Page 3 - Jake Marmer News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Part Three of OUR PANDEMIC YEAR, a week-long series examining how the Covid pandemic has changed our local Jewish world. Debra Schaffner has spent much of the past year working on her first feature-length documentary. “Curse of the Mutant Heirloom” explores how women, including herself, deal with the knowledge that they carry the BRCA gene mutation, which results in increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer and is more prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews. The pandemic prevented Schaffner from filming outside of her Oakland home, so she decided to lean more heavily on animation and miniatures to tell the women’s stories. She built a small robot version of her late mother (“It looks quite a lot like her”) and fashioned a tabletop-size model of a kitchen, inspired by the one in her childhood home in New Jersey, out of wood, tiles and handmade wallpaper.

United statesNew yorkSan franciscoNew jerseyDavies hallSacramento national wildlife refugeFrancisco marinaSarah wolfman robichaudJohn schottPete rososLexi lebanAshkenazi jewsDebra schaffnerAlma mahlerJake marmerNaomie kremer