קיימת גרסא בעברית בפוסט לפניו
When I was three years old, I was asked what I would like to be when I grew up. I contemplated this question with utmost seriousness, and was quite stressed over answering it. I felt I had to answer this question, as if people decide on their future career from the second they emerge from their mother’s womb!
In kindergarten, my world was summed up by three possible vocations: I would either be a doctor, a kindergarten teacher or that thing that daddy does. It seemed inappropriate for me to be a kindergarten teacher, believing (rightfully) that I could not stand children, and since I didn’t really know what it was that daddy did, I decided that becoming a doctor was all I had left.
I wasn’t a popular girl in kindergarten. It was always clear to everybody that I was an outsider, though nobody knew why. Maybe it was because I was relatively short. The hierarchy in kindergarten was very simple: you were as popular as you were high. When the teachers wanted to line us up, they’d do it by height. Arik was first – the tallest and most popular. Tolik was last – short, rejected, with a monstrous personality. I was next in line.
During our Christmas pageant (yes, we had such a thing), our teacher Lena cast children for two glamorous lead roles: the shepherd and his sheep. Arik, naturally, got the part of the shepherd. Whoever was to get the part of the sheep would be considered his girlfriend for Christmas time, and so it was obviously a sought-after role. For Lena this posed a dilemma – her choice was between Ella, the most popular girl in kindergarten , and me.
One day Arik discovered that my grandmother had returned from a vacation in Israel and brought some “Turbo” chewing gum back with her. It was the now-extinct gum with the luxury sports car on its wrapper. At the time we used to collect gum wrappers. I had a grand collection of wrappers from the gum my grandmother would bring me from Israel, and from the Jewish market where gum was smuggled from Israel.
I couldn’t believe it when Arik approached me, as casually as possible and accompanied by an equally impressive entourage, and said: “If you give me your gum, I’ll let you be my sheep.” Wow, how glamorous! What an honor!
And that was how I got to be the sheep in the Christmas pageant. Mom told the whole family how her only daughter got the lead in the pageant and even made friends with Arik and his group. I learned that one needs more than talent in life to achieve your goals, more than wisdom and sharpness; sometimes you need Turbo chewing gum.
But that was my only moment of glamour in kindergarten. My mom came over every once in a while to pick me up from kindergarten and looked for me among the children playing. I could always be found alone in the corner, directing plays with dolls and teddy bears.
On television, we saw the cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. I realized what I wanted to be when I grew up: I wanted to be a cosmonaut. I’d look up at the starry night’s sky and at the moon, smiling back at me, and I’d say to myself that one day I’d join them, because I was out of place down here. I didn’t belong on this earth, and I had nothing to look for here…
At the age of six or seven I was told we were leaving Moldova soon. I asked, where to? The only countries I knew of were America – the land of possibilities, wealth, and happy colors, Disneyland as it were, and Africa – a large country where it was really really hot. To America, my mom said.
Happy as can be, I told everybody I was leaving for America. One girl said that my mom was playing a trick on me, and that we were probably moving to Israel. All parents lie about moving to America, she said, because they’re afraid people will discover we’re Jews or something like that. I cried and insisted that I was never lied to – we were moving to America!!! Yahoo!!!
Imagine my bitter disappointment as I stood at the Ben Gurion national airport, under a blue and white flag with the Star of David at its center, missing the color red and the rest of the stars.
“Welcome to Israel!!” Mom rejoiced, smug with happiness over the thought that she’d finally brought her daughter to Jerusalem, where she’d never have to experience anti-Semitism.
“But… but…” I muttered under my breath.
“But what?”
“But you promised me America!” I cried.
“Israel is much better for us. This is the Jewish state! You’re a Jew! You should be happy and proud you’ve made it here. Grandma and Grandpa have been dreaming of this for generations! This is where we belong,” Mom lectured.
