Allen Ellenzweig
By Allen Ellenzweig
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The Schmooze The Mischievous Life of Marcel Ophüls
The documentary “Ain’t Misbehavin’” — which received its American premiere January 8 at the New York Jewish Film Festival — is a significant change of pace for its director, Marcel Ophüls. Previously, Ophüls has given us magisterial inquiries into 20th century moral outrages, including his pre-eminent “The Sorrow and the Pity,” a disturbing exploration of…
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The Schmooze From France to Odessa, With Love
It’s easy to see why “Friends From France” (“Les interdits”), a film about the freighted history of Jewish “refuseniks” in the Soviet Union, was chosen to open this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival. In the story’s foreground are two young Parisian Jews, Carole and Jérôme, on a group tour in Brezhnev-era Odessa. They are…
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The Schmooze Claude Lanzmann and the Boss of Theresienstadt
“The Last of the Unjust” is at once a documentary on the Holocaust, a character portrait, an inquiry into the nature of evil, a rumination on drawing moral distinctions, and a lesson on the pedagogical limits of film. This well over three-hour documentary, directed — or should we say “constructed”? — by Claude Lanzmann, whose…
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The Schmooze The Human Cost of Palestinian Collaboration
In the hands of a lesser writer and director, Hany Abu-Assad’s “Omar,” the story of a trio of young Palestinian friends caught up in a singular act of vengeance against the Israeli occupation, could have descended to the level of mere agit-prop. That would have left the film — which was recently selected as the…
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The Schmooze View From the Ground of the Arab Spring
We are living through a golden age of documentary film. Surely “The Square,” a riveting account of the Arab Spring as it played out in Cairo’s Tahrir Square between 2011 and 2013, argues in favor of such optimism. In something under two hours, director Jehane Noujaim’s film — which recently screened at the New York…
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The Schmooze Plight of Gay Palestinians No Credit to Israel
With the recent coinage of the term “pinkwashing,” presumably an “unofficial” official policy whereby the Israeli government touts its progressive stance vis-à-vis gay and lesbian rights as a way to deflect criticism of the Occupation, one entry into the sixth annual Other Israel Film Festival took on new urgency earlier this month. But the documentary…
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The Schmooze In Holocaust Film, Reality Is Bad Enough
Watching “La Rafle,” which dramatizes the painful episode of French police rounding up 13,000 Parisian Jews, including 4,000 children, in July 1942, is difficult enough given its grave subject matter without also having to consider questions of artistic merit. With the help of thousands of French police working from immigrant registration records, Vichy leader Philippe…
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The Schmooze The Orchestra That Saved Hundreds
The Nazi era and the Holocaust are such monumental subjects that any documentary filmmaker dealing with them is bound to feel daunted by the challenge. At the same time, we would be foolish to think that even the most serious moviegoer is breathlessly waiting for the next cinematic inquiry into Hitler’s perverse universe. All the…
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