{"id":62862,"date":"2019-09-25T11:31:13","date_gmt":"2019-09-25T18:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/?p=62862"},"modified":"2019-09-25T11:31:13","modified_gmt":"2019-09-25T18:31:13","slug":"viff-capsule-reviews-the-rabbi-goes-west-buddha-in-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2019\/09\/viff-capsule-reviews-the-rabbi-goes-west-buddha-in-africa.html","title":{"rendered":"VIFF capsule reviews: The Rabbi Goes West<\/i>, Buddha in Africa<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The 38th Vancouver International Film Festival<\/a> begins tomorrow night and runs for the next two weeks (until October 11). Today\u2019s capsule reviews involve two films about missionaries and some of the political and cultural issues raised by their efforts.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Rabbi Goes West<\/b><\/i> (dir. Amy Geller & Gerald Peary; USA)
\nOct 7 @ 6:30pm @ The Cinematheque \/ Oct 8 @ 11:30am @ International Village 10<\/i><\/p>\n

Some missionaries look for ways to get their foot in the door, as it were; for Chaim Bruk, a Lubavitcher who moved from New York to Montana to encourage secular and liberal Jews to follow a more traditional version of the faith, it might be more accurate to say he\u2019s trying to get his mezuzah in the door. (The mezuzah is a small case, mounted on the door post, containing a tiny scroll with verses from the Torah.) Bruk wants every Jewish home to have a \u201creal\u201d mezuzah, a kosher mezuzah, and not some random counterfeit mezuzah you might pick up on a sidewalk, which he compares to fake Nikes. The Reform and Conservative rabbis in town don\u2019t necessarily object to Bruk\u2019s mezuzah distribution \u2014 such things are good and Jewish, after all \u2014 but they worry about where it might lead, that there might be something cult-like about Bruk\u2019s activities and the community that he comes from. Bruk explicitly says that his outreach is aimed at fellow Jews, not Gentiles, but he also refuses to participate in interdenominational conferences where he would presumably be on equal footing with female rabbis \u2014 so, what if he ends up driving a wedge within the Jewish community? Montana has barely a million people, period \u2014 it\u2019s less populous than most big cities \u2014 and only a thousand or so<\/a> are Jewish, so there\u2019s potential for a lot of friction, to say the least. And this is all happening at a time when neo-Nazism is on the rise, a trend that elicits very different responses from Bruk and the other rabbis. Amy Geller and Gerald Peary\u2019s documentary raises a lot of fascinating cultural, political and religious questions, many of which will be very familiar even to non-Jews, such as myself, who have switched from one community to another within the same religion. It helps that Bruk himself is a charismatic figure \u2014 given to statements like \u201cIf it\u2019s not fun, it\u2019s not Judaism\u201d and \u201cIf you have a mezuzah and a gun, you\u2019re safe and secure\u201d \u2014 but the filmmakers find humour in other areas, too, like when they cut from a pious Christian billboard of Jesus saying \u201cI am the way, the truth and the life\u201d to a more irreverent Jewish billboard with the tagline \u201cYou bet your tukhus.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Buddha in Africa<\/b><\/i> (dir. Nicole Schafer; South Africa\/Sweden)
\nOct 8 @ 2pm @ International Village 10 \/ Oct 10 @ 7:15pm @ International Village 10<\/i><\/p>\n

Europeans brought Christianity with them when they colonized Africa a few centuries ago. Now, as China is developing increasingly strong economic ties with the African continent, those of Chinese ethnicity are bringing Buddhism<\/a>. And, just as the Europeans tended to mix the spread of religion with the spread of their culture, so too the Chinese Buddhists \u2014 such as Master Hui Li of Taiwan, whose orphanage is profiled here \u2014 are keen to spread \u201cChinese culture\u201d, giving Chinese names to African children and teaching them Mandarin and martial arts because, the teachers say, Chinese culture is the solution to Africa\u2019s \u201cuncivilization\u201d. Nicole Schafer\u2019s documentary explores this cross-cultural phenomenon from the perspective of Enock Belo, a teenager who has lived at the orphanage since he was six years old and is pondering whether to stay in Malawi or go to Taiwan to continue his studies once he graduates. Among other things, Belo says he isn\u2019t entirely sure what his Chinese name means, and he\u2019s not as fluent in the language spoken by his Muslim grandmother as he would like to be. (Granny, for her part, says Belo is \u201clike a white person\u201d now that he\u2019s been to Li\u2019s school.) Schafer also shines a light on some of the more dubious aspects of the orphanage\u2019s administration: coaches who said that living in Africa helped them to overcome their stereotypical ideas about the place are eventually sent back to China for physically abusing the students, and one of the school\u2019s primary sources of revenue is a skit program in which black kids act out poverty dramas for Asian donors. Belo and his fellow students also debate religion, and whether any of the faiths that are familiar to them are truly theirs. I would have liked a little more detail on the relationship between Chinese and Taiwanese organizations in the spread of \u201cChinese culture\u201d, but one of the strengths of this film is<\/i> the way it encourages us to identify with Belo and see everything from his more limited point of view.<\/p>\n

\u2014 For more information or to purchase tickets, check out the VIFF website<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 38th Vancouver International Film Festival begins tomorrow night and runs for the next two weeks (until October 11). 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