Being Jewish In France Comme un Juif en France

A documentary film by Yves Jeuland

AWARDS

• WINNER Jewish Experience Award – Jerusalem international Film Festival

• WINNER International Focal Award - Best Use of Archival Footage in a Factual Production

THEATRICAL RUNS

• Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York City • Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago • Los Angeles County Museum of Art

FILM FESTIVAL SCREENINGS

• Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (2009) • Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival (2009) • San Paolo Jewish Film Festival (2009) • Toronto Jewish Film Festival (2009) • Jacob Burns Jewish Film Festival (2009) • New York Jewish Film Festival (2009) • Portland Jewish Film Festival (2009) • Washington Jewish Film Festival (2008) • San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (2008) • Atlanta Jewish Film Festival (2008)

France 2007 French with English subtitles 185 minutes Available Formats - BetaSP NTSC; BetaSP PAL; DVD Part 1: From the Dreyfus Affair to Vichy (73 minutes) Part 2: Liberation to Today (112 minutes !) DISTRIBUTION - PUBLIC PERFORMANCE SCREENINGS & DVD SALES:

The National Center for Jewish Film Lown 102, MS 053, Brandeis University Waltham, MA 02454 jewishfilm@brandeis.edu (781) 736-8600 WWW.JEWISHFILM.ORG

 

 

  2

Being Jewish In France / Comme un Juif en France France 2007 French with English subtitles 185 minutes BetaSP NTSC; BetaSP PAL; DVD Part 1: From the Dreyfus Affair to Vichy (73 minutes) Part 2: Liberation to Today (112 minutes !)

SYNOPSIS Yves Jeuland's masterful, sweeping new documentary explores the rich and complex history of Jews in France, the first country to grant Jews citizenship. Beginning with Revolutionary cries of Vive la France in Yiddish, the film explores the explosive Dreyfus Affair, the Vichy government's collaboration with the Nazis, and the absorption of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries in the decades after WWII. Being Jewish in France confidently continues into the 21st century, investigating charges of rising antisemitism and the county's complex attitudes toward Israel.

A fascinating and provocative exploration of French-Jewish history, Being Jewish in France is given vivid human dimension by interviews with more than a dozen leading French politicians, intellectuals and artists including Robert Badinter, Théo Klein, Jean-Claude Grumberg, Marceline Loridan-Ivens, and Jean Benguigui. Presenting a treasure trove of lush archival material, memorable music, and clips from classic French films, Being Jewish in France is poised to become the definitive film on the topic.

Written and directed by Yves Jeuland, Being Jewish in France is narrated by Mathieu Almaric, star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. The film won the Jewish Experience Award at the Jerusalem International Film Festival and the International Focal Award (London) for Best Use of Archival Footage

CREDITS Director/Writer: Yves Jeuland Narrator: Mathieu Almaric (star of The Diving Bell and the Butterfly). Interviews With: Robert Badinter, Elie Barnavi, Jean Benguigui, Paul Bernard, Rchel Cohen, Daniel

Farhi, Bruno Fiszon, Raphaël Draï, Jean-Claude Grumberg, Eva Labi, Marceline Loridan-Ivens, Théo Klein, Annette Wieviorka

Historical Adviser: Michel Winock Editor: Sylvie Bourget Researcher: Valérie Combard Original Music: Eric Slabiak Camera: Jérôme Mignard & Christophe Petit Sound: Matthieu Daude Design: Thierry Merli, Yoann Crez & Didier Hubert Assistant Director: David Nadjari Production Manager: Vincent Gazaigne A production KUIV - Michel Rotman and Marie Hélène Ranc With the participation of the Forum des Images, France 3, France 5, Planète, CNC, PROCIREP - l’ANGOA, ANCSEC, the Foreign Office, the Fondation Rothschild - Institut Alain de Rothschild et and The Sacem.

  3

DIRECTOR YVES JEULAND Born in Carcassonne, France in 1968, Yves Jeuland is a scriptwriter and a director for documentaries broadcasted on French television channels, Canal + and Arte. In 2001 he won the 7 d'Or award for the best documentary series for Paris At Any Cost (Paris À Tout Prix) about the 2-year electoral campaign for the capital’s City Council. Jeuland was awarded the Silver FIPA for his documentary about the history of Communism in France Camarades (2003). His other films include Bleu Blanc Rose (2002), a documentary exploring gay and lesbian life in Paris over the last thirty years, and The Century of Socialists (Le Siècle des Socialistes) (2005).

