October 22, 2007 | 1:17 pm

Else wins!

Posted by Dikla Kadosh

The touching documentary I wrote about last week, “Looking for Else,”was awarded Best Production at the L.A. Femme Film Festival!

Sandy Kopitopoulos, the director and the grandson of the film’s namesake, emailed me to share the great news:

“I was so nervous and so sure that some other film would win that I didn’t bother inviting anybody, except for a few friends from Switzerland and my production assistant. What a mistake on my part to underestimate the film.”

Sandy also reported that because of the buzz the award generated, there is now talk of distribution. Though it’s too early to count his chickens, Sandy is hoping to be back in Los Angeles very soon to meet with the people who want to buy his film.

Mazal Tov Sandy!

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October 18, 2007 | 4:11 pm

To tell the tale

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Everybody has a story.

True, some are more poignant than others, but the real value of any one story in particular is in the telling of it.

Since the end of WWII, we’ve heard many Holocaust survivor stories, and perhaps none acquired greater recognition or reception than Elie Wiesel’s Night. Yet the encompassing nature of his title immediately suggests: it was a ‘night’ shared by many; and indeed it was.

It was shared by Eva Brown, whose memory of living in 10 different concentration camps is as sharp and vivid at 80 as it was at 16. When she ran out of tears, her story became a place for her pain—and its deepest expression. When she sat at his Shabbat table, David Suissa realized hers was a story that needed to be told, and he wrote about Brown in this week’s Journal.

Eva Brown, more than anyone, knows the gravity of her tale. Together with Thomas Fields-Meyer, she limned her struggle to survive in a book, “If You Save One Life.” This Sunday she’ll share her story with anyone who will come and listen.

Brown’s journey is relayed through memory, through incalculable loss but with the hopeful vision of a woman who lives to tell the tale. No doubt we’ve all seen countless films and photographs of images from the camps—those nightmarish portraits, always black and white—but have we looked upon a face recounting them?  Have we seen the fleshy skin and penetrating eyes of those who bore gravest witness—who smelled the burning of bodies, and slept with the screams of their siblings?

It’s not our story to tell, it’s the story we must listen to. As it goes: if you save one life, it’s as if you save an entire world; and if you listen to one story, it’s as if you hear the echoes of six million.

Eva Brown will share her story this Sunday, October 21 and launch her book, “If You Save One Life,” co-authored by Thomas Fields-Meyer. 2 p.m. Free. Museum of Tolerance, 9786 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. www.museumoftolerance.com

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October 17, 2007 | 6:43 pm

Lost: mother; Last seen: Switzerland 1937

Posted by Dikla Kadosh

Lily Kopitopoulos lost her mother the day she was born.

Nearly fifty years later, she was reunited with her in Hollywood.

“Looking for Else” is a heart-twisting, eye-moistening documentary about a German Jewish girl who gave birth to a baby she was told was still born. Crushed but faced with mounting danger in Nazi Germany, 16-year-old Else Siegel buried her secret deep inside her and fled to the United States.

She married (several times), had a daughter and developed a successful career as a music editor in Hollywood. But the dead baby still haunted her.

Lily grew up in Switzerland, where she was adopted by a gentile family. At age 47, she decided to resolve the great mystery of her missing mother. Why did she give her up? Did she survive the Holocaust? Did she know Lily was alive?

A relative called Else one day informing her that an ad in the paper said her daughter was looking for her. She immediately picked up the phone and dialed Switzerland.

“Hello.”

“Hello, are you Lily? This is your mother, Else.”

Screened last week as part of the L.A. Femme Film Festival, “Looking For Else” is a riveting documentary lovingly created by Lily Kopitopoulos’ son, Sandy. The story takes you through the two women’s lives, separated for so long by a lack of knowledge, to the point of their reunification and their subsequent struggle to rebuild a family torn asunder by war.

I sincerely hope that Sandy finds distribution for this remarkable film so that more people have the opportunity to see it.

Else, whose last name is now Blangsted, is an incredible figure aside from this story. She edited the music for classics such as “Tootsie” and “The Color Purple,” as well as dozens of other movies. Sharp, charismatic and humorous, Else made her presence known at the Oct. 11 screening.

As soon as the film was over, she announced loud and clear for the entire theater to hear, “That’s me. I’m Else.”

It was as if she wanted to save everyone the trouble of looking for Else.

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October 16, 2007 | 12:02 pm

Winos in WeHo

Posted by Danielle Berrin

There was something ironic about attending a wine tasting the same week the Torah portion depicts a self-medicating Noah planting a vineyard and getting trashed. I paused to consider this as I ascended the steps to a historic 1936 apartment building where a crowded residence filled with interested wine consumers gathered to imbibe. When I stepped inside, I was stamped with a nametag and poured a glass of sparkling—in the midst of a busy week, swishing the sweet bubbles around my tongue was a relief to me, too.

