STN Entertainment
A New Point Of View
A trio of black and Jewish filmmakers take on a controversial subject in a new T. 0. V. " documentary.
JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
ti)
happens all the time." 8
The second segment
looks back on the civil
rights struggle in the
Lawndale neighborhood of
Chicago. In the 1960s,
mostly Jewish real estate
speculators employed g
racism to drive up sale
prices of properties to black E
residents.
The practice also forged
an alliance between a rab-
bi and a black activist who
banded together to try to
force the speculators to
stop their actions.
"Rabbis and ministers,
synagogues and churches
are working long and hard, Isaac Bifton meets Peter Noel, the man who saved his life during the Crown Heights riots.
but unfortunathly their voic-
es and actions are eclipsed g
N O :w g r 4O UN .W
by the people who want to g
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maintain separatism," Sni- 8
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tow said.
The third story follows
a former Nation of Islam g
member to Washington,
D.C., where he attends the
1995 Million Man March. ;'
The filmmakers employ E-,;
the backdrop of the march
to examine the effect of ex-
tremist speech.
"There is a ritual of re-
crimination that has come
to dominate the relation-
ship between blacks and
Jews," Kaufman said.
"One group says one thing,
and the other stands up to
it."
The bl ack-Jewish rap group the Cure in Crown Heights, N.Y.
"That kind of repetition
ends up silencing the possibility stead, they focused on the hard man are Jews and Scott is black
for
other things to happen," Sni- reality of the direction black and —hope that the film will have an
Blacks and /Jews filmmakers Deborah Kaufman, Bari Scott and Alan Snitow. Says
Jewish relations have taken in impact on its intended audience
tow said.
film critic Roger Ebert of the production: "This provocative and absorbing film will
— black and Jewish Americans.
the past few decades.
The
fourth
story
takes
a
hard
undermine stereotypes, inspire discussion and help repair a wrongly damaged
call
"We are hoping that everyone
"This
is
not
a
Pollyanna-ish
look at the overblown media de-
relationship."
piction of an incident in East to get together on the basis of to- comes into the movie with very
Oakland, Calif., where a group of getherness," Kaufman said. "It is set beliefs about the relationship
high school students were tossed tough, and it has never been easy." between blacks and Jews," Sni-
Kaufman said that as a young- tow said. 'We want to jar people
out of a screening of Schindler's
List for their alleged disruption. ster in the 1960s, she was taken out of those preconceptions and
"They acted out in a movie by the close relationship between get people to rethink what this is
about the Holocaust, and sud- the two group,s in the struggle for about." 0
p denly they found themselves in civil rights. But as they began to
fk Blacks and Jews airs on
g the middle of a maelstrom of con- focus on internal issues — inter-
PBS's "P.O.V." 10 p.m. Thes-
marriage
and
Israel
for
Jews,
.. troversy about their actions,"
day, July 29. The program in-
Kaufman said. 'These were kids pride and furtherance for blacks
cludes a segment of "Talking
—
a
divide
formed
that
caused
g who were saying, don't under- the two groups to turn on each Back: Video Letters to
p_ stand my own pain., so how can I
P.0 .V." "P. 0 " Interactive
other at times.
understand yours?' "
can be reached via e-mail on
"I think we have to examine if
In all the segments, the film-
the World Wide Web at
working
on
these
internal
issues
makers strove to avoid the easy
littp:/www.pbs.org/pov
answers found in the media's de- comes at the expense of relations
To obtain a copy of a tape
with
the
broader
community,"
piction of the events as well as the
of
the program, call California
finger-pointing performed by the she said.
Video at (800) 621-6196.
The
trio
—
Snitow
and
Kauf-
extremists in the two groups. In-
A smile from a black-Jewish dialogue group.
s the founder and di-
rector of the San Fran-
cisco Jewish Film
estival, Deborah Kauf-
man was interested in showing
a film on the subject of black and
Jewish relations. She thought she
was sure to find a film on the
somewhat controversial subject.
She scoured and scoured 211 of
the film resources she knew, pos-
itive there was something out
there. There wasn't.
"I kept looking but nothing
came up," she said. "I knew some-
thing had to be done."
Now, three years after the pro-
ject to document the subject
began, Kaufman and her part-
ners, Alan Snitow and Bari
Scott, are preparing for the
national premiere of their 90-
minute independent film,
"Blacks and Jews," slated to be
shown locally on PBS's "P.O.V."
AF
series at 10 p.m. TueSday, July
29.
The film comprises four stories
dealing with conflicts between
blacks and Jews; each was cho-
sen to show a different aspect of
the state of relation,s between the
two minority groups, Snitow said.
The first stop is in the Crown
Heights neighborhood of New
York, where Caribbean-born
blacks clashed with Chasidic
Jews during a 1991 riot. There,
the filmmakers explore the rela-
tionship between West Indian
journalist Peter Noel, who saved
the life of Moroccan-born Lubav-
itcher Isaac Bitton when black ri-
oters turned on him. The pair
remain friends to this day.
"It is an amazingly brave oc-
currence when people cross bor-
ders, particularly when they do
it to protect others," Kaufman
said of Noel's actions. "But it
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