Beyond the Forest Q&A with Loli Kantor

To mark the start of Hanukkah, we asked photographer Loli Kantor to answer some questions about her new book, Beyond the Forest: Jewish Presence in Eastern Europe, 2004–2012. Kantor is the daughter of Polish Jews who met and married in Munich after the war. Born in France and raised in Israel, she has spent the last thirty years living stateside in Fort Worth, Texas. In the early 2000s, she was compelled to set out in search of her roots. In the book's introduction, Anda Rottenberg sets up the devastating details that spurred Kantor's travels in Eastern Europe over an eight-year period:

More info

"The face of her mother, who died in childbirth, is something familiar only from photographs. Of her father, she knows his place of birth and his short, professional CV, most likely written for the U.S. State Department and thus omitting the details of his war experiences....she knew little of the historical landscape from which her parents emerged, the territory of Central-Eastern Europe—stretching from the western borders of prewar Poland to the line connecting Leningrad, Smolensk, and Kursk in the east, Tallinn in the north, and Crimea in the south—and aptly described by Timothy Snyder as the 'bloodlands.' From 1933 to 1945 this region witnessed the deaths of 14 million innocent people, including women, children, and the elderly. Up until 1948 it also experienced mass forced displacement of whole populations (Jews, Roma, Poles, Germans, and Rusyns), as well as the “voluntary” exile of those who hoped to save their lives or improve their fate."

Kantor's photo-essay is a very moving account of her personal journey to reconcile incredible loss with hope, faith, and community. Given recent events in the area, we took the opportunity to ask her about what Jewish communities now under Russian rule  in the Crimea region are coping.

We wish you and yours a Happy Hanukkah. Chag Chanukah sameach!


Q: The plates in the book progress from stark black-and-white images to colorful, people and food–filled scenes, almost winter to spring. How does that evoke what you experienced in your travels and time spent in these communities?

The transition from black-and-white to color, from stark to bright does reflect my disposition at the beginning of the project. I made my first trip in November 2005, purposefully to have this stark, cold, and snowy atmosphere in the works, using black-and-white film. This was partly intentional and was also my state of mind about the place of Jewish presence and absence in Eastern Europe.

Block 11 | Auschwitz, 2005 | Poland

5 Things You Need to Know about "Boyhood"

**Update: Congratulations to the entire Boyhood team for the three Golden Globe wins! **

To celebrate Boyhood's five Golden Globe nominations, here are five very important things that you need to know about Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Congratulations to Rick Linklater (nominated for Best Director, Best Screenplay), Patricia Arquette (nominated for Best Supporting Actress), Ethan Hawke (nominated for Best Supporting Actor), and to the entire cast and crew for the Best Motion Picture, Drama nomination. We'll be watching on January 11!

1

The Beatles' The Black Album is real. Late in the film, Ethan Hawke’s father character presents Mason (Ellar Coltrane) with “a family heirloom that money couldn’t buy,” The Beatles’ The Black Album. A three-volume mega mix-tape that collects the best of McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr from their solo careers. Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater collaborated on making the track list of The Black Album a reality. Here’s a sample of the first few songs:

     Disc 1: 

1. Paul McCartney & Wings, “Band on the Run” 

2. George Harrison, “My Sweet Lord” 

3. John Lennon feat. The Flux Fiddlers & the Plastic Ono Band, “Jealous Guy” 

4. Ringo Starr, “Photograph”

For the complete list check out Indiewire’s full write up on The Black Album: The Post-Beatles Black Album From Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Follow us on Spotify for our 3-part playlist! 

2

There's more to the haircut scene than you might think. In preparation for a scene midway through the movie, Richard Linklater asked Ellar Coltrane to refrain from cutting his hair for a year.

My Life in the Bronx by Martin Dones

The Bronx of the 1970s and '80s is not the Bronx of today, but the issues affecting urban youth—poverty, drug abuse, violence, and police aggression—haven't magically gone away. Recent racial tensions between police and minority communities in the aftermath of Eric Garner and Michael Brown have brought widespread media attention to the problematic ways some law enforcement behave in urban neighborhoods across the country.

