Sephardic films

A scene from “About Sugarcane and Homecoming.”

American Jewish life is so Euro-centered, it’s easy to forget that Jews live — or have lived — all over the world, and have adapted to the community norms of those varied places. Jews from Kazakhstan are more like Kazakhs than they are like Jews from Canada or Jews from Argentina. This is true despite the feeling that Jews share that they differ meaningfully from their non-Jewish neighbors. Watching the films showing in the 13th annual New York Sephardic Film Festival, running through Thursday, is a healthy antidote to our blinkered sense of reality. The Jews in these films look different, think different, and feel different — and at the same time, share experiences with all Jews.

Since its founding, Israel has become the crucible of Jewish peoplehood. It’s there that Jews from different places and radically different cultures rub against each other, often causing blisters. Several of the films in the festival are set in Israel, and others have characters who have spent time in Israel. The feature that opened the festival, “Zrubavel,” the first Israeli film created by Ethiopian Israelis, takes place in a diverse Israeli neighborhood. Director Shmuel Beru follows the members of an extended Ethiopian immigrant family, headed by the patriarch Gita, who works as a street sweeper. While the older people want to maintain their traditions — arranged marriages, female subservience, religious observance, their native language — the younger ones are enmeshed in Israeli, and also American, culture. Gita’s grandson, a budding filmmaker, wears a backward baseball cap and calls himself Spike Lee. Gita’s daughter sings with gospel inflections, and her boyfriend is a breakdancer. Obviously, Gita’s family is looking for other African diaspora role models. One reason is certainly the thoughtless racism they encounter from their Israeli neighbors, particularly the police. Although the film lacks storytelling finesse, the actors are enormously appealing and the film is ultimately quite moving. It won the Best Film Award at the 2008 Haifa International Film Festival.

A scene from “Zrubavel.”

While humor lightens “Zrubavel,” there’s no relief from the gritty realism of “Vasermil,” another immigrant story, this one set in Beersheba. Director Mushon Salmona weaves together the experiences of three adolescent boys, two of them from Russia and Ethiopia, and the other from a poor Sephardic family. The Russian boy works for the local drug dealer, and the Sephardic boy’s brother is a small-time hood. The gentle Ethiopian boy, an exceptionally skilled soccer player, cares for his younger brother while his mother sleeps on the couch all day long. All of the boys are poor, disengaged from school, and have next to no familial support. Their parents are overworked, depressed, or simply negligent. When a soccer coach picks them to play on a neighborhood team, it seems that we’re on the way to the standard feel-good sports story, but that’s not to be. Hard to watch but gripping, with a terrific performance by David Teplitzky, who plays the Russian boy, “Vasermil” won the Golden Gate Award at the 2008 San Francisco International Film Festival.

The Tunisian family at the center of “Comme Ton Père” (“Like Your Father”) has moved to Marseille from Israel in the late 1960s. Another film told from the viewpoint of an adolescent boy, “Comme Ton Père” tracks a man’s decision to become a bank robber and the impact his imprisonment has on his sons. Although this might have been as sordid as “Vasermil,” the French film emphasizes the family’s affection for one another and is punctuated by warm humor. The relationship between the protagonist and his Arab friend is particularly amusing.

The festival is presenting documentaries as well as features. An American documentary, “Tree of Life,” skillfully incorporates graphics and design elements to tell the story of the filmmaker’s Italian family, which boasts famous scholars and Fiorello LaGuardia. “About Sugarcane and Homecoming” is made by a Dutch filmmaker but is about a community in northeast Brazil. A group of people who believe that they are descended from Portuguese conversos — so-called New Christians — are returning to the practice of Judaism. Of course, rabbinical authorities won’t accept them as Jews and insist they convert. Insulted, they refuse. This is a story that seems all too familiar. But the tropical setting, the languorous atmosphere, the vibrant personalities of the people give this film a great deal of charm.

Most of the festival films are being shown at the Center for Jewish History, but some are screening at the JCC of Manhattan. For full festival details, go to http://www.americansephardifederation.org/images/FF2009/film%20festival.asp.