Divan

May 1 2003 Not Rated 1h 30m
Documentary

Pearl Gluck travels to Hungary to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heirloom: a couch upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. En route for the ancestral divan, Pearl encounters a colorful cast of characters who provide guidance and inspiration.

Plot

Divan follows the filmmaker's effort to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heir loom - a couch. The filmmaker journeys from her birthplace, Brooklyn's Hasidic community, to its origins in Hungary and back. The couch - considered holy because certain Hasidic rabbis had slept on it - survived WWII and is in the filmmaker's great grandfather's house in Rohod, a northeast Hungarian town. In the tradition of storytelling, the filmmaker creates a visual parable about the Hasidic community that she left as a teenager. She trails the couch through a quirky landscape populated by Hasidim in Brooklyn, Holocaust survivors and ex-communists in Hungary, and, finally, the next generation of formerly-Hasidic Jews on the margins of their communities in New York and Israel.

Written by

Pearl Gluck, Susan Korda

Directed by

Pearl Gluck

Production Countries

United States of America

Production Companies

Palinka Pictures, Zeitgeist Films

Languages

English

Awards

2 wins total

Scores
# of Votes
129
Average Rating
6.8 out of 10
Metascore
71
Popularity
NA