Sandi DuBowski, Documentary Director/Producer of Sabbath Queen and Trembling Before G-d

138. Sandi DuBowski
     SPEAKERS
     Will Bachman, Sandi DuBowski,Will Bachman  00:02
     Will Hello and welcome to the 92 report, conversations with members of the Harvard and Radcliffe class of 1992 I’m your host. Will Bachman, by the way, you can sign up for the newsletter for this show if you go to 92 reportdotcom now today’s guest, I am so thrilled to have Sandi DuBowski on the show. We are talking on Monday, June 9, and I just had the opportunity to see Sandi’s movie Sabbath Queen at the Jewish Museum last what, Thursday evening, and which was incredible to see it in a crowd. So it was such a thrill to see Sandi’s movie, and particularly before we had a chance to chat. So I want to welcome Sandi. Sandi. Welcome to the show.Sandi DuBowski  00:46
     Thank you will I’m so excited to have seen you just recently, and now see you here.Will Bachman  00:51
     Yeah, so Well, obviously get into that, but you can start anywhere you like. Tell me about your journey since graduating from Harvard.Sandi DuBowski  01:01
     Wow. So I feel like this is a really interesting, almost auspicious moment to do this interview. Perfect, because today is actually the one year anniversary of my film Sabbath Queen, and it is a film that is about midlife, it’s a film that I spent 21 years making. So there’s something about taking the film around the world in the past year and reconnecting with so many classmates from Harvard, from high school, from elementary school, from the film world, the queer world, the Jewish world, the activist world. I’m having this like reunion moment. And it certainly feels like talking to you, I’m really having that reunion moment. And but there is something about – I really followed the journey of this 21st Century, trickster, innovator, radical rabbi, over two plus decades. So, you know, I’m really thinking a lot about time, and about what it means to graduate, to grow, to change, to transform into journey. And I think that what I’m doing right now feels like a manifestation and a culmination of all these years I spent just becoming an adult human post Harvard.Will Bachman  02:47
     So for listeners that haven’t yet seen Sabbath Queen, maybe start us with where, when you started filming, I mean, you did not know what was going to evolve out of it. Obviously, we can’t tell the future, and it was not that predictable. If you see the film, there’s some interesting, I don’t know spoilers here, but there was an interesting kind of twist to it. So tell us a little bit about, maybe just after college, your journey, and then lead up to the point where you, you know, met the rabbi, or the proto, pre rabbi, Rabbi. And what got you interested to start filming, and how did that happen?

     Sandi DuBowski  03:27
     So I was not a VES major at Harvard. I was Social Studies. I did write a 130 page thesis called “Exposing the Frame: Displaying Gay Male Bodies in Hollywood and Gay Independent Film, 1980 to 1991.” That was my senior thesis. I did not intend to become a filmmaker. I sort of fell into the lap of filmmaking by accident. I wound up going back home to Brooklyn and moving back in with my parents. My grandmother, who is 88 lived five blocks away, and I stole my father’s toupee and the family camcorder, and went over her house, and we started filming together. And we brought out her wigs that she hadn’t worn in five years, and we started playing dress up and filming each other. And she started telling me that she was sort of like a man, and that my father kind of wasn’t a man. And it became this whole gender-blending tale across three generations in my family. And it resulted in this video called Tomboychik. And you know, it was one of those pieces that you make in the golden hour, that magic hour when the sun hits the bricks. My grandmother was 88 and I was 22 and she died while I was editing it. It. So it became this living video memorial to her spirit. And she had quite a fierce spirit, and that really launched me into the film world. This kind of oral history of my grandmother. And the film wound up getting prizes. It won the Golden Gate Award at The San Francisco Film Festival. It played on WNET. It played at the Whitney Museum program. It was at the Rotterdam Film Festival. It screened at the Jewish Museum. It really just went everywhere. And I became a filmmaker.

