Day Six - Wednesday, August 29

Sorry about the FFM links for anyone who tried them and found them "broken". The FFM site uses dynamic links for the film description listings, and they "expire" after awhile. I've removed them all, so if you want more information, you'll have to go to here and look it up.

Emilka Placze (Emily Cries) (short film). Director: Rafael Kapelinski. Poland (2007).
33 min, Polish with English subtitles.
Stephen is 18, and it’s the eve of Martial law being declared in 1982 in Poland. He’s in love with Emily, who’s dad is a policeman. Shot in black and white and depressingly somber. Stephen slowly woos Emily with dance lessons, and she breaks off an affair with the high school coach. A depressingly dark character sketch of the period – sad, and without much hope. And one minute of summary narration about what happens to all the principals after Communism in Eastern Europe falls.

Behikvot Hahatiha Hahasera (The Quest for the Missing Piece). Director: Oded Lotan (this is his first feature documentary). Israel (2007) 52 min, Hebrew and German with English subtitles.
www.imdb.com/title/tt0984219/
Lotan’s first person “search” for his missing foreskin is the premise for an often humourous exploration about the practice of male circumcision. Being Jewish and Gay, and very secular (like most Israelis), he wants to know why most still adhere to this custom. Interviews with his mother, sister and brother-in-law (with a newborn son), his German husband (who is uncircumcised) are very personal, but he goes out and interviews others…young Russian émigrés in the Israeli army who opt for the procedure to fit in (they are practicing Jews), a group of people who refuse to circumcise their sons (and meet behind closed doors to avoid confrontations). Discussions with a psychologist explain tribal customs and the act of collective identity, and with a German Christian minister on why Christians don’t circumcise (since Jesus was). Muslims, Jews, a lot of North Americans, South Koreans, and Philipinos do – totaling about 1/5th of males worldwide. Traditional ‘bris’ are shown, along with the hospital procedure, and even more interesting, Arabic friends back in Germany having their version of the ritual with their 7 year old son – sort of a Muslim version of the Bar Mitzvah, where the boy becomes a “man”. It sort of makes the Bar Mitzvah physical task of holding up a Torah for about five minutes at 13 years of age (with the threat of fasting for 40 days and 40 nights if you drop it) seem like, well, child’s play. Jonathan and I both were squeamish and averted our eyes at all the injecting of anesthetic and slicing...the idea of someone willfully cutting a “perfectly good piece” off of one’s body, especially from the penis (it’s the male fear of castration, I suppose) just abhors us both, and this despite only one of us having been "cut". Towards the end, Lotan's search for the Mohel (ritual circumciser) that did the job on him, but he’s long deceased. However, an interesting conversation ensures with the late mohel’s elderly son and daughter-in-law. In all, an interesting sociological study. Probably destined to be on a documentary TV channel near you…