Director Dani Menkin on his documentary ‘Aulcie,’ about a Black basketball player’s journey from America to Israel

Photo: Aulcie Perry in ‘Aulcie.’ Credit: Courtesty Hey Jude Productions.

Dani Menkin’s 2020 documentary “Aulcie” tells the unlikely story of Aulcie Perry, an African American basketball player released by the New York Knicks in the 1970s who went on to become a superstar player in Israel. Perry led his Maccabi Tel Aviv team to two unprecedented wins in the EuroLeague championships in 1977 and 1981, and nine Israel League titles from 1976 to 1985.

During this time, Perry converted to Judaism, took on the name Elisha ben Avraham, romanced an Israeli supermodel and inspired other African Americans players to move to Israel. However, by the 1980s — haunted by his troubled past and suffering from sports injuries — Perry began a downward spiral.

“And then he just disappeared,” Menkin, the film’s 51-year-old writer, director and producer, told SoCal Jewish News via Zoom from his home in Porter Ranch, Calif.

“Aulcie” explores what happened to Perry during that period, and the film has earned multiple accolades including best documentary awards at the Mumbai International Film Festival, the Paris Film Festival and the Toronto Film Magazine Festival.

Menkin said he was drawn to Perry’s story because “it’s a story of redemption; a journey to the top of the mountain and then falling down to the deepest valley, and the fact that he was able to climb back.”

In the film, the now 71-year-old, 6-foot-10 center recounts his difficult childhood in an impoverished area of Newark, N.J., where racism was rampant. “Newark was [also] full of drugs,” he states. “Twenty of my [high school] friends were dead before we graduated.”

Perry reveals he dodged gang members on his way to and from school, always changing his route to avoid them, but by the time he was 13, he was already 6-foot-5 and basketball had become his obsession as well as his ticket out of the ghetto.

After excelling in college basketball at historically black Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Fla., the Knicks came calling in the mid-1970s. However, elation quickly turned to despair when Perry became the last player to be cut from the NBA team in 1976. That same year, while playing at the Rucker courts in Harlem, he was spotted by Shamluk Maharovsky, the legendary manager of Maccabi Tel Aviv. “I saw [Aulcie] play and I thought, ‘God, give me this man,’ ” Maharovsky recounts in the film.

“[‘Aulcie’ is] a story of redemption; a journey to the top of the mountain and then falling down to the deepest valley, and the fact that he was able to climb back.” — Dani Menkin

Signing with the team and moving to Israel, Perry said he immediately felt at home. Absent was the prejudice against Blacks he had endured in the States. Cheering crowds greeted him at every game, where they loudly chanted his name. He was constantly approached for autographs and was feted by Israeli leaders including military commander and politician Moshe Dayan and then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. When he started dating the late Israeli supermodel Tami Ben-Ami, Perry’s sister notes in the film that Perry “was like a pop star.”

Even though he had been raised as a Southern Baptist, Perry said he loved Israel so much he chose to convert. Yet despite his newfound career, partner and home, Perry notes in the film, “[While] I had fought for this point in my life, when I got there, I wasn’t ready for it. When we won the European Cup for the second time, with all the joy and excitement … inside was a dead feeling.” He said he was fearful of what might happen after he retired, when he assumed he would lose his privileged status and his spot in the limelight.

After suffering knee injuries on the court, Perry became addicted to pain killers. When his doctors finally refused to stop prescribing them, he turned to hashish and marijuana, then cocaine and heroin, not just to assuage his physical pain, but to quell the bottled-up rage he felt about the racism and rejection he experienced in the States.

Arrested on drug charges in Israel in the mid-1980s, Perry was subsequently expelled from the country. Several years later, he was arrested in Amsterdam on an Interpol warrant. In 1987, he was convicted of trafficking heroin internationally and ultimately served five years of a 10-year federal prison sentence.

During his incarceration, Perry didn’t hear a word from Ben-Ami or his Maccabi colleagues. However, after he returned to Israel for an emotional reunion with Maharovsky on a popular Israeli TV show in 1992, all seemed to be forgiven. “He knew he had come home,” Menkin said.

‘Aulcie’ director Dani Menkin. Credit: Courtesy Hey Jude Productions

Born in Ramat Gan (a suburb of Tel Aviv) in 1970, Menkin said he idolized Perry as his  “childhood hero.” In his early 20s, Menkin began his career as a television sports journalist and eventually segued into cinema, helming numerous projects including “Dolphin Boy” (2011) and “Is That You?” (2014). His 2005 feature film, “39 Pounds of Love,” about a disabled animation artist, won the Ophir Award (the Israeli Oscar), was bought by HBO and shortlisted for the 2005 Academy Awards.

Menkin then founded his film company, Hey Jude Productions, named for the Beatles song that includes the line “Take a sad song and make it better,” which, Menkin said, is an important theme in his work. His 2016 documentary, “On the Map,” spotlighted members of Maccabi Tel Aviv, including Perry, when they won their first European Cup.

Menkin had already been courting Perry to appear in a documentary devoted entirely to him, “but it took me 20 years to convince him,” he said. “All that time Aulcie was hesitant because of his [past] problems. He was embarrassed and ashamed and he didn’t want to do it.”

Perry eventually agreed. “At that point, he felt that this would be the right thing to do, because the younger generation could learn from his mistakes,” Menkin recalled. Production was set to begin about seven years ago, but the project was delayed when Perry suffered an aortic aneurism requiring complicated surgery.

Menkin eventually recorded some 80 hours of interviews with Perry, along with interviews with Maccabi officials, journalists, Perry’s two grown children and other observers of Perry’s life and career. Images in the film include vintage photographs, animation, video of Perry on and off the court, and drawings of him visiting Ben-Ami in the hospital in 1995 when she was dying of cancer. Menkin’s camera also follows Perry as he revisits his childhood neighborhood and the North Carolina prison where he was incarcerated, celebrates a Shabbat dinner with his family and reunites with the daughter he hasn’t seen in 20 years.

Today, Perry lives in Ramat Gan with his life partner, Ahuva, and continues to practice Judaism, including eating kosher, Menkin said. He works with Maccabi youth teams and, with a former teammate, runs the Basketball for Stars summer camp for children in Israel. Israelis still celebrate him as a sports icon.

As Perry says in the film, “I have no words for … the love I’ve received in Israel.”

“Aulcie” currently is playing at Laemmle’s Town Center Five in Encino through Nov. 18. Tickets and information available here.