USA,
1996, 60 min
Shown in 1997
CREDITS
- dir
-
Pierre Chainet, Danae Elon
- cam
-
Danae Elon, Pierre Chainet
- editor
-
Danae Elon, Pierre Chainet
- source
-
Pierre Chainet, 356 West 40th Street #4, New York, NY 10018. FAX: 212-760-2677
- gga award
-
Golden Spire, Film & Video: Current Events
-
COMMENTS
Shown with Independent Little Cuss.
OTHER
This powerful indictment of the Jewish Defense League traces the militant group's violent history from the rough streets of Brooklyn to the arid hills of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, painting a vivid portrait of a cycle of hate born in the ashes of the Holocaust. The JDL was founded in 1968 by Rabbi Meir Kahane and other children of Holocaust survivors intent on defending Jews from anti-Semitism. But the racism, violence and vigilantism practiced by the group contain disturbing echoes of the Nazi era. The film’s most chilling scene is an interview with a Jewish woman and her young son in upstate New York. "The Nazis killed six million of our people, that's why we should kill six million Arab people," the cherubic-faced boy asserts. The bitter fruit sown by the JDL is made painfully clear in the film's closing sequence, which shows JDL militants in New York denouncing Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin for his role in the Arab-Israeli peace process. As they chant "Rabin is a traitor. Death to Rabin," a somber note flashes on the screen: "On November 4, 1995, Yitzak Rabin was assassinated by a 27-year-old Jewish fundamentalist."
—Peter Kupfer
FACTOID #343
Director Sally Potter was the first person to be honored with the Festival’s Satyajit Ray Award. In 1993 she was interviewed onstage and her new film Orlando was screened. In 2005, she turned the tables by interviewing Peter J. Owens Award recipient Joan Allen.
