In Ocean Avenue Shari Rothfarb Mekonen creates an intimate narrative portrait of a character named Luna Singer, an Orthodox Jewish woman preparing to visit the mikveh for the last time. Rothfarb Mekonen’s style has qualities of both fiction and documentary film punctuated with experimental elements.

In Jewish tradition a woman immerses herself in a mikveh—a ritual bath for purification and spiritual renewal—before her wedding and following childbirth and each period of menstruation. Luna has followed this precept for her entire adulthood, but as she is no longer menstruating, she is about to cease the rite. She is deeply troubled as she tries to come to terms with giving up a comforting ritual. She feels superfluous as an aging woman and is also having difficulties in her relationship with her daughter, Miriam.

The element of water appears throughout. Spheres, bringing to mind eggs or ova, also recur in close-ups of Luna’s eyes and in the olives bobbing in brine in a kosher pickle shop. Filming on the streets of Midwood, Brooklyn, Rothfarb Mekonen creates a snapshot of a multicultural neighborhood in the 1990s. In the tradition of urban street photography, the artist captures storefronts and street crossings, as well as both candid and carefully framed portraits of people going about their daily routines.

Indeed, at one point Luna herself picks up a video camera and takes to the streets. Thus, the film presents two Jewish women’s points of view: that of the filmmaker and that of the character.