Queer cinema gets a boost at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival thanks to three completely different entries.[rssbreak]
The most arresting is the feature Eyes Wide Open (Monday, April 19, Bloor Cinema, 8 pm Tuesday, April 20, 8:15 pm, SilverCity Richmond Hill, rating: NNN), about two Orthodox Jewish men who fall in love. In Jerusalem, where queer life is not nearly as visible as in the more secular city of Tel Aviv, Aaron, dutiful husband and father of four, runs a butcher shop.
The attraction is immediate when Ezri, who’s been thrown out of the yeshiva, arrives on his doorstep. As the two begin to spend time together, the “purity police” – community representatives – start applying the screws to Aaron’s business. Soon the goons are throwing rocks through his shop window.
Director Haim Tabakman creates a moody, tension-?filled environment – as much at Aaron’s home, where his wife can sense something’s not quite right, as in the store – and does wonders with the disorienting image of two men wearing payos making love. Kudos to the fest for screening this at SilverCity Richmond Hill, home of Toronto Jewry’s more conservative contingent.
By way of contrast, check out Gay Days (Sunday, April 18, 8:45 pm, Al Green, Rating: NNN), Yair Qedar’s documentary about Israel’s gay movement. Qedar manages to find the only three Israelis who were out and proud in 1985 and tracks the growth of gay pride – mostly in Tel Aviv – through the 90s and into the oughts. Fascinating how early activists were critical of the first Intifada and how those politics began to fade through the 90s.
Off And Running (Sunday, April 18, 11 am, Bloor Cinema, Rating: NNN) is an intriguing documentary about the adopted daughter of two Jewish lesbians. Her search for her birth mother triggers her gradual alienation from her adopted family.
Avery is young, gifted – a talented track athlete – and black. She’s been brought up Jewish, has almost zero sense of her own blackness and feels like she’s missing an anchor. She has two siblings, also adopted, but Avery is the only one among them one bent on a roots search.
As director Nicole Opper follows her distressing downturn, the film becomes a testament both to the lengths to which a girl who’s coming of age will go to establish her personal identity and, crucially, to her mothers’ unconditional love.
