Audacious, brilliantly conceived, and unafraid of controversy, the poster designed by Daniel Josefsohn for the Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Potsdam 2013, with its bright yellow background, film-reel Star of David and provocative slogan “We Come in Peace” was my introduction to the festival, as I looked at the website from my Tel Aviv apartment.
Coming to Germany for the first time, in my encounter with Berlin, Potsdam and the festival, I felt that the poster was the perfect starting point for my journey of discovery, revealing the character of this unique festival even as it retains an aura of mystery for me. One evening at the Thalia Kino in Potsdam between films, Festival Director Nicola Galliner graciously shared the story of her own journey, offering insights into the festival, its history and significance.
The festival took place for the first time in 1995, celebrating 50 years to the end of World War II. At the time Galliner worked at the Jewish Community Center in Berlin on Adult Education and Cultural Programs. “That’s where the idea for the film festival really evolved,” she recounted, “because many of the people who come to the cultural events at the Jewish Community Center are not Jewish, and that is still true today. They are Germans who want to inform themselves about Jewish culture… and there’s a traumatic story behind it.”
For Galliner, that traumatic story, the Holocaust, is “always present. I’ve listened to so many people tell their stories.” The Jewish community in Berlin is very small, while the history of the Jews looms large. Walking through the city one encounters the Holocaust Memorial, the Jewish Museum with its permanent exhibit documenting the history of the Jews in Germany, the Block of Women memorial to the Rosenstrasse protest by sculptor Ingeborg Hunzinger, the Stumbling Stones on the sidewalks engraved with the names of Jews who were killed in the Holocaust, the Places of Remembrance Memorial by Stih & Schnock in the Bavarian Quarter; all speak of the past. The role of the Jewish Film Festival is to express the vibrant presence of Jewish life, to give voice and image to Jewish life.
“In America,” Galliner explained, “the Jewish film festivals are Jewish events. Here in Germany we have about 80% non-Jewish audience in the Berlin screenings, in Potsdam it’s about 95% non-Jewish… the festival was the perfect way to tell people about Jewish culture, Jewish life. You have the whole world: we’ve had films from Tunisia, from Australia, from New Zealand. Amazing stories, and you can show it all in a film, and you can get a good guest to talk to the audience and they will learn so much more, and you get so much more insight than through reading a book. You can get so much more across in a film.”
The First Year
“I’d always thought this (the festival) was something one should do,” recalled Galliner, “and I approached Ulrich and Erika Gregor who ran Arsenal for Film and Video Art in Berlin. They said: This is wonderful, because this is something we wanted to do, but we didn’t want to do it as a non-Jewish institution. We said, OK, we’ll do it once as an experiment, and we had to repeat films three times. They had a little neighborhood cinema at the time, and Erika would say to people: Go and have a coffee and come back in 90 minutes, we’ll show it again. We were overrun. That was the start of it. It was a small festival, about 15 films.”
“I still remember the opening night film and I still know the first guest, because that’s something you never forget: your first boyfriend, your first film,” Galliner reminisced, “The first film was a Swedish film called “Freud Leaving Home.” (Frued Flytter Hjemmefra, 1990) You’ve never heard of the film, but you’ve heard of the woman who made it. Susanne Bier. It was her first film, and she came to the festival. She was very pregnant and said she came because one of her parents came from Berlin and she wanted to see Berlin. She wasn’t well known, but the film was wonderful. Little did she know that she would be coming here very often for the Berlinale (most recently as a member of the 2013 International Jury).
In the festivals first years, Galliner relied on catalogs from other Jewish festivals to select films. Later on, in the late 1990s, she began attending the Jerusalem Film Festival, and for the past six or seven years has also been attending the Haifa Film Festival, as well as the Boston Jewish Film Festival and New York Jewish Film Festival in alternate years to select the latest Jewish and Israeli films.
Choosing Films for the Festival
“Well,” said Galliner, “I always have someone sitting next to me when I am looking at the films, an invisible person, somebody watching the film who has no idea what Jews are about. They have to be able to understand the film. That is the first hurdle: the film has to be understandable even if you know very little about the subject. Then we’re looking for films that go behind the stories in Israel, that do more…Israeli films are so excellent and so good it’s very hard for us to decide. There’s a film that we opened with once that really touched me. It was practically an East German story, we showed it shortly after the wall came down. It was Afula Express (by Julie Shles, 1997), about young people starting out and trying to make something of their lives. It was a really touching film, and it had a lot of relevance to here in a very strange way.”
