The Pageant follows the preparations for the Miss Holocaust Survivor pageant in Haifa, Israel. The part fundraiser, part educational outreach, and part beauty pageant occurs annually (except in 2014).
The documentary juxtaposes interviews and audio with images of Holocaust survivors and memorials. Former Israeli beauty queens speak over images of Nazi concentration camps and loud pop music plays over survivor testimonials.
The Pageant is a documentary, but it is also psychological and seems at times seemingly dystopian fiction despite being a documentary. The footage of the Holocaust Survivors' Haifa Home films the inhabitants through the windows creating the impression that they are being held as opposed to inhabitants. Interviews sometimes trail off and cut from an apartment or a dining room to calm city life.
Evangelical Christian speakers, interviews from Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and the occasional references to Trump-era politics in the region are also layered in to show that while these events are intended as memorials of the Holocaust, they are also very political. Survivors relive their trauma in very public and dramatic ways in order to generate funds to support their everyday expenses. The film provides the audience space to breathe but also causes our minds to frantically fill in the blanks and wonder: how can these two lived experiences exist in the same space?
A beauty pageant judge recounts how a Nazi rape victim came to his house with her husband asking to win the pageant. The wife felt that this victory would allow her to, in some way, claim a victory over the Nazis. The judge explains that if it were up to him, she would win, but that there are other factors involved in deciding the winner (such as the beauty portion). We hear this recounted to us over pulsing music and flashing lights. The juxtaposition of present-day Israel and the founding of the country collide in other ways.
While the pageant contestants have personal messages about their hopes for a peaceful world and see this stage as a platform, the pageant planners appear to focus on aesthetic concerns and pageant etiquette. The women learn to walk like beauty queens, provide shortened versions of their testimony to be read aloud during the pageant, and are also given numbers for judging.
The irony of asking about a Holocaust survivor's number is not lost on the audience when we briefly see a work camp tattoo on the arm of a survivor in a previous scene. The film is a powerful reminder of the long-term effects of intergenerational trauma on cultural identity and worldview and the ways in which our histories inform our present. Highly recommend. Aud: E,I,J,H,C,P.