The 19th Annual New York Jewish Film Festival

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Sunday, 10 January 2010 12:10

Written by Brad Balfour

Presented by The Film Society of Lincoln Center and The Jewish Museum, the 19th annual New York Jewish Film Festival will take place at The Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater, The Jewish Museum, and The JCC in Manhattan from January, 13-28, 2010. The festival includes 32 features and shorts from 13 countries — 28 screening in their U.S. or New York premieres — and offers a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience. Several filmmakers and special guests will join in onstage discussions following the screenings.

The festival opens on Wednesday, January 13, with the U. S. premiere of Saviors in the Night, Ludi Boeken’s World War II drama -- based on the memoir of Marga Spiegel -- portraying courageous German farmers in Westphalia risking their lives to hide a Jewish family.

It joins the Closing Night film, Within the Whirlwind — a New York premiere recounting the life of Jewish poet Evgenia Ginzburg, who survived a 10-year sentence in a Siberian gulag through the kindness of her fellow inmates and the power of poetry. Based on Ginzburg’s memoirs, this epic from Oscar-winner Marleen Gorris (Antonia’s Line) features Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves) and Ulrich Tukur (The Lives of Others).

Festival documentary screenings include the U.S. premiere of Einsatzgruppen: The Death Brigades, Michaël Prazan’s meticulous examination of the Einsatzgruppen, mobile commandos who carried out the murder of 1.5 million victims in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union; and the New York premiere of Hannah Rothschild’s The Jazz Baroness, delving into the life of Baroness Pannonica “Nica” Rothschild de Konigswarter, a close friend and muse of Thelonious Monk. The film includes interviews with Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins and Clint Eastwood, and the voice of Helen Mirren as Nica.

For the first time, the festival includes a claymation film, Mary and Max, from Academy Award-winning director Adam Elliot.  The film, featuring the voices of Eric Bana, Toni Colette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries, depicts the pen-pal relationship between Mary Dinkle, a chubby lonely eight-year-old in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia and Max Horovitz, a 44-year-old severely obese Jewish New Yorker with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Four dramas receiving their New York premieres focus on various facets of life in Israel.

There's Ajami, co-directed by Palestinian Scandar Copti and Israeli Yaron Shani, a visceral crime drama with a strong ensemble cast. Set in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, the stories of a Bedouin clan, a Palestinian teenager, a Jewish detective, and an affluent Palestinian and his Jewish girlfriend intersect and create the dramatic collision of different worlds. Ajami won five Ophirs (Israeli Oscars), including Best Picture, and is Israel's submission to the 2010 Academy Awards.

In Haim Tabakman’s Eyes Wide Open, an ultra-Orthodox butcher and dedicated family man in Jerusalem finds himself increasingly attracted to his handsome apprentice, Ezri.  This sensitive feature debut explores the devastating consequences of forbidden passion, including its effects on a tight-knit community.

In Alain Tasma’s Ultimatum, a multinational thriller set during the 1990/91 Persian Gulf War, a young couple in Jerusalem battle with each other while Iraq threatens Israel with chemical warfare.  The film stars French heartthrob Gaspard Ulliel and the beautiful Jasmine Trinca.

Matti Harari and Arik Lubetzky’s Valentina’s Mother portrays the friendship between a Holocaust survivor and her young Polish housekeeper. Speaking and singing in Polish, the two enjoy each other’s companionship until Paula’s repressed memories of the Holocaust start to emerge.

Three dramas exploring Jewish life before World War II also receive their New York premieres.

Marek Najbrt’s Protector, set in Nazi-occupied Prague, is a stylish drama focusing on the marriage of radio journalist Emil and his Jewish wife, a famous film star. Emil becomes an official mouthpiece of the Reich in order to offer a measure of protection to Hana, even as their relationship slowly frays.

Based on actual events, Kaspar Heidelbach’s Berlin ’36 tells a dramatic story of friendship during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Gretel Bergmann, invited to join the German Olympic team as its token Jew, befriends the unknown Marie Ketteler, not knowing that Ketteler is a man passing as a woman added to the team in an effort to spoil Gretel’s victory.

