just a little over four feet tall, Webb sat on a raised platform behind the band drumming his way to history. Kaufman crafts an exciting documentary given his limited resource material. He taps into the memories of Freddie Manning and Norma Miller, both “Lindy Hop” dancers at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. He also uses voiceovers by stars reading the words of music legends now dead. Bill Cosby reads the quotes of Webb and a breathy Janet Jackson is heard as Ella Fitzgerald. Everyone attests to the artistry and musical integrity that Webb brought to his music and to The Savoy Ballroom.

Webb became the lead band at The Savoy Ballroom and his song “Stomping At The Savoy” rocked the house. The Savoy became the home of the Lindy Hop craze and was the first club in our country where blacks and whites could dance and socialize together. This was a huge step forward in integration and at the press conference, Kaufman called Webb the Rosa Parks of American music clubs. It is amazing that as late as the1930’s places like The Cotton Club in Harlem were completely segregated and only allowed white patrons who listened and danced to black entertainers.

The Savoy Ballroom was owned by Moe Gale, a white man who made a calculated business decision to integrate the ballroom and ring the cash register. It was Webb who brought them in. Unbelievably, five to six thousand dancers packed the ballroom and there is still some footage of the dancing. The dancers shook the house to Webb’s music and the energy of the dancers and music is wild. It was claimed that the dance floor had to be replaced every three years.

When Webb died ten thousand people crowded the streets in Harlem for the father of modern jazz drumming’s funeral. This wonderful documentary is put together with creativity and love. I hope it travels to many viewers outside of the festivals.

Shot during a quick tour of Ireland just weeks after their song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” hit number one on the charts, the documentary is a behind the scenes diary of life on the road with the young Stones. It records a time when young people began to feel the full force of the 60’s cultural revolution, rejecting the post war path followed by their parents and embracing mind expanding drugs and sexual freedom.

A beautiful fresh-faced Mick Jagger talks about the band’s future and wonders if any of their songs will have a shelf life longer than a year. In another clip, he discusses the youth revolution and prognosticates that the change young people are seeking will take several generations to achieve. Keith Richards is almost unrecognizable as an innocent looking young man. Prancing around on the stage, fighting off the adoring masses and goofing for the camera together, the band is wonderful.

The film will be packaged as a DVD special with the director’s cut, the producer’s cut, and the new 2012 version and will be released on November 6th.

Barbara Castro is a Family Mediator and is currently working on a film project to introduce divorcing families to the benefits of mediation rather than litigation.

Tweet

On Saturday I traveled downtown to see what was happening at the Tribeca Family Festival Street Fair on Greenwich Street in lower Manhattan. After 9/11, Jane Rosenthal, Robert DeNiro and Craig Hatkoff thought they might shore up lower Manhattan’s businesses and community by initiating a yearly film event to draw people back downtown. At that time, most of the screening venues were in lower Manhattan. Local residents were given discount tickets to the film events and a Tribeca Film Festival Family Day was organized to become part of the celebration.

I first attended the Family Day Festivities in 2003. My husband and I had moved to Battery Park City, where we found an apartment that came with two months free rent. People were slowly coming back to lower Manhattan to live again, but the area was still in the throes of 9/11. Each day when I walked to the subway, I passed the hole that was Ground Zero and the horror of that event was always present.

Today I can report lower Manhattan has recovered and Family Day has grown in popularity along with the rest of the TFF events. The event, as the whole festival, is twice as big as I remember. It covers many more city blocks filled with entertainment and top quality food vendors. Unlike many of the Manhattan street fairs, this is kid focused and most vendors selling junk are kept out. The weather was a little nippy but people were out having a good time.

Unlike smaller festival venues like The New York Film Festival, it was impossible to see everything and a few good ones got away. I saw some films that I loved and met some unforgettable characters on screen that I would personally like to have known.

High on my list is Booker Wright, the subject of Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story, directed by Raymond DeFelitta. DeFellita’s father worked as a filmmaker for CBS news and in 1965 traveled on assignment to Greenwood, Mississippi to interview white residents about race relations. He meets Booker Wright a black waiter in a local restaurant that serves whites only. Because there are no printed menus, waiters are required to recite the entire evenings offerings by memory to each customer. The menu is extensive and Booker gives an exacting performance…still facing the camera he continues talking with candor about the realities of racism. This interview, aired on national TV, changes forever the lives of Booker and his family. I was so moved by this man’s bravery, as he was aware of the consequences of this public denouncement of racism in Greenwood. This act of defiance led to tragedy as he was brutally beaten by a local policeman and eventually killed. The film can currently be seen On Demand.

• Credit: Hal Wilson •

• Credit: Tim Schoon •

Barbara Castro, a regular attendee of the Tribeca Film Festival, writes this year for The WIP.

Tweet

Sometimes you want to watch a film that’s also a movie. You want an opportunity to go into the darkened theater with popcorn and escape into a world of fantasy, and maybe even laugh. Film festivals are usually not big on laughs or escape. Award winning films are serious, reflecting societal ills and angst. This is all to the good. We need authentic, gritty films that speak to the unspeakable and a venue to deliver them to audiences. This year’s Tribeca Film Festival selections deliver the punch. I am very glad I am here but after nine rounds, this blogger aches for a giggle.

I approached Tanya Wexler’s film Hysteria (produced by Sarah Curtis, Judy Cairo and Tracey Becker) with gleeful anticipation. Vibrators in Victorian England. Vibrators disguised as medical tools. Orgasms delivered by doctors massaging women’s clitorises as medical treatment. Now this is the stuff of farce.