“The other film which touched many, many, people here and spoke to them extremely directly was the film The Flat. It got unbelievable press in every serious newspaper and magazine. It’s not only an Israeli film, it’s a story for the Germans. There are more connecting points than one thinks between Israelis and Germans…well, there’s a common traumatic experience and this connects. Even though it’s a terrible connection, the two peoples are bound together through this experience as well.”
Israel and Germany
One of Galliner’s favorite memories from the festival is a story that began at the Jerusalem Film Festival. “Many years ago it wasn’t that easy to get tickets for films,” recalled Galliner, “but there was a nice American girl who worked there, who was always the last stop, if nothing else worked you went to see her. It was always very hot, the combination of not being able to getting tickets easily and the heat made everyone not particularly friendly.”
“In one of these moments I went into her office, and there was somebody else sitting in her chair. I thought, I don’t believe this! and I needed my tickets urgently, and I said: Do you know where Amy is? She said no, and I said: Well, if you’re sitting on her chair you should know where she is. She looked at me and she said: Are you a guest of the festival? I said yes, and she said: Where are you from? I thought let’s end this conversation fast, and I said Germany, which in those days just shut up people. The woman sprang at me and said: Oh, how wonderful! She put her little hand in her bag and pulled out a video cassette and said: I must give you my film! I said: But I need tickets for the film that’s coming up now! She said: I can’t help you, but please look at my film it’s about a woman from Germany.”
“Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t look at it. I left it till the last day. I was sitting in the library at the cinematheque, I had a whole pile of video cassettes and this one was right at the bottom. When I looked at it, my heart stopped. I thought: I don’t believe what I’m seeing. I rang the woman up from the phone box because it was in the days before… and I said to her, “We will take your film, we will invite you but the condition is you bring the woman with you who is in the film. I must have her onstage. The story is unbelievable!”
“The poor filmmaker said to me: Yes, but she’ll never come, she said she would never go back to Germany. I said: Well, you’ll have to convince her. She can come just for 48 hours.”
“She managed to convince the lady, her name was Alice Shalvi. She came to Berlin, she went onstage after the film and 250 people got up spontaneously clapped and clapped, and wouldn’t stop. It was the beginning of a long and intensive relationship with Berlin that Alice Shalvi had. The filmmaker is Paula Weiman Kelman, it was a wonderful film (The Annotated Alice, 1998) on Alice Shalvi’s life, very moving.”
Now in its 19th edition, the festival has faced many challenges along the way. “We’ve had a lot of problems with the festival,” said Galliner, “various people tried to kill it off about four or five times. We’ve always survived and it’s all been worth it, because you do meet people like Alice Shalvi who is one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life.
Hopes for the future?
“One would like to see it carry on,” Galliner replies modestly, and expressed the hope that more people and organizations would take advantage of the resources that the festival offers, “So much can be done with a festival like this. People always complain that there is so much anti-Semitism and hatred of foreigners here and that’s where we can do so much. For example, we are so happy with wonderful cooperation with KigA who work against anti-Semitism. We do a screening with them every year. This year we’re going to show them Zaytoun (the festival’s opening film by Eran Riklis), and last year we showed them Amir Got His Gun (a documentary directed by Naomi Lev Ari, 2011). This is something that could and should be done on a much larger scale.”
Diversity and Beyond
The festival presents films from all over the world, in a wide variety of languages. “We had a world premiere here of a wonderful film,” Galliner said, “Romeo Juliet in Yiddish (by Eve Annenberg, 2010) and the cinema was absolutely packed so everyone under 25 sat on the floor. The enthusiasm of the young Germans for Yiddish as well as an older audience. I think we also had in the audience those wonderful women from Oma and Bella (a documentary by Alexa Karolinski, 2012) and they had a great time. I really liked the ending. It’s a Jewish film so of course they don’t die, they survive.”
“I’m keen to show that it’s (Jewish and Israeli filmmaking) very diverse but also take it a little further and show that Israel is a very multi-layered society, and show that it has corners that one doesn’t expect,” Galliner says with a mischievous gleam in her eye, “I love the film about the lady with the sex shop, Lola by Eytan Harris. We’re screening it on Mother’s Day (check here for Berlin showtimes), and the director will be present. It shows best side of Israeli women, who have so much to deal with. They have children in uniform, they have jobs, they take care of the home, they deal with so many more things than people deal with here normally, and they are so resilient! I just love all these women!”
Diverse, bold, resilient – the 19th edition of the Jewish Film Festival Berlin & Potsdam takes place this year from April 29 – May 12, 2013. Complete information on films, guests, and events may be found on the festival website. See the festival facebook page here.
