In this week’s podcast, Glenn and Daniel jump back to their final selection from the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, Keep Quiet, a documentary about Csanád Szegedi, a former far-right, antisemitic political party leader in Hungary who discovers that he has a (still living) Jewish grandmother, which causes a sea change in his political and religious beliefs. Or…does it? If this film had been a great big pat on the back for tolerance and pluralism, we expect it would’ve been pretty tedious. But like The Imposter before it, this film’s definite strength is its ambiguity. Dive with us into an exploration of this fascinating figure and the skepticism that he (deservedly) faces from both his old community of nationalists and neo-Nazis, and his new community of Orthodox Jews. We’re joined once again by friend of the show, local author Erika Spoden (32:11).
May contain NSFW language.
Keep Quiet is available on Amazon Video, and we highly recommend checking it out. As this film deals in ambiguity, there will not be a separate spoilers section in our discussion. Please consider this both a recommendation and spoiler warning for the entire film.
http://archive.org/download/FilmwonkPodcast-Episode108-keepQuietdir.JosephMartinSamBlair/FilmwonkPodcast-Episode108-keepQuietdir.JosephMartinSamBlairsjff2017.mp3FilmWonk rating: 9/10 (Glenn/Daniel), 10/10 (Erika)
Show notes:
- Music for this episode is the track “Train of Thought“, from the film’s score by Phillip Sheppard.
- Special thanks to Erika for joining us this week – her memoir is titled Strawberries for 50 People, and it is available on Amazon Kindle.
- Thanks as well to the Seattle Jewish Film Festival and Smarthouse Creative for helping us cover so much of the festival (for the first time) this year – we’ll definitely be back!
Listen above, or download: Keep Quiet (right-click, save as, or click/tap to play on a non-flash browser)
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