Austin Jewish Film Festival: Bukra Fil Mish-Mish

Cinema history is a fragile thing. It can crack like celluloid, or suddenly combust and disappear like old nitrate. So, in many ways, it's no surprise that the Frenkel brothers - the pioneers of Arabic animation - have been forgotten.

Bukra Fil Mish-Mish (literally, "tomorrow, when the apricots blossom," but more colloquially "when Hell freezes over") takes the rediscovery of their work and makes it a deeply personal story. Due to the shifting tides of the Middle East, the Frenkels had moved to France and their work had become a passing footnote, most of it seemingly lost. It was only when Didier Frenkel, son of Shlomo Frenkel, found their archive in the basement of the house that his late uncles shared that the process began of placing their story back in the book of animation history.

For enthusiasts of mid-century cartoons, the Fleischer-esque feel of the Frenkel's work is captivating, as is their story: the children of Russian Jewish migrants who somehow cobbled together the beginning of an animation studio in Egypt. There's a certain energy around the brothers that feels like the original Disney equation: director, chief artist and dreamer visionary David was like Walt, the visionary; producer Hershl was the Roy Disney, the business mind that both enabled his brother's madcap ideas and found ways to reign him in; and Shlomo, the technical genius who could have been Egypt's Ub Iwerks (if only he hadn't had to hand craft cameras and projectors out of scrap).

But Tal Michael's documentary isn't simply about the history of Egyptian animation, or of Mish-Mish Effendi, the amiable everyman who was the lead in many of the Frenkel's films. It's the story of a family and their place in history - and of their struggles to come to terms with both their own legacy, and their own inner struggles. As Daniel tries to restore the Frenkels to the cultural position they lost, his mother would be happy if the reels were chopped up with an axe (much as the brothers had done to an early reel that they later despised as too amateurish, too clumsy). Michael uses the story of why the brothers never got the acclaim they deserved to also explain why she remains so quietly bitter about that part of the family legacy.

At a slight 74 minutes, Bukra Fil Mish-Mish could have taken a little more time to place the brothers into the broader mid-century Egyptian cultural cloth and identity that clearly defined their work. Yet the story Michael tells, of a family still wrangling with the pains of failures and the costs of success, and finally being able to appreciate what the trio had achieved, is charming and touching.

Bukra Fil Mish-Mish screens as part of the Austin Jewish Film Festival, Nov. 7-13. Tickets and passes available at www.austinjff.org.

This review has been edited to reflect that it was Didier Frenkel who worked to restore the films and the family legacy.