Stalags / To See if I'm Smiling

Sunday afternoon - back to MIFF, this time with a powerful double-hitter from Israel.

First-

Stalags

- about holocaust porn. Yes, it exists, or did back in the 60s at any rate. The stalags were lurid pulp magazines, describing the torture of captured American World War II pilots at the hands of bustily beautiful SS women. This film by rising young talent Ari Libsker explores the origins and legacy of this short lived but wildly popular phenomenon. Shot in black and white, noir-style, like an old detective thriller, it effectively evokes the era, the feel of pulp literature and the sense of mystery that hangs over the origins of the magazines. The stalags themselves are shown in glorious full colour close-up, so that by contrast they become as excitingly different to the rest of the film as the magazines themselves must have been in comparison to the sparse holocaust literature of their day.

What starts as a titter-worthy film about Jewish grandpas' dirty mags becomes a launch point for a broader examination of Israeli perceptions of the holocaust. You start laughing and end up thinking about deep questions you might not have come to see a film about, had they been presented in isolation. (Whereas who would miss a film about Israeli holocaust porn? I noticed a number of the audience - myself included - looking around at the other audience to see what sort of people come to see a film about holocaust porn. Everyone, as it turned out. The utter wrongness of it proved irresistible.)

The increasing emotional intensity of Stalags was preparation for what came next with-

To See if I'm Smiling

- in which young women who had been drafted to the Israeli army discuss their experiences, their reactions to what they witnessed and most significantly, their reactions to what they themselves had done.

The emotional tone is set high and builds. The women give candid accounts of their time in the military, and each speaks of some event for which they feel shame or regret - a person killed, a suspect incident unreported, a degrading photo taken. The interviews themselves are intense, and the emotive effect is heightened by being woven through with footage from conflict zones where the women saw active service, from the tense daily drag of the checkpoints to wild riots and the aftermath of bombings. You feel the frayed emotional context in which the women were working, you empathise with their darkest moments.

It is a powerful portrait of the psychological impact of conflict. Watching it is like a punch in the heart. I suspect it's the kind of film that could only be born out of personal insight - film-maker Tamar Yarom was a draftee herself once.

Between the two films, it was some emotional journey, as well as a showcase for the young talent coming out of Israel. Emerging into the watery sunlight of a Melbourne winter afterwards was strange, the world around me both comforting and seeming somehow fragile.