A lens on domestic abuse

This could be the opening scene of any Hollywood movie, but it’s part of a film therapy course for victims of domestic violence and abuse.

By RUTH EGLASH
Viewing of domestic violence film 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Viewing of domestic violence film 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The film starts slowly: A woman is in the kitchen preparing food for the evening meal. Her husband enters; he has a brochure in his hands promoting a new house yet to be built.
He begins to tell her what a good deal he has got for them and how they will soon be able to move together to a new, much bigger place. Nervously she cautions him, reminding him that they are broke and that perhaps buying a new house at this time is not such a great idea.
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The wife speaks gently, hesitantly, but within seconds rage appears on the husband’s face and he turns on her, screaming, hurling insults and eventually smashing plates and throwing the carefully prepared food across the room. She runs fearfully into the living room and throws herself face down on the couch, unable to control the tears.
This could be the opening scene of any Hollywood movie about the hardships of family life, but the crude props and grotesquely disguised faces of the actors suggest that this film has a different purpose: It’s part of a film therapy course for victims of domestic violence and abuse.
Later in the film, the wife has relented and the two are sitting together with a real estate agent who is showing them the layout of the place they might one day move into. As the agent talks, describing the interior and exterior with the help of a doll house, the wife stands up. She doesn’t wan to hear any more. It’s not the right time, she says, and she does not want to be part of this. She gets up and walks away, leaving her husband and the agent shocked by her defiance.
In the closing scene, the wife is packing her husband’s belongings. He will get counseling to control his anger or he will leave her house, she says loudly. She will take the abuse no longer.
“A film takes a life and restructures it,” explains Sharona Levitan, a Jerusalem-based filmmaker turned film therapist, who devised and runs the course for victims of domestic violence on behalf of the Welfare and Social Services Ministry.
This is the first course that Levitan, a former producer for Channel 1 and the creator of numerous documentaries and films about Israel, has run for women facing ongoing domestic abuse.
“In a film, we can control what is happening to us, and we can act the way we would like to be,” she says. “Film therapy, like all forms of art therapy, helps us to see things from a different perspective. For those taking part in this course, seeing themselves on TV can also help them analyze their situation. Even though every person has a different story to tell, there are also common themes and a common root that women in this situation share.”
Levitan’s program, Myself through the Camera Lens, started out as an eight-month workshop for victims of terror, funded by the National Insurance Institute’s Department for Rehabilitation. When funding for that workshop was cut last year, Levitan sought a new venue for her skills and started working with a group of women, all victims of domestic abuse or violent relationships with men.
“I didn’t know what to expect at first,” admits Levitan, who works with a social worker to ensure that the program meets certain professional and sensitivity standards. “My biggest surprise was when I realized that unlike victims of terror, who usually experience a one-time trauma, for these women their trauma is ongoing.
In addition, she says, while victims of terror can accept that what happened to them was not directly their fault, victims of domestic violence continually question their own behavior and role. “The women have low self-esteem,” she says, adding that most of them suffer more from verbal attacks and control issues than from direct violence.
“When the women arrive at the weekly meeting, they just want to get it all out, and they usually spend much of their time unloading their grief and sharing their pressures,” observes Levitan. “They feel shame about their lives and do not understand why they are in this situation. They usually have a long history of violence in their families, and most of them are afraid to leave their husbands.”
The workshop, which completed its first program earlier this month, takes the women through the distinct stages of the film-making process, including understanding the language of film, writing scripts, preparing screenplays and learning the basics of acting. Participants end their eight months of therapy with a short film depicting one aspect of their lives, and the women all help each other by acting in each film and providing props.
“People work independently and in a group,” explains Levitan, who also films each three-hour session so the women can periodically review what they have discussed and see themselves from an alternative perspective.
“To see oneself on screen is a very interesting experience. Filming the group can have a real impact on its dynamics, and the women can learn a lot from watching themselves speaking.”
Levitan says that although the benefits of film therapy for those who have suffered from terrorist attacks is clear, for women stuck in abusive or violent relationships, it is more complicated.
“At one point in this workshop I thought perhaps this group was not quite right for this type of therapy. However, as we progressed, I realized that some of them had spent more than 10 years in other types of therapy and nothing seemed to be helping,” she says. “When we started the acting, it was very hard for them to admit what was going on; but by the time they had finished their movies, I felt they had completely changed.”
One woman was insistent that she would not be able to create such an intimate film of her life.
“She is an amazing woman, but her husband makes sure to tell her every day that she is not,” says Levitan, adding that the woman was so afraid to try that she even tried to persuade the other women that making a life movie was pointless. “We managed to get her to write a script and later make a movie. It turned out that her ability to act was better than anyone else’s. Afterward she told me. ‘If I can go through these scenes as an actress, then maybe I will be able to go through it in real life, too.’”
In another of the workshop’s movies, a woman stands up to her husband and demands he pay her a salary for working in the business they have run together for more than 17 years. When he refuses, she “quits” and finds herself another job. In the final scene, the woman proudly holds up her paycheck and then immediately starts packing a suitcase, saying that she now has the “courage to leave him.”
“The workshop is a process of repair, and by the end they are dealing with their situations in the movies precisely the way they want to deal with them in real life,” points out Levitan, explaining that the films made were screened only privately among the group.
“Some of the women were even too afraid to take them home in case their husbands found them.”
However, one woman who did manage to escape her abusive husband’s grasp asked that her film be shown in some type of public capacity.
“She wanted other women to wake up and see what was happening and to know that they are not alone,” says Levitan.