Divan

Filmmaker Pearl Gluck traveled to Hungary with the intent to make a documentary about Hasidic culture and Jewish folklore. Instead, she became her own subject, telling a personal, illuminating tale of self discovery. And she brings home a marvelous divan.

There are two distinct worlds in Pearl Gluck's life. Borough Park, Brooklyn, where until the age of fifteen, the filmmaker lived in an insular Hassidic Jewish community, raised to marry young and bear numerous children. And a short eight miles away, Manhattan, where restrictive religious rules are off; an intelligent young woman can go to college, bare her arms and curly hair to public view, and lead an independent life.

Gluck attempts to reconcile her troubled relationship with her Orthodox father, travelling to Hungary to retrieve a beloved family heirloom: a divan upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. Gluck relates tales of old Jewish folklore, retraces family exterminated during the Holocaust--and while attempting to hide from the very camera that documents her story--opens herself up to intense family scrutiny. The likeable, young narrator is able to find her relatives and the couch with ease. Reclaiming the precious object is another thing.

The framing of "Divan" becomes a mini-suspense story. As Gluck's desire for the couch becomes stronger, her father's all important support is taken away. "Find a husband," she is told again and again. In what seems like a brutal blow, the couch is given to a man. Yet throughout the film, Gluck conducts interviews with various articulate secular Jews on a gorgeous, upholstered, intricately stitched, red Divan. You'll have to watch Gluck's intimate, charming film to discover how she furnishes her apartment.