ON CAMERA INTERVIEWEES

Robert Badinter !! A prominent lawyer, judge, politician and author, Robert Badinter served as Minister of Justice, during which time he supported a range of civil rights and anti-death penalty initiatives. He was appointed President of Constitutional Council of the French Republic (France’s equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court) by François Mitterrand, in 1986. Badinter served on the Arbitration Commission of the peace conference on the former Yugoslavia and has lent his expertise to solving constitutional issues in countries throughout Central and Eastern Europe. He was instrumental in the creation of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in the O.S.C.E. and served as President of the Court for six years. Badinter is the author of many books, including A Regular Anti-Semitism: Vichy Lawyers and Jews, 1940-1944. ! Currently he serves as a Senator in the French Senate as well as vice-president of the Foundation of French Judaism. Actor Charles Berling played Badinter in a 2009 French television movie. "We must not be a prisoner of memory. You have to have memory. Do not forget, but not to live with this obsession… Moreover, in the Jewish tradition, it always says Lehaïm! To Life. That's the message that we must keep: that life is stronger than death…Between Jews and France is a love story gone bad. It's terrible…What I have been slow to measure, is a form of rebirth of anti-Semitism…based on anti-Zionism. it is a recurrence of the old demons of old anti-Semitism." Elie Barnavi Elie Barnavi is director of the department of history at the University of Tel Aviv and associate professor at the Ecole des Haute Etudes et Sciences Sociales in Paris. Born in Bucharest in 1946, Barnavi emigrated with his parents to Israel. He served as Israeli Ambassador to France from 2000 to 2002. He is the author of more than 15 books, including A Modern History of Israel, France and Israel, A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People and An Open Letter to the Jews of France. "Only France and America have had this kind of messianic glow, as they carry a universal message. When Jews were given citizenship in France they said, ‘from now on the Seine is our Jordan, Paris is our Jerusalem.’” Jean Benguigui Born in Oran, Algeria, in 1944, Benguigui is a popular film, television, and theater actor, who has appeared in over 100 films and television shows, including the recent Israeli feature film Turn Left at the End of the World. A secular Jew, he is passionate about history and politics. Paul Bernard !! Born in Paris in 1977, Bernard served as national secretary and vice president of the Union of Jewish Students of France (Union des Etudiants juifs de france) from 2001 to 2004. He is a member of the Central Committee of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.

 

  4

Rachel Cohen Cohen has served as School Director of the Alliance Israelite Universelle in Pavilions-sous-Bois since 1979. She was born into a religious family in Marrakesh. Daniel Farhi Born in Paris in 1941 to Jewish parents of Turkish origin, Rabbi Daniel Farhi was hidden by a Christian family during the Holocaust. Farhi, who became a Rabbi in 1965, was one of the founders of the Liberal Jewish Movement of France (MJLF), established in 1977. Farhi received the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de Legion d'honneur in 1993. He is the author of several books, including Speak to the Children of Israel, Judaism in the Century, and Anthology of Judaism (editor). Bruno Fiszon Since 1997 Bruno Fiszon has severed as Grand Rabbi of Metz and Moselle, communities composed mostly of Jews from the Lorraine region. Fiszon’s family came from Poland and Hungary and his wife is a Jewish Moroccan. Within the grand rabbinate, Fiszon deals with issues of education and Shechita (ritual slaughter). Raphaël Draï Born in Constantine, Algeria, in 1942, Raphaël Draï is an associate professor at the University of Aix-Marseille, where he teaches politics and religion. He is a magazine columnist and the author of 20 books, including Jewish Identity, Human Identity and Under the Banner of Zion, Freud and Moses. Psychoanalysis, Jewish Law and Power. "The hardest part was the preparation of meals for Shabbat—not finding the proper ingredients for couscous…So this was not a true Shabbat, it was a Shabbat of exiles.” Jean-Claude Grumberg Born in Paris in 1939, Jean-Claude Grumberg has authored more than forty plays and films and works for children. His work reflects his experiences as the son of Jewish immigrant workers. Grumberg’s father was deported and killed during the Holocaust. Grumberg’s successful play L'Atelier (1979), set in a small clothing workshop in the immediate post-war period, gives an understated and moving picture of the life of survivors of the Holocaust. His plays include Dreyfus (1974) Workshop (1979) and Free Zone (1990). And his screenwriting credits include Francois Truffaut’s 1980 film The Last Metro and The Little Apocalypse directed by Costa-Gravras. In 2003, he published My father. Inventory. Grumberg has received all of France’s most prestigious theater and film writing awards. "There was a very simple story about the optimists and pessimists: The pessimists are in New York and the optimists are at Drancy.” Eva Labi The Deputy Director General of the Alliance Israelite Universelle and Former Director of JM Radio in Marseille, Eva Labi has worked in the Jewish community in France for 25 years. Born in southern Tunisia, she was one of the leaders of the Unified Jewish Social Fund (FSJU- Fonds Social Juif Unifié). "I remember the first Jaffa orange that came to our dining table…It was incredible! My grandmother, who had us to sit around the table as she peeled an orange, said ‘Can you imagine, it's an Palestinian orange…And this was clear proof that the legend was becoming history, a true story. Here was a blossom from the desert, it's magic!" Marceline Loridan A filmmaker who often worked with her husband director Joris Ivens, Marceline Loridan was born Marceline Rosenberg, in Epinal, France. In 1944, at age fifteen, she was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the same convoy with Simone Veil. Nearly sixty years later, in 2003, she returned to Birkenau to shoot the film The Birch-Tree Meadow, a feature film starring Anouk Aimee based on Loridan’s experiences.