     Will Bachman  05:37
     So wait, wait, wait, so you were doing some kind of work. I imagine it makes some money. But then you were just hanging out with your grandmother, and figured, oh, I should film my grandmother. Just film this. And it sounds like you weren’t. I mean, did you start with this idea? Oh, I want to make a documentary. Or just, oh, I just want to film it, you know, film my grandmother, preserve this. And then,

     Sandi DuBowski  05:58
     yeah, I mean, I was working out of college. I worked on a feature film called Fresh Kill. And I became an Associate Director of the New York Lesbian, Gay Experimental Film/Video festival. It was called MIX. And I think I was just like, in this world of, you know, just experiment and play but I didn’t really set out to make a work. I set out to just, you know, document my grandmother. And also, I had to figure out, when I was at Harvard, I came out as gay my first year. And so moving back to Brooklyn and moving back to my old neighborhood and moving back to my parents house, like I was a different self, and I came home and I had to figure out who was I, and who was my family, and who was my neighborhood, and so it was just a period of exploration. And then Tomboychik just sort of pivoted my life in a direction that, and I think that’s really been the theme of my life. I wound up working for Planned Parenthood for a few years because my classmate, Laura Rosenbury, was there, and they needed someone to do research on the anti-abortion movement and the Christian right. And so I wound up working for Planned Parenthood and producing videos there and doing work around a very volatile time in the right-wing. So, you know, that happened for a number of years, and then I started filming this movie, Trembling Before G-d, which became a major feature documentary about Hasidic and Orthodox Jews that are lesbian or gay. And, I finished it the day before I turned 30. So we were, what, eight years out of school, and then it got accepted to Sundance. So I had a World Premiere at Sundance. I had an International Premiere at the Berlin Film Festival. We won two prizes at Berlin. It got picked up for distribution. We screened in cinemas, festivals all over the world. I wound up going on the road for pretty much three years solid, doing outreach and engagement. And getting funding from Steven Spielberg Righteous Persons Foundation. I did 850 live events with Trembling Before G-d.

Will Bachman  08:56
So you handled every Q&A –

Sandi DuBowski  09:02
well, not every, but for a lot, a long, a

Will Bachman  09:06
long tail of audience questions. Okay, so, but I have, I have one or two. So I happen to have a son who is going to film school. So some people actually, you know, pay and spend several years studying filmmaking. Tell us, how did you happen to go, I mean, go from, oh, doing some film, you know, film my grandma. Were, you know, playing around, having fun. Tell us what did you have some friends to teach you? Like, editing skills. How did you pick that up? Like, tell us a little bit about, did you have friends with lighting and sound? Tell us some of the technical aspects of it doesn’t just happen accidentally, that someone makes an award winning film as their first thing, right? So give us a little story about just how all that came together.

Sandi DuBowski  09:55
You know, I think I really fell into the lap of filmmaking by accident. I wound up wearing a producer and a director hat. So I did a lot of fundraising, and I also brought on board great people, great cinematographers, great editors. I’m a director. I don’t really consider the craft of cinematography to be my specialty or editing. So I really am a very collaborative person who just builds this team of creatives.

Will Bachman  10:40
So like, Tomboychik, was that you and your grandmother alone, or did you actually have a cinematographer helping out and stuff?

Sandi DuBowski  10:45
Tomboychik was super Lo Fi. Like, that was a family camcorder, and I edited it on a VHS to VHS editing system. Whoa, all right, like, I’m in an office with a group of four filmmakers. So that was as basic Lo Fi as you can get, yeah, I think Trembling was like a leap forward, in terms of technical craft and, it was just wildly embraced. People were coming forward to share their life story. Really, for the first time, like orthodox lesbian gay people were not in the public realm. They were not on the community table. This was either regarded as sin or sickness. So we had the first, like the first orthodox gay Rabbi came out in the film, like in the world, we had high school sweethearts who were an ultra-orthodox lesbian couple who were in the film, the first person who came from a Hasidic world to come out as lesbian was in the film. I spent six years crisscrossing the globe trying to find any Orthodox parents who had a lesbian or gay or transgender kid, and I could not find in six years one parent who had come forward publicly. Wow. So a lot of the people were in silhouette. I also convinced Orthodox rabbis to speak for the first time publicly on the issue. So it really was like one of these tipping points in the culture where it just completely shifted. And it was like, I mean, I still get people coming up to me and saying, you know, you changed my life. Like I saw your film and I came out because of it, all over the world, 1000s. I mean, the stories are enormous. And I’m about to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film next year, and I’m having my first retrospective of my work at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and so we’re doing like a whole big program with Trembling Before God and Sabbath Queen. It’s going to be really exciting.

