-- This review may contain spoilers --
I saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's amazing that one man could have three movies made about his work, but that's the case with Pierre Dulaine. Mad Hot Ballroom was a surprise hit (for a documentary), being shown in theaters for six months. Take the Lead was a dramatization, with Antonio Banderas playing Pierre. That was much more Hollywood-ish, but there was a tango in it that was worth the price of admission!
An obvious question is whether Dancing in Jaffa is just Mad Hot Ballroom set in the Middle East. I don't think so. I like movies that turn out to be about something other than what you think they are. People may buy tickets for this because they liked MHBr or like ballroom dancing, or have heard of the Dancing Classrooms program, and they'll be glad they did. But my takeaway was more about the Middle East than anything else, and a team of Clydesdales couldn't drag me to see a film on the Middle East. After all we've read, the decades we've seen of strike (and the centuries of strife before that we know about), the endless rounds of peace talks, truces, terrorism, protests, evictions, posturing, threats and war, I never want to hear about that place again. And yet, we need to. DiJ gently, very gently, exposes us to slices of life we'd never see, bitterness and sweetness, but doesn't drift into the saccharine.
Kids get rescued by the most unlikely people and the most unlikely activities. Chess ramps up the mind of a boy in the ghetto. Choir keeps a young girl from hanging out with the wrong crowd. An environmental program rounds up toughs to clean an urban riverbank and one of them becomes a biologist. Still, ballroom dancing seems a particularly obscure way to approach this. Dulaine himself admits it. But it's his life, so naturally he deploys his tool. He was born in Jaffa so you can't criticize him for cultural imperialism or some such. It's a worthwhile program and is continuing there, and in other cities around the world.
It's a worthwhile film, too. More than an advertisement for a particular NGO, it's a testament to the power of one person, using this implausible approach, to do something that at least brightens the days of some children. Twenty years from now, I'd like to hear the interview with someone who advanced out of poverty or depression, who when asked what spurred him or her on, begins his or her answer with, "well you're not going to believe this, but the turning point for me was a foxtrot in the fifth grade taught by this guy named Pierre Dulaine "
I saw this at the Tribeca Film Festival. It's amazing that one man could have three movies made about his work, but that's the case with Pierre Dulaine. Mad Hot Ballroom was a surprise hit (for a documentary), being shown in theaters for six months. Take the Lead was a dramatization, with Antonio Banderas playing Pierre. That was much more Hollywood-ish, but there was a tango in it that was worth the price of admission!
An obvious question is whether Dancing in Jaffa is just Mad Hot Ballroom set in the Middle East. I don't think so. I like movies that turn out to be about something other than what you think they are. People may buy tickets for this because they liked MHBr or like ballroom dancing, or have heard of the Dancing Classrooms program, and they'll be glad they did. But my takeaway was more about the Middle East than anything else, and a team of Clydesdales couldn't drag me to see a film on the Middle East. After all we've read, the decades we've seen of strike (and the centuries of strife before that we know about), the endless rounds of peace talks, truces, terrorism, protests, evictions, posturing, threats and war, I never want to hear about that place again. And yet, we need to. DiJ gently, very gently, exposes us to slices of life we'd never see, bitterness and sweetness, but doesn't drift into the saccharine.
Kids get rescued by the most unlikely people and the most unlikely activities. Chess ramps up the mind of a boy in the ghetto. Choir keeps a young girl from hanging out with the wrong crowd. An environmental program rounds up toughs to clean an urban riverbank and one of them becomes a biologist. Still, ballroom dancing seems a particularly obscure way to approach this. Dulaine himself admits it. But it's his life, so naturally he deploys his tool. He was born in Jaffa so you can't criticize him for cultural imperialism or some such. It's a worthwhile program and is continuing there, and in other cities around the world.
It's a worthwhile film, too. More than an advertisement for a particular NGO, it's a testament to the power of one person, using this implausible approach, to do something that at least brightens the days of some children. Twenty years from now, I'd like to hear the interview with someone who advanced out of poverty or depression, who when asked what spurred him or her on, begins his or her answer with, "well you're not going to believe this, but the turning point for me was a foxtrot in the fifth grade taught by this guy named Pierre Dulaine "