At noon today, Visionary Award recipient Michael Verhoeven was interviewed by Sharon Rivo, Co-Founder and Executive Director, National Center for Jewish Film. We saw a few moments from his new film, “Human Failure,” which has its North American premiere tonight at the festival. It is a documentary about the discovery of an extraordinary archive from the Nazi era. For more than 60 years, tax records showing the appropriation — the authorized theft — of money and property from members of the Jewish community had been protected by privacy laws. But a professor found a stash of 20,000 files in Cologne, made copies of some of them, and created a museum exhibit. When Verhoeven read in the newspapers about the exhibition, he became involved and made the movie.
Theses special taxes were based on property, not income, so Jews were required to submit detailed inventories of every possession they had, down to the children’s dolls, according to Verhoeven. These are not just documents of what was lost. They provide a snapshot of the lives of these families. Many of the files include facts about the people as well as the property and the short clip we saw included an American who discovered for the first time what had happened to his great-uncle through a newspaper story on the files.
Verhoeven, whose previous films include feature films based on history “The Nasty Girl” (a young woman who exposed her community’s involvement with the Holocaust), “My Mother’s Courage” (a woman who escaped being sent to a concentration camp) and “The White Rose” (about young protesters who were killed by the Nazis), said that when he graduated from high school in 1957, the history of the Third Reich was not being taught. “It was the Cold War. It was not interesting any more who was a Nazi. What was interesting was who was a communist.” Even now, he says, there were those who tried to prevent this archive from being exhibited. But the movie’s release (it was shown in connection with the exhibit for three months) is evidence that “people face the past, people cope with the past. It’s a good thing.”
Take a look at the trailer for the upcoming movie “Babies,” which follows four babies from different parts of the world through their first year of life. I dare you not to say “Aw…”
A theme of the movie, including anti-semitism and racism
Date Released to Theaters:
1998
Date Released to DVD:
1998
Amazon.com ASIN:
B00005NTOI
In honor of the World Series, take a look at this documentary about baseball star Hank Greenberg.
Brilliant documentary-maker Aviva Kempner has created a gem of a movie to lift the spirit of anyone who cares about baseball — or heroes.
Hank Greenberg was that rarest of sports stars, someone who was as good as his fans hoped he was — in fact, he was even better. Over and over, in this movie, we see accomplished, distinguished men get teary-eyed as they talk about how much Hank Greenberg meant to them when they were growing up. Senator Carl Levin said, “Because he was a hero, I was a little bit of a hero, too.” Lawyer-to-the-stars Alan Dershowitz says, “Baseball was our way of showing that we were as American as anyone else.”
“We” meant Jews. Hank Greenberg was not the first Jewish baseball player, but he was the first one to be proudly Jewish. He did not change his name and he did not hide his religion. He missed a day of the World Series to observe Yom Kippur (though he did play on Rosh Hashanah, thanks to a clearance from a rabbi who was a baseball fan). And he was a star. Dershowitz said, “He was what they said Jews could never be.”
Kempner combines stock footage and contemporary interviews with fans, friends, family, and teammates to give a glowing portrait of Greenberg, who died in 1986, and, as the title promises, of his era.
Greenberg faced a lot of prejudice. He played for the Detroit Tigers in a city whose leading citizen, Henry Ford, was a virulent anti-Semite. One of his teammates was a country boy who had never met a Jew before and literally expected Greenberg to have horns. But Greenberg never took it personally and never became bitter. He said that it made him work harder because if he failed, “I wasn’t a bum; I was a Jewish bum.” Not a religious or observant man, he was very aware of his role as a symbol, and, as a fan notes, “he wore his Jewishness on his sleeve and in his heart.” At the end of his career, he helped support another baseball player he perhaps understood better than anyone — Jackie Robinson.
Greenberg missed four seasons at the top of his career because he was serving in WWII. And at the end of his career he was impulsively traded by an owner who mistakenly thought he was thinking of leaving. He spoke of those incidents with regret, but without anger. One of the great treats of this movie is see not just how well Greenberg handled adversity, but how well he handled fame and success, remaining humble, honest, and dedicated through it all.
Perhaps most revealing of Greenberg’s character was the one statistic that he cared about, in this most statistic-ridden of sports — RBIs. He loved being the one who batted clean-up, “the guy that comes up at the clutch, changes the ball game, makes all the difference.” He could have gone for the home run record, but he was the ultimate team player.
His teammates and friends talk, also, about his dedication. He was the hardest-working of ball-players, paying anyone he could find to pitch to him for extra batting practice and even stripping down in a friend’s dress-making studio so he could examine his batting stance in a three-way mirror.
Parents should know that while younger kids might not understand the movie, there is nothing objectionable in it — and how many of today’s sports figures could inspire a documentary about which that statement could be made?
Families who see this movie should talk about America’s history of prejudice and about the different ways that people handle adversity — and success. Families who enjoy this movie will also enjoy Ken Burns’ “Baseball” documentary, broadcast on PBS and available on video.
