June (Web-only) 2000

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It's easy to identify a movie as Jewish—you know one when you see one. But defining "Jewish sensibility?" That which makes a movie Jewish? Filmmakers themselves struggle to shape a simple definition, much less put it in a single paragraph. And they don't necessarily want to: "You never hear anything referred to as 'that Protestant movie!'" one filmmaker snapped back when the moderator (a Lutheran, it turns out) of a roundtable at a recent Jewish film festival opened the discussion by bringing up the "sensibility" question. And so was launched a lively, hour-long discussion on the paradox and perils of being both tribal and universal.Roundtables and postscreen discussions are typical of film festivals of all varieties, not just Jewish. Watching, or better yet, participating in, the interaction among filmmakers and between filmmakers and audience, or, at the smallest festivals, only among audience members, adds a rewarding dimension obviously not found at a typical Friday night flick.What makes postscreen discussion different at a Jewish film festival is that a large share of comments come from people who have experienced whatever is being discussed, whatever the movie was specifically about. In terms of tribal versus universal, for the brief moments of that discussion, everybody in the room is, or can be, at least a little bit "tribal"—which, in a paradoxical sort of way, makes the experience "universal." Hearing people who could be (and often are) those you just saw on screen, talk about the movie you both just saw—what is true or misleading or incomplete in it or complementary to it—provides a double dose of whatever "sensibility" the movie itself contains or conjures, whether or not you can, afterward, articulate the formula ...