Palestinian Narratives Enter the Mainstream
AlterNet. March 4, 2006.

Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad says his Oscar-nominated film, 'Paradise Now,' is an attempt to create peace between the Middle East's many identities.

Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now," which won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film, has been nominated in the same category for an Oscar, marking the first time the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has recognized a film from Palestine about Palestinian culture. (Several Israeli and Jewish groups have petitioned the academy to change the entry from "Palestine" to "Palestinian territories" to no avail as of this writing.)

Click here for full article.



Tim Robbins' "Patriot Act"
Alternet.org. March 2, 2006

After his incandescent plays about the death penalty ("The Exonerated") and the media in Iraq ("Embedded"), it seemed inevitable that actor-writer-director Tim Robbins would continue to fearlessly produce politically charged theater.

In his newest production by Los Angeles' Actors' Gang ensemble, a corrosive play based on George Orwell's novel "1984" and adapted by Michael Gene Sullivan, director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Big Brother is here and torture is us.

Click here for full article.



War of Attrition: Drug Policy and the Decline of the American Empire
LiP Magazine. Aug. 24, 2002

Darryl Best was doing some work at the Bronx home of his wife's elderly uncle, fixing an awning to make some extra cash, when a Federal Express truck pulled up with a delivery.

Best, an African American man and father of five children, signed for a package that had the correct address for his uncle-in-law, but when he examined the package more closely, he found it was addressed to a "Linda Williams." Best knew the Williams's indeed lived next door, but there was no "Linda," so he hurried down the stairs to get the driver's attention. It was then that the police nabbed him and charged him with conspiracy to traffic in cocaine.

Click here for full article.



The Shas Phenomenon
The struggle to save Sephardic humanism in Israel
Jewish Journal. Oct. 13, 2000


Israel's political landscape has, over the past decade, been transmogrified by the growing strength of the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi party Shas (Sephardic Torah Guardians). But the conviction and recent jailing of party leader Aryeh Deri has only fortified Shas' power among an electorate of largely disenfranchised Middle Eastern Jews; the party currently holds 17 seats in the Knesset, just behind Likud. The American Jewish community, which had not previously taken much notice of Sephardic Jewry, has been shaken by the Shas phenomenon. Last week, Hebrew Union College invited Dr. Zvi Zohar, one of Israel's most astute observers of the socio-political scene, to give a lecture in Los Angeles on what many now perceive to be a permanent feature of Israeli politics.

Click here for full article.



In Praise of Empathy: Victor Perera as Other-Sider
San Jose Metro. Sept. 29, 1999

THE FIRST THING I noticed about Victor Perera when we met five years ago was that he is a man of extraordinary empathy—a compassionate observer, a spiritual secularist and certainly someone who cannot be contained by ordinary boundaries. You could call him an exemplar of the Abrahamic line; Abraham, that early rebel who rejected idolatry, gave up his wealthy inheritance and set out across the desert in search of a higher truth. Abraham called himself an "Ivri"—a border crosser or "other-sider."

Click here for full article.



Telemedicine in the 'Hood: Treating Patients From a Remote Location With Aid of High-Technology Communications.
Black Issues in Higher Education. Aug. 20, 1998

By Jordan Elgrably

Sean Morris's eyes worry him; they hurt sometimes and he wonders what to do about it. A friend's report of a six-month wait for exams at the county hospital had discouraged him from seeking help. But recently, the twenty-four-year-old discovered the Carmelitos Teleopthalmology Center only a short walk from his home.

Morris calls to make an appointment and, to his surprise, is scheduled for the next day. After filling out the necessary paperwork on the day of his visit, medical assistant Denise Kelly, leads him into the examination room and introduces him to a young ophthalmology resident from Drew University, Dr. Michelle Banks. Banks first takes several pictures of Morris's eyes from varying angles using a computerized retinal camera.

Click here for full article.



A Celebration of the Jews the World Forgot: Sephardic Jews Are in the Process of Rediscovering Their Language, Their Literature and Their Ties to Each Other
Los Angeles Times. Nov. 4, 1996, pg. 1

As intermarriage and assimilation erode the already small numbers of Sephardic Jews in America, the struggle to preserve their ancient heritage is getting a boost from a modern trend: ethnic chic.

An upcoming anthology will bring new visibility to the 10% of America's Jews who are descended from those cast out of the Iberian Peninsula five centuries ago.

Click here for full article.



TYPICAL AMERICAN 'China Boy' novelist Gus Lee grabs hold of America's emerging multiethnic society by the 'Tiger's Tail' in his latest book
San Jose Metro. May 23, 1996

WHILE READING Gus Lee's third and latest novel, Tiger's Tail, I asked myself, not for the first time, what we mean when we say someone is "a typical American." Since we're all together in this crazy American pastiche — a cultural experiment that can best be likened to a salmagundi, owing to its colorful, flavorful ingredients — it occurred to me that Lee and the multiethnic cast of characters he has thrown together in this semiautobiographical tale are indeed typical Americans.