Crude is the latest documentary from Joe Berlinger, whose last film was the award-winning “Metallica: Some Kind of Monster.” This movie explores a large, complex, international environmental lawsuit over damage allegedly inflicted by an oil company on a community in Ecuador. He also does the television show Iconoclasts, pairing interesting high-profile people with the people who inspire them. I spoke with him by phone about this new film.
NM: How did you gain the confidence of the people you were filming? Unlike your last subjects, Metallica, you were dealing with subjects who were not familiar with media.
JB: I would not necessarily distinguish them that way — getting the trust of a media figure like Metallica or James Hetfield is no easier than getting the trust of these people. One of the amazing things about this experience was how unguarded and open people were and how easy it was to gain their trust. Metallica are not just any rock stars, they are all about male testosterone-fueled rage and not showing any weakness and to allow that to be put on screen was even more difficult.
When I made “Paradise Lost,” a film about three teenagers falsely accused of devil-worshiping murders because of the clothes they wore and the music they listened to, and it was shot in 1993, just as the 24-hour news cycle as we know it today was kicking in and it was a very different mindset. It was the last time I felt in my career that we got that kind of access, total access to the families of the defendants, three families of the victims, the judge, the prosecutor, we filmed the trial. If we made the film today, it would not have been possible. There would be 50 satellite trucks, five Hollywood agents, book deals, that kind of thing has happened in the last five or ten years, who likes to dig in and tell a story over the long haul — not what the media does — it makes my job that much more difficult.
So one of the unexpected pleasures of “Crude” was I once again felt that freedom that I could take my camera anywhere in this country. The people involved were — in a refreshing way — un-media savvy, un-tainted, un-jaded. And these are people who have been wronged for a long time. I was surprised a little bit that a white person and an outsider had such ease. But what motivated me was not the lawsuit per se but I had an epiphany as I walked around the villages and saw the level of disregard that these people have suffered at the hands of others. For the first time I viewed this injustice toward them as part of the long continuum for the last 600-700 years. As I see people eating canned tuna instead because there are no longer fish from the nearby water, getting diseases they never got before, poisoned drinking water. Their lives have been devastated, first by missionaries and then by the oil companies. What made me want to see the film was seeing it in a larger context of displacement and mistreatment of indigenous people. I didn’t want an “oh, we have to win the lawsuit,” one-sided agitprop kind of film-making. That is not consistent with my style of film-making and it is actually less persuasive than my style which is kind of warts and all.
NM: That brings me to my next question. You make a real effort to be even-handed here. The movie certainly has a point of view but you let all sides make their own case. How do you make your point, stay even-handed, preserve your credibility, and still show what you have learned?
JB: Some filmmakers in the category of human rights and expose are afraid of a contrarian point of view, but I think it creates a viewing experience that is active instead of than passive. When a film has a singular point of view — first of all, stylistically I don’t believe in narration because I am a cinema verite film-maker. I want the audience to make up their own minds about what they are seeing. I believe the emotional truth of a situation rises clearly to the top. But a lot of film-makers start a film with a thesis and bang it over your head and have all their points adhere to that thesis. I embrace a contrarian point of view because that way the audience weighs the pros and cons and comes to their own conclusion. If you treat an audience member like a member of a jury they will make up their own minds and that is much more persuasive experience than telling them what you think they should think. Only people who already agree with you will see it. Any film where you want to affect social change you have to bring other people into the fold. You have a better chance of having people walk out of the movie and take action if they have been actively engaged. There hasn’t been a screening of this film where I haven’t had 40 people come up to me afterward and ask me what they could do. If people come to their own conclusion they will want to become more involved.
NM: How do you frame the story then?
The other thing that allowed me to be even-handed, and this was to the consternation of some of the activists and certainly to the plaintiff’s lawyers, who were surprised that it was not more overtly in favor of the lawsuit, is that the film to me is not really about the lawsuit. It is an excuse to tell a larger story. The lawsuit, while I think it’s important that there is a lawsuit and it is an historic one because it is the first time indigenous people have brought a foreign company into their own courts to hold them accountable, and it was important to deflate the issue of the for-profit lawsuit right up front instead of hiding from it, but a lawsuit is an inadequate vehicle for addressing humanitarian and environmental issues. We’re in year 17 with no end in sight. Even if there is a ruling this winter, as we expect, it will be appealed for another decade. And then try to make them pay. Look at the Exxon Valdez. Everyone agreed that they were in the wrong but it took almost two decades to pay those fines and at the last minute they got a judge to reduce the amount by 80 percent.
The other larger observation of the film is that I am not smart enough to tell you whether Chevron has wrapped itself up in enough legalities, all the legal issues and claims and counter-claims. The jurisdictional issue is interesting, the initial release from the government is an interesting issue. I’m not trained in the law. To me, there’s a much larger issue here, and that is the utter immorality about what is done. The law is not about seeking the truth; it is about presenting the best argument. For me, there is no justification for what they did originally. They came into a place where there were six indigenous tribes, and yes, the government had a hand in it, and they set up a system that was designed to pollute. There is no moral justification for that, to use methods that were not permissible in our country. Unlike everyone else, after the arguments are over, they have to go back there to God knows what existence, to that poisoned environment. Another generation will suffer because the lawsuit is taking so long.
