Elevate Difference

Reviews by Elisheva Zakheim

The Girl With The Glass Feet

I am a bit of a daydreamer, as I imagine we all are. When I read, the same rule applies; while the letters unfurl on the page, the images unwind in my mind, doing as they will, relying on my knowledge of the world. I do not like intrusions into that universe. Ali Shaw is a daydreamer as well; however, his dreams have intruded into my own.

Nrityagram: The Love of Dance

In the film Nrityagram: The Love of Dance, a short and simple story is told. A woman finds purpose in her was life when she learns how to dance and creates an institute to instruct others. It is the story of Protima Bedi and her Nrityagram Dance Ensemble. Protima Bedi was known in India as a socialite, until she saw a Narissi Dance and came to pursue it instead. A woman who was known as an emotionally vibrant and open person, pursues a dance form that is tells the story of feelings more than anything else.

Made in Dagenham

I am not much for plays. I generally prefer to sit bundled in my comforter, wine in hand, and watch a movie. However, I was recently convinced by a friend to join her for Mrs. Warren’s Profession, the main attraction of which was Sally Hawkins. I know Sally Hawkins only from Happy-Go-Lucky where her cheerfulness, tireless as the Sony synopsis describes, was also guileless and irritating.

Horse, Flower, Bird: Stories

Full of self-pity and self-loathing, Kate Bernheimer’s stories in Horse, Flower, Bird are not all of what being a girl is about. This is essential to remember, because fairytales, for all their unnecessarily flowery language and lurid fantasy, taught us all who to be. Fairytales, like the more adult fables, are instructional devices; stay away from the woods, do not talk to strangers, truth and love will prevail… As corny as they always are, they imbue us with an elementary moral compass. It was their function and their rationale, it is why parents allow their children to watch Sleeping Beauty a million times into the wee hours of the night. However Bertheimer's fairytales, while unconventional and enticing, do not convey any distinct moral messages. They are enchanting stories, but not fairytales; there is nothing to be learned from them. They are simply fantastical.

New York Craft Beer Week: Freaktoberfest (9/24/2010)

I do not know many women who like beer, I am certainty not one of them. Knowing this about myself, I took the task of reviewing Freaktoberfest as a challenge. In the anthropological spirit that imbues every writer, to a certain extent, I decided I would engage in some participant observation. As a sort of Sherpa, I brought Sam, an acquaintance from the circle of drinking friends everyone develops with age.

Daniel & Ana

Daniel & Ana is an opinion piece, the film equivalent of an op-ed. While it is a forgone assumption that a film will represent the opinion of its authors and that every film necessarily adopts a particular point-of-view on its subjects, Daniel & Ana endorses a position.

Peepli Live

The women of Peepli… well, there are no women in Peepli. Yes, there are daughters and mothers and wives, and to them Natha is purportedly “son and brother.” Natha is in dire straits; he has taken a loan from the bank and now cannot repay it.

Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East Since 1967

It is widely acknowledged that limited gender constructs and highly patriarchal social structures, the kind that are prevalent in the Middle East, are often harmful to women.

Weapons Grade: Poems

Reading Terese Svoboda’s poem “Vets” title to finish reminded me of a story of an older friend who marched against Vietnam early, before others had marched, and who told me of the veterans. Those veterans of earlier wars would march with the students, the protesters, the young, and the naïve. These veterans would encircle the protestors to protect them from those who tried to stop them. The police dared not stop the veterans—those people who lost their youth as they (once again) protected the innocence of others—now in their own cities.

Driving with Dvořák: Essays on Memory and Identity

Fleda Brown’s writes almost as though she were paid by word. Every description feels as though it lasts for hours. The writing in Driving with Dvořák is self-indulgent, as though she were doing it for herself alone. So who is really being indulged in Driving with Dvořák?

Women in Power in Post-Communist Parliaments

Reading the title of this book, Women in Power in Post-Communist Parliaments, one pictures Chancellor Angela Merckel standing alongside Presidents Obama and Medvedev. Then, East German women swimmers, intimidating and Frankenstein-esque, and hearty Russian farmers, resilient with scythes in hand march across the landscape of one's mind, all of them serious and dour in shades of grey and brown.

Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture

Writing a book and having it published is not the accomplishment it used to be. While academic presses are not known for being as competitive as popular presses, they appear to be on the precipice of absurdity.

Fugue State

The Library of Congress’ perfunctory “Cataloging-in-Publication Data” (printed on the verso of the title page) rarely has anything novel or even in the least bit helpful to contribute to the discussion. However, in the case of Fugue State, a collection of stories by Brian Evenson, the dissembled “data” contains a single bit of notable information.

Which Way Home

Which Way Home opens like many other films: reeds blowing in the wind, calming yet somehow unsettling music, a body being fished out of the water. If one were judging only from the opening scene, the documentary could have easily been mistaken for a gangster movie or a romance.

Soul Power

It is nearly inconceivable to think that Soul Power was made from the leftover footage of another documentary (When We Were Kings). This is not yesterday’s pizza. The subject, like the film documenting it, was only the second ring in a two ring circus. Dubbed “Zaire ‘74,” this famed music festival was merely riding on the coattails of the Ali-Fraser fight, “the Rumble in the Jungle”.

Kanchivaram: A Communist Confession

There are two times in a Hindu's life when one is supposed to wear silk: at one’s wedding and at one’s own funeral. In the village of Kanchivaram (Kanchipuram), the silk weavers are only ever able to have enough silk to tie the toes of the dead together, and no daughter of a weaver has ever worn a silk sari on her wedding day. Kanchivaram tells the story of a man of change. Weaving silk for a pittance, as his father did before him, Vengadam wants nothing more than to weave his daughter a silk sari for her wedding day.

Promised Virgins: A Novel of Jihad

Promised Virgins echoes of stories already told; they howl and yowl in your ear as Jeffrey Fleishman whispers and intimates, ever beseeching that you withstand his narrative a moment longer. Fleishman relies on the threads of past to weave his story, devices used before by film writers and the novelists who inspired them.

Confessions of a Mullah Warrior

“History is full of great men,” Masood Farivar declares as a young man, about a third of the way into his memoir, Confessions of a Mullah Warrior. Luckily, Uncle Jaan Agha rhetorically slaps him on the back of the head, half a page later. The topic is dropped then, and for the remainder of the narrative.

ARUSI Persian Wedding

In ARUSI Persian Wedding, Marjan Tehrani trails her brother Alex and his wife Heather as they prepare to wed in Iran. In fact, the couple is wed twice in the film—making it thrice in total. One wedding is in preparation—so they may travel as husband and wife—and the traditional ceremony that ends the film, which is the point of the documentary, is the couple's second on-screen wedding. Tehrani touches ever-so-briefly on themes that would have given the movie more impact had they been explored further.

Big Man Japan

The experience of watching Big Man Japan, directed by and also starring Hitoshi Matsumoto, is akin to the pleasure of watching a five-year-old running on a child-size hamster wheel in the park. One alternates between confusion, amusement, and boredom as the aesthetic combines and alternates between the humor of a Hollywood slapstick, the visual dynamic of a video game, and the tone of a documentary.

Drifting Flowers

In the film Drifting Flowers, director Zero Chou brings together three stories of lesbian love and camaraderie. In the first, the audience is presented with May, a young girl who is confronted with the need to guide her blind older sister, Jing, while envying her sister's relationship with Diego. The second story is a sharp turn from the youthful innocence of May to the addled mind of Lily.
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