If this was where I was going to belong, then I was happy. It seemed that was the root of the problem – I was a Jew, and in Moldova that prevented me from belonging. Israel would solve all of my problems.
I made do with American television in the Israeli city of Bat Yam. I mostly watched Beverly Hills 90210 and other shows like it. I spent most of my first years in front of the television, because outside the kids wouldn’t play with Russian girls. I learned Hebrew quickly by way of reading subtitles on the TV screen. Mom worried that I was wasting my life in front of the TV or buried in a book. I told her I was learning a lot from TV and knew TV shows by heart. “But what will that give you? What will you get out of watching people kissing all day long? And Kelly, that Barbie? She talks like a cat, meow meow,” Mom complained. But I loved all those glamorous love affairs. And I couldn’t wait to be big enough to go through such exciting drama: love, sex, betrayal, beautiful clothes, etc. It seemed super-cool to me that when you were an adult and going through those things you were considered even cooler, worthy of wearing a leather jacket.
I’d always dreamed of a super-cool man with a leather jacket, a bald strip through his eyebrow and a tortured soul. One that would sit on the steps and look up at me without lifting his head when I passed in front of him. The ultimate bad-boy, as smooth as his hair grease, who would sweep me off my feet and onto his motorcycle, then turn me into a bad girl by taking my innocence at the Spring Dance. Then he’d cheat on me with my best friend, which would make me super-cool too. Because that’s how things worked on Beverly Hills.
After I’d learned Hebrew, the kids still didn’t like playing with me. By then they’d made up a new excuse – I was hard of hearing. But I found other ways to connect with my classmates. I began to perform for them and sing at the end of the day on Fridays, during show and tell. The class loved watching me sing for them.
That’s when I realized I wanted to perform on a stage and sing. Of course! After all, I’d always sing in the car on trips with my parents, and my mom would look at me lovingly and say, “Oh, Anichka, my love, you sing just like your father.” So I was meant to be a star!
When we left Bat Yam for Ashdod there was one hope for me. Bat Yam didn’t like Russians. This was all before the great Russian immigration to the Bat Yam of today. In Bat Yam of the early 90s, if you saw a Russian on the street you’d say, “Wow, look, a Russian!” That’s how rare it was. In Ashdod, everyone was Russian. This was the place where I would belong. But it didn’t happen there either.
In 2nd grade my hearing problem was diagnosed and it was decided that I should wear a hearing aid. Even though I could still hear at an adequate level, the doctors wanted to provide me with maximal amplification. The first time I wore hearing aids I felt as if the world had turned a thousand times louder, and I could hear it all, like Superman. Naturally, it was torture, and I wanted to toss the hearing aids under the wheels of a bus. But eventually I got used to it. There was only one problem – without the hearing aids, the world was on mute.
Mom refused to send me to special classes for deaf and hearing-impaired children like the social worker expected her to. She insisted that I fit in to the regular classes. I had trouble keeping up with everybody, and sometimes my late responses made me appear dim-witted. Mom wanted me to be like everybody else and fit in. Of course, I never did fit in, yet it was the wisest decision my mother ever made for me. Every day at school was a fight to survive; getting through basic communication without being laughed at, without getting cursed at or mocked. I still dreamed of moving to outer space and living among the stars, but math and science were not my field of expertise. I simply wasn’t good with numbers. It probably had nothing to do with the fact that my mother was a math teacher, and often times solving an equation felt like there was a gun against my head, that I would die if I didn’t get it right. And that’s how the dream of astronomy was set aside.
There was one ray of light in our neighborhood. It was a new neighborhood, only just developing, full of Russian tenants who’d recently started to populate it. Their children were there as well, and all of them were new to the place, coming from other parts of the country. At first we all played with each other, but as time passed, groups began to form. The kids of building 31 wouldn’t hang out with building 33, but sometimes the kids from 29 would hang out with both buildings. But no matter what, you’d never hang out with buildings 38 or 41; such a thing was unheard of.
