RUTHIE
AND CONNIE : EVERY ROOM IN THE HOUSE
"Out" in film festivals all over the world.
FILM REVIEWS
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MIAMI HERALD
Posted on Wed, Apr. 24, 2002
Film depicts Jewish wives who were friends, then lovers
BY LINDA BROCKMAN
lbrockman@herald.com
Ruthie Berman believes her friendship with Connie Kurtz -- when the women were
young mothers in Brooklyn in 1958 -- was beshert.
''It's like you are on a bicycle for two,'' says Berman, who lives with Kurtz
in Century Village, West Palm Beach, 'and you don't have to say `OK, start with
your left foot.' We know what to start with.''
In 1974, after a 15-year friendship, Kurtz and Berman finally came to terms
with what their relationship had grown into over the years. They finally realized
they were in love.
But how would their husbands, children and friends handle the revelation?
Filmmaker Donald Goldmacher tells the story of these two seniors -- lovers,
friends, gay activists, mothers and grandmothers -- in Ruthie and Connie: Every
Room in the House.
''I initially thought I would make a movie about Ruthie,'' said Goldmacher,
who met Berman when he was a child. ``Then it dawned on me -- it's not just
about Ruthie, the story to tell was about both of them. They are partners in
life.''
Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House is being shown at 2:30 p.m. on April
27 at the Colony Theater in Miami Beach. It is part of the fourth annual Miami
Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, running through May 5.
The women, both in their mid-60s, have been together for 40 years as friends,
25 years as lovers. The snowbirds divide their time between South Florida and
Brooklyn, where they met while living in Contello Towers.
Kurtz spent 18 years in an unfulfilling marriage. She wed and had children,
she said, because it was expected of her.
''In 1974, I gave myself permission to fall in love with Ruthie,'' said Kurtz,
remembering the tears, energy and anguish involved with making that ``quantum
leap.''
Today, Kurtz's children -- even her Hasidic son, Moshe -- have been more understanding.
''He realizes that his religious beliefs don't equal an inability to love his
mother and welcome Ruthie into his home,'' she said. ``I don't ask my son for
acceptance, nor do I need his acceptance.''
Kurtz's daughter, Eileen, considers the women her ``two mothers.''
At first, Berman had trouble facing her sexuality. She denied it to her family
and even to herself. When her kids asked if she was a lesbian, she said no,
and tried to perpetuate the lie that the divorcées were simply roommates.
Berman's pain became so fierce, she worked out the perfect suicide plan -- a
leap from the Verrazano Bridge linking Brooklyn to Staten Island. Her children,
she rationalized, would accept their mother's death easier than her ``coming
out.''
Then Berman remembered Kurtz and thought, ``I have to go back to her . . . Connie,
as my friend and my lover, took my hand and brought me out of the closet little
by little.''
Berman said she always felt something was missing in her marriage and her life.
Before she met Kurtz, she didn't know how to fill that void.
''Without my consciousness recognizing it, I was falling in love. You were the
person who listened,'' Berman tells Kurtz in the movie.
When Kurtz's family moved to Israel, Berman expected to miss her friend, but
the pain was greater than she imagined.
``When she came back from Israel I felt such joy -- joy that I hadn't felt since
the birth of my children.''
People often think of homosexuals only in terms of sexuality, Berman says. The
film's subtitle, Every Room in the House, means that as a couple, Connie and
Ruthie's lives encompass much more than just the bedroom.
In the 55-minute film, a friend from Contello Towers remembers the climate during
those early years. ``It was bad enough they were getting a divorce, but that
they were leaving their husbands for each other. Oy gevalt.''
Berman and Kurtz attend local PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays)
meetings and belong to a gay synagogue in New York City.
Berman's son still does not accept her lifestyle. But at these meetings she
can share her story in hopes of helping others understand their own gay family
members.
The film shows one such PFLAG meeting, where a distressed mom tells participants
about her gay son -- but it's not what you might think.
''This is very difficult for me today,'' she begins.
The source of her heartbreak? Her son, Kenneth, has broken up with his partner
of 15 years.
''I miss Dominic,'' she said, crying. ``He's like a son to us. I'm taking it
terribly. It's such a hurt.''
Goldmacher is hoping that the film will have the ability to help individuals
with gay relatives better understand them.
''I think this movie really has the power to transform individuals. It can help
those who have someone gay in their family to warmly accept and love those people.
It's inspiring to watch these two women enjoy life. Nothing stops them. It's
a great lesson on how we can love each other,'' Goldmacher said.
In 1988, along with two other couples, Berman and Kurtz sued the New York Board
of Education (Berman's former employer) for domestic partner benefits -- the
same benefits awarded to a spouse. After a six-year struggle, the women won
those benefits not only for themselves but for all New York City employees.
