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`KOSHER VALLEY'
`THE MAD BAKER'
Chuck Davis doesn't feel fenced in — neither by
career nor religious observance.
Although he earned his medical degree from the
University of Michigan, he went on to get a master's
degree in filmmaking in California and divides his
time between the two professions in Colorado.
Although he grew up in a Jewish home in Huntington
Woods and studied at Temple Beth El, he went on to
experience Buddhism and then returned to Judaism.
"I have an artist's temperament and should have
been a filmmaker [from the start], but I got the
Jewish message that I better be a doctor," says Davis,
54, who will be in town to introduce Kosher Valley, a
documentary about non-Jewish cattle ranchers
observing kosher practices to serve a niche market.
Davis, who always wanted to make films, started
at U-M with a short movie about Richard Nixon's
inauguration. Later subjects dealt with a jaded emer-
gency room doctor, Cambodian refugees in America
and foster parents caring for special needs kids.
The filmmaker got the idea about kosher ranching
from a newspaper article.
"Kosher Valley is about different cultures coming
together to do something and the cross-fertilization that
happens," says Davis, the writer, director, producer and
editor. "It's heartwarming and funny and has been in
film festivals and on almost 20 public television stations."
Davis and his wife, Stephanie, a pharmacist who
prefers acting, have two young sons. After deciding
to raise their children as Jews, they became involved
with the Jewish Renewal movement, and that's the
subject of his upcoming documentary, Raising the
Sparks, which has his wife as a featured player.
"I'm going to start a production company and do
films about spirituality and maybe some other issues
that fit the educational video market," Davis says.
"Kosher Valley" screens 3 p. m. Sunday, May 6
Filmmaker Chuck Davis will make an appearance.
Showing with it will be god@heaven, a short film that
follows the adventures of an American boy sending mes-
sages to God on his computer.
"Kosher Valley"• What do you get when you cross a rabbi,
a Mormon and a group of Colorado cattle ranchers?
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Ted Petok has had a unique experience with film.
He's been able to earn a longtime living at it
while living in Michigan.
Petok, who just turned 84 in April, will be rep-
resented in the festival by The Mad Baker, a nine-
minute animated spoof of horror films. The ani-
mator has applied his drawing skills to show a
large chocolate cake roaming the countryside and
eating its citizens.
"Woody Allen had written a routine for a
comedian I knew, and I turned that into an ani-
mated film," recalls Petok, who started in cinema
in 1935, when he was hired to do commercials
and educational films by Jam Handy. His com-
mercial clients have included General Motors and
A & P, and his educational work has reached to
TV's Sesame Street.
"I like everything about animation, and I keep
one piece of work from each film," says Petok,
who maintains a studio in his home.
Although Petok has not fully retired, he contin-
ues to work with hand drawings, leaving the
computers for others. The highest recognition of
his artistic projects came with Crunch Bird, which
brought him an Oscar for Best Short Subject,
Animated Film in 1972.
Petok, who has been a member of Temple Israel
and the Jewish Community Center, has exhibited
his drawings and done gag cartoons for maga-
zines. He also has tried his hand at painting and
collage. Every year, he judges an art show in
Florida, where he spends his winters and enjoys
golf.
"I like animated characters because they show a
lot of creativity and never grow old," says Petok,
a widower with two sons living in Maryland. "I
think it was a big loss when theaters stopped
showing short subjects."
"The Mad Baker," shown with 'A Fish in the
Bathtub," screens 9:45 p.m. Saturday, May 5, and
features Ted Petok in attendance.
"The Mad Baker" Woody Allen wrote the script
for this animated short.
isnvzoN MAGUS'
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Special to the Jewish News
G
teat-grandma was a naughty girl," says British
filmmaker Ben Hopkins, whose feature debut,
Simon Magus, is the tale of a Polish shtetl in peril.
The iconoclastic director's single Jewish ances-
tor was the Eastern European mistress of an
English gentleman in Vienna; in the 'teens, she
moved to England to live with him and to bear
him (and other men) children, Hopkins recounts.
Her convent-educated daughter did not learn she
was Jewish until she planned to marry. "Great-grand-
ma told her she couldn't wed in
church, because she was
Above:
Jewish," says the Oxford gradu-
"Simon Magus":
ate, who was raised as an atheist. Visionary and
Nevertheless, around 1990, pariah.
Hopkins says, "the Jews sit-
ting around the samovar in
our collective DNA came to life." Grandmother
began referring to herself as a Jew; Father, a his-
torian with a specialty in ancient history,
immersed himself in studies about first- and sec-
ond-century Judaism; and Hopkins made an
unexpected entry in his journal: "Make Simon
Magus a Jewish story."
"It was obviously written when I was drunk, as
it is very scribbly," confides the irreverent, award-
winning filmmaker, who is fluent in French,
Italian and German.
Simon Magus, the tale of a visionary outcast
(Noah Taylor) who becomes a pawn in an anti-
Semitic plot against his Jewish community, has
an eerie, magical atmosphere reminiscent of the
works of Yiddish author LB. Singer.
The movie, which stars Rutger Hauer and
Embeth Davidtz (Schindler'' List), was inspired
by the early Christian legend of Simon Magus,
the Samaritan magician who attempted to buy
himself a place among Christ's disciples after
Judas' death. Hopkins, the struggling director,
identified with the failed magician. "It quite
accurately described my life at the time," he says.
The Australian actor Noah Taylor, who por-
trayed another tortured, mentally ill Jewish char-
acter in Shine, is not Jewish but told the London
Jewish Chronicle he has experienced anti-
Semitism because of his looks.
He also said he played the filthy; rag-clad Simon
as a homeless person; thus he did not wash for
much of the seven weeks on location in Wales.
"Noah got pretty scruffy," 31-year-old Hopkins
said. "Once he was even barred from a pub."
Another coup for the director was casting promi-
nent British thespian Ian Holm as Satan, a part that
was relatively simple to write, Hopkins says.
"The devil is a fantastic character," he explains.
"God is a bit boring."
"Simon Magus" screens 8 p.m. Monday, April 30,
with Village of Idiots, a prize-winning animated
short that comes from the traditional Chelm stories.