History 299c
Modern Jewish History in
Film
Spring Term, 2007
Francis Scott Key Hall 0106
Tuesday 3:15-6
Bernard D. Cooperman
Taliaferro 2130
301.405.4271
cooperma@umd.edu
This one-credit course is offered
in conjunction with HIST 283/JWST 235. It is intended to provide an opportunity
for students to engage some of the main themes in the history course by watching
and discussing movies and videos that document or fictionalize Jewish life
in the modern era. Students will be asked to prepare short written assignments
after at least nine of the showings. NOTE: Almost all of the
films are available in Hornbake Library's Non-Print Media collection (4th
floor).
Written assignments are expected
to be typed, double-spaced, properly footnoted and documented (where relevant),
and of approximately one page in length.
Jan. 30 The Jazz Singer. (USA 1927). Yiddish and English. Directed by Alan Crosland. 89 minutes.
Written
Assignment: Why, in your opinion, is the theme of the Òprodigal sonÓ who leaves the community, achieves fame in the outside world of entertainment, and then returns to be reconciled with his father, so common in Jewish films?]
Feb. 6 A Child of the Ghetto. (USA 1910). Directed by W. D. Griffith. 10 minutes.
Written Assignment: The theme of country vs city or rural vs urban is a common one in modern literature and film. Authors and auteurs contrast the two environments in order to articulate and emphasize two opposed poles of behavior, society organization, and ethical values. Sometimes the city is portrayed as the land of opportunity, and sometimes it is portrayed as the locus of corruption and evil. Correspondingly, the country is the place of ignorance and brutalizing poverty or the place of original purity and genuine, healthy morality. The two films shown today were made by very different directors at very different times and for very different audiences, but both feature a young Jew leaving the urban environment and finding some kind of personal peace (as well as romantic love) in the rural context.
Contrast the two films in terms of their image of urban Jewish life, what is being escaped, and what positive values the rural environment offers. Put most of your emphasis on the Yiddish film. At the end, briefly explain who Peretz Hirshbein was and what themes generally characterized his plays.
Feb.
13
The Magician of Lublin. (USA 1978). Directed by Menahem Golan. 105 Minutes.
Written
Assignment:
Feb.
20 Fateless
Written
Assignment:
Feb. 27 Tell Me a Riddle
Written Assignment: Based on Tillie Olsen's short story by the same name this film presents the intricate story of an elderly couple facing death and loneliness after a lifetime together. The movie uses elements that are familiar: the "road movie" metaphor, the family in crisis setting, the generation gaps that allow grandpaent and grandchild to establish contact when parent and child cannot. But the end result is in no sense stylized or conventional.
In the context of this course, one of the most interesting themes in the movie is that of memory and history: the heroine Eva was a major revolutionary activist as a teenager, and her entire adult life is somehow submerged beneath the powerful memory of that time. While performing the obviously valuable roles of wife and mother, she has sustained herself by turning inward and living in the memories of those past moments and the revolutionary ideals she espoused. In a way she has made a brief period in her youth into the entire substance of her life, so that at the end she has left her husband and even her children outside of her world.
Question: do historians inevitably do the same thing when we pick a specific moment or even about which to write? Do we, in effect, "lie" about reality?
OR
A (Jewish) historian would be tempted to write about how David and Eva represent large movements and changes in (Jewish) history: the revolutionary movement in Russia; the mass immigration to America; the labor movement in America; suburbanization and the dispersion of the nuclear family; loss of Jewish traditional language and culture; etc. But the story and film "Tell Me a Riddle" deals with all of these phenomena by focusing on the lives of two individuals and on their relationship to each other. Discuss which of these two approaches you feel is "truer" or "more useful" and explain why. Give specific examples from the film to prove your points.
Mar.
6 Jewboy. (Australia 2005)
Written
Assignment:
Mar.
13 Unstrung Heroes (USA 2003). Directed by Diane Keaton.
93 minutes.
Written
Assignment:
Mar. 20 Spring Break. No Class.
Mar.
27
Written
Assignment:
OR
To what extent is Jewish piety, and specifically non-Ashkenazic Jewish piety given a fair treatment in this film?
Apr. 3 [Passover. We will try to find an alternate showing date.]
Apr. 10 [Passover.]
Apr.
17 Belzec. (France, 2005). Polish, French and Hebrew with English subtitles. Written and directed by Guillaume Moscovitz. 112 minutes.
Written Assignment: This film, much influenced by Claude Lanzmann's "Shoah" recreates the past in the viewer's mind by displaying, comparing and contrasting, various people's memories (and reconstructions) of the past. It challenges us to rethink what we mean by testimony, evidence, and history. Discusss.
Apr. 24 Ushpizin. (Israel 2005). Directed by Gidi Dar
Written Assignment: This film presents a type of traditional religious Jewish folk tale, retold here in a straightforward rather than in an ironic or critical mode by the screen writer Shuli Rand (who also played the male lead). How would you describe Rand's authorial intent, and how does it differ from what you might have expected from such a film? Are there points in the film where you found yourself criticizing actions that the film seems to represent as positive?
Apr. 26 Live and Become. (Israel, France, Italy, Belgium, 2005). Written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu. Hebrew, French, Amharic with English subtitles. 140 min.
Written Assignment: The film deals with identity conflict in Israel by telling the tale of an Ethiopian Christian boy who joins the 1984 airlift of thousands of Ethiopian Jews from the Sudan to Israel. In doing so, the film follows certain tried-and-true conventions of Israeli film-making (the wedding scene, for example, where members of different Jewish ethnic communities join together to celebrate) but it also challenges many of those conventions. Discuss by examining one particular aspect of the film that seemed to illustrate the complexity of Israeli identity.
May 1 October's Cry. (Israel 2006) Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles. 70 minutes. Directed by Julie Gal.
May 8 The Pity Card (USA 2005). Directed by Bob Odenkirk. 12 minutes. Also available on U-Tube.
A first date at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Written
Assignment: