▪ Sieger5Deti 3426 E. West Maple Rd. at Haggerty Rd. (248) 926-9555 Personal filmmaker universalizes Jewish- American experience. DINNER SPECIAL $1 99 ▪ r LB. of Sable $26.99 LB. of LOX $14.99 ILB. of chopped LOX $6.99 Lb . kippered salmon $12 . 99 I I I I Roast Chicken, Beef Short Ribs Beef Brisket, Stuffed Cabbage expires 10/6/131 Deli Tray $8.99 per person I Dairy Tray $14.99 per person I 1 1 Deli tray and Dairy tray for 10 or more expires 10/6/13 I I will receive fresh fruit basket free .1 ✓ SPECIAL FOR TWO $ II LOX, SABLE, KIPPERED Arn 9 Any Salad with two bowls of soup A scene from First Cousin: Once Removed expires 10/6/13 I r SALMON OR WHITEFISH ,1 APPETIZER expires 10/6/13 11 Includes free coffee 0 ne of the highest compli- ments to Alan Berliner's skill is that no one has ever described his revealing personal docu- mentaries as "home movies:' From Intimate Stranger (1991), a fascinating family portrait centered on his maternal grandfather, to First Cousin Once Removed, his incisive new ode to the memory-robbed final years of beloved poet and mentor Edwin Honig, the New York filmmaker's meticulously crafted portraits of American Jews also are brilliant evoca- tions of universal experiences. Berliner's documentaries are chock- a-block with love, disappointment, tough decisions, failed relationships, curdled resentment and underly- ing compassion. Humor and irony abound, especially in his profound 1996 interview/boxing match with his father, Nobody's Business. "Because I travel around the world with my films, I often feel like an emissary for Judaism:' Berliner says on the phone from his Lower Manhattan studio. "I'm not an exemplary Jewish filmmaker, but my films are Jewish in subtext and by innuendo. My father doesn't talk much about religion in Nobody's Business, but he couldn't be anything but Jewish. I've received more than one email [over the years] that said, 'Your film made me want to be Jewish7 So much for the old fear that expos- ing such conflicts was "bad for the Jews:' Berliner's films, all of which have aired on PBS or HBO, have con- tributed to a wider appreciation of Jews as part of the fabric of America. First Cousin Once Removed received the top prize at last winter's presti- gious International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). An unflinching and often uncom- fortable look at a man of letters (and words) overtaken by Alzheimer's, it is the most demanding of Berliner's trio of films about his family. "You could say it's raw and honest, but First Cousin Once Removed espe- cially is a labor of love:' Berliner says. "I'm daring to show the love, daring to go where the love and the care allows me to go. If that's Jewishness, OK, cap- ital T I'm not in someone else's family universe. I'm not a visitor in someone else's house here. I'm inside the culture of my family:' That dynamic allows for ready iden- tification by Jewish audiences with the people in Berliner's films. From the filmmaker's standpoint, the territory is fraught with a certain freedom — and enormous responsibility "Each film reflects my comfort level and the culture of intimacy and the culture of communication and the culture of caring and investigation:' Berliner explains. "I'm investigating the ethos of my family — and, by implication, its Jewishness. And that gives me the courage and the confi- dence and the strength to make these kinds of investigations regardless of where they go:' Berliner started out making experi- mental nonfiction shorts in the mid- 1970s. His first long-form work, The Family Album (1986), constructed a birth-to-death collage of American lives out of old home movies and audio interviews. He made the leap to turning the camera on himself in The Sweetest Sound (2001), which dealt with names and identity, and Wide Awake (2007), in which Berliner catalogs and con- fronts his lifelong insomnia. "My whole artistic life has been ded- icated to trying to find extraordinary opportunities to get to the bottom of things, to approach the essence of human fragility:' the filmmaker says. In First Cousin Once Removed, Berliner flips between the present, the recent past and the distant past, con- tinually peeling back layers of Edwin Honig's identity. It's a true character study, encompassing the poet, transla- tor and professor's accomplishments and failings. "If there's another imperative that guides me more than anything, it's the pursuit of irony:' Berliner says. "I thought I was making a film about Alzheimer's and memory loss, but I was making a film about a man who has a lot to forget. It's really about the importance of forgetting. "I think there's something Jewish about that:' INCLUDES FRESH FRUIT 1 AND 2 COFFEES : r 11 .1 $1'99 LOX OR SABLE FOR TWO expires 10/6/13 LB of any Meat, I LB of Coleslaw, III LB of Potato Salad, 11 Loaf of Rye Bread .11. 9 16 9 9 expires 10/6/131 .11. Michael Fox Special to the Jewish News 77 7 $ i . expires 10/6/131 r 4 LB. OF BEEF SALAMI $79911 SOUP, SANDWICH $1099; LB. OF SMOKED TURKEY FREE AND DRINK expires 10/6/13 expires 10/6/1311 1. .1 L , r .. 4 4 PIECE LAMB $1199:: SIEGEL'S HOMEMADE $ 699 CHOP DINNER • • :: CHOPPED LIVER 1 L expires 10/6/13 expires 10/6/13 1 II .1 1. 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