Will Bachman  13:11
So Sabbath Queen, so okay, so give us some context. So you already had won some prizes and stuff, and then how did you happen to get connected with the pre rabbi and and decide to start filming. I mean, you probably weren’t anticipating at that point. Oh, I’m going to do this for 21 years, right? Tell us the story of how it started.

Sandi DuBowski  13:35
So I basically went to Jerusalem in the late 90s to look for people to be in Trembling Before G-d. And everyone kept saying, well, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, his nephew, is gay. You should talk to him. Amichai and I met, I asked him to be in the movie, and he refused, because he’s too much of a diva, and he wanted his own movie. He said, “I don’t do collage.” So, you know, in all fairness, Trembling was so much about belonging within the bounds of Orthodoxy, and he was already post-denominational and smashing the box. So we just became friends, and we developed a dear friendship over the next five years. And then I began filming in 2003. I don’t think either of us knew that it was going to be a 21-year twist and turn journey. At that point he was doing all this counterculture storytelling, a kind of ritual theater. He had a drag queen character called Rebbetzin Hadassah. I mean, this is someone who’s from 38 generations of rabbis. His family are like the Kennedys of Judaism. This family has stature, and he’s the renegade. But I don’t think we knew at that point that he would actually enter rabbinical school, that he would take off the wig and the mask, that he would go Conservative Jewish. There’s been all of this unfolding so that he could do more deep and serious work and transformative work. So, you know, even his brother, who’s a very, very prominent orthodox rabbi, who was powerfully affected by Trembling Before G-d agreed to be in Sabbath Queen. Having done all this work with parents who had disowned their children because they were queer, religious parents like, here’s a family who stepped forward to be in the film. And, you know, watching the fruits of one’s labor, you know, manifest in history is pretty incredible. Even Trembling wound up changing the law. I mean, the Conservative Jewish movement forbid openly gay and lesbian rabbis and and we helped change that. So they opened the door, and people like Amichai were able to enter seminary for the first time in history. So, you know, there’s a lot of intertwining of these works, and a lot of like, a real span of time and work that keeps building on each other in a real arc, you know? And then I’ll also say that actually, during my time with Trembling in our distribution, I did an interfaith panel, like a Christian, Muslim, Jewish panel in DC, and I was approached by a Muslim gay man, Parvez Sharma, who said, you know, I’m thinking of doing a movie on Islam and homosexuality. Can you give me some advice? Well, fast forward, like five years, six years later, I was the producer, and we premiered that film at Toronto Film Festival and Berlin Film Festival, and it’s called A Jihad for Love. So that was like a whole other world. And then I co-produced a film called Budrus. So there’s a real connectivity between all this work around faith and gender and sexuality and religious fundamentalism and just the journey of the soul.

Will Bachman  17:36
Can you tell us a bit about over the course of those 21 years of filming, you know, I don’t want to give kind of spoilers here. Yeah, you’re, you’re free to, but I would love to hear a little bit about just kind of the process of, How often were you following Rabbi on a high around and how often were you filming? And there’s, there’s some trips that you take with him, right? So just talk a little bit about what that was like over that period of time.