Standing at the center of a dimly-lit drawing room, in a satiny black dress and pointed high heels was Courtney Cochran: a smart, sassy sommelier from San Francisco. An elegant eyepiece-yes, but with a self-assured braininess uncommon in such leggy blondes. She held a glass of Chardonnay while explaining the nuances of kosher wine to Stephen S. Wise’s “W” Group. In town to kick off her book tour for “Hip Tastes” Ms. Cochran prepared a private tasting focused on kosher and Israeli wines for her Jewish hosts. Guests sipped while they listened, eager to learn what the young woman had to say about mevushal.

“Boiling wine causes it to lose freshness,” she said and proceeded to pour from bottles of boiled-to-the-brim Pinot Noir so everyone could taste for themselves. The crowd was only too happy to oblige…Cochran’s knowledge of kosher winemaking, like her expertise in other varietals and regions, was astounding. I only wondered, why would a non-Jewish wine cognoscente make a point of learning about parve wineries? The answer is in Cochran’s business background, which alerted her to the importance of niche marketing. She makes it her business to know her audience and she seized on an opportunity to reach a new, young generation of connoisseurs who were otherwise being ignored by the wine industry.

Not anymore.

In fact, Cochran launched her own enterprise as a private sommelier, where amongst other things, she designs tasting events specifically targeting young people - young people who are spending more money on wine than their parents did, she notes. Her book, “Hip Tastes” speaks to that audience, replacing snobby winespeak with a saucy rap that is both interesting and accessible.

Her cutting edge approach has also led her to discover under-the-radar, emergent wine regions, of which she considers the Golan Heights one. Since Israel invited viticulturalists from France to incorporate the latest technology in winemaking, Israeli vineyards are on their way up.

It’s all rather sensible for a people who bless the fruit of the vine every Sabbath. Although Noah was surely fascinated by the art of viticulture, wine isn’t usually an inebriate’s drink of choice. With a low alcohol content typically between 11-15%, he would have been much better off with the nearest bottle of scotch.

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October 12, 2007 | 3:08 pm

Holy cow! and chicken and turkey at Subway

Posted by Dikla Kadosh

Hallelujah! Subway has seen the light: kosher sandwiches is where it’s at. Two local Jewish entrepreneurs (25-year-olds!) opened the first glatt kosher Subway franchise in the western United States on Monday, Oct. 1.

Jay Firestone, Jewish Journal editorial assistant, writer, video-blogger, comedian and all-around super guy, wrote a full article on this major Jewish buzz item; read it here.

Danielle and I tagged along with Jay this past Wednesday as he visited the newest eatery on Pico Blvd. in the heart of the “hood,”  and videotaped the experience:

Danielle, a recent kosher convert, compared her turkey sub to those of her treyf past: “It tastes exactly the same!”

I decided to try a sub I’ve never had at Subway, because Subway never had it before: a shawarma sub. I have to say, it was quite tasty.

I can’t wait for owners John and Sammy, who were sweet and accommodating and impressively sharp, to open up a kosher subway in my hood!

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October 10, 2007 | 12:46 pm

Sitting pretty

Posted by Danielle Berrin

Sitting in her intricate swivel chair, the one in which she sits to have her makeup done, you become Marie Antoinette. You see the things she saw; the green gardens of Versailles, an opulent boudoir - the trappings of courtly life. But you also see yourself, sitting at the intersection of reality and fantasy, the projected image of your own body set inside The Petit Trianon. The private retreat Louis XVI built for his queen is now Nicole Cohen’s gift to you.

“Please Be Seated,” a video installation commissioned by the Getty Museum to reinvigorate interest in their permanent collection invites viewers to transcend time and space by using their bottoms. Artist Nicole Cohen worked with an LA based furniture designer to replicate 18th century chairs from the Getty’s French decorative arts collection. To contextualize the chairs in their original settings, Cohen traveled to France where she filmed period rooms at the Louvre, Versailles and Nissim de Camondo museums in Paris. Intercutting footage from the Getty’s period rooms with those in France, Cohen created distinct videos for each chair and set up a “whitescreen,” where surveillance cameras project the viewer into the photographed spaces when they sit down.

It’s hard to imagine any art exhibit having the power to transport the viewer to another time and place, but Cohen’s creation is surprisingly effective. By manipulating the environment, her work activates the viewer’s imagination. Perhaps courtiers have come to sip tea or dressmakers to fit you in fine silks. At once, Angelenos are permitted to enter rooms once reserved for royalty alone, and the contents of each space provokes fantasies of lifestyle and history. Cohen even filmed actors in some of the rooms, imposing contemporary reality onto historical past. The rooms are real but what of you in them? Are the actors more real or present than the viewer that steps into a live feed?

