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First Person Jewish (Visible Evidence) PDF

240 Pages·2008·2.31 MB·English
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  First Person Jewish V I S I B L E E V I D E N C E Michael Renov, Faye Ginsburg, and Jane Gaines, Series Editors V olume 22 :: Alisa S. Lebow First Person Jewish V olume 21 :: Malin Wahlberg Documentary Time: Film and Phenomenology V olume 20 :: Jeff D. Himpele Circuits of Culture: Media, Politics, and Indigenous Identity in the Andes V olume 19 :: Jennifer Deger Shimmering Screens: Making Media in an Aboriginal Community V olume 18 :: Abé Mark Nornes Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary V olume 17 :: Alexandra Juhasz and Jesse Lerner, Editors F Is for Phony: Fake Documentaries and Truth’s Undoing V olume 16 :: Michael Renov The Subject of Documentary V olume 15 :: Abé Mark Nornes Japanese Documentary Film: The Meiji Era through Hiroshima V olume 14 :: John Mraz Nacho López, Mexican Photographer V olume 13 :: Jean Rouch Ciné-E thnography V olume 12 :: James M. Moran There’s No Place Like Home Video V olume 11 :: Jeffrey Ruoff An American Family: A Televised Life V olume 10 :: Beverly R. Singer Wiping the War Paint off the Lens: Native American Film and Video Volume 9 :: Alexandra Juhasz, Editor Women of Vision: Histories in Feminist Film and Video (for additional series titles, see page 204) VISIBLE EVIDENCE SErIES, VOLUME 22  First Person Jewish  Alisa S. Lebow University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London Portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est,” Camera Obscura 52 (vol. 18, no. 1) (2003). Copyright 2008 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a r etrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2 520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lebow, Alisa. First person Jewish / Alisa S. Lebow. p. cm. — (Visible evidence ; v. 22) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8166-4354-7 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-8166-4355-4 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Jews in motion pictures. 2. Jewish motion picture producers and direc- tors. 3. Documentary films—History and criticism. 4. Autobiography. 5. Identity (Psychology) in motion pictures. 6. Stereotypes (Social psychology) in motion pictures.—I. Title. PN1995.9.J46L43 2008 791.43'6529924—dc22 2008005308 Printed in the United States of America on acid-f ree paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-o pportunity educator and employer. 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction: Reading First Person Documentary xi 1  M emory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est 1 2  R eframing the Jewish Family 36 3  A Treyf Autocritique of Autobiography 87 4  A mbivalence and Ambiguity in Queer Jewish Subjectivity 111 Conclusion: A Limit Case for Jewish Autoethnography 149 Notes 161 Bibliography 183 Selected Filmography of Jewish Diasporic First Person Documentaries 195 Index 199 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments A book that takes the first person as its main focus would seem a likely place for an expansive first person narration. It is the logical choice for an author, to match subject and subjectivity. Yet, surprisingly and perhaps in a misplaced deference to a misbegotten sense of academicism, with the excep- tion of the chapter about my own film Treyf I have mostly eschewed, if not the first person grammar, at least the first person account. Even as I aspire to the elegantly agile intellectual acrobatics of “personal criticism” projects such as Nancy K. Miller’s Bequest and Betrayal and Annette Kuhn’s Family Secrets—o r, for that matter, Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida—w hich effortlessly fuse autobiographical and theoretical reflection, I have not managed to achieve such a dignified balance here. Still, I had such studies in mind as I wrote, and this book owes an intellectual debt to these bold and brilliant forays into what I have come to think of as the “first person critical” tense. And if nothing else, I will avail myself of the first person voice liberally in this admittedly circumscribed prefatory space. Chantal Akerman has said that a filmmaker doesn’t realize what her film is about until it’s finished. In my case it has taken much longer than that. This project began, without my quite realizing it, when I set out to make a first person Jewish film with Cynthia Madansky back in 1995. We finished the film Treyf in 1998, at which point I began researching more seriously questions of Jewish first person representation. I had to explore the issues raised not only by my film but by many others before begin- ning to understand even a fraction of the forces at work on these cultural artifacts. This exploration was the basis of a critical study that eventually, after many incarnations (and with the assistance of a grant from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council and research leave granted by the School of Cultural Studies of the University of the West of England), turned into the book you hold in your hands. vii G o i n g f r o m p r a c t i c e t o t h e o r y r e q u i r e s a c o n c e p t u a l s h i f t . T h e m a k i n g o f a f i l m , h o w e v e r p r o f o u n d i t s e f f e c t a n d m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l i t s a p p r o a c h , s t i l l a l l o w s f o r o n l y l i m i t e d t h e o r e t i c a l e x p l o r a t i o n o f t h e c o n c e p t s i t r a i s e s . O n e ’ s c o n c e r n s a r e d r i v e n b y , a n d l i m i t e d t o e x p r e s s i o n w i t h i n , t h e t i mb e a- s e d a u d i o v i s u a l m e d i u m . F i l m m a y b e a t h i n m e d i u m f o r t h e o r y ( a s k a n y o n e w h o h a s a t t e m p t e d t o