Other dramas in the festival include Radu Gabrea’s Gruber’s Journey, about an Italian journalist and diplomat navigating the outrageous bureaucracy of Nazi-occupied Romania in a desperate search for a Jewish doctor named Josef Gruber; and Happy End, receiving its U.S. premiere, the final chapter of Frans Weisz’s trilogy about a much-haunted Jewish Dutch family gathering in anticipation of the passing of their patriarch.

Restored prints of two archival films will receive their New York premieres. Adapted from Arnold Zweig’s 1947 novel, Falk Harnack’s The Axe Of Wandsbek follows a man who accepts money from the Nazis to serve as a public executioner and goes on to be rejected by his community.

In Henry Lynn’s 1935 Yiddish classic, Bar Mitzvah, a mother miraculously survives a shipwreck and shocks the family by appearing at her son’s bar mitzvah, discovering that her husband has remarried a scheming gold-digger.  Starring legendary actor Boris Thomashefsky in his only film performance, this melodrama features songs, vaudeville jokes and fancy dancing.

Two riveting documentaries from Israel receive their New York premieres. Ron Ofer and Yohai Hakak’s riveting Gevald! juxtaposes the lives of two of Israel’s prominent ultra-Orthodox leaders, anti-Zionist radical activist Shmuel Chaim Pappenheim and the late Avraham Ravitz, a former soldier and longtime Knesset member who worked within the system to advance his constituency’s religious agenda. Nurit Kedar’s Chronicle of a Kidnap follows activist Karnit Goldwasser, who stepped into the media spotlight on behalf of her husband Ehud (Udi), a soldier abducted in 2006 by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Nine additional documentaries are being screened:

• Bob Richman’s Ahead of Time considers the career of journalist and photographer Ruth Gruber.
• Susan Cohn Rockefeller’s Making the Crooked Straight follows the work of Dr. Rick Hodes, a Long Island-born Orthodox Jew who has dedicated his life to helping heal the sick and poor of Ethiopia.
• Lukás Pribyl’s Forgotten Transports: To Poland, receiving its New York premiere, delves into the lives of Czech Jews deported by the Nazis to camps and ghettos in Eastern Poland’s Lublin region during the Holocaust.
• In Human Failure, receiving its U.S. premiere, Michael Verhoeven (director of Oscar-nominated feature The Nasty Girl) reveals the expropriation and sale of Jewish assets that benefited innumerable citizens of the Third Reich.
• Stephen Z. Friedman and Antony Benjamin’s Leap Of Faith, receiving its New York premiere, depicts four families experiencing the difficulties of abandoning their traditions and embracing Judaism.
• Jean Bodon’s Leon Blum: For All Mankind, receiving its U.S. premiere, tells the story of a prominent French leader, a Jew who at different times was prime minister of France and prisoner in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
• Raphaël Nadjari’s A History of Israeli Cinema explores the evolution of Israel’s cinema and its parallels with the country’s history, weaving together clips and interviews with directors, scholars and critics.
• Llewellyn Smith’s Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness explores the career of Melville J. Herskovits, the first anthropologist to trace Black cultural roots directly to Africa, instilling pride in many African Americans even as he undercut the scholarship of African American social scientists, dismissing their work as subjective and agenda-driven.
• In Slawomir Grünberg’s The Peretzniks, receiving its U.S. premiere, alumni of the Peretz School, a Yiddish-language school in Lodz, recall their adolescence in Poland before the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign.

This year’s New York Jewish Film Festival was selected by Rachel Chanoff, Independent Curator; Andrew Ingall, Assistant Curator, The Jewish Museum; Richard Peña, Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; and Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator and Director of The New York Jewish Film Festival, The Jewish Museum.

The New York Jewish Film Festival is sponsored, in part, by The Martin and Doris Payson Charitable Foundation.  Generous funding was also provided by The Liman Foundation, The Jack and Pearl Resnick Foundation, Mimi and Barry Alperin, and other donors. Additional support has been provided through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts.  The Israel Office of Cultural Affairs in the USA and the French Embassy provided travel assistance.

The majority of The New York Jewish Film Festival’s screenings are held at The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway.

Two additional screenings will be held at The Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd Street; and The JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th Street.

Single screening tickets for The New York Jewish Film Festival are $11; $7 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members, students and children (6-12, accompanied by an adult); and $8 for seniors (62+).

