Ukraine: Documentary, June 27

The film is coming along in interesting ways. The Jewish school wanted one of their students to present about the holocaust in the little museum they have, buthe kept nervously moving around and I had to keep moving the camera tokeep in in frame (in retrospect, I should have just said "fuck it" andgone wide) and then his teacher kept interrupting and trying to showthis and that, but she's behind the camera. Thing is, a lapel mic ison him running into the camera, so I can only pick up what she'ssaying by pulling the plug and switching on the onboard mic, thenputting it back in when he starts talking again. So the result is thecamera swinging back and forth between the two of them and the soundconstantly cutting in and out as the mic is switching. It's prettyfunny to watch, but there's enough usable stuff in there to make itworth it.

I don't mind how bad some of the footage initially looksbecause I will be editing it, but then they asked for a copy of theraw footage and now I'm embarassed to give it.Went to the archives and spent four hours getting official permissionto access the historical documents related to the holocaut (as aforeigner, I had to get permission from the head director). Told himI wanted to interview him about the archive repossessing the Torahscrolls and he got really angry and refused. I asked who the officialspokeperson was that I could talk to and he realized it was him andthen grudgingly agreed to do it next week. I got him calmed down andsaid I just wanted to know the official side of things since Americansthought it was Ukraine being antisemitic (actually, most Americansdon't know about it, so I lied a little). He started talking, though,saying they took them back because the Jews had lost 90 meters of thescrolls (the Jews say those 90 meters never existed and it had beenmiscategorized; I should point out that these are a number of scrollsand scroll fragments). But the director, getting more comfortable,explained that now anyone could come see them whenever they wanted toand that they were much safer now. And then (God, I hope he says thison camera) he went on to say that the Jews should be thankful to thearchives for preserving the scrolls and keeping them safe after thewar. Actually, he has a point to this, but it still came off reallyhigh and mighty.

Getting people to say things on camera has been a problem. Myantisemtic friends that agreed to an interview started complimentingthe Jews as soon as the camera went on. Me: "But that's not what youtold me before." One of them: "I have changed my mind. That was along time ago." Me: "That was last week". "But I have thought aboutit and realized the Jews have done nothing bad to me" Me: "That'sgreat! Would you be willing to talk about how you used to feel andwhy you changed your mind?" Her: "No"Other open antisemites that my friends know have also refused to talkon camera. Understandable, but... Grrr.

Jews have also been unwilling to say anything bad on camera, fearfulof later retribution. Said one: "don't forget, we have to live here".I was getting a little frustrated, but hit a gold mine last night.The rabbi's assistant finally got back to me and was really honest.He's been compliling antisemetic incidents in Zhitiomir and apparentlyattacks have been happening about every three months. He gave me thenumbers of not just Jews who have been attacked, but those who havebeen attacked AND speak English. He's also going to take me to theJewish cemetery to show me the vandalism and smashed graves. He alsosays a lot of skinheads hang out there, so hopefully I can startmaking contacts with them and get interviews that way. He also calledover to a Jewish organization that provides fellowship parties forolder Jews, and when I talked to them today they said that there weremany who attend who were alive during the holocaust and that theyloved when young people were interested in their stories. They alsosaid recording them wouldn't be a problem and that it was important toget the stories captured.The rabbi's son's bar mitzvah is tonight and I was invited so that Icould meet other members of the community. Thing is, I don't haveformal clothes. The family I'm staying with, the father and son areboth taller than me, but one loaned me a shirt and tie and the otherloaned me pants. So I am going in these old, baggy clothes and tennisshoes. But I'm excited that I will be allowed to film there, so I canget some good b-roll footage of Jewish life here, and will put it ontoa disk so that the son can have some Hi-def footage of his barmitzvah.

So things are coming along. I am realizing that there is enough herethat I could be working way past when I would need to go back toaccept the New York job, or even teaching in Florida (which I stillhaven't secured a job for; no one wants to do phone interviews).Ironically, I was offered a job here in Ukraine that would havestarted in September and was only a four month contract. If I hadtaken it I could have finished filming, worked four months tore-infuse the bank account, travel a bit and been flown home for free. I passed on it, though, and now it's been filled.

Grr. I feel likeI have been very out of the flow lately, unsure of what I should bedoing and it's frustrating. I am used to things lining up andtrusting to getting where I'm going, but now I find myself unsure.

Ukraine: The Documentary

I am in Odessa right now, about to finish an interview with a Holocaust survivor. I have decided to start updating the blog again in regards to the documentary. Filming has been going really well despite some hiccups, and I finally feel like I will have an end product worth watching, and so feel like I should acually start writing about it. I have been documenting the experience in emails and in my journal, but not on this blog. That will change, but it will take a while to catch everything up. So this comes from an email dated June 22, and as I get more time, more will get posted until the story up untill now has been posted.

