ANXIETY CLUB – Review by Yael Friedman (Guest Post)
At first blush, Wendy Lobel’s Anxiety Club may seem like another straightforward exploration of individual comics battling their demons amid the broader questions about comedy and mental illness. Even Marc Maron, the OG of digging through emotional muck together, is on hand. Yet he is there as a sort of founding father passing on the torch to a new generation who have already internalized the power of vulnerability as critical to both their well-being and their comedy. They are so fluent and self-aware, seamlessly capturing their generation’s earnestness and their own keen ability for expression. From this new baseline, Lobel also builds the next iteration of this conversation and shows how it can evolve.
Read MoreYael Melamede talks ADA: MY MOTHER THE ARCHITECT and profiling Ada Karmi-Melamede – Yael Friedman interviews (Exclusive)
There seems to be an endless appetite for depictions of the lone genius architect, both as a mythological creature walking amongst us, and as a metaphor for just about everything. And yet one of the best movies about one may never get its due. Ada: My Mother The Architect, by Yael Melamede, about her mother, Ada Karmi-Melamede, one of Israel’s most celebrated architects, is an extraordinary film that addresses all the big questions while also portraying a human being who is very much mortal. Yael Mellamede chats with Yael Friedman about making the deeply personal documentary.
Read MoreA REAL PAIN, Holocaust Tourism & Gaza – Essay by Yael Friedman
Somehow the backdrop of a Jewish roots/Holocaust tour of Poland didn’t even feel contrived or “ugh not again” (“Never Again” pun not intended). I’m not bemoaning the “Holocaust movie” – there will always be innumerable ways to portray the Holocaust’s seemingly infinite facets and insights into history and human nature. I’m also not criticizing Holocaust tours – there is really no substitute for having a concrete connection with history, whether one’s own or that of others. Years ago, I finally visited Ireland, after a near lifetime of being engrossed in its history. I knew about the Famine, I’d read so much about the North and the Troubles, and yet it wasn’t until I actually walked through empty countrysides with overgrown Famine Cottages, and hiked the small hills of West Belfast amid the murals and “peace line” barriers, that I could internalize any of it. And when I finally visited Auschwitz — reluctantly, because I felt like really what was there left for me to uncover, in history or within myself — it affected me so viscerally; I realized there is no substitute for that, no text or even survivor testimony that can so quickly plunge you into what that place was.
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