Hysteria tells a story based on fact. Dr. Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy) a young, modern doctor challenges the prevailing views of medicine in 1880 England and is fired from several hospitals. Needing a job, Granville goes to work with Dr. Dalyrymple (Jonathan Pryce), a specialist in “hysteria.” In Victorian England a quarter of the female population were diagnosed with “hysteria” with such symptoms as depression, mood swings, restlessness and other signs of unhappiness. Dr. Dalyrymple treats his female patients with vulvular hand massage until they have an orgasm. Does this sound like soft porn? Au contraire! The doctors and the patients all act as if the treatment has nothing to do with sex. In fact, the doctors complain of exhaustion and suffer from fatigued wrists and hands. (Imagine a nineteenth century version of carpal tunnel syndrome.)

Dr. Granville, with cramped hands, can no longer satisfy his patients and is fired. To overcome his handicap, Granville develops an electrically charged vibrating device that becomes the world’s first electric sex toy. There is also a complicated love story between Granville and Charlotte Dalyrmple (Maggie Gyllenhaal) the boss’s oldest daughter. Charlotte is a suffragette. She longs for emancipation and liberation and challenges the strict cultural codes of her time.

Marshall Mc Luhan wrote, “We shape our tools and our tools shape us.” By 1918, the electric vibrator was sold in the Sears and Roebuck catalogue and advertised as “very useful and satisfactory for home service.”

Go see the movie. It is not hysterical but it is quite charming.

Tweet

This is my third day watching films at The Tribeca Film Festival, and I know by the week’s end I will have only scratched the surface of the 90 or so films that are showing here.

So far, so good. Almost everything I have seen has been worthwhile. This year there are fewer films on the schedule, and the films appear to be more selectively chosen. Still making film choices is hard because everyone including IndieWIRE has a different top ten, and you can make yourself crazy trying to insure you are viewing everything there is to see. I have tried to focus on films either about women or directed by women and while this has narrowed the field, there are plenty selections meeting these criteria.

On Thursday night I went to the screening for the documentary The World Before Her directed by Canadian filmmaker, Nishua Pahuja. Her film was the opener for the documentary competition and is considered a favorite to win.

The World Before Her takes us backstage to the Miss India Beauty Pageant while also exploring a Hindu fundamentalist training camp for teenagers who are indoctrinated into the violent Durga Vahini movement. We meet Ruhi, competing with 19 others to become Miss India, and Prachi, a hard line Hindu fundamentalist. Ruhi hopes that with the title of Miss India she will “break-out” gaining wealth and freedom. Prachi rejects these new values. On the surface the two women’s ambitions seem far apart, but each one is searching for identity and empowerment in India’s rapidly changing society.

India is a beautiful backdrop for any film. Pahuja spent four years shooting on and off inside India but she spent only thirty days with the pageant. While the publicity shots for the film lead you to believe that the film is about the beauty contest, it is the view inside the training camp that is both riveting and eye opening. The young women are trained to protect themselves with martial arts and to use guns to shoot non-Hindu Indians if they are attacked. They become physically strong and ideologically committed to the cause of Hindu fundamentalism. With this new sense of self they are also taught to continue the traditional roles set for women - they are warriors who know their place. The male dominated fundamentalists will allow women to go so far. Keeping women trained in martial arts submissive can be a tricky business.

At the end of the film, Ruhi does not become Miss India; and she returns home defeated, still not sure what is next for her in the new India. She is a pretty face without too many other skills. Prachi will continue her role as an activist, sure of her commitment to her cause and waiting for the planned marriage that is her future.

The 11th Annual Tribeca Film Festival is happening now in New York City. Barbara Castro, a regular attendee of the festival, writes this year for The WIP.

Tweet

While The WIP often carries stories about poor women forced into prostitution by their financial circumstances, the film Elles details a contrasting situation of young college women using prostitution to finance their studies. Elles, directed by Malgoska Szumowska, stars the lovely and talented Juliet Binoche as Anne. As a sophisticated French housewife and mother of two, Anne juggles her journalistic career with her days of picking up after two sons, arranging and cooking a dinner for her husband’s boss, visiting her dad in a hospital and engaging in other self sacrificing duties. We get that Anne is stressed and stretched. Her husband is not too supportive to boot.

• Anne (Juliette Binoche) and Charlotte (Anaïs Demoustier) •

As a film nothing quite works. The photography is often beautiful and so is Binoche. The subject is controversial, but its development is weak and I found it difficult to know where I was as the scenes follow some stream of consciousness in Anne’s mind. The filmmaker wants to shake-up middle class sensibilities but offers us clichés instead of authenticity. Who are these young women? Are they addicted to sex and have found a profitable way to indulge their habit? Do they feel at all degraded by their roles as prostitutes? In one scene Alicja, Jo Anna Kulig’s character, is urinated on but she is so stoned she does not seem to mind. Are these young women really in control? Will they go on to become lawyers, journalists, wives and mothers much like Anne? And if they are so independent and liberated, why do they keep their work so secret?

I think Szumowska wants us to ask who is being exploited. Is it the middle class housewife who is a “slave “ to her family and is asked by her husband not to discuss her feminist views at dinner with the boss or the young women trying to climb the social ladder through education and sex for sale? It is all a bit too facile.

As we deplore the world wide practice of young girls forced into prostitution against their wills, we are not sure we feel much better about young women so in need of comfortable life styles and adventure that they sell their bodies for money.

2012, France/Poland/Germany, 96 minutes

Official Selection:

Toronto International Film Festival
Berlin International Film Festival
Tribeca Film Festival

The 11th Annual Tribeca Film Festival is happening now in New York City. Barbara Castro, a regular attendee of the festival, writes this year for The WIP.

Tweet