Eye-opening & thought-provoking: Janina Quint & Tal Recanati's GERMANS & JEWS

The new documentary from Janina Quint and Tal Recanati (their first film, so far as TrustMovies can ascertain) is said to have begun from a private and informal conversation between Ms Recanti (an American Jew) and Ms Quint (a non-Jewish German). The result of this conversation, however, is a surprisingly rigorous and enormously edifying new movie, GERMANS & JEWS, that should open a number of doors in the dialog between those titular objects, while managing to be thought-provoking, humane, sometimes funny, and always rich in ideas.

Ms Quint, shown at right, and Ms Recanati (below, left) have opened up their initial conversation to include a number of other talking heads (often with gesticulating limbs) who take us into areas we might not expect to go but will end up quite pleased to have visited. They've filmed eight, ten, maybe twelve people around a dinner table who go at it cordially and interestingly, as they discuss what it means to be Jewish in Germany today, what it means to be German in Germany (and the world), what kind of a country Germany was back in the day -- and, yes, I do mean the day of the Nazis and the Holocaust -- as well as what kind of

a country Germany has currently become. We learn some of the unintended results of immigration there today -- Germany is one of the most welcoming countries of the new Europe, even now with the many problems that come from this, such as a concurrent rise in anti-Semitism due to so many of the new immigrants arriving from places where this attitude is prevalent. We also discover how knowledge of and attitudes toward the Holocaust have changed down the ensuing decades, including those of post-war children toward their Nazi parents/grandparents.

Though that dinner party and its guests look interesting enough to have taken up the entire movie, I suspect the filmmakers were wise to only show us some of the conversation -- which they intersperse with chat and ideas from the guests during separate interviews and also from other folk who were not present but have some good thoughts and ideas on offer.

These include the likes of historian/professor/author Thorsten Wagner, below, who has reams of smart stuff to tell us, and the amused and amusing historian Fritz Stern, shown above, who died only last month, aged 90. These and others are interlaced into the dinner conversation, and the overall effect is one of off-the-cuff but highly intelligent talk -- about subjects that are hugely important today, as they have been ever since the time of Hitler and well before then.

Learning about the state of Germany today is both surprising and fascinating, especially for someone of my advanced age who grew up with the tales of World War II fresh in my mind. This is a history told first-hand by Germans who experienced it, and we learn everything from the enormous effect of the American television show Holocaust on the German populace when it was first shown to the way in which German teens of the 1960s could level the accusation "You were a Nazi!" against their parents. (At times the new Germany, which may now be the single most democratic country in the world, is depicted with such fervor and relish, especially from the Jews who now live there, that the doc threatens to becomes a kind of commercial for Deutschland über alles.)

The movie is occasionally quite funny -- as when a dinner guest brings up her experience that Jews are always interrupting -- and sometimes hugely moving. A scene in which a German woman explains the importance of keeping the brass memorial plaques to dead Jews polished and bright, and how she felt when relatives of the dead thanked her for her efforts is especially impressive. As is the tale another tells of the effect of hearing the cheering at a football game -- "Deutschland! Deutschland!" -- at which her Jewish son is playing for the German team.

There's an extemporaneous feel to the documentary that almost belies its great importance. It's also quite short -- just 76 minutes -- but its cumulative effect is extraordinary. From First Run Features, Germans & Jews opens this Friday, June 10, in New York City at the Cinema Village and will also play this Thursday, June 9, and Sunday, June 12, at the Greenwich International Film Festival in Connecticut. Elsewhere? I certainly hope so. Click here to keep up with currently scheduled playdates, cities and theaters.

Gabor Kalman's THERE WAS ONCE... is a Holocaust documentary worth keeping

If the job of a good documentary is to document, then Gabor Kalman -- the director and co-producer (and also one of the subjects) of the very fine Hungarian Holocaust film THERE WAS ONCE... -- has done his job, and then some. His film tells of how Gyöngyi Mago, a present-day Catholic school teacher in Kalocsa, Hungary, discovers an interesting, some might say, shocking, part of her local history: a thriving Jewish community was once part of Kalocsa but has now vanished entirely.

As she researched, Ms Mago came upon Kalman's name and contacted the man (shown at right), who -- as have done literally all the Holocaust survivors from this town -- had gone on with his post-trauma life completely away from Kalocsa and even from Hungary itself. Kalman turned out to be a documentary film-maker, and so, as soon as Mago and he connected, this film began its formation. And while the film-maker may not be a grand stylist, he knows how to assemble a movie in which the facts stand out and the story comes together in a manner that grabs and holds you.

