Jews are Clever, Make Different Movies
By Dan Friedman
Brazil is not only home to the Jules Rimet trophy, Copacabana beach, Carnaval and the frighteningly militarized favelas portrayed in “City of God,” it’s also the location of an old and respected Yiddish community. Now Jose de Abreu is making a Yiddish-speaking film — “Where Pigs Eat Oranges” — about Jewish immigration from Czarist Russia (Bessarabia) to Brazil, in 1904. Supported by the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), Jewish immigrants founded the first organized agricultural colony in Brazil, called Philippson Colony (in the Brazilian pampa). The film takes its name from a phrase in a JCA pamphlet encouraging immigration.
It’s written by Marcos Bernstein who wrote the screenplay for “Central Station” — the poignant 1998 film nominated for an Oscar. At $10m, the budget is extensive by Brazilian standards, and includes building a shtetl in Paulinia-Sao Paulo State, and the Philippson Colony will be shot where things really happened, in a farm in Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul State. All he needs now are some Yiddish-speaking children to film next year!
Meanwhile, in Turkey, Selim Çiprut has already made his film “Süpürrr!” (”SweePPP!”) about, of all things, curling. You know, men with brushes skating very slowly down a strip of ice trying to encourage large chunks of stone to end up close to each other: aka Canada’s second national sport. The film will be released December 18 in Turkey and thereafter on DVD with English subtitles in February.
Selim did not refer to “Cool Runnings” — the film about a Jamaican bobsled team — but, until the DVD comes out I’m imagining that a Turkish film about curling may be going for that same counter-intuitive cute niche. When asked why on earth a Turkish Jewish filmmaker would make a film about curling, Selim replied: “Turkish Jews make curling movies, because we like to create something extraordinary, like curling. Jews are clever, make different movies.”
August 21, 2007, 4:57pm
ADL Cries Uncle: Okay, Okay, It Was Genocide
By Daniel Treiman
The Anti-Defamation League paid a heavy price of late for refusing to call Turkey’s slaughter of its Armenian population a genocide. First, its No Place for Hate program was booted from the heavily Armenian town of Watertown, Mass. Then the ADL fired its New England director Andrew Tarsy for criticizing his organization’s position. And the chorus of criticism within the Jewish community grew by the day.
Now the ADL has issued a mea culpa (sort of):
New York, NY, August 21, 2007 … Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today issued the following statement:
In light of the heated controversy that has surrounded the Turkish-Armenian issue in recent weeks, and because of our concern for the unity of the Jewish community at a time of increased threats against the Jewish people, ADL has decided to revisit the tragedy that befell the Armenians.
We have never negated but have always described the painful events of 1915-1918 perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians as massacres and atrocities. On reflection, we have come to share the view of Henry Morgenthau, Sr. that the consequences of those actions were indeed tantamount to genocide. If the word genocide had existed then, they would have called it genocide.
I have consulted with my friend and mentor Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel and other respected historians who acknowledge this consensus. I hope that Turkey will understand that it is Turkey’s friends who urge that nation to confront its past and work to reconcile with Armenians over this dark chapter in history.
Having said that, we continue to firmly believe that a Congressional resolution on such matters is a counterproductive diversion and will not foster reconciliation between Turks and Armenians and may put at risk the Turkish Jewish community and the important multilateral relationship between Turkey, Israel and the United States.
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