New York Jewish Film Festival Reaches 21

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Monday, 26 December 2011 02:16

Written by Laura Blum

New York Jewish Film Festival turns 21 in the new year (January 11-26, 2012), bringing the brainchild of The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center to the legal age for Manischewitz. Though the mood may not be giddy -- Jewish film fests blend oy and joy -- there's plenty to inspirit audiences at the Film Society’s Walter Reade Theater and its new venue, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

Hailing from 11 countries, this year's 35 features and shorts sample Jewish life from Ethiopia and Iraq to Poland and France.

Curtains part with the New York premiere of Guy Nattiv’s Mabul/The Flood. Nominated for six Ophir (Israeli Academy Award) nominations, it charts the delayed puberty of a bar mitzvah boy whose Torah portion is Noah's ark and whose dysfunctional family nearly drowns in a tsunami of tsuris. Ronit Elkabetz, Tzahi Grad and Yoav Rotman show warts and all in in this latest filmed metaphor of Israel's growth pangs, civic distress and fear of a coming deluge.

Whether Mabul's final ray of optimism offers relief or disbelief is arguable, but this feature-length expansion of a 2002 short from Nattiv and screenwriter Noa Berman-Herzberg confirms Nattiv -- who co-directed Strangers and A Matter of Size -- as a helmer to watch in his own right.

The always compelling Elkabetz stars in another Israeli drama, Invisible. Directed by Michal Aviad, it dredges up the buried past of two rape victims who embolden one another to confront their traumas and pursue justice. Rumors have it Invisible may slip from Festival view. Assuming a distributor is behind this sleight of hand, perhaps it will soon be visible at a theater near you.

Disappearing acts are a key theme in French import Bachelor Days Are Over. Katia Lewkowicz's feature debut invites us to the pre-wedding of a Benicio del Toro lookalike (singer/songwriter Benjamin Biolay) whose fiancée (Valérie Donzelli) has staged a no-show. Plunged into confusion by an emotionally and bodily available chanteuse (Sara Adler), the expectations of family and friends and apartment agitas, he struggles to choose the truest partner and avoid a future of abandonment.

Israeli-French Lewkowicz comes from acting, and her love of the craft shows. Emmanuelle Devos, in the role of the sister, is given a wide berth to improvise quirk, as is Nicole Garcia, who invests her wounded, narcissistic mother with a childishness to stunt generations. Unlike the drunken misadventures of typical pre-marriage rom coms, the hangover in this drama is traceable to the father's long ago walkout on the mother rather than to any stag partying.

The film's French title is Pourquoi tu pleures? or Why Are You Crying? As the closing tears remind us, whom we chose matters. In real life as on the screen, it's all in the casting.

A generational lament also reverbs through Gili Gaon’s poignant documentary, Iraq ‘n’ Roll. Yet, just as Bachelor is sprinkled with off-beat humor, so too this musical saga spices its sorrows with joy. Concert footage from 1930s Iraq depicts the acclaimed duo of Salah and Daud al-Kuwaiti, Jewish brothers who performed for the King even during Baghdad's brief pro-Axis alignment during WWII.

The story unfolds via Salah’s grandson, popular Israeli fusion artist Dudu Tassa, as he mashes up golden oldies for today's audiences. Fans of mizrahi music may ululate involuntarily as Grammy nominee Yair Dalal joins on stage with his oud. Could Iraq ‘N’ Roll have used more music and less talk? Anyone who says yes can whet their appetite at NYJFF and then catch Dalal at Carnegie Hall in August (or anticipate a yes and first enjoy his January 8 performance at the same venerable auditorium).

Another documentary that inspires further delving is Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story. World-premiering at the Festival, it explores the charismatic and driven persona of Jonathan “Yoni” Netanyahu, who was killed in action commanding Israel's 1976 mission to rescue hostages in Entebbe, Uganda. Among the highlights of this skillful portrait by Jonathan Gruber and Ari Daniel Pinchot is news coverage of the Entebbe raid anchored by CBS legend Walter Cronkite. Yoni's own poetry, prose and letters are used in narrating the film, which also weaves home movies and interviews with younger brother Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, both wives and other prominent figures in the young hero's life.

Though Follow Me reveals Yoni's growing fears, doubts and even a testimony of his betrayal (ventured by journalist Dani Litani), the urge to lionize a decorated warrior may have discouraged the filmmakers from digging deeper into his shadows. Off the record, an erstwhile confident of his tells FilmFestivalTraveler.com of Yoni's need to challenge himself and others, but also recalls his all-too-human tendency to panic.

What compelled his ambitions -- to the point of sacrificing his first marriage? The film underplays the complex influence that Yoni's father, Benzion Netanyahu, had on his life, including the Revisionist Zionist politics that sent the scholar from then Labor-dominated Israel in search of a top academic appointment in the US. As the eldest brother, Yoni may have felt the brunt of Professor Netanyahu's divided academic, ideological and familial commitments. Follow Me will no doubt inspire viewers to follow up.  