''Now I'm on Ruthie's plan,'' says Kurtz, an artist. ``Ruthie still needs to
pay federal tax. Married couples wouldn't have to pay federal tax . . . under
the eyes of judicial system, we cannot get married. There are over 1,000 rights
that married people have, that we don't have.''
As a guidance counselor, some parents worried that Berman might influence vulnerable
children to follow in her path. Just the contrary, she said, proudly declaring
her uniqueness as a ''lesbian, Jewish, left-handed guidance counselor'' who
had saved the lives of many homosexual kids dealing with confusion and depression.
''I hope this film will help people understand that the less we label people
as different, the less we will see them in straitjackets,'' Goldmacher said.
``If you didn't know them, you wouldn't know they were lesbians, so that's what
I wanted people to know. So maybe they will better understand the next gay person
they meet.''
Goldmacher said the film is intended for all audiences -- gay or straight. Kurtz
and Berman will be present at the showing of Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in
the House on April 27. Admission is $11. For more information, call 305-534-9924.
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SOUTH FLORIDA SUN-SENTINEL
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-ligayfilm25apr25.story
Ruthie and Connie: A complicated love story featured at the Miami Gay &
Lesbian Film Festival
By John Tanasychuk; Staff Writer
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/features/lifestyle/sfl-ligayfilm25apr25.story
April 25, 2002
When Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz stand before the audience at the fourth Miami
Gay & Lesbian Film Festival on Saturday afternoon, they'll have come a very
long way from their first meeting more than 40 years ago.
In 1958, they were doing what many women of the '50s did: marriage and children.
Berman had three children, Kurtz two. Their friendship grew, and together, they
became community activists in their Brooklyn neighborhood. A new junior high
school was built. A synagogue came to serve the growing Jewish community. An
area that once was a dumping ground for illegal polluters is now a park.
They did a lot of good work.
While it's difficult to say when these best friends became lovers and life partners,
in 1974 Berman and Kurtz "challenged their fundamental belief systems,"
left their families and built the relationship that filmmaker Deborah Dickson
documents in Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House.
"It's a portrait film," says Robert Rosenberg, director of the festival
that runs Friday through May 5 in Miami Beach and Miami. "I fell in love
with them. They are so cantankerous and yet so sincere and warm and real. They
made me cry, just the prosaicness of their daily lives. They're wonderful role
models and wonderful women."
Berman is now 68, Kurtz 65. They divide their time between a home in Brooklyn
and a two-bedroom apartment in West Palm Beach's Century Village. They marked
their 25th anniversary at New York's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah. Their
lesbian rabbi officiated.
From '50s housewives, they are now 21st century lesbian activists, feminists
and Jews.
"My Jewishness dictates to me that I be active," says Kurtz, who worked
for 38 years as a bookkeeper. "It defines me as someone who has do something.
To be aware. To be conscious."
In fact, Kurtz and her family left the United States in 1970 to live in Israel.
Making aliyah -- returning to Israel -- kept the friends apart for four years.
"I don't think we would have gotten together if she hadn't lived in Israel
for four years," says Berman, a retired guidance counselor and administrator.
During their time apart, Berman turned 40. She became chairman of her department.
She was teaching college and became the first woman on the board of trustees
of her synagogue.
Those four years made them realize how important they were to each other.
When Kurtz came back to the United States, both started divorce proceedings.
Ask them how they could leave their children and it's the one question that
makes them angry.
"I wanted to kill myself," says Berman, who had grown up in a strict
Yiddish-speaking Orthodox household. Her shame and embarrassment is well-documented
in the film. "You don't have any idea of how inside out a mother could
be. This is what I needed to do in order to survive."
Says Kurtz: "We did what we needed to do."
And hopefully, says Kurtz, she's given her children the power to be "their
authentic selves."
Kurtz's son and daughter still live in Israel. Her son, a Hassidic Jew, has
11 children. Her daughter has one child. Berman's three children have brought
her five grandchildren. Only Berman's youngest son has not made peace with his
mother.
After coming out, they ran a counseling center specializing in gay issues. Their
list of workshops includes "Is There Life After Coming Out" and "The
Answer is Loving."
Before Berman retired from the New York City Board of Education the couple successfully
sued the board for domestic-partner benefits. With or without Ruthie and Connie,
they are proud and out and say they find reasons to tell everyone, from the
Publix bag packer to the folks in their retirement community, that they are
gay.
"Forget the film," says Berman. "I'm still going to tell you
I'm a lesbian and I have a lover for 27 years."
