arts & entertainment

Showing At Cinetopia

Festival screens Hannah Arendt, a look
at the philosopher who coined the phrase
"the banality of evil."

I

Suzanne Chessler

Contributing Writer

H

annah Arendt, a German-born
Jewish philosopher who escaped
her homeland in 1933, came to
America in 1941 and taught at the New
School in New York, stirred wide con-
troversy for her reporting of the Adolf
Eichmann trial in Israel, where she was
assigned by the New Yorker.
As Arendt was writing about the man
who oversaw the transportation of Jews to
concentration camps, she used the phrase
"banality of evil" to characterize Nazi per-
petrators as ordinary.
The strong reaction throughout the
Jewish community was stirred further by
her allegations that some Jewish leaders
collaborated with the Nazis.
The woman and the issues come togeth-
er in the feature film Hannah Arendt,
being shown at 6 p.m. Sunday, June 9, at
the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor.
Hannah Arendt is among 40 films being
screened June 6-9 as part of the Cinetopia
International Film Festival, which show-
cases feature-length comedies, dramas and
documentaries seen at the top motion pic-
ture festivals around the world. In addition
to the Michigan Theater and other venues
around Ann Arbor, nine of the films in the
annual event will be shown at the Detroit
Film Theatre in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
"We picked the Eichmann years to find

the time in Arendt's life that would be
the key to cinematic portrayal:' explained
co-screenwriter Pamela Katz in a phone
conversation from New York.
"Coming up with the notion of the
`banality of evil: I believe, let Arendt rede-
fine the discussion of the Holocaust for-
ever. I think that's true whether you think
what she said was brilliant, and I think
that's true whether you think what she said
was ridiculous.
"On an intellectual level and a historical
level, I think she's contributed to a discus-
sion that's of immense importance
Katz, adjunct professor at the Tisch
School of the Arts at New York University,
was asked to work on the project by
Margarethe von Trotta, the director and
co-screenwriter, who collaborated with
Katz on earlier films.
"I found Hannah Arendt very fascinat-
ing as a character; Katz says about decid-
ing to work on the film. "She spent her life
[after the trial] trying to clarify for herself
and the world what she meant"
Barbara Sukowa takes the title role in
the German-made film spoken in German
and English with English subtitles. It was
shown at the Toronto International Film
Festival last year and at the New York
Jewish Film Festival this year.
"First and foremost, we tried to make
a movie about a woman whose primary
occupation was thinking" Katz says.
"Without an actual woman about whom

Barbara Sukowa stars in a cinematic portrayal of Hannah Arendt.

Also Showing

B

_

esides Hannah Arendt, two
other films in the Cinetopia
International Film Festival have
Jewish content.
Fill the Void, about Tel Aviv's ultra-
Orthodox community, will be shown
at 7:15 p.m. Saturday, June, 8, at the
Michigan Theater, 603 E. Liberty, in
Ann Arbor (the film also will open
at the Maple Theater in Bloomfield
Township on June 14).
Written and directed by Rama
Burshtein, the film is about an
18-year-old woman coping with the
death of her sister, who leaves behind
a bereaved husband and newborn
child. The woman must decide wheth-
er to take her sister's husband as her
own.

you care or about whom you're fascinated,
you don't have a movie.
"I think we show her work and her per-
sonality. The film is not didactic, trying to
[call attention to] what she said. It's trying
to show what she meant so people can
come to their own assessments:'
In preparing for the film, Katz tried to
talk with individuals who had met Arendt

elAls

Nate Bloom
0 r ■ Sp ecial to the Jewish News

IN=

Michigan Celeb News

West Bloomfield-raised actor Justin
a) Bartha, 34, has just become engaged
to Lia Smith, 27, a Los Angeles-based
fitness instructor he met while working
out at her fitness center. The couple
have been dating for about six months.
As I write this, Michelle Chamuel, a
2008 graduate of the University of
Michigan's School of Music, Theatre
and Dance, where she was a perform-
ing arts technology
major, is one of eight
remaining contes-
tants on The Voice,
the hit reality talent
show airing Mondays
and Tuesdays on
NBC (we go to press
before this week's
Chamuel

MO

U

52

May 30 • 2013

JN

two contestants are eliminated).
Born and raised in Amherst, Mass.,
Chamuel long lived in Ann Arbor, where
she was the powerful lead singer of the
popular band Ella Riot/My Dear Disco,
currently on hiatus. Chamuel, who is
openly gay, told a lesbian website in
2011 that she doesn't define herself
only as a "lesbian musician" or as "a
Jewish artist." Michelle and her mother,
a doctor, attended an Amherst egalitar-
ian synagogue for several years (her
parents are long divorced).

At the Movies
Sophie Okonedo, 44, and Zoe Kravitz,

24, co-star, respectively, as Will Smith's
wife and daughter in the sci-fi adven-
ture After Earth, opening Friday, May
31. An apocalyptic event causes most
people to evacuate Earth for a distant
planet. A thousand years later, Smith
and his son (played by his real-life son,

Jaden) crash-land on Earth and have to
deal with all sorts of dangerous stuff.
The Oscar-nominated Okonedo (Hotel
Rwanda) is the daughter of a Nigerian
father and an English Jewish mother
and was raised Jewish by her single
mom. Kravitz is the daughter of actress
Lisa Bonet, 45, and musician Lenny
Kravitz, 48. Bonet's mother is Jewish,
and her father is African-American.
Lenny's father was Jewish, and his
mother was African-American.
Zoe Kravitz defines herself as a
secular Jew, unlike her father, who calls
himself a Christian.
In Now You See
Me, also opening on
Friday, four of the
world's greatest magi-
cians steal from cor-
rupt business leaders
and then shower their
Kravitz
stolen profits on their

There will be two showings of the
French film Let My People Go!, at
7:45 p.m. Thursday, June 6, at Angell
Hall (435 S. State, Ann Arbor) and
noon Sunday, June 9, at the State
Theater (233 S. State, Ann Arbor).
In the film, a high-strung Jewish
mailman moves from France to Finland,
where he has a fight with his boy-
friend over what to do with a package
stuffed with cash. The man's return
to Paris leads to an unusual Passover
celebration. The film, directed and writ-
ten by Mikael Buch and co-written by
Christophe Honore, is spoken in French
and Finnish with English subtitles.
For more information on the films
($9-$12) and the festival, go to www.
cinetopiafestival.org .

- Suzanne Chessler

in person along with those familiar with
her work.
Katz, also a novelist, has a special inter-
est in historical and biographical subjects.
The source of that interest derives in part
from her own background as the daughter
of a German-Jewish emigre.
The screenwriter worked with von
Trotta on the film Rosenstrasse, which was
Cinetopia on page 55

show audiences. An elite FBI/Interpol
squad tries to catch them.
The magicians are played by Jesse
Eisenberg, 29; Isla Fisher, 37; Dave
Franco, 27; and Woody Harrelson.
Mark Ruffalo and Melanie Laurent
(Inglourious Basterds), 30, play the lead
agents after them.
Spoiler Alert: Don't read beyond this
sentence if you don't want to know a
key secret revealed in Stories We Tell,
an autobiographical documentary writ-
ten and directed by Sarah Polley, 34,
also opening on Friday.
Polley, acting in TV and films since
she was a child, emerged as a filmmak-
er with Away from Her (2006). In her
documentary, a chance meeting led her
to discover that her biological father
was not her late mother's husband,
actor Michael Polley, but Harry Gulkin,
a Quebec-based filmmaker with whom
her mother had an affair.

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