Love and marriage The Maine Jewish Film Festival challenges with time-tested themes BY TONY GIAMPETRUZZI

It’s fairly well-known that both Jews and gays had more than just a little to do with building Hollywood and revolutionizing filmmaking. Forgive me for objectifying and stereotyping, but both groups have done a damn good job. That will be evidenced next week when the Maine Jewish Film Festival takes center stage in Portland with a week-long roster that runs the gamut from bizarre short subjects to provocative documentaries to full-length features.

This year, as in years past, the Festival will also feature a mini-fest within the fest, highlighting Jewish gay and lesbian film makers (yes, a marriage made in heaven). Speaking of marriage, many of the films, most of them shorts, that will be featured within the gay set at 8 p.m. on Monday, March 14, are about, you guessed it, gay marriage.

Most notable is the yet unfinished The Gay Marriage Thing, a documentary by Gorham native Stephanie Higgins.

Higgins, 29, and now a resident of Boston, will be on hand to introduce the first 15 minutes of what will eventually be a much lengthier documentary about the gay marriage phenomenon in Massachusetts, where the partnerships were made legal last year.

"I went to one of the Constitutional Conventions in Boston last year and sat in the gallery and watched all the discussion on both sides regarding gay marriage and I really thought to myself that all these people must have so much more to say that’s going unheard," Higgins told the Phoenix of her inspiration for the film. She said that she was also overcome by the thousands of people outside the Massachusetts State House on Beacon Hill carrying signs. "And I really felt that I wanted to explore the threads and stories behind the signs."

Higgins had no trouble finding her subjects: clergy on both sides of the issue who speak candidly about marriage interpolated with the story of a lesbian couple who begin their odyssey toward May 17, 2004, the day they were married.

The film begins with Lorre and Gayle, who were heartbroken when they learned their two great-aunts, sisters who’d lived together their entire 80+ years, were on the verge of losing their 1850s home because it was too big a burden to care for anymore. "Having to leave your home just because you’re older?" Lorre asks. "After living there 60 years?" Gayle adds. "Unfair," they agree. So they did something about it. Lorre and Gayle broke their apartment rental lease and moved in with a very grateful Gertrude and Germaine, to be financial, emotional, and physical caregivers for their elderly aunts. "We were the Golden Girls for a while there, and we still call ourselves that, even though we lost Auntie Gert last year," Lorre adds. "But Auntie Germaine is still feisty and we do for her because that’s what we’ve both been taught. You take care of family."

With that, the first few minutes of The Gay Marriage Thing establishes a picture of what it means to be a family. Gayle and Lorre, thirtysomething college sweethearts who marked their 15th anniversary a year after the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled a ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, form the heart of this documentary scrapbook.

"Did I ever imagine making this film while growing up in Gorham?" asks Higgins. "Absolutely not. It was the farthest thing from my mind!"

The marriage theme moves from the sublime to the bizarre with The Gil and Moti Wedding Project (Netherlands, 2001, 30 min., English, Dutch w/subtitles). Directed by Israeli performance artists Gil Nader and Moti Porat, the film portrays the transformation of their Rotterdam wedding into an extravagant, wacky public spectacle in celebration of Holland’s equal-marriage legislation. Yes, it’s weird, but patently campy in a very European way. From a wedding party decked out in scant outfits that resemble gladiator-wear a la Versace to the bizarre nuptials that include a bit of stripping, one actually finishes the film with the realization that, although random, the rituals that Gil and Moti create are definitely steeped in tradition, if style, too.

What’s a more common film device than marriage? How about coming of age? A Different War (Israel, 2004, 15 min., Hebrew w/subtitles) is a bittersweet tale directed by Nadav Gal. The protagonist, Nuni, is a fourth-grader living in a war-torn Jerusalem neighborhood. While his brother wants him to be a ruffian and to prove himself by climbing barriers and yelling at violent Palestinians, Nuni simply wants to be a girl. His desires are fueled by his mother who helps him apply make-up, and by his being cast as King David in the school play — Nuni realizes that he’d rather play the princess than the King.

Then there’s the suffering mother. Masha Mom (Poland, 2004, 35 min., English, Russian w/subtitles) was actually shot over 10 years by Michal Bukojemski and follows the Russian-American Masha, who discovers that lesbian motherhood makes sense in Moscow, although stress more than marks her journey. The desperate attempts at getting her first girlfriend pregnant with the sperm of her Harvard-educated brother is fun stuff.

It’s worth noting that Equality Maine recognized the Maine Jewish Film Festival with a Media Award at its 21st Annual Awards Banquet on March 5, 2005, for its ongoing commitment to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community through yearly programming of innovative and often controversial films about explicitly queer subjects.

"Film is an important medium for helping us to understand who we are, our history, culture, music, and literature, to feel connected to our own experience and community and to the lives of others," said Bess Weldon, the Festival’s executive director, responding to the award. "A film festival heightens the experience of those connections and is a way to open dialogue between communities."

Of course, there is much more to the MJFF than its gay component. One stand out is The Fight (USA, 2003, 90 min., English).

Directed by Barak Goodman, this film explores two bouts between heavyweights Joe Louis, America’s "great black hope," and Max Schmeling, "Hitler’s favorite boxer." The issues of race, nationality, and ideology are captured through archival footage and some fascinating interviews that delve into the strange ironies that marked Hitler’s quest for nationalistic pride and his hatred for Jews.

And Watermarks (Israel, 2004, 90 min., English, German, Hebrew w/subtitles), which closes out the Festival, is a look at Hakoah Vienna, an Austrian Jewish athletic club that brought thousands of young people together and trained them to become champion athletes in a wide range of sports during the 1930s. In fact, it was Hakoah’s women swimmers who dominated national competitions in the 1930s until the Nazi invasion of Austria forced the girls to flee the country. Sixty-five years later, director Yaron Zilberman visits seven of the swimmers in their homes around the world, and the women, all in their eighties, recount their experiences with both sad and hysterical stories.

If you’re looking for challenging material, the MJFF consistently delivers on a number of fronts. Luckily, they haven’t sacrificed quality in their pursuit.

For a complete and detailed list of the Maine Jewish Film Festival offerings, connect to www.mjff.org