2nd Block of Documentary Shorts

Life through a lens, dir. Jeffrey Levenson
USA, 2016, 12 min
A heartfelt monologue of photographer Robert Zuckerman, who has worked extensively in film industry (he tells about one of his first jobs, which was to take production photographs of the Training Day with Denzel Washington, for which the latter won an Oscar) and made portraits of celebrities of the level of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Samuel Johnson and Bruce Willis. Later he found out he had APBD, the adult polyglucosan body disease, which is so rare and unexplored that its Wikipedia page doesn’t even have a counterpart in Russian. The film is made in order to spread information about APBD.

At the heart of this film are two extraordinary characters. It is a mystery how director Hillel Rate managed to persuade them to let the camera so close, to invite the filming crew into their home and share their most private moments. Moshe Mishuris, a 37-year-old lonely Ashkenazi Jew came from Russia with his elderly father, and now they live together in one tiny apartment. Their main source of income is donations from the audience of their YouTube channel, where they talk about Judaism in Russian. Moshe is single, he had proposed to different women twice, but it didn’t work out. When he goes to the matchmaker and it’s hard to tell whether he is hoping to get together with someone or is fearing it. The most unexpected thing is that the film is open-ended. The director leaves Moshe perplexed, but not alone because in any case he stays with his father, a man who is almost a saint and dedicated his entire life to his faith.  

Sixteen-year-old Eitan wants to live in Amona where he was born, but that territory is still disputed. The most persevering squatter, he builds a house out of stones there together with his friends, which without any fuss gets destroyed by the police. Never Locked - a film with that name eloquently describes Eitan’s dream house - explores the question of whether people can live where they want and are able to live in their own country, of what makes places home, and talks about the feeling of being at home itself.

Ninety-five-year-old Holocaust survivor Inge Ginsberg attempts to break out as a death metal singer by entering America's Got Talent.

Wendys Shabbat, dir. Rachel Myers
USA, 2017, 10 min
The film documents a heartwarming neighbourhood tradition of elderly Jews (the director tactfully emphasised their age by mentioning in the credits that even their dogs are old now) to gather together for the Shabbah and celebrate it right in the middle of a Wendy’s fast food restaurant. At first the employees tried to obstruct it, but old ladies and gentlemen persisted and talked to the manager who let them occupy several tables, listen to the Rabbi (who is, according to his words, the oldest working Rabbi in all of the States of America), break challah bread, and eat burgers with no bacon and french fries for four dollars only.