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By Joe Bendel. A prestigious Wall Street firm specializing in Treasury securities, Cantor Fitzgerald suffered more losses on September 11th than any other organization, including the New York Police and Fire Departments. The numbers are staggering: 658 of their 960 New York employees died that morning. However, Cantor’s story did not end there. Filmmaker Danielle Gardner, whose brother Doug was one of the 658, documents CEO Howard Lutnick’s efforts to support the anguished Cantor families while desperately working to keep the firm afloat during its darkest hours in Out of the Clear Blue Sky (see clip above), which is currently screening as part of the 2012 DocuWeeks New York.

Had it not been the morning of his young son’s first day of school, Lutnick surely would have been at Cantor at the time of the attack. With offices several floors above the initial impact zone, Cantor employees never had a chance. Rushing to the scene only to witness the Towers’ collapse, Lutnick and a handful of senior staff began scrambling to determine who survived. With the enormity of their loss weighing on him, a distraught Lutnick became the public face of the tragedy. Yet, as some family members lashed out Lutnick in frustration, the media turned on Cantor, hard.

Blue’s stories of grief and remembrance are truly heartrending. Surprisingly, though, it is also a compelling business documentary, providing an inside account of Cantor’s fight to survive during the precarious days following the fateful Tuesday. Their resourcefulness is quite extraordinary, conducting Twenty-First Century financial transactions with scrounged office supplies. Of course, the stakes were high. Had the firm folded, Lutnick’s ability to help Cantor families would have been severely limited. Indeed, that behind-the-scenes look at Cantor’s tenacious rebound is what sets Blue apart and above other well meaning 9-11 documentaries.

As a member of their ranks, Gardner clearly earned the trust of Cantor families, eliciting some unusually eloquent testimony from her interview subjects. While there are many emotionally charged scenes, the film never feels intrusive or exploitative. (The only exception might be Lutnick’s tearful television interviews recorded within days of the attack, which have already been replayed innumerable times in the media.) Indeed, Gardner deftly walks the tightrope, directly conveying the rawness of survivors’ pain, without reveling in it.

While the media does not cover itself in glory for uncritically recycling complaints against Lutnick, the overall film is scrupulously nonpartisan. Too many misguided people would prefer to forget or deny the horrific events of September 11th. Worse still, some might even be inclined to dismiss Cantor as an instrument of the “1%” amid the current polarized climate. Blue acts as a valuable corrective to such impulses, reminding viewers the Cantor employees lost at the World Trade Center were all individuals from diverse backgrounds, who left behind friends and loved ones. Poignantly engaging but also quite an enlightening portrait of corporate resiliency, Out of the Clear Blue Sky screens through Thursday (8/16) at the IFC Center in New York, with a week’s run at the Laemmle Noho to follow (8/17-8/23) in Los Angeles, as part of this year’s DocuWeeks.

LFM GRADE: A-

Posted on August 13th, 2012 at 1:39pm.

By Joe Bendel. Theodor Herzl once advocated mass Jewish conversion to Christianity, but would nonetheless become a unifying leader for the Jewish Diaspora. Profoundly concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism, his fears would be dreadfully justified in the years soon following his death. Yet, they provided the early impetus for the Zionist movement that ultimately led to the founding of the State of Israel. His life and mission are documented in Richard Trank’s It is No Dream: The Life of Theodor Herzl, which opens this Friday in New York.

Herzl believed that if an anti-Semitic wave could sweep across France, the cultural capitol of Europe in the 1890’s—and it was—it could happen anywhere. Never particularly religious, covering the Dreyfus Affair as a journalist forced Herzl to take stock of his own Jewish heritage and seriously address the increasing volume of European anti-Semitism. His early ideas proved impractical on further reflection, but the notion of a sovereign Jewish state (not original to Herzl) remained a viable option.

For the remaining years of his life, Herzl became the preeminent leader of the movement to forge a Jewish homeland, making his case to some of Europe’s most influential power brokers, including the Kaiser. For Herzl, the only question was where. Eventually, the colonial territory entrusted to England by a League of Nations mandate, known at the time as “Palestine,” became the obvious choice, given the Jewish people’s deep roots to the region. However, Herzl was appalled by the backwardness and poverty of the British Mandate during his first visit. Still, this did not disqualify the small tract of land from consideration. Arguably, it made even more sense on several levels.