The film was produced by Donald Goldmacher, the brother of one of Berman's childhood
friends. Goldmacher contacted three-time Oscar nominee Dickson to direct.
"I think the film speaks to a wider issue, which I think is at the core
of most of the problems we have today," Dickson says from her home in New
York. "We can't accept each other's otherness. We can't accept each other's
differences. Whether it's homosexuality or religion or culture or class or skin
color, these are the things that drive people apart."
The film festival's Rosenberg says Ruthie and Connie is, in many ways, emblematic
of a new generation of gay films.
"People have begun to tackle more complex issues, deeper issues in our
lives," he says. "Ruthie and Connie is not a coming-out story, but
is a much wider canvas. There are all kinds of lives and all kinds of issues
to deal with, and the films are tackling those issues."
Rosenberg says the trend can be seen across the world.
"It's partly a function of the fact that in a number of societies where
gay life has not been so open in the past, there are filmmakers now tackling
films that they once weren't allowed to."
This year's festival includes: a telenovela from Nicaragua that deals with gay
issues; Lan Yu, a gay love story set against the Tiananmen Square massacre;
and a Slovenian feature called Guardian of the Frontier, which has been called
a female version of Deliverance.
"There's less of the coming-out, romantic-comedy kind of film," says
Rosenberg. "And more diversity both in genre and the way in which gay and
lesbians characters and story lines are included."
John Tanasychuk can be reached at jtanasychuk@sun-sentinel.com or 9654-356-4632.
Copyright © 2002, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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PALM BEACH POST
Meet 'Ruthie and Connie'
By Hap Erstein, Palm Beach Post Film Writer
Friday, April 26, 2002
There is a concept in Jewish culture known as bashert, meaning something that
is destined to be. Looking back on their 27 years as lovers and life partners,
Ruth Berman and Connie Kurtz of Century Village in suburban West Palm Beach
acknowledge that their being together was meant to be. It is bashert.
"Because I would never, ever, ever have thought of doing something as quantum
as I did in leaving my husband if it wasn't such an intense feeling of being
swept away in this relationship," says Berman, 68. "Because it was
a difficult path to take. But the path was for me to be with Connie, to go through
the wrenching, the turmoil, the pain, the sadness, the guilt, the whole thing
of moving away from that conventional life to becoming a lesbian."
The two women -- wives and mothers living conventional middle-class existences
in the New York borough of Brooklyn -- were always outspoken community activists,
for causes ranging from gaining a stop light on their street, to exerting pressure
to get a school built, to forming a mothers' action committee against air pollution.
They had no idea that their most controversial act would be to listen to their
hearts.
Berman was a teacher, Kurtz a bookkeeper. They have retired to South Florida
into a busy life of increased activism, leading workshops to ease the way for
those coming out of the closet of sexual orientation secrecy and organizing
support group meetings of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).
Now, they have added roles, as stars of a documentary about themselves called
Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, which has its East Coast premiere
on Saturday at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film Festival in Miami Beach, with
the two of them present for a post-show discussion.
It is directed by three-time Oscar nominee Deborah Dickson, who quickly agreed
to record their history. "I like to tell stories about people who take
risks, who passionately believe in something or who make a difference in some
way," she says. "That said, I'm always interested in a good love story.
They had an incredible love story, but one where they had to pay a price. Anyone
with children can relate to it."
The film is also a time capsule of a period in 1960s America when homosexuality
was less open, less understood, less accepted.
"I didn't hear about it for a very long time, probably not 'til high school,"
says Berman. "It wasn't talked about. We all were focused in on meeting
the guy to get married."
Ruth met her Sol and Connie met her Bernie and they followed the expected path
of getting married, having babies, pursuing careers, too much on the run to
question whether they were happy.
"I gave birth, Ruthie gave birth to her second child, so there was the
carriage brigade," recalls Kurtz, 66. "We just did what needed to
be done. We raised our children, we baby-sat for one another. We were good friends."
In 1970, the Kurtzes decided to move to Israel, and Ruth did not understand
her overwhelming sadness. Saying farewell, "it was the first time that
Ruth, my dear, dear friend, cries and hugs me, as a friend hugs a friend in
saying goodbye," notes Kurtz.
They wrote to each other, Berman even visited her friend in Israel, but it was
not until Connie came back to Brooklyn for a vacation that the emotional dam
burst. After an all-night talking jag, sipping wine and smoking Salem cigarettes,
a tear-stained Berman asked her friend a question.
"Unaware of the consequences, I needed to express myself and take the next
step," Berman says. "We were just talking and I leaned forward and
I said, 'Aren't you going to kiss me?' And then she proceeded to kiss me, a
friendly little peck, and I said, 'Can't you do better than that?' "
It would be months before Berman and Kurtz mustered the courage to tell their
husbands they were leaving them. Then around the close-knit apartment building,
where everyone knew everyone else's business, the proverbial excrement hit the
fan.
