Greetings gentle readers and welcome to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s a documentary, Defamation, the gist of which will not come as a surprise to any of us:
and next week’s film, Andrei Rublev:
Reviews of Defamation:
The ADL, via The Guardian, says:
Two years ago, Yoav Shamir approached the Anti-Defamation League for assistance on a documentary he was making on the subject of antisemitism. We provided him wide access to film ADL in action, in our offices, at our annual national meeting, on leadership missions in Italy, Ukraine and Poland, and in Israel. Our expectation was that his documentary would present a serious portrait of what Jews worldwide face today – antisemitism in both its age-old and new forms, and the actions taken to counter it.
After seeing Defamation, we can only say the film fell far short of our expectation. Rather than document antisemites and their hatred of Jews and the Jewish state of Israel, the film belittles the issue and portrays the work of ADL and that of his own country as inconsequential. There was so much more Shamir could have and should have done.
Defamation is neither enlightening, nor edifying, nor compelling. It distorts the prevalence and impact of antisemitism and cheapens the Holocaust. It is Shamir’s perverse, personal, political perspective and a missed opportunity to document a serious and important issue.
This is an official statement made by and on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League, rather than a personally authored article by Mr Foxman; it is reproduced by permission.
Letterboxd says:
A 15 year old document which seeks to understand the conditioning of a society cynically exploiting the past in an endless feedback loop to create one of the most heavily militarized and indoctrinated countries in the world. Yoav Shamir’s attempt to look forward towards a tangible future of coexistence, confronting his subjects about their perceptions of “new antisemitism”, are often shot down with aggression mixed with a permanent victimhood complex. Sadly, we must now look back at this work of journalism as a means to explain HOW the ongoing genocide in Gaza— by its extension, the support structures which have enabled a 76 year apartheid state —have remained so steadfast, regurgitating the same rhetoric to justify war crimes and apartheid.
Slant Magazine says:
More of a penetrating look at the social uses of stereotypical, self-hating Jewishness than a structured examination of anti-Semitism, Defamation fails in its paltry attempts to consolidate its central issue’s multiple frayed edges, but it offers an unprecedentedly raw portrait of the self-destructing political discussion surrounding Jewish discrimination. Shamir plunges headfirst into his topic as an ostensible tabula rasa to be informed, claiming a lack of hands-on experience with anti-Semitism due to his community’s ethnic homogeneity but an ardent sense of duty to root out the role that the awareness of, and the defense against, discrimination plays in modern Jewish identity.
My take: No surprises here. The ADL and the Israeli government use the specter of anti-Semitism to indoctrinate the young and to perpetuate the mantle of Jewish victimhood. Of course, we know from recent events they also use it to suppress criticisms of Israeli policy. I’m awarding it a ⭐, it’s definitely worth watching but once you do you get the idea pretty clearly.
For some additional perspective, here’s an article from Jewish Currents that explores the many tentacles of the ADL:
The Unbearable Ignorance of the ADL
The organization uses its moral authority to shield Israel from criticism while spreading misleading information about contemporary antisemitism.
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-unbearable-ignorance-of-the-adl
Content:
Filmmaker Yoav Shamir, an Israeli citizen, grew up hearing a lot about anti-Semitism. However, he has never experienced it himself. He sets out on an exploration to try and discover what it truly means.
He interviews the Jewish, and non-Jewish, residents of Brooklyn to learn of their everyday experiences of anti-Semitism. He spends time with the ADL and it’s chairman Abraham Foxman. He speaks with Norman Finklestein and John Meirsheimer. He follows an Israeli high school group to Poland where the kids take a tour of a former concentration camp.
The short: incidents of anti-Semitism, while undoubtably real, are vastly exaggerated by those who seek to keep Jews afraid and compliant. The smallest incidents are blown out of proportion. Events are taken out of context. Most telling are the effects of all this on the children, who enter the film as bubbly and rambunctious teens but become increasingly paranoid and fearful as it progresses. A lot of the public support for the Gazan genocide makes sense now.
Bonus Jazz:
Bittersweet by Bill Jennings. After Adderly’s 74 Miles Away this is my favorite jazz song. It’s delicate, dreamy, and haunting:
4 comments
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Thanks for the link and for a site willing to put up the link. As I’ve said here before, those of us raised as SC Baptists have had an opposite experience of growing up in a world where not just antisemitism but Jewish people in general were barely on our radar screen.
Whereas the ADL is devoted to the opposite proposition that an irrational hatred of their religion lurks in all Christian precincts even as those believers are taught from a book that sets out to tell their ancient history. So this is in itself a form of “pre-judging” that discards the general condemnation of prejudice for the particular. The current actions of Israel itself highlight the intellectual incoherence of victims who become the victimizers. It’s totally appropriate that many see these actions as the embodiment of the real prejudice that existed in my growing up. Perhaps the Israelis avoid the water cannons and the separate water fountains lest it become all too explicit.
More good exposure to Jazz music in an old style genre. (Quite a transition from ’74 Miles’.) The plinky sound of the piano in the background conjures the
era of this recording. Jennings wrote lyrics for this song:
I’m giving up the ghost of love
And a shadow is cast on devotion.
She’s the one that I adore
Qween of my silent suffocation.
Break this bittersweet spell on me,
Lost in the arms of destiny.
Bittersweet.
I won’t give up; I’m possessed by her.
I’m bearing a cross; she turned into my curse.
Break this bittersweet spell on me,
Lost in the arms of destiny,
Bittersweet, I want you (how I wanted you)
And I need you ( how I needed you)
Break this bittersweet spell on me,
Lost in the arms of destiny.
Break this bittersweet spell on me,
Lost in the arms of destiny.
Bittersweet.
source: https://www.lyricsondemand.com/bill_jennings/bittersweet
Having “invited” Alex Christoforou, half of the two person project calling itself The Duran… to our lunch or dinner table, daily, via the Rumble video platform, I appreciate Alex’s use of movie and TV characters to illustrate, explain and satirize international dynamics. The cultural language films offer is rich, and seeing Yoav Shamir’s light hearted and honest expose’ offered today is nothing short of wonderful!
I find it a remarkably insightful explanation of our severe current tragedies.
This is very good work. Shamir manages to seamlessly integrate into the groups he accompanies. People are not afraid of the camera. They open up. And most importantly – he doesn´t betray anybody despite the obvious criticism the film carries (IMO). He doesn´t create caricatures.
I have always been of the view that a film should not demean its protagonists.
He may not reinvent the wheel artistically. But that is not the job he has sought out for himself.
And of course as one guy says in the movie: “He (the movie director) creates a problem because he needs to make a living.”
That is an astute observation about filmmaking in particular, and entertainment and media in general.
However to creating a problem still doesn´t answer the most pressing question of all: In what way do you express the problem. If the problem is your sujet, the question of how you present it addresses the form, in other words style. And since it´s art after all style is everything. And with that comes tonality, respect and everything else that actually contains the “viewing experience”.
p.s. Since the great Frederic Wiseman died may I suggest to seek out his films.
They could be read as a precursor of this kind of film trying to probe into an institution and encounter its representatives on eye-level. Wiseman is of course a very different man and era and it would be obviously foolish to overstretch any comparison. But in scope and conceptual approach.