Tickets for screenings at the Walter Reade Theater and The Jewish Museum are available at the Walter Reade Theater Box Office; at Centercharge, 212.721.6500; and online at www.FilmLinc.com.

Tickets for the screening at The Jewish Museum are also available at that venue.

For complete festival information, visit www.FilmLinc.com, www.TheJewishMuseum.org, or call 212.875.5601.  For tickets and information about the screening at The JCC in Manhattan, call 646.505.5708 or visit www.jccmanhattan.org.

Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture. The Jewish Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects—paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media.  For more information, visit www.TheJewishMuseum.org.

Under the leadership of Mara Manus, Executive Director, and Richard Peña, Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center offers the best in international, classic and cutting-edge independent cinema. The Film Society presents two film festivals that attract global attention: the New York Film Festival, now in its 47th year, and New Directors/New Films which, since its founding in 1972, has been produced in collaboration with MoMA. The Film Society also publishes the award-winning Film Comment Magazine, and for over three decades has given an annual award – now named “The Chaplin Award” – to a major figure in world cinema.  Past recipients of this award include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.  For more information, visit www.FilmLinc.com.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from 42BELOW, GRAFF, Stella Artois, Illy Caffè, The New York State Council on the Arts, and The National Endowment for the Arts.

The New York Jewish Film Festival, Jan. 13-28 Schedule at a Glance

Screenings at the Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street (close to Amsterdam Avenue)
(Unless otherwise indicated)

Wednesday, Jan. 13
1:00          Saviors in the Night
3:45          Gruber’s Journey
6:15          Saviors in the Night
9:00          Gruber’s Journey

Thursday, Jan. 14
1:15          Bar Mitzvah
3:30          Gruber’s Journey
6:15          Ahead of Time with Making the Crooked Straight
9:00          Ajami

Saturday, Jan. 16
6:30          Ajami
9:15          The Jazz Baroness

Sunday, Jan. 17
1:30          The Axe of Wandsbek
4:15          The Jazz Baroness
6:30          Happy End with Point of View
9:00          Protector with With a Little Patience

Monday, Jan. 18
12:30        Leon Blum with Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness
3:30          Protector with With a Little Patience
6:15          Forgotten Transports: To Poland
8:30          The Jazz Baroness

Tuesday, Jan. 19
1:00          Happy End with Point of View
3:30          Protector with With a Little Patience
6:15          Happy End with Point of View
7:30          Eyes Wide Open with Kallah*
8:45          Leon Blum with Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness

Wednesday, Jan. 20
1:00          Forgotten Transports: To Poland
3:30          Leon Blum with Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness
6:30          Einsatzgruppen

Thursday, Jan. 21
1:00          Human Failure
3:30          Berlin ’36
6:15          Human Failure
8:45          The Peretzniks with Happy Jews

Saturday, Jan. 23
6:30          Eyes Wide Open with Kallah
9:00          Mary and Max

Sunday, Jan. 24
1:00          Bar Mitzvah
3:15          Berlin ’36
6:00          Eyes Wide Open with Kallah
8:45          Mary and Max

Monday, Jan. 25
1:00          Gevald! with Chronicle of a Kidnap
3:00          Valentina’s Mother with Pinhas**
3:30          Leap of Faith
6:15          Gevald! with Chronicle of a Kidnap
8:30          Leap of Faith

Tuesday, Jan. 26
1:30          Valentina’s Mother with Pinhas
4:00          Human Failure
6:30          A History of Israeli Cinema

Wednesday, Jan. 27
1:00          Within the Whirlwind
3:30          The Peretzniks with Happy Jews
6:15          Valentina’s Mother with Pinhas
8:45          The Peretzniks with Happy Jews

Thursday, Jan. 28
1:00          Ultimatum with Prrrride
3:45          Within the Whirlwind
6:15          Ultimatum with Prrrride
8:45          Within the Whirlwind

*At The JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Avenue at West 76th Street
646.505.5708
www.jccmanhattan.org

Tuesday, Jan. 19
7:30          Eyes Wide Open with Kallah

**At The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street
www.TheJewishMuseum.org

Monday, Jan. 25
3:00          Valentina’s Mother with Pinhas

NewFilmmakers Winter Festival 2010

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 04 January 2010 09:37

Written by Lynne Shannon

NewFilmmakers starts the second annual Winter Fest and its 2010 Winter Series January 2nd - 6th, 2010 at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue at Second Street, New York City.

