Best Unintentionally Perfect Timing for a Film Screening

When Jewish Film Festival organizers scheduled their event for March, nobody knew that a war with Iraq would have just begun. And even if someone had considered that possibility, it is unlikely that Schmelvis: In Search of the King's Jewish Roots would have struck anyone as globally significant. It's a funny documentary about a Jewish, Canadian filmmaker obsessed with the rumor that Elvis might have had a hidden Jewish identity; he sets out with a Jewish Elvis impersonator and an RV full of his neurotic cohorts to get Memphis natives' reactions to the Elvis-might-be-Jewish scenario. When they don't get what they're looking for -- that is, a rise out of people -- they make a pilgrimage to Israel, where they plant a tree for Elvis. (For readers who don't know this, Jewish people are nuts about planting trees in Israel; Jewish families the world over plant trees for their kids in Israel with the same fervor that Christians apply to making mayonnaise-based foods such as potato salad.) While in Israel, the group visits an Elvis Café just outside Jerusalem. It so happens that Palestinian children are on a field trip to that locale. At the teacher's request, Schmelvis gets on the school bus and does a few songs before wishing the kids peace. The audience, which had been laughing for about an hour straight, fell silent. During the Q&A session that followed, director Max Wallace explained that he'd filmed the scene just a few years earlier, between intifadas, and that the scene could not occur now, when Palestinian children can no longer take field trips to that region and no Jewish person is likely to get on a bus filled with Palestinians. It was hard to know whether to be disheartened by how much had changed in just a few years or to be encouraged by the notion that -- given common ground like the Elvis Café -- people have it in them to get along.