CONTROVERSY NOT A STRANGER TO `RUBIES' WRITER-DIRECTOR YAKIN.Byline: - Bob Strauss ``A Price Above Rubies'' has raised the ire of some in the Hasidic community. Members of the Orthodox Jewish sect interrupted filming of the picture in Brooklyn's Borough Park neighborhood last spring, and New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of state representative Dov Hikind Dov Hikind is an American politician in the state of New York. He is a Democratic New York State Assemblyman. Hikind is an Orthodox Jew representing Brooklyn's Assembly district 48 which has many Orthodox Jews living in it. led another protest against the film in March, essentially accusing the movie of perpetuating anti-Semitic stereotypes. Often, filmmakers dismiss these kinds of charges as the incorrect misunderstandings of critics who, more often than not, haven't even seen the finished product or an accurate shooting script shooting script n. The final version of a movie or television script with the scenes arranged in sequence as they are to be filmed or taped. Noun 1. . ``Rubies' '' writer-director Boaz Yakin, however, expected the controversy, though he does not exactly welcome it. ``There are people who will be offended of·fend v. of·fend·ed, of·fend·ing, of·fends v.tr. 1. To cause displeasure, anger, resentment, or wounded feelings in. 2. by the film, absolutely,'' says Yakin, whose first feature was the well-regarded, African-American urban drama ``Fresh.'' ``But it is a film that does challenge certain ideas, and it's about a community that gets hurt by the actions of an individual. When I set out to do it, I understood that it would upset certain people.'' Though raised in what he describes as a secular, artistically oriented home, Yakin attended an Orthodox yeshiva yeshiva Academy of higher Talmudic learning. Through its biblical and legal exegesis and application of scripture, the yeshiva has defined and regulated Judaism for centuries. Traditionally, it is the setting for the training and ordination of rabbis. school until age 15. ``When I was gearing up to write this, I did tons of research,'' he says. ``I reconnected with some of my old rabbis, who now will probably regret the fact that they talked to me again.'' Of course, while few religious believers like to see their faith criticized, millennia of persecution, and the living memory of the Holocaust, would justify special Jewish sensitivity to any portrayal that could reinforce anti-Semitism. ``There's a real feeling that, if you show Jews in anything other than a positive light, it's going to give them a reason to hate us,'' Yakin says. ``I'm quite aware of the Holocaust; everyone from my mother's side of the family was killed. But my feeling is that the way to approach life is to accept who you are, with all your weaknesses and strengths, and to explore yourself with all the criticism or fun or openness that everybody else does, and not let fear dictate how you live.'' While admitting that it's no fun to be passionately criticized himself, Yakin seems bent on Adj. 1. bent on - fixed in your purpose; "bent on going to the theater"; "dead set against intervening"; "out to win every event" bent, dead set, out to a career of cinematic provocation Conduct by which one induces another to do a particular deed; the act of inducing rage, anger, or resentment in another person that may cause that person to engage in an illegal act. . ``I accept that I'm doing things that push people's buttons,'' he says. ``I've just finished a script for a horror film horror film n → película de terror or miedo horror film horror n → film m d'épouvante horror film horror n that's set in the Pentecostal world in the South. I'm going to have to change my address after this one.'' |
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