  5

Theo Klein A practicing lawyer in France and Israel, Theo Klein was one of the leaders of the Jewish resistance movement from 1942 to 1944. He was Chairman of the Council of French Jewish Institutions (CRIF - Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France) from 1983 to 1989. He is the author of Unleash the Torah and Manifesto of a Free Jew. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (Jewish Museum in Paris. Annette Wieviorka Born in Paris in 1948, Annette Wieviorka is one of the best know French historians of the Holocaust. Wieviorka belongs to an illustrious Jewish family—her grandfather Polish Yiddish writer Wolf Wieviorka, died on the death march from Auschiwitz. Her father and uncle survived in a Swiss labor camp. Wieviorka’s three siblings are also writers. Wieviorka’s many books and publications include Deportation and Genocide, Auschwitz Explained to My Child, The Era of the Witness and The Jews of France: The French Revolution to Present Day. She has served as research director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and a member of the scholarly council of the Mémorial de Caen and on the Mission Mattéoli, Prime Minister’s Study Group on the Spoliation of Jewish Property.

  6

MOVIE REVIEW

'Being Jewish in France' THE FILM TRACES THE MINORITY GROUP WHEN IT WAS IN THE NATION'S GOOD GRACES, AND A FALLING OUT. By KENNETH TURAN, Film Critic August 7, 2009 Good things don't come exclusively in small packages, sometimes they come in great big ones that don't stay around for very long. Which is the case with the exceptional new three-hour documentary that is playing for three days only at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The film, "Being Jewish in France," screening today, Saturday and Sunday at LACMA's Bing Auditorium, may sound like a picture with a limited potential audience, but that turns out to be not the case. For one thing, as directed by Yves Jeuland, the story this film tells has fascinating parallels not only with Jews in the U.S. but with any minority group making its way in a majority culture. Also, the very specificity of this project, the enormous amount of work that went into telling a very particular story, bring an air of authority to "Being Jewish" that is appealing across the board. It also doesn't hurt that the saga of the Jews in France is an especially fraught one, a complex tale of interdependence and contention. How did it happen that a nation that prided itself on being the first on the continent to offer Jews full citizenship, a nation that gave rise to the Yiddish saying "as happy as God in France," is now routinely described as "the most anti-Semitic country in Europe." The reason Jewish fortunes have waxed and waned in France turns out to be a push-pull dynamic between the nation's best instincts and its worst. Although this is a country that has always taken quite seriously its position as the home of liberty, fraternity and equality, it's also a place where a dark, potent and resilient strain of anti-Semitism has perennially found a home. "Being Jewish" begins with a newsreel clip of an event that perfectly captures that duality: the 1906 reinstatement into the service of French Army officer Alfred Dreyfus. A dozen years earlier, in a particularly vicious example of anti-Semitism, Dreyfus had been falsely convicted of treason. Only the intervention of non-Jews like Emile Zola, who believed that France should stand for justice, brought the truth to light. Though the Dreyfus affair is well known, "Being Jewish," which was made for French television, is filled with incidents that will be less familiar to U.S. audiences, like the story of a French rabbi who became a national hero during World War I when he was killed by shrapnel while bringing a crucifix to a Christian soldier. Although their patriotism in the Great War helped French Jews, the postwar influx of refugees from Eastern Europe made these established folks nervous that the uncouthness of the newcomers would engender increased hostility. In fact, the Great Depression did bring an anti-Semitic revival, but nothing prepared French Jews for what happened under the collaborationist World War II Vichy government, when Jews were first forced to wear yellow stars and then deported in tens of thousands to death camps.

 

  7

After the war, things did not improve, as many French citizens refused to believe what had happened to the deportees. Worse than that, the French government for decades refused to recognize that Jews had been specially targeted during the war or acknowledge that French officials had done the actual deporting. The next big change in the equation came in 1962, when thousands of Jews living in Algeria, part of the "pied noir" community, left their homeland after the revolution and changed the face of the French Jewish community one more time. As the home of the largest Arab and the largest Jewish population in Europe, it was perhaps inevitable that France would become a flash point for conflict between these two groups, especially after the Intifada shook Gaza. Demonstrating how events in the Middle East morphed into an upswing in French anti-Semitism is one of the film's most potent segments. "Being Jewish in France" makes exceptionally good use of vintage photographs and film clips in telling its story, and in fact won an award for best utilization of archival footage. It also boasts an especially varied and articulate group of talking heads, including comic actor Jean Benguigui and politician Robert Badinter, to comment on events past and present. It is Badinter, a former Minister of Justice, who sums things up best: "The Jews and France," he says, "are a love affair gone sour."

