•• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Canadian filmmaker Garry Beitel's "My Dear Clara" uses love letters, family photos, official correspondence and rarely seen archival footage to tell the story of a Polish Jewish refugee whose Canadian wife battled to change her government's immigration policies during World War II. - derfully poetic love letters which my uncle wrote from Poland to my aunt in Montreal, I realized that I had the raw material with which I could construct an archivally based love story," he said. The movie blends excerpts from these letters, read by an actor, with photographs, on-screen interviews with friends and family members, and rare archival film. "It was fascinating for me to discover the romantic, poetic side of an aunt and uncle that I knew very differently as I was growing up with them," Beitel said. "Especially my uncle, who had become much more disillusioned after the war. The letters revealed a young man deeply in love with my aunt, a for- ward-looking man for whom no obsta- cle was a deterrent to his optimism, a plumber with astute observations about the situation of Jews in Poland and the deteriorating world situation. "He was also my mother's brother, so I was learning about her and her world," he said. "It felt like a real priv- ilege to be allowed inside their world, inside my family's personal history as it was being lived." Beitel's personal involvement imbues the movie with a sense of discovery that is almost painfully palpable. "It's an epic love story, so tangible that the two protagonists move the viewer to depths of emotion that don't usually mark documentary" filmmak- ing, wrote critic Heather Solomon in the Canadian Jewish News. Broader Meaning Beitel said the exploration had a pro- found effect on his family as a whole. As I was reading the letters and recon- structing the events they experienced between 1938 and 1947, I felt like I was becoming the family historian, retrieving a history from which we had become disconnected, a history told to us in frag- ments as we were growing up but one we never really integrated," he said. But, he said, the story of his aunt and uncle had a much broader meaning and shed new light on the experiences of Jews in Europe during the Holocaust. "Telling this story enabled me to retrace the survival stories of Polish Jews who had escaped the Nazis to the Soviet Union — Holocaust stories that have been so rarely told," he said. "I grew up feeling that Holocaust sur- vivors were those people who had sur- vived the camps and that my parents weren't really Holocaust survivors because they had been in Russia," he said. "Now I understand that their stories of survival are equally important as sto- ries of resourcefulness and ingenuity in the face of the horrors in Europe, and that their subsequent sadness and devas- tation after the war is so important for us, as their children, to understand." My Dear Clara has been made in both French- and English-language versions. 111 My Dear Clara will be screened 12:30 and 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 23, at the 12th annual New York Jewish Film Festival, which runs Jan. 12-23. Screenings of all films will be held at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center, 165 W 65th St., New York City. $9.50/$7 students. For a com- plete schedule and more informa- tion, go to the Web site at wvvw.thejewishmuseum.org . Tickets are available online at www.filmlinc.com . Box office: (212) 875-5600. Our Trays & Hot Entrees are always Deliciously Different. Now they make a Difference! We are proud to donate 5% of the proceeds of Catering for any Shiva, Bris or Baby Naming to Children's Leukemia Foundation. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Si-op ih or CAI othA Iii -PokX you, at copy. • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 31.Aovrothi-ee • • • • • • 6873 Orchard Lk. "On the Boardwalk" • • • 248.855.6622 We will exceed yaw ecpeci-oti-iohs. • • • • a Difference Since 1962! • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Making • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •- • Buy One Meal, Get 1/2 off the 2nd of equal or greater value. Total Food Bill (Entrees Only) Mon.-Wed. Only Expires 1/31/03 Expires 1 /3 1 /03 (248) 474-2420 20300 Farmington Road Bangkok Sala Cafe THAI CUISINE ' 14* Mile on East Side MORE THAN OMELETTES GEST OMELETTES Four Star Rating/Detroit News & Free Press **** Full Breakfast & Lunch Menu 1/2 OFF Purchase one entree and receive 50% off second entree of equal or greater value Buy One Lunch or Dinner & Get a Second for 50% OFF I. Between 7 rar 8 One per customer • Expires 1/31/03 COUPON (NW corner of 12 Mile) 27903 Orchard Lake Rd. Farmington Hills Not valid on Sunday, Holidays and Daily Specials (248) 553-4220 • Children's Menu • Non Smoking Open 7 days a week 39560 Fourteen Mile Road Mon-Sat 11 am - 10 pm Sunday 4 pm - 9:30 pm 657030 (248) 926-0717 1/ 3 2003 61