***

I feel like filming on the documentary has finally started. I had shot some stuff in Ukraine earlier and an interview with an expert in the states, but the main course has begun. I interviewed a friendbeside some mass graves today. She told of how, when she was fifteen,she and classmates had to rebury the bones churned up by gravediggerslooking for jewlery they had heard the Jews had swallowed prior tobeing led away from their homes, not knowing (or refusing toaknowledge) that they were going to be killed. This had only been sixyears ago: with no money after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thisis what people had been driven to.And horrific as all that is (and, sadly, the more horrific the thingsI find, the more compelling the documentary becomes), it onlyreinforces a whole new angle I'm finding on this. Those casualantisemites [I wrote earlier of some friends I had dinner with who, when I mentioned the topic of the film, started ripping into Jews, but not in an angry manner] I had dinner with? Well, let's put it this way: we had totake turns at their little table. It's four people and a dog livingin a two room (not two bedroom, two room) apartment: the parents of myfriends' sister, the sister (very pregnant and due in two weeks) andthe sister's husband (who has invited me hunting with him). Soon itwill be five with the arrival of the baby. With my friend, me, andher daughter there, there simply weren't enough chairs and we tookturns eating dinner in the kitchen. This is their life. Much of theconversation centered on the impossibility of finding an apartment.The husband is in the army, the wife will finish university next year. They will continue living this way, with the addition of a baby, forthe forseeable future, disgruntled by every moment of it. So is itany wonder when they casually blame Jews for this and that? I askedthem, would any of them attack a Jew given the opportunity? No. Butthat doesn't mean they like or trust them. They don't even lump allJews together. There's Jews and then there's "Zhidi", which I took tomean Hassidic Jews from their description of the ear curls (by theway, one of the founders of Hassidism was born in Ukraine; smallworld) [NOTE: I later learned that Zhidi is the slang for "kike", so they were telling me the differences between Jews and kikes the way someone might tell you "there's differences between blacks and niggers". Those Jews, they said, they stay seperate, go to seperateschools, are told they are special. And of course they found thatthreatening. With as fucked up as the government is here, as corruptare the cops and judicial system, can't they wonder, believe, thatthere is something behind all this, profiting from all this? I can'tblame these people for how they feel. As they spoke, it seemed liketheir views were completely reasonable, save for the fact that, youknow, I knew that they were completely, morally WRONG. But as Ilistened, their story seemed as important as that of those sufferingfrom the violent results of this undercurrent of dislike.Being Jewish, you might not see it that way, but what it comes down tois that this hate doesn't spring fully-formed, that the cycles ofpoverty, oppression and hate have spun together for the entire historyof this country and it comes back again now, viciously as every hopethey had with the Orange Revolution has collapsed (to me at least, theskyrocketing of antisemetic incidents seems to coincide exactly withthe revolution's collapse)I can't speak for antisemitism in the world in general, but here Ifeel that there might be a chance to, I don't know, EXPLAIN it alittle, or a least peel back some of the layers over the motives.It just feels as if it all weaves together: strands of Judaism bornhere, being murdered here, casual poverty, casual hate. I have aninterview with the Zhytomyr rabbi tomorrow, who was, along with hisfamily, was beaten in broad daylight by skinheads. His assistant'sassesment of antisemitism in Zhytomyr when we talked yesterday? "Ne ochen ploha" (not too bad) People telling me there is no problem, people tellingme they have a problem, people just not caring either way. I feellike there's something here, compelling, worth documenting, even ifonly for me, even if only to teach myself HOW to to document suchthings on film (or HD digital, whatever). I've felt a trepidation fora while about all this, that it was going to overwhelm me, that I wasdiving into a project I didn't have the skills for (making adocumentary) and now I don't care if the end result turns out to beshit because I feel like I am in the middle of something right now, anexus of so many different ideas and images and opinions and factsand--despite all the horror--I feel glad to be here.

Balkans: What I have been doing

For the past week I have been travelling around the Balkans (for the most part). This is what I have done:

I was taught traditional Hungarian folk dances by two girls from a troupe at a party overlooking the Danube, swum beneath waterfalls in Krka, free climbed cliffs to enter an inaccesible watchtower in Split, sea kayaked around old city walls in Dubrovnik, ran uphill to a fortress overlooking the largest fjord in Europe in Montenegro, met the perfect girl (who, unfortunately, had a boyfriend), stood atop a a mineret above a war-torn city in Bosnia, and got drunk on grape brandy on a beach today... Tonight to Poland, tomorrow to Ukraine, where hopefully I will have enough time to post the pictures and stories that I have collected on this amazing trip.