NewFilmmakers gives independent filmmakers a chance to show their work directly to the public.  Each night begins with films from the NewFilmmakers Documentary Series, selections from the Short Film Program, followed by a Feature Presentation.

Documentary Films include:

Muskrat John: Urban Trapper, directed by Warner Wada, a documentary about trapping in sight of the Empire State Building.

Americanism, directed by Arin Yoon, a documentary about education in South Korea.

Pardon Us for Living but the Graveyard Is Full, directed by Geoffray Barbier  
In 1976 two teenagers, Keith Streng (1976 – present) and Jan-Marek Pakulski (1976 – 1986), formed the Fleshtones in Queens, New York. Soon they were joined by neighborhood friend, Peter Zaremba (1976 – present) on vocals. The Fleshtones debuted at a CBGB's concert on May 19, 1976. By 1978, their high-energy shows, neo-psychedelic sound gained The Fleshtones a rep as a don't-miss live band and signed to IRS records (REM, The Gogos).

NewFilmmakers Feature Presentations include:

Spy, directed by Alex Klymko
A romantic thriller. A man falls in love with a woman he is spying on and tries to save her from a fate she does not wish to flee. Stars Ben Curtis as Jonathan and Vincent Pastore as Dante.

Stand Up /Zhan Qi Lai, directed by Clara Xing
A young industrial worker becomes the inadvertent victim of a radioactive accident at his company. He undergoes seven major operations in which both legs are amputated at the hip, and his left hand is amputated at the wrist. He also loses functionality of all five fingers of his right hand. A subsequent addiction to pain-killing morphine forces him to undergo drug rehabilitation three times.

The local company Song worked for refuses to give him proper compensation for his crippling losses or to even pay for prosthetic limbs with which he might some day achieve his dream of standing up. Experiencing the lowest point of his life, he meets a beautiful, caring young school teacher, named Yang Gang. Through their growing and emotionally supportive friendship, and with very meager financial support from his impoverished parents, he resolves to bring his case for just compensation to officials at his former company's headquarters in Beijing. Song Xue-Wen plays himself in this film, which is based on the true story of his life.

Dark Room Theater, directed by Benjamin Pollack
Dark Room Theater is a double feature in the vein of The Twilight Zone, about ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary, usually supernatural, situations, using both ironic and comic twists. The show is hosted by an animated character entitled Dr. Brainly, a brain that lives in a glass beaker from an experiment gone wrong or right depending on your point of view.

8 Behind the Wheel, directed by Tracy Burroughs
Eight diverse personalities driving to unknown destinations. We are the voyeurs to their most personal thoughts. The serial killer, masseuse, pizza delivery girl, policeman, actress, middle-aged man, stoner and a pedophile. We slowly discover they are all related and that when some thoughts lead to actions bad things will happen.

In the Company of Strangers, directed by Thomas Hofbauer
Brian is arrested for assaulting a gay couple and sentenced to 600 hours at an AIDS center. Exposed to the daily existence in an AIDS hospice, Brian eventually softens and forms a friendship with James. His growth culminates in an attempt to reconcile James with his estranged son and in his own attempt at reconciliation with his father.

More information can be found at www.newfilmmakers.com.

NewFilmmakers Winter Festival 2010
January 2nd - 6th, 2010

Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue at Second Street
New York City

Park City, Utah -- Host to Skiing and Film Fests

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 21 December 2009 01:57

Written by Eric Lurio

Park City, Utah, is a ski resort, and for most of the year, it’s a sleepy imitation of Aspen, Colorado -- rich in wonderful scenery, decent slopes and trendy, almost kitschy knickknack shops. But if you’re not into skiing, it’s nothing special.

Yet, for more than one week of the year -- nearly 12 days -- it becomes the movie capital of North America. Basically half or so of Hollywood’s movers and shakers--not to mention zillions of indie filmmakers, distributors, journalists, poseurs, hangers-on and assorted fans and buffs -- descend upon this little town for the annual film festival called Sundance.

And at that time, Park City not only hosts this ultra-prestigious Film Festival but also the more recently respectable Slamdance counter-festival.

Back in the day, there were dozens of other film festivals that week, but they have been driven out over the years.

