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Documentary filmmaker portrays intercontinental
reunion with a brother she never knew she had.
MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News
0
ne of the per-
nicious side
effects of
20th century
European anti-Semitism
is the mysterious ways in
which American Jews ---
even those who are fully
assimilated — are still
shadowed by their par-
ents' wartime experi-
ences.
That's true, most
obviously, of children
of Holocaust survivors,
but New York fihnmak-
er Bola Rapaport's
father never had to
endure the camps. Ionel
Rapaport was born in
Romania and moved to
Paris in 1926 to study
medicine; he made it
through World War II
passing as a non-Jew in
Occupied France.
He fathered a son in
Paris in 1945, but his
lover's family discour
aged her from marry-
ing a Jew, so she
returned to Romania
with the boy. Ionel
subsequently met a
non-Jewish American
woman in Paris and
they eventually came to
the. States, where Pola
and her sister were
born in Staten Island.
Pola Rapaport's highly
cinematic one-hour
video, Family Secret,
relates this convoluted
tale, most of which she
was oblivious to until she
was tracked down by the
half-brother in Bucharest
she didn't know she had.
Family Secret, which
airs July 2, 7 and 11 on
the Sundance Channel,
is one of the oddest fam-
ily reunions recorded on
camera, and a peculiarly
unsatisfying one.
The first rule of per-
sonal documentary is
that the filmmaker must
make the subject matter
relevant and compelling
to audiences beyond his
or her immediate family.
Unfortunately, despite a
plethora of filmmaking
stunts, Family Secret is
rarely more than a glori-
fied home movie.
For example, we hear
nary an anecdote about
Ionel's life during the
war, although he and
his lover were physi-
Filmmaker Pala
Rapaport, left, and her
Romanian
half-brother Pierre
Radulescu-Banu in
"Family Secret."
clans who belonged to
the French Resistance.
For that matter, we get
little sense of lonel at
all, other than that he
was a sufficiently
,respected_psychopathol-
ogist to garner an obit
in the New York Times
when he died ire 1972.
Ionel never saw his
parents again after he
moved to Paris when
he was 17, but don't
blame Hitler. Although
they lived to a healthy
old age in Ron-lania, for
some curious reason he
never visited them.
Pola's half-brother,
Pierre, is the most inter-
esting figure in the film,
a man so desperate to
reconcile with the father
he never knew that he
contacts the man's
American family
The filmmaker clear-
ly intends to make a
statement about the
chaos of war, the pain
inflicted, on children
and the shrinking,
post-Iron Curtain
world that enables fam-
ilies to be reunited.
What comes through
instead, however, is a
single personal story
that never connects to
larger social forces or
leads to deeper insights..
And given the film-
maker's participation in
the events documented,
the piece inevitably
takes on the aroma of
self-indulgence.
Rapaport shot'in
Paris, Bucharest and
New York, ernployin
slew of eye-catc
but themati
less
Secr
and archiv
contem-
with
tel, and
is -tcnuous connecti
with his Jewish iclen
He
a lengthy dis-
tance from his parents
for 46 years, his impor-
tant relationships were
with non-Jewish women
and, perhaps most
amazing, he passed as a
non-Jew, in a city wh.ere
he was known for more
than a decade under the
name Rapaport.
Maybe Family Secret
should have been called
Ian Not Rapaport. El
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Family Secret premieres
9 p.m. Monday, July 2,
on the Sundance
Channel and repeats 7
p.m. Saturday, July 7,
and 8 p.m. Wednesday,
July 11. Check your
local listings.
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