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Chicago Reader |
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Listings for Friday, October 18, through Thursday
October 24, 2002
The Optimists
Capsule by J.R. Jones
From the Chicago Reader
A family memoir that opens out into the larger
currents of history, this 2001 film by Jacky and Lisa Comforty uses a
treasure trove of photographs recovered from the home of Jacky's late
grandmother to document the experience of Bulgarian Jews during the
Holocaust. While some 12,000 Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace and
Macedonia were deported to death camps in the summer of 1943, the
Comfortys were among 50,000 Bulgarian citizens who escaped, largely
through the offices of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, but also through
pressure from trade unions, professional guilds, and a handful of
courageous men in parliament. A key difference between Bulgaria and other
countries of eastern Europe was its integration; as one interviewee points
out, there were no Jewish ghettos in Bulgaria, and the country's Muslim
and Christian citizens were well acquainted with neighbors who were being
targeted for genocide. This rare victory of decency over depravity lies at
the center of the film, though it's dwarfed by anecdotal testimony from
Jewish survivors that echoes numerous other treatments of the Holocaust.
In the end, this admirably broadens our knowledge of the era but doesn't
much deepen it. 82 min.
This movie is currently playing at: Wilmette
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