At the end of her documentary Holi-Days -- about travelers to Jerusalem, Florence and Las Vegas -- Randi Steinberger quotes noted tourism expert St. Francis of Assisi: "You are what you are seeking." But watching Christian pilgrims in Jerusalem swooning to a staged nailing of Jesus, or Americans oohing over Florence's beauty because that's what you do on your way to buying cheap designer leather, it's clear that a lot of people kid themselves about what they're really seeking.
   Moving from Jerusalem, ancient city of three major faiths, to Florence, where Western Civ first threw off the heavy cowl of the Dark Ages, and ending in Vegas, where secular seekers pursue salvation through jackpot, Steinberger's patient lens captures their theme-park similarities. Jerusalem seems a carnival of religious intensity and Florence a diorama of Renaissance culture, each retailing its past for the entertainment of visitors; like Vegas, they're tourist towns now. Except that what's natural here -- where there's no past to retail, so it's less like selling your soul -- seems forced elsewhere. "That was the epiphany," Steinberger says from her Santa Monica, California, home, "that Las Vegas is the most real of the three." Steinberger, who spent four years on Holi-Days, will now hit the film-festival circuit in search of distribution.
   What emerges from this watchable documentary is the realization that Tourism is its own global nation now, a floating, borderless land of trophy experiences, photo ops, shopportunities, dramatic re-enactments and commemorative coffee mugs, where the scenery changes but the mind-set never does, where you "do" Europe in 12 days, where you stand in the same line to see the Western Wall, the Uffizi and Siegfried & Roy. "Maybe they come as pilgrims," one tourist in Jerusalem scoffs during a rendition of Christ's~torment (putting the fiction in crucifixion, shows at 6 and 8!), "but it all ends in tourism."

-- Scott Dickensheets