Sandi DuBowski  18:12
Yeah, yeah. Well, I did probably overshoot, because I did have 1800 hours of original material. I had 1100 hours of archival, you know, we distilled all of that down to an hour, 45 minute film. You know, it took six years to edit. So I think because Amichai’s identities are so kaleidoscopic, and he lives in so many worlds. My editors would say, I do not know anybody who has this many identities. Like he is a radical queer Faerie. He has a really intense Holocaust story in his rabbinic family. He’s founded Lab/Shul, which is a everybody-friendly, God-optional, artist-driven pop-up experimental congregation in New York. So, this is  someone who lives in so many worlds and these worlds never even see each other. So there was so much that I needed to film in order to really capture all the very complex, rich inner world of this rising leader. So sometimes it was like, you know what you’re going to do, a 25 hour ritual called Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement. I’m going to film the whole thing. Or, you’re going to have a baby. I’m going to film your baby naming. Or it’s like, oh, wait, you’re like, after 13 years, I just asked your brother to be in the movie, this major Orthodox rabbi. And he said, Yes, I’m gonna fly to Jerusalem and do an interview with him. So there were so many ways in which I was following so many storylines within even just one human. And, you know, it was a very complicated film to make, and I’ve really put two decades of work into it, and it is quite beautiful becauseI watch it, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I feel like we left no stone unturned. And actually, Amichai and I are still dear friends, which is a testament to all of this. That you can have such a really big chunk of life collaboration and there’s still such a great relationship. I just did a screening with him during World Pride in DC last night. We’re doing our DC theatrical right now. We have Ari Shapiro, who’s the NPR host of All Things Considered, doing our Q and A with us tonight. So we’ve been in like, it’s been an incredible year of being in conversation with such phenomenal people. You know, having the film just like burst into the world, we’re in 50 cinemas right now. You know, over these months, we’re in 65 film festivals. You know, I’ve been, I’m going to Berlin this week to do a big Berlin premiere. People are having deep and powerful, transformative reactions to the movie.

Will Bachman  21:57
How did you decide when to stop filming and and say, Okay, we could keep going. But like, Okay, enough is enough. When did you decide that and how?

Sandi DuBowski  22:06
So, you know, I think in some ways act one and act two move through this kaleidoscope and then there is act three. It really had to be something dramatic, where Amichai had to face a choice. And I actually thought that when he became a rabbi, that would be the end of the film. I thought, oh, that’s like a natural end. He gets this title. He steps into his family dynasty. And then I realized that in the hero/shero’s journey, it’s not about getting a title. It’s what you do with that title in the world. It’s the change that you create with that title and the test that you face. And Amichai faced a big test, and he had to make a very hard choice, and then he was forced to pay a price, and that became the end of the movie.

Will Bachman  23:09
Tell us more about how you just you mentioned heroes, hero’s journey. Tell us a bit about how you tried to use that template, you know, in the film. Was that very kind of a conscious thing that you were doing.

Sandi DuBowski  23:24
I mean, it naturally lent itself to that. Because, you know, this is Biblical in many ways. You know, it’s a coming of age. I wouldn’t say prophetic, but there is an element of, like, what does it mean to take on a thousands year-old faith and try to really paradigm shift it to the present, and we are facing very challenging times. And I think if our if our religions, are going to be vehicles of justice and truly upholding values and morals, then there’s a lot of work to do in Israel, Palestine, in the US. We’re facing the rise of so much authoritarianism and fascism and I think that being able to create something that wasn’t just a disposable algorithm, you know, short viral video, but something that really looked at time and how we really can manifest these values in our lives and in our communities and in our families and in our houses of worship and in our nations. That’s really what is on Amichai’s shoulders as he meets the past, present and future, the ancient and the contemporary. It means a lot to be a rabbi, and there aren’t that many films about rabbis or ministers or imams or priests, that really travel a longitudinal journey.

Will Bachman  25:30
What do you know now about the world that you didn’t know when you started making this film, that this film taught you,

Sandi DuBowski  25:47
Well, it could be that my husband is a meditation teacher among also being a technologist and being a filmmaker. I think I’ve learned a lot about patience, and I’ve learned a lot about time and just sitting with experience, being a witness and present to experience, and also not knowing what does it mean to evolve in our lives without knowing and trusting that you know, because nothing about this was cookie cutter, nothing about this had a map, and I don’t think my life really has had that. You know, if I even was just speaking about kind of my post Harvard life, it’s been very unexpected, and it doesn’t fit neatly into boxes.

Will Bachman  26:54
Did you get any advice from other documentary filmmakers had worked on similar large projects. I’m curious if you had mentors in this, or if you turn to people who had done like these kind of long term efforts,

Sandi DuBowski  27:13
I didn’t. There aren’t that many people who you know are doing this kind of 21 year project.

Speaker 2  27:23
well, then let me, let me flip it, but I okay. I can say that.