Where the visceral meets the virtual, Cohen’s videos challenge traditional assumptions about documentary technique, because her footage evokes an image that is “unreal.” But fantasy is fun, and this one’s also free. Instead of a round-trip ticket to Europe, take a trip to the Getty. Travel to 18th century France, sit in neoclassical furniture and envisage yourself in a stately palace room. Afterwards, if you’re feeling fantasy-full, there’s always the 405 for a big, fat dose of reality.

(All photos courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.)

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October 9, 2007 | 5:49 pm

Berkeley

Posted by Dikla Kadosh

There’s more to the film “Berkeley,” opening Friday, Oct. 12, than just a bunch of doped up college kids with shaggy hair protesting the war, having sex, and making groovy music.

Actually, there isn’t a whole lot more than that.

The heavily autobiographical film is the work of Bobby Roth, an accomplished television director who is currently working on the hot TV series “Prison Break.”  His real passion, however, is filmmaking and Roth has managed to sneak away from the corporate studios several times to create his own independent films. “Jack the Dog” and “Manhood” were based on the death of his father and his sister’s murder.

“Berkeley” is like a prequel to those stories. At its epicenter is Ben Sweet, a soapy clean Jewish kid from a middle-class immigrant home who is sent to college to get a practical education and avoid the draft. Poor Papa Sweet (played by Henry Winkler), he had no idea what he was getting into when he sent his only son to Berkeley in the middle of the 1960s student revolution.

Sweet is played by Roth’s boyishly handsome son, Nick. The awkward but endearing Sweet grows out his hair, joins a rock band, drops acid and beds a few free thinking daughters of the revolution while the anti-war protests rage around him. Although he participates in the demonstrations and sit-ins, Sweet seems more baffled than inspired by the movement. The character lacks conviction and passion and consequently taints the movie with the same lackluster hue.

Much more heated was the Q&A discussion that followed the preview screening, during which a middle-aged man repeatedly asked “What the fuck are WE going to do?” (about the Bush administration and the Iraq war).

Another audience member asked Nick Roth, who attends UC Berkeley as his father did, why he thought there is such a marked absence of student protests against the current war. Someone shouted, “Because there is no draft!” Nick’s response was vague - something about how his friends at Berkeley thought the 60s anti-war movement was awesome, but he couldn’t explain why no one was moved to replicate it.

Though the movie itself was not nearly as powerful or moving as it could have been, if “Berkeley” succeeds in sparking discussions between 60-year-olds and 20-year-olds about American foreign policy in the past and the present, then the film has served Roth’s purpose.

Opening Oct. 12 at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood and Laemmle’s Colorado One in Pasadena.

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October 8, 2007 | 12:23 pm

Morimoto mashes it up

Posted by Danielle Berrin

“Do you like my socks?” asks Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, lifting his Japanese robe to reveal black and white striped socks scrunched between polka dot sandals. The audience laughs; delighted by his silliness, a playful image of the world-renowned culinary talent better known for the scowling seriousness portrayed on “Iron Chef America” than the humor and charm he exudes in front of a live audience. Morimoto’s attire is symbolic of his culinary style, he dresses his feet like he mixes food cultures, and despite an almost indecipherable accent, he knows how to entertain.

Morimoto traveled from New York City to the Skirball to promote his first cookbook, “The New Art of Japanese Cooking,” which details his signature style combining French technique, Italian simplicity and Japanese flavor. Evan Kleiman, owner of Angeli Caffe and host of KCRW’s “Good Food,” radio program shared a glass of Morimoto’s Hazlenut Ale and engaged him in conversation about his childhood, his global cuisine and his passion for knives.

His food ambitions began when a shoulder injury prohibited his dream of a professional baseball career. Childhood memories dining with his family at sushi restaurants inspired him to try his hand at slicing sashimi.

“Was your mother a good cook?” Kleiman asked. “Actually, that’s why I became a chef,” he confessed.

Baseball would amount to a lifelong hobby as his culinary mastery catapulted him to celebrity-chef stardom on “Iron Chef America,” the highly rated Food Network show. But the glory of winning his coveted title hasn’t been all fun and games - in fact, he dislikes the intense pressure of the cooking competition.

It’s obvious Morimoto is happiest slicing slabs of Japanese toro using his favorite two knives from a 300-piece collection designed especially for him. During his cooking demonstration, he grated fresh daikon radish into fettucine-flat slices and sauteed them in marinara sauce. Then, he unveiled a giant piece of raw tuna which he used for his “tuna pizza,” an inventive dish of grilled tortilla bread (from Trader Joe’s!) brushed with eel sauce and topped with cherry tomatoes, jalapenos, herbs and a garlic aioli.

While in Los Angeles, Morimoto dined at rival chefs’ restaurants: Mario Batali’s Osteria Mozza and Wolfgang Puck’s Beverly Hills steakhouse, Cut.

So who is his favorite chef? Morimoto instantly replied, “My wife.”

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