{"id":18414,"date":"2012-02-07T13:13:58","date_gmt":"2012-02-07T21:13:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=18414"},"modified":"2012-02-07T15:16:03","modified_gmt":"2012-02-07T23:16:03","slug":"jealous-of-the-birds-jordan-baker-2011-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=18414","title":{"rendered":"Jealous of the Birds (Jordan Baker, 2011): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda Lopez<\/a>.\u00a0 SBIFF. Viewed at the \u00a0Santa Barbara Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

\"Jealous\u201cJealous of the Birds\u201d is a documentary about the holocaust victims who were\u00a0retained in Germany after the end of World War II.\u00a0 When the Allied Forces liberated the Jews from concentration camps,\u00a0many were brought to\u00a0displaced-persons\u00a0camps inside Germany\u00a0under U.S. military jurisdiction.\u00a0\u00a0Many survivors were not\u00a0from Germany but\u00a0came from\u00a0Poland, Romania, and\u00a0other European countries.\u00a0 Today,\u00a0there are approximately 69,000 Jews (originating from those displaced holocaust survivors)\u00a0living in Germany, which includes their children and grandchildren–the latter were born and raised\u00a0in\u00a0Germany and are\u00a0German citizens.\u00a0 (Note:\u00a0 These figures do not include the 150,000 Russian Jews who immigrated to Germany after 1989.)<\/p>\n

Ellie Wiesel narrates this powerful film.\u00a0 In the opening scene, the camera focusses-in on an elderly gentleman\u00a0getting ready to sit down with his chess board\u00a0at a park in Frankfurt.\u00a0 A stranger approaches the man and asks if he can\u00a0join him in\u00a0a chess game.\u00a0 In essence, they are just two strangers who meet by chance in a park.\u00a0 Or is it\u00a0fate that one\u00a0is a Jewish holocaust survivor and the other a former SS German officer?\u00a0 Neither are aware of this, but there is a tension between the two men as they both scrutinize each other wondering about the other as they move their chess pieces.<\/p>\n

Jordan Baker, the director of this film, is the grandson of one of the survivors who still lives in Frankfurt.\u00a0 Baker was born in the U.S., but since his birth he has travelled to Germany with his mother every year to visit his grandparents.\u00a0 Baker made this film because he always wanted to know why\u00a0his grandparents\u00a0stayed in Germany and never immigrated elsewhere.\u00a0 During the course of several interviews with his grandmother and other survivors, Baker discovers why.<\/p>\n

Baker also interviewed a German woman, whose father was a SS officer during the war.\u00a0 This particular interview was useful in the documentary to provide contrasts and similarities\u00a0between the different generations.\u00a0 One\u00a0reoccuring similarity\u00a0is that the older generation on both sides do not talk about what happened to them during the war.\u00a0 As a result, they\u00a0have built walls around themselves, thereby building walls between themselves and their children.<\/p>\n

When Baker interviewed his grandmother, she made it very clear that she was not telling a story but telling her life.\u00a0 Later, Baker and his grandmother visit Auschwitz and she shares a glimpse\u00a0of her life at\u00a0the\u00a0concentration camp\u00a0when she was only a young\u00a0girl.\u00a0 Baker’s grandfather was also a holocaust survivor but died before\u00a0Baker could interview him.\u00a0 However,\u00a0his grandfather\u00a0left a tape recorded message for Baker.\u00a0 In it, he said that when he was in the concentration camp, he would \u201cget jealous of the birds because they could fly away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Throughout this documentary, tensions between the Jews and Germans is\u00a0central to its\u00a0theme.\u00a0\u00a0Although time has not wiped away the tensions,\u00a0one Jew interviewed \u00a0believes that the tensions are good because it keeps everyone alert.\u00a0 But because of these tensions Baker’s mother immigrated to the U.S. before he was born. She left because she was caught between two worlds.\u00a0 On one hand she was a Jew and on the other a German citizen.\u00a0 She was tired of\u00a0her German friends asking,\u00a0“How can\u00a0you stay here after what the Nazis\u00a0did to your people?”\u00a0 Then Jews ask her, “How can you be a German after what they did?”\u00a0 Ultimately, becoming a U.S. citizen was probably among the best things she’s ever done.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Linda Lopez.\u00a0 SBIFF. Viewed at the \u00a0Santa Barbara Museum of Art. \u201cJealous of the Birds\u201d is a documentary about the holocaust victims who were\u00a0retained in Germany after the end of World War II.\u00a0 When the Allied Forces liberated the Jews from concentration camps,\u00a0many were brought to\u00a0displaced-persons\u00a0camps inside Germany\u00a0under U.S. military jurisdiction.\u00a0\u00a0Many survivors were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1958,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,3,181],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary","category-films","category-santa-barbara-film-festival-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1958"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}