Click here for full article.



In Your Faith: Many Jewish Gen Xers are Embracing Their Religion and Cultural Icons with Defiance and Bold Irony. But are the piercings and tattoos a fad or spiritual expression?
Los Angeles Times. May 13, 1996, pg. 1

With her purple mohawk and pierced eyebrows, nose and lip, Marina Vainshtein is not, at first glance, your average young Jewish woman. But look further and you'll find evidence of Marina's obsession with the history of her people: a star of David tattooed on her inner left arm, a tattooed armband in Hebrew on her right wrist that reads, "And now we are the last of many." And these are only the first signs that Marina, a 22-year-old Los Angeles photographer, is defining her Judaism in unconventional ways.

Click here for full article.



WILDER AT HEART A new study of eccentrics raises old questions about who is really sane and insane in modern society
San Jose Metro. Feb. 15, 1996

San Jose's Sarah Winchester — the widow of arms manufacturer Oliver Winchester — believed that the ghosts of people killed by her husband's rifles would haunt her "unless she built a magnificent house large enough to accommodate a legion of friendly ghosts to protect her." As neuropsychologist David Weeks and co-author Jamie James write in their new book, Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness, the result was an ever-expanding mansion to which Winchester added rooms for 38 years.

Click here for full article.



Brando's Comments Draw Fire, Support; Jews Should Lead the Call for Diversity
Counterpunch. Los Angeles Times  Apr 22, 1996. pg. 3

Morning Report (Calendar, April 8) referred to Marlon Brando's now-familiar remarks on "Larry King Live" about Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood. Apparently Brando was referring to ethnic stereotyping and a lack of diversity for nonwhite film roles. His remarks offended the Jewish Defense League and other sectors of the Jewish community.

Click here for the rest of this film industry comment, plus a review and a news report.



Touring Poet, Playwright Promote Mideast Peace Detente: An Israeli and a Palestinian are visiting the Southland as part of a program to show Americans that hope is strong for an end to violence.
Los Angeles Times. May. 6, 1995

By Jordan Elgrably

They traveled thousands of miles to promote peace among Jews and Arabs, to show Americans by their very presence together that entente between Israeli Jews and Palestinians Arabs was no longer a mere fantasy.

These days, the ever-fragile peace in the Middle East is threatened by extremists in both the Arab and Jewish camps. But Sami Michael, an Israeli novelist and playwright, and Salem Jubran, a Palestinian poet, have been touring U.S. cities for the last month to tell Americans that hope will not be destroyed by terrorist attacks.

Click here for full article.



Steven Soderbergh: King of the Hill

Introspective and intellectual in the European sense of the word, here is one filmmaker who easily crosses back and forth from independent film to studio blockbuster.
San Jose Metro. Jan. 19, 1993

By Jordan Elgrably

In and out of analysis for years, Steven Soderbergh has a gloominess about him that somehow manages to be cheerful. For those who admired his first film, "sex, lies, and videotape," this kind of introspection is unlikely to be surprising. During a recent interview in downtown L.A., where he was busy shooting "The Quiet Room" for Showtime, Soderbergh took a little time to discuss his new film and reminisce on the past.

Click here for full article.



Anti-Macho Man

Director Pedro Almodovar Once Performed in an Underground Drag Band and Wrote a Pornographic Comic Strip. Now in Eight Acclaimed Movies, He Continues to Relentlessly Skewer Traditional Spanish Values
Los Angeles Times Magazine Jan. 19, 1992. pg. 18

DON'T ASK PEDRO ALMODOVAR HOW HE MADE THE QUANTUM LEAP from rebel of Spain's counterculture to mainstream symbol of commercial respectability. While he hates to admit he's no longer on the edge, he also challenges the bad-boy reputation that has followed him everywhere.
"Hombre," the director says, a corona of cigarette smoke framing his cherub's face as he takes a break on the set of his new movie, "High Heels," "my success surprises me because, I tell you, success is a miracle." Almodovar's voice is dreamy but emphatic: "I'm not an enfant terrible. This is a label the mass media has stuck on me since I began, but when I look at myself, from the beginning, I don't see an enfant terrible."

Click here for full article.



Myth and Matriarchy in Mexico:
Graciela Iturbide on Juchitan

El Paseante*. March 1990.

By Jordan Elgrably

Graciela Iturbide is a small woman with a dreamy disposition and soft, searching eyes that seem to reflect the photographer’s natural desire to see and record things unknown. A student and disciple of the Mexican master Manuel Alvarez Bravo, she came to photography after marriage at nineteen and two children. Iturbide enrolled at Mexico City’s Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos, when she was twenty-six, then settled on photography upon realizing that “the kinds of movies I would’ve wanted to make wouldn’t have been possible within the confines of commercial Mexican cinema.” Her first exposition came seven years later.

Click here for full article.

Back to Top