STORIES FROM
ENGLAND AND
JERUSALEM
<< NEW >>
FEB. 2002

SOUTH
AFRICA
CONTROVERSY

STORY FROM
THEATRICAL
RELEASE
IN NYC

STORIES FROM
ENGLAND AND
JERUSALEM
<< NEW >>
FEB. 2002

UPDATE
FROM
SUNDANCE

UPDATE
FROM
BERLIN

BANNED IN
MEXICO +
STORIES FROM
EASTERN
EUROPE

JERUSALEM
PREMIERE
+ SAN FRAN
HAPPENING

back to
screenings

ENGLAND: Rabbi Steve Greenberg and I traveled to England recently for the Limmud conference which brought 2000 British Jews over X-mas at Nottingham University near Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest. The film took off like a fireball in the fishbowl like nature of such gatherings. We had to turn hundreds of people away and schedule additional screenings. At one showing, a woman stood up and said she had stepped into a mikve, a ritual bath, three weeks ago to cure herself of her homosexuality. Now after seeing the film, she was going to re-enter that mikve in order to accept her homosexuality. Her parents had thrown her into a mental asylum because she was a lesbian. She was a professional, a mother now. She sobbed throughout the entire film and Q &A. It is clear the film touched a raw nerve among British Jewry. We are now negotiating for a UK theatrical release and broadcast on UK TV,

JERUSALEM: We also held a special private screening for 130 rabbis and rabbinical students with The Masorti or Conservative Movement in Israel. Lessons at the Schechter Institute (The Conservative Movement's academic center) were cancelled, so that Rabbinical students could attend the screening. At first, the institute administrators did not allow for the Rabbinical students to attend, but later changed their position as students informed the administration that they would miss class regardless, in favor of the screening and dealing with the relations between the conservative movement and the gay community (the movement bans the ordination of gay and lesbian rabbis). The film is screening now in Washington D.C. while the Conservative movement's conference is happening - troops of rabbis have gone every night to the theater. See Washington Post article

Releasing the film in Israel in December was very intense. I had planned to go to Jerusalem's Ben Yehuda Street on Saturday night to distribute flyers for the film's Israeli Theatrical Premiere the next night at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque. Luckily I did not, because two suicide bombers and a booby-trapped car injured 188 people and killed 11. The next day, there was a bus bombing in Haifa. Everyone said no one will leave their house, forget the Premiere. Instead, the Cinematheque was packed. Last July, when we were at the Jerusalem Film Festival I wrote about an Orthodox mother who had approached me on the street and asked if I could help her cure her gay son. Six months later, she brought him to our Tel Aviv Premiere. This mother and son who had never been able to truly speak about his gayness sat crying through the film, and stood hugging after saying the movie opened up a line of communication they had not had, and thanking us.

She wrote me again:
"It took quite a long time until I could pull myself together and write to you. You saw already after the screening that I was speechless. The film impressed me immensely, as I never thought that a documentary film could. It is due to your great talent that one sits during the whole movie, breathless, absorbed totally in what is shown on the screen, not one dull movement. I also noticed with appreciation, that you have not once been tempted to show the slightest physical touch between the gay people – or maybe better to say, did not surrender to the temptation to show such scenes, even though, knowing how much such “piquant” pictures could be provocative and, therefore, good for the rating.

1.My son does not wear anymore a kipah – but when we entered the movie, he suddenly put on the kipah, saying that this movie is the right place to be with it.

2.You may not know, but is has been my initiative to go together with him to see the movie, and later when hearing him telling to you that I am the only one he has in the world – I knew that, instinctively, I did the right thing. Simcha – I am sorry that there is no “happy end” in our life following the screening, but I can tell you that: although I still cannot accept my son being gay and it causes me immense pain – I love him very much. Maybe after this movie, even more.

With great appreciation,
Anonymous

It was a grueling, sad time in Israel but it was amazing moments like this that gave one some hope that life was not just an endless cycle of violence. Let us hope Hanukkah brings peace and light.