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Running for a full week from August 15-22 at the Shwayder Theatre in Denver's Mizel Center for Arts and Culture, the 7th Denver Jewish Film Festival features twenty films from across the world that explore different facets of the Jewish experience. Five films centering on the idea of resistance anchor the project (the so-called "Films of Courage:" Resistance, Sisters in Resistance, Sobibor, "Terrorists" in Retirement, and Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone), but getting more than equal time are films about Jewish performers whimsical (Schmelvis), nostalgic (The Travellers: This Land is Your Land), and experimental (Last Dance).
If there is a common theme to be found among the films at this fest, it is the lingering taint of The Holocaust and the constant spectre of anti-Semitism that flavours even the lightest hearted of the selected films. The theme is more topical than usual this year because of the rising tensions in the Middle East and what feels like a sea change in American popular opinion regarding some of the more militant policies of Israeli President Ariel Sharon. Part and parcel with that discomfort, however, is what appears to be an unfortunate desire to present a program that neglects a different point of view while staying well on this side of safe. With recent Starz Filmcenter offerings like The Inner Tour and Promises, it's clear that there's no shortage of incendiary, intimate fare; very little of that insight appears at this year's Denver Jewish Film Festival.
All the same, the pride and the discomfort of being Jewish finds its expression through a variety of voices over the festival's laudable line-up of twenty features and documentaries each making their Colorado debut.-Walter Chaw
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SELECT CAPSULE REVIEWS
by Walter Chaw
 RUTHIE AND CONNIE: EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE (2002)
directed by Deborah Dickson
Unintentionally misleading and fragmentary, Deborah Dickson's documentary Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House is a warm and occasionally interesting look at a pair of Jewish grandmothers who, years previous, decided to leave their middle-class housewife existences to live with one another in Sapphic bliss. Externalizing their taboo affair, the pair engage in politicking and GLAAD community building against a backdrop of Shabbat candles and shuls; the whole of Ruthie and Connie plays like a long anecdote in quaint Brooklyn-ease while the events of true interest (the family reaction, the community fallout) appear far offscreen and only in the affectionate recollections of friends and family. The trouble with the picture is that it has neither controversy nor counterpoint, the outraged point of view of the cuckolded husbands left as antiquated and baseless. For as liberal as my personal feelings might be about the social stigma attached to homosexuality, for a film that purports to be about women representative of a cultural shift in the late-'60s there is a decided lack of palpable sadness. There is an aching sweetness between Ruthie and Connie, though, that makes the extremely brief time we spend with them pleasant, if not terribly edifying--a stillness at the core of their relationship hints at volumes the film can only skate across. Sadly, what we're left with in Ruthie and Connie is a documentary composed of pocket revelations that, no matter their obvious importance to the subjects, remain commonplace (even stale) in today's more battle-worn society.** (out of four)
LAST DANCE (2002)
directed by Mirra Bank
A documentary on the creative process behind creating an interpretive dance piece based on an opera written and performed at the sham "relocation camp" Theresienstadt, Mirra Banks' Last Dance is best when illustrating the way that art about the Holocaust is often mistaken for the Holocaust itself. Maurice Sendak (author of the children's classic Where the Wild Things Are) found himself in 1998 in collaboration with experimental dance troupe Pilobolus on a project called "A Selection" that would honour the work of Czech composers Hans Krása and Pavel Haas (both of whom died at Auschwitz)--in particular, Krása's short opera Brundibar. With fascinating archival footage of a Nazi propaganda reel fabricated to give the illusion to foreign ambassadors that Jews were sent to a pleasant if controlled community (Theresienstadt) rather than the then-rumoured death camps, Last Dance establishes the kind of mournful tone inseparable from relics of the Holocaust. More unusual is the insight offered by a clash of egos between a pair of temperamental artists: Sendak and Pilobolus' most outspoken director Jonathan Wolken. While Sendak is intent on a sometimes-literal faithfulness to depicting the actual dehumanizations of the Holocaust, Wolken demands a level of sacrifice for the sake of linear art, and the friction between the two transcends the growing pains of an artistic collaboration to touch upon more incendiary topics, such as the sanctity of the vehicles employed for remembering the Holocaust. Though the process of the lithe dance troupe developing their Cirque du Soleil-like performance holds some level of fascination, ultimately there are too few revelations offered by Last Dance. The pleasure of the text is anchored in minor truths regarding the pain of creation and the lingering angst of atrocity, which is compelling, perhaps, but finally important only for those intimately involved with this dance.**1/2 (out of four)
 SCHMELVIS (2002)
directed by Max Wallace
It begins as a quest--undertaken by two good Jewish boys, an Elvis impersonator who sings in Hebrew, and their rabbi--to prove that Elvis was Jewish (based on a matrilineal link traced to a great-grandmother), but Schmelvis ends (after trips through Mississippi, Memphis, and the Holy Land) as something of a hermeneutical conversation as frustrating and vacuous as a yeshiva debate. The picture is a documentary about a process of argument, in other words, that is somewhat unique to the Jewish religion: withering in its logical perambulations, but baffling and frustrating for the observer, who may not be nearly so schooled in the intricacies of the topics and the art of debate. Ostensibly, Schmelvis wants to mock redneck intolerance of a theory that semiticizes a white icon, but failing to raise the ire of any Elvis fans (the general retort is "Who cares what he was? He was Elvis!"), the picture is left with an hour for the filmmakers to wonder what in the world they're doing. It's a question they share with the audience, and the extent to which one takes the text as an opportunity for some kind of strenuous theological exegesis is the extent to which any real enjoyment can be had from Schmelvis. As a film it looks terrible and has no structure or particular point, yet a moment where Schmelvis is handled roughly by the evil idiots running an Elvis impersonator contest almost makes it all worth it.** (out of four)
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