Sandi DuBowski  27:32
I could say that there’s a lot of community in the documentary film world. And another thing that I did was I wound up being – I had a dear friend. Unfortunately, she died of brain cancer Jess Search, but she launched something called Good Pitch. And Good Pitch was a way to take social issue documentaries and work with teams of documentary filmmakers over many months, and then culminate in a high impact pitching forum. So she brought me on to build it in North America. And I wound up becoming the Good Pitch outreach director. And so I would work with these film teams, and we would have films on everything from racial justice to criminal justice, global development, education, LGBTQ, equality, like just so many different issues. And then I would work with the teams. And then I would curate a room of philanthropists and foundations and activists and nonprofits and broadcast and digital platforms and government and business and it was amazing. We would have these seven teams pitch, and I used to call it a waterfall of love, like filmmakers would be showered with resources and opportunities for their films and their change campaigns. So that’s really how they brought me in, because that’s how I worked with Trembling and with A Jihad for Love. I built community around films and filmmaking and film movement, and then I translated all of that into this work wwith Sabbath Queen. I’m a people mover, I move people so I think that’s been, not necessarily filmmakers who do longitudinal work, but film communities and how we intersect with so many other communities. I mean, everywhere I’m going, it’s just this outpouring of connection and networks and it’s so beautiful. One thing that we’re doing with Sabbath Queen is that we’re not just showing a movie, often we’re creating live ritual. Like in Berlin, we’re doing a Sabbath Queen Friday night feast with Rabbi Amichai, which is his, you know, everybody-friendly, God-optional, musical, contemplative version of what it means to come together and to pause and stop for being in togetherness and in person and reflective. We did a SoulSpa at our San Francisco premiere. In Chicago in a few weeks, we’re doing a Let the Light in Saturday Night ritual with wine and candles. And so I think that I’m also thinking about expanded cinema, and what does it mean to gather. Like so much of what I do is about gathering. And I co-founded a group called The Creative Resistance with a group of media makers. I started a thing called Queens Food caravan. We used to eat our way through Queens. It’s just been a real joy in community building over these decades.

Will Bachman  31:13
So community building maybe to flip my question from before last question, what advice would you have for other longitudinal, long term documentary filmmakers? If they come to you, they are, I’m starting something, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last. They have this idea. I found this amazing, interesting person. I’m only going to start filming. What sort of tips, lessons learned Do you have that you’d share beyond this piece around, you know, community building,

Sandi DuBowski  31:42
yeah, I think that it is very helpful to have, you know, touchstones of creative collaborators who enter into the process and are like a third eye, you know, who can give feedback and who can help you look at things that you don’t see. Because you know, any filmmaker so deeply immersed in the work and in their lens, and I think it’s really important to have test screenings, we do feedback screenings, like, we’re kind of workshopping the piece over tim and having the ability to take, like a summer, which I did, to edit like a piece, you know, to take like three months to edit a piece. And, yeah, especially for something so longitudinal, where the map is not as clear as an issue film, where you’re really like, but trembling. I was not that that was simple, either, but it was just, you know, I was curating a chorus of voices around one issue, you know. But this is a character driven film, and that’s really different. Yeah.

Will Bachman  32:58
What else was going on in your life over the last 2025 years, 22 years since you filming this? I understand it wasn’t, you know, 50 hours a week doing just this. It was periodic. What else have you been up to?

Sandi DuBowski  33:15
Well, I did find love, and I’m with someone now for 15 years, and we just got married three years ago.

33:26
Congratulations. We had a

Sandi DuBowski  33:29
Actually, Rabbi Amichai officiated the wedding. We had a Catskills summer camp for a whole weekend, and we did a Shabbat ritual that opened up into a costume square dance on Friday night. And we had beautiful friends who DJ’d and another friend with a band and a friend who’s a chef and we just had this glorious outdoor Summer Catskills weekend – lots of swimming and even Go-Karts. So that’s been really beautiful. And then we, we bought a home that we live in, in Brooklyn, with these friends. So we split a two family – one’s a filmmaker, one’s a dancer/choreographer, and they have a kid, and we share this great home together. So that’s like a creative way of approaching what I call gay-ging, gay aging. And we decided not to have a kid. So, you know, we get to be kind of live-in guncles, you know, gay uncles to this wonderful growing boy who’s great and so that’s been, like a really kind of whole turn in my life, in my 40s and 50s. I did a 40th birthday friend caravan across southern Utah, and I brought together friends and we hiked for two weeks. And actually, it was during that hike that I said, “You know what, I think I’m really ready to meet somebody,” and then a few months later, I meet the person that I fall in love with. So that’s a lovely unexpected, you know, turn to have love at this stage of life, new love.

