When Nomi Talisman began working on her first film, the animated short documentary “Last Day of Freedom,” with her partner in life and art, Dee Hibbert-Jones, she had few dreams of glory. For Talisman, it was primarily a question of politics: How would she and Hibbert-Jones most compellingly tell the story of what they perceived to be a gross miscarriage of justice?
Six years later, the San Francisco-based artist and native Israeli is facing what could be described as the most delightful of challenges: how to deal with a spate of unanticipated recognition — including making the first cut for an Oscar. The 32-minute film has already earned awards at several film festivals and was named best short by the International Documentary Association.
But after being notified that “Last Day” was one of 10 Academy Award semifinalists for best documentary short subject — five finalists will be announced Jan. 14 — Talisman’s jaw continues to drop.
“The whole thing is surreal,” said the 49-year-old. “I feel like a deer caught in headlights.”
“Last Day of Freedom” tells the story of Bill Babbitt and his brother, Manny, an African-American veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder in the wake of two tours of duty in Vietnam. Bill feels compelled to go to the authorities after he strongly suspects that Manny was involved in a heinous crime in Sacramento, but later experiences remorse and personal
responsibility for the manner in which his brother’s case is handled — from poor representation by Manny’s defense lawyer to broken promises by law enforcement officials that they would not seek the death Penalty.
Manny was executed at San Quentin Prison in 1999, soon after being awarded a Purple Heart behind bars.
For Talisman, who met Bill while working for the Community Resource Initiative, a Bay Area nonprofit that collects narratives to build cases against capital punishment, the Babbitt family saga touched on many issues that she and Hibbert-Jones have long cared passionately about: class, race, homelessness, mental health, inequities in the criminal judicial system and lack of appropriate care for veterans.
In using Bill as the film’s narrator, Talisman said that she and Hibbert-Jones wanted the man who bore witness to his brother’s execution to have a “healing experience,” and to give voice to a perspective that is rarely broadcast. At the film’s outset, Bill acknowledges that he was a strong proponent of the death penalty before he became intimately involved in his brother’s case.
“There are a lot of people on the fence [about the death penalty],” Talisman said. “I wanted to contribute something meaningful to the conversation about it … I thought that this would be the best political tool.”
Talisman was raised in a secular Jewish family in Tel Aviv, the daughter of an Israeli-born father and an American mother who had made aliyah. Growing up in Israel compelled her to become quickly attuned to political issues and perspectives of every stripe, she said. The Israeli public “is much more engaged” with the body politic than the American electorate, Talisman believes. “I did not know a single person who did not vote [in Israel].”
After studying at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and working in a variety of artistic media in Israel, Talisman moved to the Bay Area 15 years ago to attend Mills College, where she received her master’s in fine arts.
Soon after, she met Hibbert-Jones, an art professor at U.C. Santa Cruz who also earned her MFA at Mills. The two began what is now more than a decades-long collaboration in multimedia art, politics and love. They were part of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ artists-in-residence program, where they created “Living Condition,” an interactive project that focused on the lives of families with relatives on death row. Other artistic partnerships have taken them to the Berkeley Art Center, the Institute of Contemporary Art in San Jose and the sides of freeways, where they held up cardboard signs to highlight hardships faced by immigrants and undocumented workers.
Talisman said her artistic and political work has a Jewish foundation: a concern for others.
“I think of a film I saw in which a Jewish husband and wife are arguing about the housekeeper,” Talisman said. “The husband instructs the wife to fire her because he believes she is stealing the family’s silverware. The wife objects, saying, ‘If I fire her, where will she get silverware?’ Jews notice injustice and stick up for the underdog.”
For their next film project, Talisman and Hibbert-Jones are considering several stories about the criminal justice system. Talisman is also gearing up for a trip to her homeland in March, where “Last Day” will be screened at the prestigious Epos Film Festival in Tel Aviv.