That’s how I met Maya from the first floor and Raya from the third floor. We played skip-rope together, and they were surprisingly nice to me. They were much more patient with me. They made an effort to make sure I could hear them well and understand them even if they spoke Russian (which I had started to forget).They even got mad at other kids, defending me. When I started to sing while playing skip-rope, they stopped and looked at me, stunned.
“What?” I asked.
“What are you doing?” Asked Maya.
“Singing…?”
“Then don’t.”
“What? Why?”
Maya changed colors and donned her walking-on-eggshells expression (which she still does to this day). “Hmmm… you’re out of tune.” I looked to Raya, who confirmed this.
“What? No I’m not.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“You don’t know anything about singing. I perform for the whole class every Friday! And they begged for me to sing for them!”
I accused them of being jealous and unsupportive, and ran to my mom, crying.
“Mom, they say I’m out of tune.”
Mom caressed me gently and said, “Yes, it’s true my darling, you’re out of tune.”
Reality shifted before my very eyes.
“What are you talking about, but I performed for the class… they loved it…”
And then the memories came back, of the children laughing as I sang, of boys high-fiving each other, the mocking and amusement at the weekly entertainment.
“But… but… you said I sang like daddy.”
“That’s right, dear, you sing like daddy…” and then mom looked at dad tiredly. “It’s best that you just accept it, the Shnaidmans can’t sing.”
Maya and Raya became my best friends at the age of ten, and we’re friends to this day. I could always trust them to be honest with me, whether it was about my clothes or my work. They will also say whatever they think of the men in my life. And, most importantly, during the first 20 years of my life they were the only ones who supported my desire to make film in Israel and the world. Even if they thought I was living in a fantasy, they still encouraged me.
In Ashdod I discovered my love for the world of acting, theater, film and television. I spent my childhood fantasizing about living side by side with Hollywood stars, and I practiced my walk down the red carpet, as well as my Oscar acceptance speeches in front of my mother or the mirror. At first I thought I wanted to be an actress. I was attracted to the stage and the screen – but when my drama teacher noticed my tendency to take control of everything - the story, the cast and the mise-en-scène - I understood that my place was behind the scenes. I wished to be God.
During middle school, living with my hearing disability in a rural southern town was a test of survival. Each day was a struggle – the constant badgering by the children at school, the low self-esteem that came with being an adolescent girl and the challenge of getting through schoolwork and tests in my advanced classes. Under the strict education of my ambitious mother, it’s no wonder I strived for more and cultivated great expectations of myself. The dream of one day being a writer-director got me through all my hardships, even throughout high school. I would go through anything to make my dream come true.
Mom wanted me to choose high-tech or computers. Something practical. Something that wouldn’t require communication skills. How could I be a director if I was such an eccentric – a wallflower, lacking all charisma or the ability to say a sentence without stuttering and, most importantly, lacking the ability to speak over the phone. It’s a simple thing for normal people but an impossible task for me.
When I met Vali in high school, everything changed. I met him through friends. He was charismatic, dashing, rich with knowledge and life experience, and more than anything else, immeasurably ambitious. He declared himself to be God. And I? I was your average Goddess. Even though he was rather insane, it was thanks to him that I built up my self-esteem and the faith that I could do anything I chose to do, no matter what the others said. He taught me how to say: Fuck it all. And so I earned my confidence, my ability to know and define what I wanted and the ability to grab people’s attention. He accompanied me throughout the final stages of high school, the desperation of final exams, the Israeli SATs, the repeated attempts at getting into film school. He was the love of my life, and he left me when I got into film school. To this day, I hold on to the most important lesson he taught me: If you make movies, if you’re living in a movie, then make the movie of your life with your own two hands.