The closing night film, Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort, should similarly pique interest in further research. Taking on the last of the “Borscht Belt” venues, documentarians Caroline Laskow and Ian Rosenberg chronicle the beginnings of the Jewish vacation phenomenon and the influence these sprawling establishments came to wield in enter­tainment, stand-up comedy and sports. (Wilt Chamberlain shot hoops at Kutsher's when he wasn't serving as one of its bellhops.) The film gives more than you might care to know about running a hotel or cooking kosher food for the minions, but it's worth a few good laughs and indicates the rich grist awaiting to be ladled up.

Joel Katz ponders race and prejudice in his new documentary White: A Memoir in Color. Unlike his previous film, Strange Fruit, examining the Billie Holiday classic about lynching and the Jewish songsters who wrote it, here Katz trains his lens on his own family. His father’s tenure as a white professor at predominantly black Howard University during the civil rights era provides the context for Katz to query his and his wife's decision to adopt a mixed-race child. One can only hope for a Michael Apted-style series as the Katzes continue their candid reckoning.

Avishai Yeganyahu Mekonen and Shari Rothfarb Mekonen present a very different facet of the black Jewish experience in their documentary 400 Miles to Freedom -- Beta Israel's 1984 escape to Israel from the mountains of northern Ethiopia, where this this remarkable community of observant Jews had survived for 2,500 years. Avishai seizes the occasion of the shoot to finally talk about his kidnapping as a 10-year-old boy in Sudan while waiting for Operation Moses to bring the community to the Holy Land.

In their wanderings, the filmmakers veer off topic into the murk of converso culture in Latin America and sundry Diaspora topics. Yet with material that intriguing, who cares?  

And that's sort of the point. Not every NYJFF entry bears the perfect edit or Hollywood production values. But when it comes to engaging storytelling, affecting issues and heart and soul? Prizewinners, one and all.

The full film roster is available below and at filmlinc.com.

Screenings at the Walter Reade Theater unless otherwise indicated.
165 West 65th Street
New York, NY 10023

Wednesday, Jan. 11
1:00    Mabul with Howl
3:45    400 Miles to Freedom with Panta Rhei
6:00    Mabul with Howl
8:45    Invisible
 
Thursday, Jan. 12
1:30    White: A Memoir in Color with Letters Home
3:30    Invisible
6:00    White: A Memoir in Color with Letters Home
8:15    Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
 
Saturday, Jan. 14
6:30    Bachelor Days Are Over
9:00    Mary Lou
 
Sunday, Jan. 15
1:00    Breaking Home Ties (silent, with piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin)
3:30    Shoah: The Unseen Interviews
6:00    Restoration
8:45    Bachelor Days Are Over
 
Monday, Jan. 16 (Martin Luther King Day)
1:00    Dressing America with Orbit
3:15    Lost Love Diaries with Iraq ‘N Roll
6:00    Remembrance
8:45    Restoration
 
Tuesday, Jan. 17
1:00    Deaf Jam
3:15    Remembrance
6:00    Torn with The Moon is Jewish (at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)*
9:00    My Father Evgeni with Three Promises (at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center)*
 
Wednesday, Jan. 18
1:00    Torn with The Moon is Jewish
3:30    My Father Evgeni with Three Promises
6:00    400 Miles to Freedom with Panta Rhei
8:30    Lost Love Diaries with Iraq ‘N Roll

Thursday, Jan. 19
1:00    100 Voices: A Journey Home
3:30    My Australia
6:00    100 Voices: A Journey Home
8:30    Deaf Jam
 
Saturday, Jan. 21
6:30    My Australia
9:00    Daas
 
Sunday, Jan. 22
1:00    My Song Goes Round the World
3:20    Lea and Darija
6:00    A Bottle in the Gaza Sea
8:30    The Queen Has No Crown with Grandmothers
 
Monday, Jan. 23
1:00    A Bottle in the Gaza Sea
3:30    The Queen Has No Crown with Grandmothers
6:00    Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story
8:30    Lea and Darija
 
Tuesday, Jan. 24
6:00    Incessant Visions: Letters from an Architect
8:15    Dressing America with Orbit
 
Wednesday, Jan. 25
1:00    Incessant Visions: Letters from an Architect
3:00    The Silent Historian with Joann Sfar Draws from Memory
6:00    My Song Goes Round the World
8:30    The Silent Historian with Joann Sfar Draws from Memory
 
Thursday, Jan. 26
1:00    Daas
3:45    Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort
6:00    Daas
8:30    Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort
 
*At the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th Street
 
Tuesday, Jan. 17
6:00    Torn with The Moon is Jewish*
9:00    My Father Evgeni with Three Promises*

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