Produced by Moriah Films, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s film production subsidiary, Dream is a welcome and necessary antidote to malicious attempts to make “Zionism” a dirty word in the media. Trank and co-writer-co-producer Rabbi Marvin Hier clearly illustrate the alarming nature of anti-Semitism during Herzl’s lifetime, largely leaving unspoken (but ever-present in viewer’s minds) the enormity of the Holocaust, which would tragically vindicate all his fears.

Narrated by Academy Award winner Sir Ben Kingsley, with fellow Oscar winner Christoph Waltz giving voice to Herzl’s letters and writings, Dream has a fair amount of star power for a serious historical documentary. With an elegant score composed and conducted by the Emmy winning Lee Holdridge (whose credits including Moonlighting), Dream is a pretty prestigious package, but the real attraction is Herzl’s short but epic life-story, which will probably come as a revelation to many viewers outside the Jewish faith. Though perhaps not the target market, it is those viewers of good will not especially schooled in Jewish history who would get the most out of the film.

Consistently fascinating and never dry, Dream tells a compelling story that remains only too timely for the world today. Well paced and informative, It is No Dream is recommended for general audiences, regardless of religion or political affiliation, when it opens this Friday (8/10) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on August 8th, 2012 at 1:05pm.

By Joe Bendel. A Catholic requiem in a concentration camp might sound like a problematic endeavor. So it was, but not necessarily for the reasons one might assume. It was actually the programming choice of a group of prisoners, led by a remarkable maestro. The story of the Terezin performances of Verdi’s Requiem and the subsequent on-site re-staging for survivors decades later are documented in Doug Shultz’s Defiant Requiem, which screens as part of the 2012 DocuWeeks in New York and Los Angeles.

Verdi’s Requiem is a draining chorale work, in many ways. It would not seem like a natural piece of music to unwind with after a hard day of labor—slave labor to be more accurate. However, these were far from normal times for the Terezin (a.k.a. Theresienstadt) concentration camp captives. These Czech citizens had been swept up by the conquering National Socialists and held at Terezin until they were deported to a death camp. Nonetheless, many died at Terezin due to the inhuman conditions, but a determined young conductor harnessed the power of music to keep their spirits up.

Gathering those interested around an old upright providentially discovered in the basement of his barracks, Rafael Schächter started his make-shift chorus off with Czech popular songs and Smetana operas, but he eventually coaxed them into the Requiem. The key might have been his translation of Verdi’s Latin into Czech. As Murry Sidlin, the conductor of the commemorative Requiem concerts observes, the Requiem’s lyrics hold tremendous meaning for anyone unjustly denied their liberty and dignity. Rife with prophesies of judgment from above, Verdi’s opus is not just a requiem. It became a J’Accuse—an indictment of the National Socialist crimes so bold, only the International Red Cross inspectors could miss its significance.

Yes, the Requiem was performed at that Terezin, the concentration camp temporarily remodeled into a Potemkin village to fool the Red Cross. It was there that Sidlin brought members of Catholic University of America chorale ensemble and a full orchestra, for an emotional performance.

In fact, mounting Verdi’s Requiem and telling the story of Schächter has become a mission for Sidlin, who serves as the film’s musical director and one of its primary commentators. It is an important story, but the film also fosters a greater appreciation for Verdi’s work. Wisely, Shultz takes a rather traditional documentarian approach, largely approximating the shape of Sidlin’s music-with-historical-context concert presentations of the Requiem, filling in here and there with tastefully recreated scenes in the rehearsal cellar and some animated sequences adapted from surviving Terezin drawings. This is hardly the place to get experimental, after all.

Granted, anyone who knows anything about the Holocaust and the fate of the Terezin prisoners in particular will sadly know exactly what to expect from the film. Nonetheless, it deepens our understanding of life at Terezin and offers up an example of music as an instrument of survival. Frankly, hearing some of the stormier passages promising divine justice will likely make viewers’ hair stand on end. Highly recommended precisely for such memorable moments, Defiant Requiem screens through Thursday (8/9) in New York at the IFC Center as part of DocuWeeks New York as well the week of August 17-23 during DocuWeeks LA.

Posted on August 6th, 2012 at 12:58pm.