  The land of liberty, equality and fraternity has had a storied history with Israel’s children. France was the first country to recognize its Jewish population as free citizens; it also gave birth to the Dreyfus Affair and the most virulent anti-Semitism of the late 19th century. As Eastern European Jews flocked to the nation during the Third Republic, French Jews treated their new brethren as inferiors, adding fuel to the fires of social unease. As for what happened once the Vichy government voluntarily persecuted its Judaic residents on behalf of the Nazis in 1940…let’s just say it’s a stain that France shall never be able to fully wash away. The land of liberty, equality and fraternity has had a storied history with Israel’s children. France was the first country to recognize its Jewish population as free citizens; it also gave birth to the Dreyfus Affair and the most virulent anti-Semitism of the late 19th century. As Eastern European Jews flocked to the nation during the Third Republic, French Jews treated their new brethren as inferiors, adding fuel to the fires of social unease. As for what happened once the Vichy government voluntarily persecuted its Judaic residents on behalf of the Nazis in 1940…let’s just say it’s a stain that France shall never be able to fully wash away. Even those who’ve boned up on Gallic history will have their eyes opened by Yves Jeuland’s comprehensive documentary regarding the Chosen People and this motherland blithe and brave. Combining testimonials, newsreel footage and snippets of cinematic representations from Renoir to Marcel Ophüls, Jeuland has concocted something close to a final word on the subject, even if the repetitive shots of talking heads against black backgrounds blur the interviews together. Still, this examination is essential viewing to understand a love-hate relationship that’s been triumphant and—during WWII, after the Six-Day War and, crucially, throughout the new millennium—remarkably tragic.

 

Film Review Being Jewish in France By David Fear May 14-20, 2009

 

LONG ARM OF THE LAW Gendarmes prevent a Jewish citizen from leaving.

  8

     May 13, 2009 As with the cinematic talkfest, the French pioneered the multi-culti mix. "Let the Jews find their Jerusalem in France!" Napoleon is quoted as declaring in Yves Jeuland's three-hour tele-documentary Being Jewish in France, running for a week at the Walter Reade after sold-out shows at last winter's New York Jewish Film Festival. There's a Yiddish saying: "Hard to be a Jew"; Jeuland's film adds the qualifier "in France." Unlike similar American docs, Being Jewish in France is neither a bittersweet nor a triumphalist tale of adaptation and achievement, featuring a roll call of prominent French-Jewish artists, writers, and industrialists. The history is less upbeat and more complicated. Whereas our PBS sagas suggest that Jewish immigrants brought out the best in America, Being Jewish in France exposes a fault line: From the Jewish perspective, France is two countries—the splendid republic of liberté, égalité, and fraternité and a vicious province of smug chauvinism. France was the first European country to grant Jews full citizenship, and yet, as Jeuland makes clear, the Dreyfus Affair at the turn of the 20th century culminated 20 years of virulent political anti-Semitism. Later, France welcomed Jewish immigrants after America shut the Golden Door, nurturing a parallel Yiddish culture and even electing a Jewish socialist prime minister. But, in a return to anti-Dreyfus hysteria, the Vichy government then passed racial laws equal to the Nazis' and took the lead in deporting foreign Jews. More impressionistic than analytical, Being Jewish details French complicity through the children of the deported, now in their seventies and here articulating their traumas—during the war and after. Midway through the movie, these witnesses are joined by North African Jews who began arriving in the 1950s. Unique outside of Israel, this combination of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews doubtless contributed to the extraordinary popular solidarity France expressed with Israel during the Six-Day War. But Jews are hardly the only, and far from the largest, group of North African immigrants in France, and, consequently, it is also the one country outside the Middle East where the intifada can be played out—with attacks on cemeteries, synagogues, and Jewish schoolchildren. Such scapegoating may be specific to France, but it is also more universal. For all the distinguished public servants that Jeuland interviews, I missed hearing from French-Jewish intellectuals—Edgar Morin, Hélène Cixous, and Alain Finkielkraut, to name three. Gentiles, too: The identification of French Jews with Israeli policies reprises with a vengeance Jean-Paul Sartre's famous postwar formulation, "The Jew is one whom other men consider a Jew."

 

Film Review By J. Hoberman MOTs Meet Friend and Foe in Being Jewish in France

Being Jewish in France Directed by Yves Jeuland National Center for Jewish Film May 13 through 19 Walter Reade Theater