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If I should Forget Thee

The ancestors of Israeli filmmaker Ron Havilio arrived in the Holy Land shortly after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, and in "Fragments: Jerusalem" he pays loving tribute to the city of his birth and the history of his forebears.
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March 1, 2001

The ancestors of Israeli filmmaker Ron Havilio arrived in the Holy Land shortly after their expulsion from Spain in 1492, and in "Fragments: Jerusalem" he pays loving tribute to the city of his birth and the history of his forebears.

Keeping to a leisurely pace, the six-hour documentary will screen on four evenings on the Sundance Channel, starting March 5.

Havilio mines a treasure-trove of historical paintings, etchings, still photos, postcards and various artifacts, mixed with interviews of aged relatives, to recreate the Jerusalem of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Given current religious tensions among Jews in Israel and deadly confrontations with Arabs, some of the historical photos and reminiscences are startling.

For example, a sharp mid-19th century photo of the Western Wall shows men and women, intermingling freely and praying together.

Grandparents recall how, during the 1921 anti-Jewish disturbances in Jerusalem, an Arab neighbor lent her garb and even her own baby to a Jewish woman so she could safely pass through the Arab mob and seek police help.

By bitter contrast, there are photos of Jewish corpses, victims of the deadly 1929 riots in Hebron, lined up in long rows.

But most of the scenes illustrate and celebrate the daily life of Jerusalem’s citizens and neighborhoods. One wonderful segment shows the official neighborhood "caller" making the rounds and waking up the faithful at 3 a.m. for Selichot services at the Kurdish, Persian and Greek synagogues.

The scene is shown in the documentary’s seventh and final "chapter," titled "Abba" and devoted to Havilio’s father.

The elder Havilio incorporates the transition between the old and modern Israel as he is sworn into the underground Haganah, Bible in one hand and pistol in the other. One casualty of this process is the family’s old Mamila neighborhood, which becomes a no-man’s land in the heart of Jerusalem after the 1948 war and is then "renewed" by urban construction following the reunification of the city in 1967.

"Fragments" has won a number of international awards but is regrettably marred by jerky sequences that jump from one time epoch to another and from general to detailed family chronology. The series is billed as a "mosaic" of Jerusalem, but kaleidoscope would be more apt, and some tight editing would add considerably to the enjoyment of the six-hour experience.

"Fragments: Jerusalem" will air on the Sundance Channel in four Monday installments at 9 p.m., starting March 5 and continuing March 12, 19 and 26.

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