PODCAST | Angelo Acerbi interviews Samuel H. Levine, actor of the film Minyan.
Samuel H. levine is a nice, funny and handoms actor who shares with Angelo Acerbi, in Berlin, his thoughts about his role in Minyan, where he plays a young jewish russian gay guy coming to terms with his own sexuality and proudly balancing the rules and teachings his upbringing brought him with his personal life, in a almost neo-realistic New York of the late 80’s. His talk shows his passion for this film and his role in it.
Minyan: For a Jewish prayer community or “minyan” to be able to hold a service, it must consist of at least ten practising Jews. David, who was born into a Russian immigrant family, is 17 years old and regularly helps out at minyans in Brighton Beach, a district of New York that is characterised by Jewish life. His father, a former boxing coach, his mother and his beloved grandfather all take this for granted. But David, who is just starting to tentatively explore life in the East Village gay scene, gradually begins to question the strict rules of his community and makes friends with two elderly gay Jews. At the same time, David’s sexual awakening cannot help but be affected by the emergence of HIV and AIDS. Director Eric Steel sets his sensitive portrait of a gay Jewish youth in the as yet un-gentrified, roughshod New York of the 1980s. In his feature-film debut, he depicts unobtrusively and with quiet humour how one young man squares social attributions – immigrant, Jew, homosexual – with his own feelings and learns to define them anew.
To discover more about the film, click here.