Published: 27 January 2022
Last updated: 4 March 2024
MIRIAM COSIC speaks to Nira Burstein, director of a film about her dysfunctional family, which will open this year’s Antenna documentary film festival in Sydney
CHARM CIRCLE IS BOTH disturbing and mesmerising. It’s depressingly sad, discomfitingly intimate, generous, despairing and witty. It documents an almost creepily idiosyncratic New York Jewish family, their dysfunction punctuated by moments of joy and togetherness.
The film, which will open this year’s Antenna Documentary Festival in Sydney on February 2, is New York filmmaker Nira Burstein’s first full-length film and her first documentary. And it is about her own family: her parents and her two sisters. The house, on the cul de sac in Queens that the film is named for, is chaotic; there’s stuff everywhere and it’s not too clean.
Money is scarce. Food is sporadic. Mental health issues are pervasive. And worldviews range from the strictly Orthodox to the sexually liberated. The footage Burstein shot is interspersed with home videos of the siblings’ childhood and their parents’ youth.
Her parents, Uri and Raya, are bohemians, both musicians, and her mother is also a trained occupational therapist. Uri, stick thin, wears a kippah and quotes the prophet Ezekiel by heart, in between swearing fiercely and displaying endless impatience. He still has long hair that he ties back.
Raya is overweight and speaks haltingly. Like her husband’s, her education is evident. She is also boundlessly patient and her smile is sweet. Nira’s older sister, Judy, has serious learning disabilities and has always needed care. Her younger sister, Adina, is preparing for a polyamorous wedding to two other women.
It is an extraordinarily honest portrayal of a household that most people in American society - and Australian - would prefer to keep hidden. And, if not for that mesmerising quality, most might prefer not to see. Burstein is clear about her purpose, however.
We're allowed to find happiness in the politically incorrect; we can find things funny in the sadness.
“There’s a lot of levels to it,” she says on the phone from New York. “There is the film that I made, which is a personal journey and which is just for my family, showing them what I see in terms of filming the house and filming the way that we interact.
“There is a line in the film when my dad says, ‘sometimes when you’re in something, you don’t realise how others might see it.’ That was the internal reason for making the film.
“And then, I wanted to share with a wider audience how there can still be beautiful and joyous moments in seemingly chaotic situations. We’re allowed to find happiness in the politically incorrect; we can find things funny in the sadness.
“One of my favourite quotes, I don’t know who said it, is ‘you can see the light the brightest in the darkness’. I’m really moved by those kinds of ideas.”
She adds that, despite all, her family is “very charismatic”. And the love goes deep. In one scene, Uri refuses to attend the wedding: “absolutely, absolutely, absolutely”, he insists, quoting the Halakhah.
Finally, however, he turns up there, dressed to the nines and kisses all the women getting married in turn. The give and take goes both ways: despite the radical edge to it all, the wedding takes place under the traditional Jewish Chuppah.
“What I am so grateful for about my family is how much love there is,” Burstein told the Docs on Screens blog after the film premiered at the Sheffield DocFest in September last year. “I think that is what gives people space to watch this movie even in the more difficult moments.
“And I think that’s the way that people feel safe about it. I am very inspired by my parents. I think they have a wonderful spirit for what they have been through and their sense of humour is incredible.”
“I’m really moved,” she tells The Jewish Independent, “when people say to me, ‘Oh, I want to show this to my grandmother’ or ‘I want to show this to my kids’. There are things in there that are conversation starters.”
Charm Circle has won several indie awards since its release and has reached cult status by word of mouth. “A slow burn,” Burstein calls it, “and that’s very cool.” She began making it in 2015, after years of doing corporate work.
Working as a film editor, which she started as a freelance while a media studies student in college, gave her a good grounding in technique and narrative structure, she says.
My parents enjoyed it for the most part. It was almost play for them, and as creative as play.
This film began when a music video she was supposed to shoot was postponed because of bad weather and she felt the urge to get on with something nonetheless. She had already asked her parents if she could film them and had set one of the three abstract and edgy shorts she’d already made, The Lighthouse, in their house.
“My parents enjoyed it, for the most part,” she says. “It was almost play for them, and as creative as play.” There’s a surprising lack of self-consciousness for people who are not professional actors used to operating in front of a camera.
“I guess there’s a lot of trust between me and my parents. It’s very special,” says Burstein, who is 37. She adds: “I’ve always had very intense, very intimate relationships with everybody who’s important to me. I don’t really have casual acquaintances.”
There’s nothing casual about Charm Circle. It is intense and the viewer sees the people it portrays as familiars very quickly. Burstein herself appears in the old family videos, though she has clearly edited herself out of most of them to put her sisters first, and her voice is heard asking questions from time to time.
And yet, she is the one we’re in conversation with throughout the film. We learn her insecurities, her affections and her demons. It is, in the end, about her most of all.
Charm Circle screens at the Antenna Documentary Festival on February 2 and 12. There will be a Q&A with the director following the February 12 screening
Photo: Nira Burstein holding a photo of her family
