Having a little fun with video

As I develop the story for my Iran documentary, I can't help but think visually about film clips that might be useful. I shot this footage last month when I was baking hamantashen--triangular-shaped, filled cookies, eaten during the Jewish holiday of Purim. The holiday commemorates the deliverance of the Jewish people from Haman's plot to annihilate them, and the story is recorded in the Book of Esther.  In Yiddish, these cookies are called "hamantashen," meaning "Haman's pockets," and in Hebrew, they're called "oznei Haman," meaning "Haman's ears."

Making hamantashen and the story of Purim are important for my documentary in a few ways. One of the memories I have of my Turkish grandmother, a character in my film, is going over to her house as a teenager to learn how to make hamantashen. (Years later, when I started making them for my family, my father instructed me on how to pinch the dough so the hamantashen would hold their shape.) The Book of Esther takes place in Persia and the tombs of Mordecai and Esther, important characters in the story, are in Hamadan, Iran. Many Iranian Jews have made pilgrimages there over the years. The characters in my film are heroines like Esther in that they overcame hardship in order to perpetuate their culture, religion and peoplehood.

As incoming students to LUCAD during the June 2013 residency, Judith Barry described an ideal studio space that includes a "play" area, where we should have fun with our medium.  I had a lot of fun with this exercise as I was editing and listening to the song I included. A word about the music: I went to an elementary school founded by Yiddishists and one of the songs I remember learning was the one featured in this clip,  called "Hop Meine Hamantashen," a humorous ballad about a woman named Yachne Dvoshe and her attempt to make hamantashen. This particular version is sung by Abby Rosenblatt. Here are the translated lyrics:

Yachne-Dvoshe's in a dither
Packing for the market-place,
She is off to buy flour
For to bake the Purim cakes

Chorus:
Ho, my hamantashen
Ho, my white delight,
Ho, my hamantashen

Didn't come out quite right.
It's raining and it's snowing,
And the roofs are dripping,
Yachne's bringing corn meal home
In a bag that's ripping.

She bought no honey, no poppy seed,
And quite forgot the yeast,
But Yachne's making hamantashen
They're in the oven at least.

Yachne's carrying her Purim gift
To her mother-in-law,
Two or three hamantashen
Half-burned and half-raw.

Meeting with Dana Levy, 3-25-14

I had another productive meeting with Dana. My Iran documentary is taking shape. The film will be about women who emigrate from Middle Eastern Countries to the West, and how the traditions and skills they bring with them are an important part of culture and history. My next assignment is to streamline the Mizrahi family’s story, put it on a timeline using interview material, and intersperse it with sparse voiceover about my grandmother’s story. Dana explained that visually I should think in terms of texture. We looked at digitized photographs that I have of Iran in the 70s, and she showed me how textures from two different photographs can blend together using dissolves. Textures and smells are an important part of this film. Dana also recommended I see the documentary film Before the Revolution, a new film by Dan Shadur and Barak Heymann, about Israelis living in Teheran in the 60’s and 70’s who enjoyed a special relationship with the Shah until their world collapsed with the onset of the Revolution. Fortunately, it’s playing at the MFA in May. And one more thing--I’m building a pulley clothesline.  To be continued . . .