By Carol Davis
SAN DIEGO — The 21st Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival sponsored by the Leichtag Family Foundation is presenting a number of short but engrossing documentaries, three of which I had the pleasure of screening: Ingelore, Wrong Side of the Bus and He’s My Girl.
Ingelore, the shortest of the three running time about 40 minutes captures, in that short amount of space, the lifetime arc of Ingelore Hertz Honigstein who was born in Germany in 1924 to Jewish parents. The amazing story of Ingelore isn’t that she is a German and a Jew, nor is it another Holocaust story.
Ingelore’s story, a valentine if you will by a son to his mother and his family begins when she is an adult and travels back to the time her parents realized that their young daughter could not hear and finishes years later to the present. She is 84 at the time of her telling her story.
As a deaf child Ingelore’s parents ignored her, were embarrassed by her deafness and pretty much excluded her from any family conversation. She was sent to several schools and had a variety of tutors where she learned some form of communication but didn’t utter her first word until she was six and her first sentence when she was twelve. By age thirteen, and finally in a boarding school in Berlin for the deaf, Kristalnacht happened and any formal education, especially for Jews, ended.
Through her eyes and unflinching honesty with no filters, signing and mouthing the words, we are taken back with her on her journey through her childhood. We are privy to her impressions of classmates, societal surroundings and the confusing actions she saw but couldn’t understand.
She talks of her parents and family home life, her sexual attack by two German soldiers, finally to her journey to America and the hair splitting decisions that almost railroaded her plans to a life of freedom from the German occupation. Here she emerges into a courageous and beautiful woman, devoted wife, mother and grandmother with strong family ties to both her Jewish traditions and home life.
Ingelore is directed by her son Frank Steifel, who according to an interview with Thomas White, decided after listening to his mother’s story at a lecture to a group of deaf students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, to direct a film about her himself
His original purpose “was to leave a film to his children so that a record survived of their grandmother. As the film proceeded, it became more of an art project that took on a larger piece of my life.”
Ingelore will be shown at the JCC Garfield Theatre on Thursday. Feb. 17th at noon.
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Wrong Side of the Bus is cloth of a different color, figuratively speaking. Sidney Bloch is a noted professor of psychiatry, author and musician who was born, lived and educated in South Africa during Apartheid. He hated the system, but stood on the sidelines and, if you will, contributed to its ongoing abuse of Blacks by doing nothing.
Shortly after graduating with his PhD heleft South Africa for Israel and later moved Melbourne Australia. Forty years after leaving, Sid along with his son Aaron returned to Cape Town for a class reunion. But more than cared to admit he came home to come to grips with his own bout of guilt for being complicit in carrying out Apartheid acts, something he found so appalling that it weighed heavily on his conscience since he left his native country.
Throughout the fifty-six minute documentary, Sid retraces his steps showing his son where he lived, the Synagogue (which is now a wholesale outlet) he prayed in and various places he frequented where Blacks were banned. They visited other venues where Blacks and Whites were separated by a ropes and or space.
More than anything though what Sid finds almost impossible to conceive, as he connects with his ‘Colored’ friends and with the ordinary man on the street, is that they have forgiven the Whites and him for what they did and how they were treated. They are well beyond Sid in their lives even though many still live in tin shacks and their world is still not on equal terms with the Whites.
Sid, whose now Jewish conscience nags at him when he admits that fourteen of his relatives were lost in the Holocaust, is a tortured man. He arranges for reconciliation with some of his former classmates to try and get things out in the open by both sides. There were twelve out of one hundred of his graduating classes who were classified as ‘Non-White’ and one showed up to this meeting. The discussion that followed will surprise you.
Sid was a tough convert. Even with some difficult conversations back and forth between himself and his son, Sid can’t seem to shake the shackles of his shame. His process is agonizing to follow, but worth it.
Sid’s journey is not a perfect bell shaped curve. At times it’s frustrating to listen to his reasoning and not accept what most Africans have already accepted and at other times you want to just hold him. His vulnerability is an open wound.
But in the final analysis Wrong Side of the Bus is a story of forgiveness, gratitude and coming to grips with ghosts of the past. The final scenes are riveting.
Wrong Side of the Bus was produced, written, directed and produced by Rod Freedman, another South African who identified with Sid’s journey. At the end of this documentary there is a 45-minute talk back with all the major characters giving a little more insight to all the participants.
Wrong Side of the Bus will be airing on Sat. Feb. 19th at the Clairemont Reading @ 6:45.
He’s My Girl or La Folle Histoire de Simon Eskenazy is an 86-minute documentary based on the life of Director Jean-Jacques Zilbermann. Zilbermann’s alter ego is Simon Eskenazy, a divorced Klezmer clarinet player whose homosexuality broke up his marriage and from meeting a son he never knew he had.
Ten years have passed and we catch up with Simon, whose life seems to be on the skids. Jewish Simon is in love with a Muslim transvestite, Mohammed, his over the top hypochondriac mother needs him to look after her in his home, and his ex wife, Rosalie, comes back into his life announcing that she intends to remarry and now wants him to meet her new husband to be and the young son he never knew.
Topping it all off, his musical career is at a crossroads when he can’t decide whether or not to go with his group on a recording tour to New York.
Simon has tsurus and tsimmes, as you will soon realize. He’s a man of few words and even fewer actions but his comings and goings and the situations he finds himself in are entertaining and somewhat intriguing as well. While the film has it’s sentimental and funny moments, it does tend to be sluggish.
He’s My Girl , a Southern California premiere is a French, Yiddish, Arabic w/English subtitles documentary that runs 86 minutes, and covers a multitude of issues not the least of which is acceptance and coming to peace with self.
Preceding He’s My Girl, Sidney Turtlebaum an 18-minute documentary will be shown. It was chosen Best Foreign Film, LA Shorts Fest 2009. They are being shown at the Ultra Star in Mission Valley on Sat. Feb.12th @ 6:20. Enjoy!
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Davis is a San Diego-based critic
Enjoy.
Organization: Jewish Center for Culture
Web: sdjff11
Production Type: Documentaries