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Sarah writes a harsh blog about the bleak lives of Haredi women. Shlomit is an independent photographer who documents violent incidents on segregated busses on which women are required to sit at the back. Both of them were banned by their communities because of their desire to live normal, unsuppressed lives. These young women operate entirely alone and pay a very high price for violating the number-one rule of Haredi society: "Never air dirty laundry in public". As they expose the violence of Haredi fanatics, acting in the name of modesty, they are punished by persecution and vilification. What will happen to them when they can no longer bear being shunned by their own family and friends? Which way will they choose? Where will they go? Black Bus "Soreret" tells the story of their single handed and courageous attempts to document and lead to a change in the Haredi society from which they have fled

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Director: Anat Zuria
Production: Anat Yuta Zuria & Sigal Landesberg

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From The Press:

Interview with the director Anat Zuria:

Iran is Here

October 15, 2009

By Smadar Shir

Ten years ago, when Anat Zuria began her transition from art to cinema, she began to take an interest in dealing with a world that contained both a story and a script. She had studied in the Maaleh Film School and wanted to direct Tehorah [“Purity”] (2002) as her final project after four years of study – “But I was afraid that I would be censored, after all, Maaleh is a religious film school, and consequently it was rejected. I don’t recall the exact moment when I decided to make films that focus on taboos,” she explains, “but my documentary work emanates from personal experiences, and the more I was drawn into it, the more I felt driven to make films about women that fall into different kinds of traps.”

Tehorah (2002) presented the story of three women that found themselves trapped, as she puts it, by the laws of family purity. “One left religion, another continued to live in the trap and the third was a bride standing in the gateway, peeking inside and not yet realizing what awaited her. I met with dozens of women and I was amazed to discover that they did not dare talk to their husbands about the humiliation they experienced in the ritual bath.”

The film earned Zuria the Discovery of the Year award from SCAM (Société Civile des Auteurs Multimedia), the French directors’ association, and won six international prizes, creating enthusiastic waves in India and Japan. “Here in Israel, not surprisingly, it was received with anger,” she reports dryly, “but I was very happy to see ultra-Orthodox women at some of the screenings. Among the secular women that saw the movie, I noticed something very different. They would tell me: ‘An ultra-Orthodox woman knows that her enemy is halacha – Jewish law – which defines her body as impure. In the secular world, there is no concept of impurity, so where does our distress and feeling of being trapped come from?’”

Making the women disappear

In wake of the success of Tehorah, a trilogy was born. “Each of my films comes after a year and a half of research and very meticulous filmmaking. My films are modest, they don’t get huge budgets, but Channel 8 supported them and enabled me to continue.”

Her second film, Mekudeshet [“Sentenced to Marriage”], (2004), focused on three women that were unable to obtain a divorce in the rabbinical courts. “I became the public enemy of the ultra-Orthodox community, which accepts rabbinical rulings as if they are a divine revelation,” admits Zuria. “But even the rabbis that attacked me and claimed that my interpretation was unacceptable did not accuse me of lying. The reality is so powerful that you don’t have to make anything up. All you need to do to shock is to document it in a credible fashion.”

Before Zuria began working on The Black Bus, she tried to get to the bottom of this ever-growing movement to separate the sexes. “Yes, I received explanations,” she says with a sigh. “In order for the Messiah to come, Judaism has to be pure, and it will be pure only if men do not think about sexuality at all. And in order for that to happen, women have to be made to disappear from the landscape. And if women do not even enter the imaginations of men, redemption will come. Do you get that? This explanation is what has led to the fact that on some public buses in Israel as well as on buses of private transportation companies, men sit in the front and women may only sit in the back third of the bus. It happens in Jerusalem, Bnei Brak and in other ultra-Orthodox satellite cities, such as Beitar Illit and Beit Shemesh. There are places where even the HMOs have been separated. A little girl complaining of back pain cannot be examined by the best doctor if he is a man – only by a woman doctor. There are already grocery stores that operate according to this separation, with hours for men and hours for women, and it goes without saying that an ultra-Orthodox woman may not learn how to drive, not even with a woman teacher, because if she has a driver’s license, who knows where she’ll go off to.”

