2011 26
What is Judaism?
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
While going around the Jewish Ghetto in Berlin I make a video directed to non Jews in which I explain what I think Judaism both from the point of view of Jews and those who hate us. In doing this I get into a topic that is well explained in Wikipedia, that of secular Jewish culture.
And here are some pictures I took in Berlin
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PHILLIP STARK on April 1, 2011 ·
Very good video, Martin. Also an atheist Jew here. I have had people say very antisemitic things to right my face in Spain; sometimes they didn’t know I was Jewish, other times they certainly did. I don’t let anyone get away with it. I started yelling VIVA ESPAÑA JUDIA on stage in Madrid with my hard rock band as a joke just to see what people do ;-).
The narration is good – very engaging.
I would say be sure to hold the shots longer. Usually it’s 5 seconds still, movement (pan or tilt) stop, 5 seconds, go back, stop again 5 seconds. That gives you many shots to work with in editing:
1) static shot
2) movement
3) another static
4) going back movement
5) Another static, different content than the original static if you are shooting anything with movement (traffic, people, etc)
Every moment should tell a story as well, no matter how small. There must be a relationship between the objects in a pan or tilt, ie, basketball on ground, tilt up to the the basket = they have a relationship. Everything should have some sort of relationship. I say crazy stuff in my head when I am shooting like “Ok, here we go, this is the story of the hands typing on a keyboard …to….wow, a computer screen! amazing!
This guy is cheesy but he has some good video tutorials: http://www.izzyvideo.com/
Eduardo Lina on April 2, 2011 ·
Hi, Martin!
As usual, I find your videos “A la Varsavsky” (as you tended to call them once upon a time) very interesting. These have been one way for me to see places I haven’t been to, and for that I wish to thank you.
While I don’t see Judaism entirely the way you do (incidentally, I am a secular Jew of some sort, too), I appreciate the effort you make at explaining what that means to you. I understand what you have said on this post and elesewhere about people in Spain and so many other places not being familiar with Judaism and Jews at all.
When I spent ten days mostly in Madrid as a teacher co-responsible for a delegation of Israeli high school pupils who took part in a student exchange program with pupils from several Madrid schools last month, I found myself doing that sort of explaining here and there. So did many of the pupils I travelled with, as they talked to their non-Jewish hosts (our pupils “lived” with hosts families just like the Madrid kids did here in Israel), with their friends’ fiends, their fhosts’ classmates, etc. Of course, that was not the main thing the Israeli teens did: teenagers have a way of getting to know each other, better than my words here might tell, and we all had a great time feeling among fiends all along.
Martin, you’ve undertaken a hard task here, and I appreciate that.
By the way, I have had to do some more explaining countless times when people have wanted to try to understand perhaps not so much Judaism as what being an Israeli – Argentinean- born Jew means. There is a lot of explaining to do here when it comes to talking to people who try to understand what Israel, not just Judaism, is.
But then, that’s me and not you, isn’t it? I will stick to your task.
I would enjoy one of your “A la Varsavsky” clips in Tel Aviv (a Secular Jewish City that also has a Christian and Muslim Arab part I like, namely Jaffa). I guess when you want to explain modern Secular Judaism, Tel Aviv is the place to do that. I know you’ve been here, yet I’d like to see you tackle that on a Tel Aviv video. It will be worth your and your viewers’ time because then people would see that neither Jews not Israel are simply whatever the mental picture they might have in mind concerning us .
Well, I must say maybe… Yet if we respect each other, the world wil be a better place to live, I guess.
PHILLIP STARK on April 2, 2011 ·
Well if anyone here is going to Israel, my brother has the best tourism company there! http://www.shalomisraeltours.com
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Polac on March 31, 2011 ·
En cada plano, entre travelling y travelling, intenta mantener la cámara parada cinco segundos. Una cosa es verlo y otra muy distinta es enseñarlo en video. Filmar tiene sus propias leyes..