Will Bachman  35:40
It’s so interesting how it often happens that if you when you finally decide and tell the universe that you’re ready for something The universe provides, yeah,

Sandi DuBowski  35:54
So yeah, I think that’s been really meaningful. Personally, you know, I had to, I buried my father eight years ago. Amichai actually buried my father. I am part of a group called Kaddish Club, which Lab/Shul does, which is a group for mourners, and I’m a circle holder of that, and we do a weekly Zoom for people who are in need and in person, seasonal gatherings. So I also have been in rituals of love and rituals of death and rituals of life, and that’s been very profound. And I’ve been helping a lot of people, some classmates as well, who have been part of Kaddish Club and actually have been part of my husband Eric’s meditation teaching and sit groups. And so I think there’s been like, all this, again, community from many of our classmates and from people from all kinds of worlds that I’ve been moving through. But trying to figure out how we mark these milestones and how we mark all of the rituals of our lives, you know, in deep ways,

Will Bachman  37:24
tell me about a ritual that you have created, and any tips you have for classmates and listeners on how to, you know, create a ritual for your family or for your community.

Sandi DuBowski  37:40
Well, besides the wedding, which I highly recommend, like, if people are extroverts, and I am clearly a maximalist extrovert. I realized that alot of the containers for mourning, we really don’t have them in our culture. Judaism does really well, but just at large, we’re not there. And so I did something called Mourners Corner, and I would invite people to come to the park, anyone who was in mourning. And sometimes people would bring a poem, musical instrument. We would go around the circle, and everybody would share. We’d maybe sing together, recite poetry. It was really beautiful. And then we would end it with a jelly roll hug. Do you know what a jelly roll hug is, where somebody stands in the middle, everybody holds hands, and then you coil a spiral around and around and around, and so everyone kind of becomes this little clump of, like silly giggliness. And it is actually such a great way to end that ritual, you know, to go to this just to go to the place of tears, to really, you know, be in the sad place, and then lift everyone in this kind of connective touch with each other. So I think that was a great kind of mix of ingredients around creating a ritual. I really do recommend this book by Priya Parker called The Art of Gathering. That’s been a very meaningful book for me. And yeah, I think that we need more ritual, especially in these times which are so uncertain. Certainly everyone’s always welcome to plug into Lab/Shul, if it speaks to people and just find ways to get offline, to get off our screens and to be in person. You know, we’re in a loneliness epidemic, and I can see how. I can see how deeply everybody appreciates just coming to a cinema with a live event and hearing a director and walking out feeling more connected to ourselves than we were before. So, yeah, go outside. Go outside one’s comfort zone.

Will Bachman  40:23
tell us about any courses or professors you had at Harvard that continue to resonate with you in some way.

Sandi DuBowski  40:31
You know, it’s so interesting when you ask that question. I just had this course that just popped into my mind. It was a Hist and Lit course on the Vietnam War, and it was a small seminar. And I think just the interdisciplinary nature of it that was so exciting. We’re moving between story, you know, which obviously is something that has become a lifelong passion and also just history. So I think like looking at the story, it’s interpretations that matter, how we process our lives and our stories and our wounds and our traumas. It was very profound. That was a course that still resonates with me.

Will Bachman  41:35
Sandi, where can listeners find out about your works online. If they want to follow up, I and feel free to share several different websites for the films or Or where’s the best place for people to go

Sandi DuBowski  41:48
So if people want to learn about Sabbath Queen, we have a website, www.sabbathqueen.com. We have an Instagram @sabbathqueenfilm. I’m on Facebook, I’m on Instagram, I’m on LinkedIn. People can always reach out at hello@sabbathqueen.com. I’m also on tour, so I’m happy to meet up with anyone, anywhere and if people want to bring the film to their community. That’s happening starting in August. I’m just, I’m loving connecting with our class and our wider community world. So

Will Bachman  42:35
fantastic. And we will include those links in the show notes. Sandi, thank you so much for joining today and congratulations on the release of this film. Thank you so much. Will you.