Anti-Semites Asked To Express Themselves

Provocative, quirky look at Judaism TheStar.com - artsentertainment - Provocative, quirky look at Judaism
April 20, 2007
Martin Knelman

With his provocative new film Kike Like Me, Jamie Kastner has at the very least earned a place in the Toronto showbiz record book. He's the only director ever to get his movie into Hot Docs and the Toronto Jewish Film Festival – and in the same year.

I predict the audience response at these events could be very different, even if next week's two Hot Docs screenings take place just a couple of weeks before the TJFF event in the same part of town. It may be illuminating to compare and contrast the Q&A sessions where Kastner could be asked questions even more irritating than he gets from the characters he meets on screen.

In the film, he hops around the world with his crew, playing a character sort of but not exactly like himself, getting into trouble in many different countries just by asking people to express their attitudes about Jews.

Like Michael Moore, Kastner puts himself at the centre of his movie, and like Moore, he turns himself into a slightly comical pest by confronting startled subjects, making them nervous and putting them on the spot.

But unlike Moore, Kastner – a talented, entertaining 35-year-old veteran of the media trenches – is not basically an attack journalist. And his agenda is not really political.

The film was prompted by his irritation when people asked a certain question: "Are you Jewish?" Why do they want to know? What difference does it make? What attitudes toward Jews lie behind such questions?

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