Seder-Masochism (2018) on Netflix
NR20181h 18mAnimationComedyFantasyHistoryMusical
A Passover Seder retells the Book of Exodus, acted by Moses, Aharon, the Angel of Death and Jesus. The Great Mother and humanity's earliest goddesses face the rise of patriarchy.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb7.4/10363 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
The Book of Exodus is restaged in song, with Moses and his brother Aharon among the figures who act it out. The Angel of Death, Jesus and the traditional Hebrew God join them. Ranged against that company is the Great Mother and the goddesses worshiped in Egypt, among them Isis, Nut, Hathor and Sekhmet, in a tragic struggle with a patriarchy on the rise. Goddess figurines from the Venus of Willendorf to the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük take part, and goddesses dance to a plea that Moses embrace their worship. Popular and liturgical recordings from 1928 to 2018 carry the numbers.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Seder-Masochism (2018)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- For the 'Chad Gadya' scene, Nina Paley animated figures in Flash 8 that Theodore Gray imported into Wolfram Mathematica as polygons; 516 embroidered figures were then stitched into 86 matzoh covers, and each finished figure was photographed to make one frame of animation.
- Having spent $70,000 to clear the music rights to Sita Sings the Blues so she could give that film away, Nina Paley relied on the fair-use parody defense for Seder-Masochism and did not try to secure the rights to the many recordings she used.
- Nina Paley assembled and edited Seder-Masochism on Final Cut Pro X, which she called "horrible" in its interface but powerful in its processing of 4K video, and estimated the finished feature's total budget at $20,000.
- Pat Boone wrote the English lyrics to "The Exodus Song", Ernest Gold's main theme for the 1960 film Exodus, in 25 minutes on Christmas Eve on the back of a Christmas card, which he later sent to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
- Criticized after Sita Sings the Blues for co-opting Indian culture as an outsider, Nina Paley took the taunt "how would you like it if people made a film about your religion?" as a challenge and turned to her own Jewish heritage for a revisionist retelling of the Passover story.
- To animate ancient goddess figurines for the film, Nina Paley cut the backgrounds from high-resolution photos in GIMP, then gave them "little skeleton" points in Moho so they could bend, blink and smile, and posted the animations free on her blog; they include the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (6,000 BC, Turkey) and the Venus of Willendorf (30,000 BC, Austria).
