Hilla Medalia captures ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine as he uses fancy footwork to bring together Palestinian and Jewish children
Hilla Medalia’s modest, watchable documentary is about Pierre Dulaine, a ballroom dancer and teacher whose work with underprivileged New York schoolchildren was the inspiration for a fiction feature, Take the Lead (2006) starring Antonio Banderas as Pierre. This film is about Dulaine’s return to Jaffa, the city of his birth, and his attempt to set up a new school dance programme to get Jewish and Palestinian children to come together for the first time in their lives, and partner up for waltzes, tangoes and rumbas – a kind of Strictly Come Dancing-style kids’ version of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. It’s a nice idea, and there is something touching and important in showing how the boys and girls are – of course – so shy and giggly with each other at first.
Hilla Medalia’s modest, watchable documentary is about Pierre Dulaine, a ballroom dancer and teacher whose work with underprivileged New York schoolchildren was the inspiration for a fiction feature, Take the Lead (2006) starring Antonio Banderas as Pierre. This film is about Dulaine’s return to Jaffa, the city of his birth, and his attempt to set up a new school dance programme to get Jewish and Palestinian children to come together for the first time in their lives, and partner up for waltzes, tangoes and rumbas – a kind of Strictly Come Dancing-style kids’ version of Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. It’s a nice idea, and there is something touching and important in showing how the boys and girls are – of course – so shy and giggly with each other at first.
- 2/12/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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