So aside from the snow and freezing temperatures, Park City becomes a cinephile’s wet dream during last week or so of January. But it wasn’t always so...

The Utah/United States Film Festival was a creation of the Utah Film Commission, and began its illustrious career in 1978. It was a complete flop. The repertoire was primarily, as former festival program director Lory Smith puts in his book Party in a Box, "...to show old movies and have famous people talk about them." To be frank, nobody outside of Utah really wanted to go all the way to Salt Lake City -- where a sort-of prohibition was still in effect -- just to see that. However, the six independent films shown got relatively large audiences.

The first Utah/US Film festival wound up $40,000 in the hole.

The next year was even worse, although Robert Redford, the famous movie star and Utah resident, was able to get some major Hollywood muscle to show up at the fest. While it did far better than the first one, it was still a financial disaster.

Something had to be done. Film vet Sydney Pollack -- who won an Oscar® for directing Tootsie -- whom Redford had recruited for the U/USFF board of directors, made an entirely unserious suggestion: "You ought to move the festival to Park City and set it in the wintertime." It would be, he said, "... the only film festival in the world held in a ski resort during ski season, and Hollywood would beat down the door to attend."

The board decided to give this silly idea a try. The 1980 festival was cancelled and in 1981 it was pushed up four months and moved to Park City.

The rest is history.

In 1979, Redford and many of the U/UFF staff got together to form what would become the Sundance Institute -- named after his most famous role. “imagine,” he’s reported to have said, “If I’d gotten the part of Butch Cassidy."

Redford’s institute was a major player in the programming for the U/UFF, and they and Utah began to squabble. So in 1985, the commission basically forced the ownership of the U/USFF on Redford and his institute. And it got bigger.

The focus on oldies was dropped, (although retrospectives continue to this day) video and shorts competitions added and some of the winners, like Steven Soderbergh’s 1989 Sex, Lies and Videotape became commercial hits as well.

The festival was making money, and the Institute had an event to plan around and give structure to many of the organization’s  other projects. The transition was complete in 1991, when the U/USFF changed its name to The Sundance Film Festival.

The number of independent films went from six in 1978 to almost a hundred in 1990, the last year under it’s original name. It’s grown exponentially pretty much ever since.

Getting stuff into Sundance got harder and harder as the festival got bigger. In 1994, after would-be auteurs Shane Kuhn, Dan Mirvish and Jon Fitzgerald all had their films rejected, they decided to have their own counter-festival, called Slamdance, at the same time in Salt Lake City in revenge. On the second day of the first festival, to get publicity and just tick Redford off, they moved to Park City.

They were wildly successful on both counts, and have remained there ever since. This of course inspired others.

The Slumdance Experience (Park City officials refused to let them call themselves a festival) was the biggest counter-counter festival, and was nearly as big as Slamdance in ‘97. It was canceled 2007. Not only did it suffer from a dearth of submissions but no one would let the guys who ran the darn thing have any space. Allegedly, they had trashed their last venue.

Among the many counter counter-festivals that have either bitten the dust or were exiled are:

Slamdunk was totally digital and was last here in 2007.

No Dance, sponsored by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker, lasted at least six years before folding sometime in ‘03.

Undance was in a hotel room, and disappeared without a trace.

Tromadance was basically a publicity stunt for Troma films, but they gave up in December 2009.

X-Dance, which showed extreme sports films, was exiled to Salt Lake City in 2008.

the Park City Film Music Festival was postponed until April.

Schmoozedance, with its focus on Jewish films, was thrown out in 2008 when Sundance grabbed its venue for the following year despite having it run the week before Sundance even opened.

ROADance was a free outdoor film festival of silent films projected from a truck, and it vanished without notice.

And there was Sleazedance, which showed porn out of a minivan and was chased out of town ages ago.
 
As to the fate of all this year’s counter-counter festivals, there’s really no information at this moment. Over the past 10 years, Park City has been successful in getting all of them to flee, mostly due to usurious rents.

All we know for certain is that with the exception of Slamdance, Sundance has finally killed of the competition.

Slamdance will remain. It will once again take up residence in Treasure Mountain Lodge (on Main Street) in the center of town for a 10-day party. This year, it has 20 feature films in competition this year and 100 over all. It’s very informal and if one can’t get into a Sundance screening this is a great place to hang out.