Most of the men in their circle recoiled from the news. "I would say the
husbands felt threatened, and uncomfortable," recalls Kurtz. Of their women
friends, she adds, "We were already connected to them in such deep ways
that this was a shock, but not a separation."
"For me it made no difference. They were my friends," says Ruth Taffel,
a former Brooklyn neighbor who now lives in Boca Raton. "The problem basically
was that they were married to the wrong men. I feel that their husbands never
gave them the encouragement, nobody really did."
News disturbs families
Their families took their news hard. Berman's mother did not speak to her for
seven years. They agreed with regret to leave their children. As Berman says,
her younger son "was not in a good place about it, as you see in the film.
He's still not. He just had a baby, so that's what's brought us more or less
more together." But as she speaks, she is unclear whether he will allow
her to see her new grandchild.
Berman was in such pain, feeling she was harming so many around her, she began
to contemplate suicide. "I thought I was ruining all these lives. It would
have been much easier. It was a solution," she says.
In her mind, she saw herself climbing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and jumping
to her death. "Whatever I was meant to do, I couldn't do that. Maybe a
lot had to do with the selfish part of who I am, of not wanting to give up my
life. I think also Connie's being so dear to me, that she was there, saved me."
Still, Berman became physically ill, and became convinced that it stemmed from
the emotional toll of her lack of openness. "Her hiding, her secret, her
shame, her embarrassment, her guilt, the gamut of feelings was making her sick,"
says Kurtz.
Through therapy, they have become at ease with themselves and their place in
the world. "We both are not so insulated and so isolated that we don't
need you also to like us, but if in fact you don't, we don't lose ourselves,"
says Kurtz. "We're OK."
OK is an understatement. Berman personally filed a lawsuit against New York
City's Board of Education to provide benefits for same-sex domestic partners.
And she won.
When the possibility of a film about them came up, they welcomed it as a boon
in their efforts to encourage others to be "authentic" about who they
are.
"It is important for people to hear all the different aspects of our lives
and the fullness that it is, in every room," explains Berman. "That
maybe there is somebody out there who wants to kill themselves, but says, 'Y'know,
I saw this movie. They went through hell, and look where they are. Maybe I should
give it another day.'
"Maybe there is a senator somewhere who just may see the movie, who says,
'Y'know, maybe it's time for me to come out.' Or 'Maybe it's time for me to
really care about my son.' Or 'Maybe it's time for me to really vote for that
Marriage Act.' "
For director Dickson, Berman and Kurtz are ideal stereotype breakers to counteract
homophobia. "What I love about Ruth and Connie is that you meet them and
you realize they're just like your own aunts. They're like kin to many people.
And then it's, 'Oh, yeah, and they're lesbians.' It gave me the opportunity
to talk about something that's political, but in this most delightful way."
'An extraordinary place'
Berman and Kurtz agree that they are in a good place now, both psychically and
geographically. Kurtz first started coming to West Palm Beach three decades
ago to visit her parents, who bought a condo in Century Village in 1970. To
them it feels comfortable, like a larger, sunnier version of their Brooklyn
apartment complex.
"Century Village is a great place, an extraordinary place. Everything is
here if you want it, all kinds of people," says Berman. "We have met
gay men, couples here who have been together longer than Connie and I. They
have a life, they're not in bathhouses and maybe they were, so what?"
"And we started a PFLAG meeting here, because that's what you do,"
shrugs Kurtz.
"I have such admiration for them," says Rita Fischer, mother of a
gay son, depicted in the movie at a support meeting led by Berman and Kurtz.
"If you're in trouble, they're there for you. They're very kind, very concerned,
very sincere. The more I learn about them, the more inspiring I think they are."
In addition to her counseling efforts, Kurtz has found a new avocation, working
in collage, acrylics and watercolors. "I would not be the artist I am today
without (Ruthie's) support in every way, without her 'oohs' and 'aahs' and 'wows',"
says Kurtz, currently exhibited in a Palm Beach Gardens show.
Not that she has had a lot of time for painting lately, because of their other
job -- appearing with and promoting Ruthie and Connie. They flew to the Berlin
Film Festival in February to speak. "We're leaving for Toronto May 18,"
says Kurtz. "The end of June we're leaving for San Francisco.
"Wherever we go, this is who we are," she says. "We may be the
characters in this movie -- and certainly we're characters -- but this story
belongs to a lot of people."
The Palm Beach Post. PalmBeachPost.com