Christ on the Upper West Side
First serious session: Jen Krause showed the Christ in the City short, directed by Yitz Brilliant, followed by a discussion on religious identity in the twentyfirst century.
Let’s just say Yitz’s utterly one-dimensional movie didn’t really do it for me – if Jesus came back, not sure it would be to the upper west side of NY, despite it’s comedy value, and he sure wouldn’t know from looking for a shul for shabbes – and for me, from an English perspective, the movie felt… caricatured, at best.
J comes back to see Mel Gibson’s the Passion, and the movie’s kinda like laying out the anti-Passion position: christians (and muslims) could get as angry about this one.
Jen, however, is a powerful, dynamic presenter, and instisted on calling me bubeleh because I’m wearing my bubeleh t-shirt.
I totally disagree. I did not see this at the Limmud conference, but at a non-Jewish screening at Independent Film Project in New York, where it received an overwhelmingly strong response – from a mostly “gentile” audience. The film treated all the characters respectfully as 3 dimentional personalities – as much as one can in a satire – and the narrative had many layers of understanding. Sure,it could be seen by some as one dimentional, like any piece of literature, but only those who don’t take a moment to reflect on possible deeper messages and ironies therein.