My high school years were a struggle with my parents over my field of study. I struggled with the institution. I struggled with everybody. But it was impossible to cut Anna out of the movie she was living in. I couldn’t make myself listen in class so I spent my time writing stories. They were mostly dirty romantic stories, and the girls in class would stand in line to read these juicy fantasies, anything to get through the gray, dreary days.
As a high school girl looking to my future, my possibilities were endless. The world was waiting for me. I’d never seen myself confined to the Israeli industry alone, but on the other hand I’ve always dreamed of changing the face of Israeli film and television. And change, as you know, comes from the inside.
The first step was getting into the Tel Aviv University Film Department. This was a mission that took 3 years to complete. I took the Israeli SATs twice, but I couldn’t pass the minimum requirements. In the meanwhile I did a year in the multi-disciplinary arts program at Tel-Aviv University, while also taking journalism. I was considering journalism as my fallback career.
Journalism school was not the right place for me. I couldn’t see the problem with an interview and profile piece on… God?
I quickly discovered that I hated the pretentious striving for the truth. What is the truth anyways? What gives any one person the right to decide that what their eyes see is the real truth?
I loved to write. I loved to tell people’s stories. My tendency to add color and drama to every story only strengthened my belief that my place was in film – I am a storyteller and this is the essence of my life. More than mere stories, they are grand dreams, and I must learn how to bring them to the screen, how to tell a story from a personal, philosophical and beautiful point of view.
Eventually I was accepted to the film department for a screenplay I wrote, rather than my grade average. Naturally, the years in academia were a struggle as well. It was a struggle with the head of the department, who was apathetic toward the little deaf girl from Moldova who came from a middle class family in the south. I struggled to jump up and make him see, “Here I am, I may be little but all I want to do is tell a story.” I wasn’t accepted to the elite unite of the most prestigious production department in the country, possibly the Middle East. But I couldn’t let one man bury my dream after all I’d been through. I insisted on making short films anywhere I was afforded the opportunity. I was able to round up the support of the best teachers at school: Ella Shachaf for television, and Michal Bat Adam, who was my role model when it came to directing and taught me the entire basis of working with actors.
Even when the head of the department finally gave in and accepted me, my hardships were not over. During our studies we produced summer films. I was not approved to make a film. I went ahead and produced it anyhow. Only when they saw it did they approve it. And then we came to our thesis films… and once again, I was not approved to shoot.
One day, after smoking a joint in the arts campus, a horrifying thought came to me: what if my ex, Vali, married another girl? Could I see myself at his wedding?! And then it hit me: “What if I made a movie about an ex-lover’s wedding, with a hundred actors and extras, all shot in one TV studio?” It was a production that, as a student, was impossible to take on due to the resources it required. People told me, “You’ll wake up tomorrow morning and you’ll be over it. Here, take another hit.”
It goes without saying that I did not get the approval and support to direct Yana’s March, a 50-minute pilot for a dramedy partially based on my own life, my friends from building 31 in Ashdod, including Maya and Raya, and of course the memories I had of my ex, all gathered in order to answer the question – what if the love of my life married another?
When I wrote a synopsis and pitched it in class to my teacher Ella Shachaf, I expected her to denounce me for my insanity, to reprimand me like the others: “How will you pay for the production of the entire wedding sequence?” I believed that the reprimand would be the final nail in the idea’s coffin, that it would allow me to let go of it and continue searching for an idea for a family drama, or a soldier-in-Lebanon story, or an Arab-at-a-checkpoint story, or a Holocaust-survivor story, something simple and easy to produce, something that could be shot in one location with two actors and nothing more.
But to my surprise, what I heard was, “Alright, go for it.”
“What?”
Ella Shachaf gave me her frighteningly determined look and said “What are you waiting for? Go and write it.”
What? Really? I’m going to do it?