Zuria documents this revolution in her film, The Black Bus, by means of two people: Shulamit Weinfeld, a photographer who grew up in ultra-Orthodox society, and Sara Einfeld, a former member of the Gur Hassidic movement, mother of two children, who divorced her husband and writes a subversive blog. “I looked for women who were documenting the silencing of women and who themselves refused to be silenced,” says Zuria, “and with my own eyes, I saw the price they are forced to pay. When I got to know Shulmit, she was still taking pictures secretly, and when her father caught her in the street with a camera, he threw her out of the house. Both young women were banned, as rebellious women should be. In the ultra-Orthodox world, when a child makes problems, the family is forced to cut the child off, and the way I see it, this is akin to incest. In the past, it was believed that a husband is entitled to do whatever he feels like to his wife, until that horror was finally put to an end. If we continue to relate to the separation movement as an esoteric phenomenon, a feature of the ultra-Orthodox ghetto, we will be contributing to its spreading.”

Will you be praying for the success of your film?

I speak to God only about my children’s health. I wouldn’t waste His time with matters related to films.

Excerpted from:

Maariv

Fearful for the future: Sara knows how to play the game

October 18, 2009

By Yitzhak Tesler

This is an important, disturbing, riveting, astounding and thought-provoking film. The filmmakers caught a number of heartrending moments on film. The self-confident Shulamit, armed with her camera, chronicles the separated bus lines and confronts women with the question of why they are willing to agree to be discriminated against.

Ultimately, and despite some drawbacks, The Black Bus is one of the most important documentary films of recent years. Now we can look forward to sequels in another five years’ time to tell us what happened to Sara, Shlomit and the separated bus lines.

Excerpted from:

Yisrael Hayom

Jerusalem Unmixed

October 18, 2009

By Shir Ziv

The Black Bus, Channel 8

Sara Einfeld and Shulamit Weinfeld grew up in Hassidic families and underwent a revolution. From born and bred members of the ultra-Orthodox community, they have become women living in the secular world, and are consequently viewed as “rebellious women.” The director, Anat Yuta Zuria, whose films focus on the religious world, has become accustomed to the fact that her films stir up emotions. Once again, Zuria slaughters yet another a sacred cow, the “ultra-Orthodox separation,” which in essence focuses on the prevention of any contact whatsoever between men and women. The movement has seen considerable success on the bus lines in Jerusalem. It is somewhat Iranian, quite primitive and very sad. With the help of two courageous and fascinating young heroines, Zuria exposes the hidden aspects of the ultra-Orthodox world to the viewers. For Zuria, the coercion has no beginning and especially no end.

Violation of a taboo in the ultra-Orthodox world leads to banishment, but even those who leave the ultra-Orthodox world remain haunted by tormenting thoughts. The most difficult ones relate to the state of their mental health. “Now I need to prove to myself that I’m sane,” says Shulamit, who already has one failed suicide attempt behind her. She is an attractive law student and a gifted, but lonely photographer. Sara, a mother of two and a successful blogger, suffers her share of pain too. “They managed to convince me that I’m mentally disturbed. That’s me. I am waiting for me outside,” she explained to an ultra-Orthodox friend who is wavering between the two worlds, trying to decide what to do with his life. The heroines are confronted by a central, noisy enemy – the bus. “The bus is a trauma that caused me a great deal of pain,” Sara describes her moment of illumination.

The role of this moving and delicate film is just beginning. After all, the bus is merely the symbol, not the goal. In Hassidic circles, this film will be viewed as an invitation to a duel. The question is who will fight next to Sara and Shulamit on the other side.

Excerpted from:

Eretz Acheret – Issue 54

Sisterhood of Rebels

How the body is treated in the early 21st century

By Raya Morag

Anat Zuria’s outstanding film, The Black Bus, (2009) is a unique work of art in the Israeli documentary industry. The film follows the lives of two young women, Shulamit and Sara, who are struggling with the transition they have made from the ultra-Orthodox world to secular society: from a life of violence and subjugation to a life of freedom, from a feminine identity in which every step and detail is dictated and decided in advance to a fluid identity that is formed each day anew, from a life inside a community and family to a life that forces an absolute rift and loneliness on them.

As can be seen from the inflammatory articles written against the film and its protagonists on the ultra-Orthodox web sites, when the two young women are referred to as “rebels,” it does not refer only to the fact of their becoming nonobservant, but rather to the autonomous activism both young women demonstrate. Their voice is heard thanks to the fact that they are both creative and artistic: Sara writes a subversive blog and shares her experiences with the whole world, and Shlomit takes still photographs of ultra-Orthodox life. In this respect, Zuria’s film is also about yet another rebel – the director herself – whose voice is heard indirectly through the stories of the two other artists, and her cinematic language mediates Sara’s words and Shulamit’s visual images.

Can these three languages of creative art overcome the unseen world of the modesty revolution in the ultra-Orthodox world of the past decade? How will the cinematic language depict the hatred for women there, which appears in the guise of a mystical desire to fix the world and of halachic norms?

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