I say Kalman is no stylist -- yet even in this area, he has managed to give us a few memorable flourishes that should remain with your for a long while.  One of these, shown above, is a photo of an elementary school classroom in a Jewish school in which the lighted figures (five of them) are the only survivors. The rest, including the teacher, were lost to the Nazis. Kalman comes back to this shot, again and again, playing with it in ways that connect the figures and bring additional meaning, memory and poignancy to the proceedings.

As for school-teacher Mago, shown above, she keeps at her task of uncovering and exploring until she has unearthed and interviewed a number of survivors -- whose feeling about their "home town" range from angry to heart-breaking.  Ditto those of the non-Jewish townsfolk she interviews, many of whom claim there was no anti-Semitism experienced in pre-WWII Kolocsa. This seems an exaggeration; in any case, as we learn, there is plenty of it afoot currently, as a rock pierces the heads of one of the women at the present-day memorial service.

We get a good dose of Jewish-Hungarian history here: How the Jews first came to Kalocsa and slowly assimilated. We get reminiscences, some of which are hard to hear and even harder, one realizes, for the speakers to bear. We see what "objects" (a Herend porcelain figurine, for instance) mean to a survivor. Finally, the movie asks a pertinent question -- What is home? -- and allows one of the survivors to ruminate on the total dissolution of family ties that was brought about by the Holocaust.  "We were supposed to be living -- and dying -- in Kalocsa," he tell us.  This documentary is one for the books, an important addition to the historic record, and a moving account of discovery, memory and setting up safeguards.

There Was Once... opens today, Friday, September 23, or a one-week run in New York City (at the IFC Center) and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Sunset 5.

Czech "Oscar" submission -- Marek Najbrt's PROTEKTOR -- opens Friday in New York

Every so often, for TrustMovies, a film comes along that is perfectly all right, more or less -- in terms of subject matter and style, concept and execution -- but that resolutely refuses to engage him. (Or he it.) Such a movie is PROTEKTOR, the 2009 Czech submission for "Oscar" bait as Best Foreign Language Film for 2010. Attempts at engagement were repeatedly made on TM's part, as the film is coming to us via Film Movement, a distribution company, the catalog of which, is full of fine movies, with rarely a clinker in the bunch. But while Protektor won a slew of awards in its home country, it's not a patch on the Czech Republic's Oscar submission from this past year, the fine Kawasaki's Rose.

Directed and co-written (with Robert Geisler and Benjamin Tucek) by Marek Najbrt, shown at left, the movie is a not uninteresting mash-up of film noir, World War II, Jews-in-danger and films-about-filmmaking/filmgoing/
film-projection (several key scenes take place on a shoot or in a cinema). Beginning in the middle, moving backward and then forward again until we've caught up, Protektor does have a few surprises in store, mostly involving the use of bicycles (see the film's poster above).

The story itself involves a marriage suddenly threatened by increasingly anti-Jewish Nazi edicts. The husband (Marek Daniel, above), who works for Czech radio, sees his career advancing, even as his Jewish wife, a beautiful actress on the cusp of stardom (Jana Plodková, below), sees hers destroyed. Bent on protecting his wife at (almost) all costs, the fellow instead nearly drives her (and us) to distraction.
 
God knows, there's plenty of dramatic possibility here, but from the outset the pacing seems off -- slow, with too much time wasted. Simple storytelling is given a backseat to "style" (that drained color palette, shown below, is growing tiresome from over-use).

Of the several things the movie gets right is its look at the price of collaboration. No matter who you are and how far you go, that price is too high, and yet the choice for a conquered people inevitably lies somewhere between small and large collaborations. Another interesting idea is that of the peculiar freedom obtained by being a provocateur -- until, at least, they catch you. Hubby chooses the former, while his wife -- with the help of the cinema projectionist (Tomás Mechácek below, left) who's carrying a torch for her -- plants herself firmly in the latter's frightening venue.

The idea of cinema as a kind of drug (we can all appreciate that, right?) raises its naughty head as the movie progresses. The finale, when it at last arrives, ought to be especially moving. But it, like all else in the film, goes on too long. With a running time of only 98 minutes, Protektor feels like two hours or more. Still, I admit that I somehow feel I ought to have enjoyed this movie a bit better. Maybe you will.
 
Protektor arrives in New York on Friday, August 5, at both the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and the Brooklyn Heights Cinema, and elsewhere perhaps in the coming weeks and months.  Otherwise, as with all Film Movement titles, this one will eventually be available via DVD.