“In Her Own Time” Screening with Executive Producer Jonathan Bernstein
Our final film screening of the year brought Executive Producer Jonathan Bernstein to BU to discuss both The Chosen and In Her Own Time. In Her Own Time was screened in CAS 326 the following Tuesday, making this a two part film series exploring Orthodox Jewish life in both fiction and in documentary film.
In Her Own Time is a documentary following the work of anthropologist Dr. Barbara Myerhoff in Los Angeles, specifically her fieldwork in the Fairfax community of Orthodox Jews in the 1980s. She did this work while also battling a cancer diagnosis, and the documentary focuses as much on her life as it does on her subjects of study. She received acclaim for her work on communities that were personal to her while overlooked by other anthropologists; she chaired the anthropology department at the University of Southern California and founded the Center for Visual Anthropology. Myerhoff and the director of In Her Own Time Lynne Littman also won an Academy Award for their documentary short Number Our Days, about the elderly Jewish community of Venice, CA. In Her Own Time recounts her life and work, and shows Myerhoff in a personal light as she finds support from the Fairfax community during this difficult time in her personal life. Littman took over the production of In Her Own Time when Myerhoff succumbed to her illness in 1985, and the documentary came out a year later.
Jonathan Bernstein was on hand to discuss he work on the production of this film as well as The Chosen and the Woody Allen film Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask (1972).