More info

Photographer Stephen Shames' new book Bronx Boys includes an arresting essay by Martin Dones, a Puerto Rican kid who insured Shames gained the trust he needed to photograph life in the Bronx. Dones painfully articulates the truth of trying to survive and have a life in a rough area rife with gang violence. His story is a powerful account of the brutal cycle the young and marginalized find themselves trapped in: no money, little access to quality education, and no trust in the police. We have excerpted part of his essay below. There is much more to his story, and an additional essay by José "Poncho" Muñoz in the book.

We're so proud that Bronx Boys was named one of the 27 photobooks that defined 2014 by Time Magazine: TIME Picks the Best Photobooks of 2014 →

My Memories
By Martin Dones

I don’t know if you remember this cop from the Bronx named Officer Jet. President Clinton gave him an award. Well, it was in the news and everything. A journalist ran around with him. The New York Times Magazine wrote an article about our block and they gave them all nicknames, like Beefcake, Beefhead. He told how bad they were. He said that they made $100,000 a week. They made enough money, but not that much. He told the story the way he thinks the story went. It’s just what he assumes.

This is the real story on how everything happened. How they cut the crack. How the drugs came out of LO’s mother’s house. About their machine guns—their AK47s and M16s. How they had their hands on some real high-power ammunition. How they had enough for a war if anybody came down for it.

This is my story. I’ve been on the street, got tangled in drugs, been in the gangs. I lived through violence—murder, stabbings, fights. The streets helped me learn all the mistakes that I had to learn. I’m sorry that I had to learn them that way, but I had to.

I was a dead man who got lucky.

It’s hard to get out of the ghetto. The ghetto could be fine. You could be raised there and go to college. It’s just the violence—the way things evolved from fistfights to gunfights. Eventually it soaks into you. You learn what you live.

My childhood contributed—the drugs that my mother did. To this day she does drugs. I don’t have a mother. I just have a “mother” who gave birth to me. I have a father, but I’ve only known him since I was twenty-three. As a kid I was mad at my mom. I was mad at the things around me. I’d go out in the street, knowing that I can’t hit my mother, and want to punch somebody in the face—just to get the anger off of me. It’s like you’re locked in a room and you have to do something.

Then again, I had people who were showing me go to school. Telling me, “Do what you have to do. Forget about the streets.”

I’ve known Steve since I was ten years old, and I’m forty-five now. He played a major part in keeping me alive. So did my godparents, Rocky and Connie of the Boys Club, teaching me woodworking and magic, taking me into their home, sometimes giving me the only meal I had that day.

So I had two directions. I had to choose which way I wanted to go. Whether I wanted to go to jail and die or live my life and be happy with my family.

I chose to go with my family and just be a normal person.

Connie once told me, “That’s what life is all about. We’re doing nothing else in life but collecting memories, because after all is said and done, when we’re gone, what do you remember?”

These are my memories.

My First Memory

My first memory is still as clear as a picture: my cousin being murdered. I didn’t actually see him being murdered, but I heard the thud of his body hitting the pavement. That death sound is the first thing I remember. Thud. I jump awake, startled, and everybody is screaming. My mother lies disheveled next to me on the bed, fainted. Everybody is on top of her: “Give her air.” I hop out of bed and run toward the window. That’s where all the action is.

My four-year-old eyes see the playground of the school I will soon attend, every day walking past my memories. A white blanket lies on the black asphalt. A cop lifts the blanket off a body and my cousin’s face, black and blue and all swelled up. He is naked. My mother screams, “Get away from the window.” That is all, but it is enough to fill my head. I still dream about it.

It comes like a flash, without warning while I’m watching TV or walking. Flash. I see his bruised, swollen face, his naked body as the cop pulls off the blanket. It will be with me till the day I die. It is my first memory, one of my highlights growing up.