Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Adoptive Families magazine review
This documentary, about a Vermont family who adopts a 10-year-old girl, can be seen as a sweet story, an intimate portrait of Claudia, Rob, Eli, and, finally, Meskerem. But One Family: An Ethiopian Adoption (Jim Ritvo and Dave Raizman) has broader implications, too. People are beginning to speak about openness in international adoption, but almost always in adversarial terms--baby stealing, baby selling. So, the scenes in which Meskerem's birth family--her adoring grandmother, big brothers, and aunts--entrust her to her new American parents are awe-inspiring, and a lesson for us all. This, you realize, is how it should be. Split by race, distance, poverty, disease, and grief, two families are connected by a delicate hinge, Meskerem, and they become one.
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As the filmmakers follow the couple, they found that issues of race were not nearly as important to the people they interviewed in Africa, where many other priorities are of higher concern.
The film documents the family’s return to the United States for a little less than two months, during which time there is an examination of the various cultures that Meskerem must integrate into her life, beginning with the fast for Yom Kippur. For someone who lived a life with little food and may have often gone hungry, the notion of fasting is a difficult concept to grasp, especially at ten years old.
For those who are intrigued by the various dimensions of interfaith and multicultural families within a Jewish community, this is certainly a film to consider. It is a Big Tent indeed for those who wish to enter it and live within it.
A 35 minute DVD documentary of the Cohen family's journey from Vermont to Ethiopia to be united with their daughter Meskerem who was orphaned by HIV/AIDS and is leaving all that is familiar to her -- her extended family, her culture, her language -- to begin a new life in America wrapped in the arms of her new family.
Yesterday we spent the afternoon at a fundraiser in which we viewed this beautiful film. The featured family is one of the families in There Is No Me Without You. It's a truly wonderful story of loss and love. I highly recommend this film. 1.21.08
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