t a k e o n d e n s e t h e o r e t i c a l i s s u e s i n a f i l m ) , b u t i t i s a n i n f i n i t e l y r e w a r d i n g o b j e c t o f s t u d y f o r t h e t h e o r i s t a n d o n e m a d e e v e n m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g w h e n o n e w a d e s i n u n k n o w n t e r r i t o r y . W h e n I b e g a n w r i t i n g a b o u t J e w i s h a u t o b i o g r a p h i c a l d o c u m e n t a r y , t h e r e w e r e n o m o n o g r a p h s a v a i l a b l e o n a n y a s p e c t o f f i r s t p e r s o n f i l m m a k i n g , l e t a l o n e a n y t h i n g s o s p e c i f i c a s a c a s e s t u d y . I h a d t o r e l y o n i n d i v i d u a l a r t i c l e s b y s u c h i n t r e p i d f i l m a n d l i t e r a r y s c h o l a r s a s M i c h a e l R e n o v , S u s a n a E g a n , a n d J i m L a n e , a s w e l l a s o n w r i t i n g s b y l i t e r a r y c r i t i c s w h o h a d n e v e r c o n s i d e r e d h o w t h e i r t h e o r i e s m i g h t ( o r m i g h t n o t ) a p p l y t o film, but who had nonetheless made important contributions to auto- biography studies (I’m thinking of Sidonie Smith, Philippe Lejeune, James Goodwin, and of course Jacques Derrida). By the time this study devel- oped into a book, there were two books published on first person film— which attests to exactly how long a road this has been. On such a long and circuitous journey, there are inevitably many people to thank, and indeed many unpayable debts of gratitude. Perhaps at least an acknowl- edgment here of my thanks will go some way to convey my deepest appre- ciation of the support, advice, assistance, and love I have received. My greatest debt of gratitude goes to Cynthia Madansky, without whom none of this would have gotten off the ground. Together we made not only a film that I’m still proud of many years later, but much more. No other single individual has had so profound an influence on my think- ing and creativity. I hope she is pleased with the result. The intellectual encouragement of the documentary theorists I most respect, among them Michael Renov, Elizabeth Cowie, and Janet Walker, meant more to me than I can convey here. Chris Straayer, Faye Ginsburg, and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett never failed to amaze me with their endless generosity, not to mention their brilliance. I thank Faye and Barbara in particular for inviting me into their hotbed of intellectual ferment, the New York University Center for Media and Religion. I had the privilege to present my work to the center’s working group on Jews, media, and religion, whose members (especially Jeffrey Shandler) gave me useful feedback. I thank Barbara Abrash and Angela Zito at the Center for inviting me to further benefit from my connection to this community of scholars as a CMR Visiting Fellow in autumn 2005. Thank you to my stalwart editor at the University of Minnesota viii a C k N O w L E D g M E N t S Press, Jason Weidemann, and to the editors of the Visible Evidence series. A special mention goes also to Nancy Sauro, Paula Friedman, and Adam Brunner at the Press. A prize for unshrinking tenacity should go to Senem Aytac, who patiently and laboriously input my barely legible changes to the manuscript; the award for technical support in the wayi novf a luable video dubs goes to Lauren Steimer. Thanks to the editors of Camera Obscura, especially Patty White and Lynne Joyrich, who believed in this project enough to publish two articles originating from it. Ivone Margulies’s encouragement with regard to my work on Akerman was an unexpected pleasure. I thank Bob Stam, who may still be in search of the latent film scholar in me, and Anna McCarthy, who encouraged me to ferret out the not-s o-l atent links in my analyses to discourses of race and racism—w hich I have perhaps not done to her satisfaction, or even to mine. Jane Arthurs first suggested I apply for research leave after working at the University of the West of England for barely three months, something I would never had had the chutzpah to do on my own. Her support and mentorship continues to be a precious gift. Other colleagues and friends have given their time and attention to work through sticky ideas or read a passage or chapter. Here I would like to especially mention Sara-J ane Bailes, Jonathan Boyarin, Michael Chanan, Tuna Erdem, Rachel Gabara, and Bülent Somay. In the process of writing and rewriting this manuscript I have bene- fited from the close scrutiny of old and new intellectual companions, some of whom, like Michele Aaron and Jeffrey Skoller, really got to know me only through my writing, and with whom I hope to continue a more mu- tual dialogue in the future. Marcos Becquer and Bliss Lim (whom I also admire deeply) suffered through many early drafts only out of love for the person they already knew. Our dialogues were responsible for advancing my thinking well beyond the limits of my own imagination. To Marcos, I must apologize for at times selfishly privileging the state of my book over the infinitely more important state of his health. My fellow Bristol Docs First Person Films Symposia Series organiz- ers, Jon Dovey and Tony Dowmunt, made me recognize that there really is strength in numbers. The symposia that we organized helped me to clarify what is most salient about first person filmmaking and to see that there are many others who are interested in developing this particular line of theoretical inquiry. I learned much from the participants of these symposia as well. Of course, this book could never have been written if not for the filmmakers who made the fascinating films discussed within it. For this reason, I am grateful to Chantal Akerman, Jan Oxenberg, Alan Berliner, a C k N O w L E D g M E N t S ix

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