Tuesday, December 13, 2005

Seraphic Secret: Ushpizin

Seraphic Secret: Ushpizin re: the Israeli movie Ushpizin, and about making a movie universal:

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When I worked with Sidney Lumet on A Stranger Among Us, the studio was pressuring us to water down the specifics of the Hasidic life and make the film more "universal." Sidney stepped up and told the executives: "The more specific you make the culture in a film, the more universal does it become."

Ushpizin is so specific, so dead-on in its depiction of life in B'nei Brak, the Hasidic neighborhood in Jerusalem where the film was shot, that all people will glimpse their lives in the faith and love exhibited between Moshe and Mali.

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