Another reason for the stylistic approach is that it is an advocacy film but it is also a portrait of advocacy. The camera pulls back a bit in a self-reflective way and looks at the advocacy movement, what each side has to do to push their agendas forward. Some people asked, “Are you sure you want to show the coaching of the witnesses?” It wasn’t about gotcha.
NM: It was about teaching them you have to speak their language.
JB: There’s an honesty in that that I think the audience feels and it helps in their engagement to weigh the issues, including to weigh the media and celebrities. It asks why in this country unless there is celebrity attention on a social or humanitarian issue it does not get any media attention? I have enormous regard for Sting and Trudie Styler for what they did for this region long before the celebrity photo-op was fashionable, they walk the walk, but the film is critiquing why we need that.
How much impact can you make through a year of no impact? Colin Beavan and his wife Michelle Conlin decided to do their best to minimize their impact on the environment and as if that was not enough of a challenge, they did it the hard way, in New York City, with Isabella, their two-year-old daughter. And exposed to withering scorn from readers of the blog documenting the effort and a New York Times article that seemed to reduced the entire project to the toilet paper question. And they did it all in front of a camera.
It was a stunt, sure, but more than that a statement about what is possible and what, in the most profound and global sense, is necessary. And more than a statement, it is a series of questions, starting with this one: what do we really need and how much does it really cost?
I spoke to director/cinematographer Justin Schein about what it was like to follow this family for a year.
NM: What steps did you and the crew take to reduce the environmental impact of the film-making?
JS: Colin made us promise that we had to do it in as sustainable way as possible, so even before we picked up the camera, we were challenged to do that, everything from not buying a new camera, to no lights, no cars. All the bicycle footage was shot from another bicycle, a newly developed skill I have. Most documentaries have a much smaller footprint than fiction film-making but there’s always another step you can make, and that’s at the heart of this project. You have to ask yourself these questions. It is pretty easy to be stuck in a habit, and making this film carried over into my home life. You can’t spend a year with these guys without asking yourself about the food you’re eating and the garbage you’re creating. We started composting, we use cloth diapers, things like that.
NM: How do you draw the line between what is meaningful and what is going too far for too little benefit?
JS: Part of the process and the arc for Colin was about letting go of the rules a little bit and seeing that yes these individual actions are important but there is a bigger picture. For Michelle it was a different arc, learning that she wasn’t happy living the way she was living.
NM: Yes, she goes from someone who describes herself as addicted to reality television to someone who at the end of the year does not want the television back in the apartment.
JS: It was very clear to me that she really appreciated the benefits of not having the TV, in terms of being a mother, their parenting was dramatically impacted by the closeness that this brought to their family. That was an unintended benefit but it will be the lasting benefit. The time they spent together, eating and cooking, getting out of the house because they didn’t have air conditioning was really important. As they question their disposable consumptive lifestyle, those questions are going to benefit Isabella.
NM: And how did Isabella feel about it?
JS: Colin speaks eloquently about how Isabella was teacher as much as benefactor. Adults are stuck in habits they learned as children. She was not as entrenched. Turning off the lights was an adventure for her. Gardening was a whole new world. And she doesn’t have a caffeine problem and now may well avoid it.
NM: You were privy to some very intimate moments as this couple had some painful conversations about whether they should have another child. How do you establish the kind of trust that allows them to be so open with not just you but your eventual audience?
JS: The work that I do is verite and creating a relationship is at the heart of that. A big part of that is empowering my subjects to ask me to turn off the camera, Once they have that power they are much more comfortable opening up their lives to us. Laura is an old-time friend of Michelle’s from high school. We came into this with a certain level of trust and that started us off.
My wife Eden is the producer of the film, She had met Colin and Michell through Laura, Eden and Laura had worked together in the past. About a week before the year was going to start we had dinner with Michelle and learned about the project. As a film-maker who is interested in issues of the environment and prefer character-driven films, I liked the way it would be told through the story of a family rather than just the issues. In the wake of “An Inconvenient Truth,” we were looking for a solution-based project.
NM: One event you document is the burst of media attention the project gets following a rather snarky New York Times article.
JS: The media attention that exploded was unexpected and it was fascinating. Colin was being attacked by both the right and the left and applauded by both the right and left. The individual-based approach drew a lot of appreciation from the religious right, so we knew we had touched a nerve in a way that was interesting.
That Times article was at first very disappointing to Colin because the issues that he was trying to bring to the front were trivialized. There’s a contingent that really focuses on the stunt, as though we were trying to hide that. It was an experiment in order to bring about attention to the issue.
NM: What elements of the no-impact year have they kept in place?
JS: They don’t have air conditioning, they did not get a new dishwasher, they still eat from the farmer’s market largely. The biggest thing is that Colin has dedicated himself to educating people about this issue and started a foundation around the no-impact project. They are designing no-impact weeks for college students, to use this as a teaching tool.