And at that moment my professional romance with Roy Krispel began. Roy was paired up with me as the director, while I was the creative producer of the project. The casting was quickly finalized. This all happened without any support from the University beyond the use of its equipment or the support of any other film fund in the country. Our first day of shooting took place in the University’s television studio, under a wedding canopy made from columns and chiffon cloth Roy and I had bought at the Carmel street market, with a cast and crew of “only” 70 people. I had jumped straight into the biggest production of my life to date. What followed was a suicide mission that lasted for months, keeping this difficult production going without any money. I was forced to break into my savings for New York, which has always been my greatest dream, in order to afford the rental bride’s dress from the film The Syrian Bride, amongst other expenses.
Production lasted nearly three years. We went through a lot during those years. The director got married, the actress got pregnant, and the cast kept changing hairstyles (though the plot took place over the span of a single day). I scratched up all the money I could, including loans from parents and donations from friends, while inevitably taking on lowly jobs in the meantime. I don’t know why I stepped into this whirlwind in the first place, but having watched the actors I chose stepping into characters born in my mind, becoming flesh and blood, I wouldn’t give it up for anything. In fact it was more than that, it was my own life, my memories as I’d distorted them for the sake of the movie, displayed on the big screen with dozens, if not hundreds of people sharing it, moved by it, laughing with it, and most importantly – being inspired by it, gaining insight and making important decisions in their own lives. All of this was worth anything I’d gone through. This is the essence of happiness for me.
It was only after the premiere that the university decided to award me the Hannah Haves Grant. It paid for two of my editing shifts.
Three years have passed since the film’s premiere, and I’m still struggling for a spot for my work in the state of Israel. Still struggling to make a living and pay rent in Tel Aviv. Everyone knows how hard it is to find a job in this field, but getting a job when you’re hard of hearing is doubly difficult. I still find myself struggling to turn this pilot into a television show on one of the networks. I’m devoting every free moment to writing two feature-length screenplays. Since producing my own pilot, I’ve found my way to becoming a post-production manager in prime time TV. Some of the shows I’ve headed post production for are Super Nanny, Star Portrait, Children of Divorce, Straight to the Heart, and Moti’s Victory (of The Big Loser). I’ve also been involved in casting and location scouting.
“Yana’s March” was nominated for best film in the New York International Independent Film Festival, making my Big Apple dream come true. It was the universe’s way of compensating me for depleting my New York savings. Attending a festival for my own movie was encouraging, giving me strength and faith in my work.
I continue to collaborate with Roy. I worked as casting director for his films and produced his film Guest, which is currently screened at the Haifa Film Festival, at the Syracuse Film Festival in New York, at Fresh Films in the Czech Republic and at Grand Off in Poland. And yet, we continue to receive rejections and delays from the networks for the television formats we submit to them. I sometimes feel helpless when confronting this industry, as I did with my university department head. I understand that the struggle never ends, that it will always be a fight to survive. But at least I’m not alone. We’re all struggling here. I was fortunate enough to meet a group of people whom I feel are the most talented in the country, which includes Oz Guttman, our editor on Guest; Ram Shani, our Director of Photography; and the wonderful actors I’ve had the good fortune to cast and work with – all these wonderful people are struggling to make ends meet, while making painful compromises in order to pursue their creative passions.
I may only be “the little deaf girl from Moldova, daughter to middle class parents from the south,” and my chances of being one of the two Israelis getting this scholarship may be slim, but I won’t give up. It can sometimes be difficult to carry this heavy load on my back all alone. I’m still starting out, and I have a great passion for creativity, for meeting my potential, for breaking through the borders of this small country and learning from the greatest filmmakers in the world: in Berlin, America, Russia and beyond.
My dream right now is to study MFA in film school in NY and L.A. I don't have idea how to pay for the tutions but i hope that everything will work out... The truth is that NY is still my dream: to live and to work there.
I want to bring my story to the world, to give people strength. We live in a country leaning more and more toward depression, a country in need of strength and hope as much as I am. But for that, I will need your strength.
And hoping you’ll yet hear of me,
Anna Shnaidman
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