My Date With Drew
TITLE: My Date With Drew
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Jon Gunn
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 90 minutes
SOURCE: mydatewithdrew.com
TEXT: Documentary. The story of anxious insecure filmmaker Brian Herzlinger's quest to score a date with Drew Barrymore (and also his route around Hollwyood to get a job in the business). Made in 30 days on a budget of $1,100 (they bought a digital video camera at circuit city and had 30 days to return it for a refund). They interview people who know Barrymore in an attempt to get close to her, people such as Corey Feldman, Eric Roberts, and John August. The film is quite funny, especially when they hold a casting call for Drew look-alikes. (someone please buy Brian a razor).
PRIME
TITLE: PRIME
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ben Younger
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 105 minutes
SOURCE: Universal Video
TEXT: Starring: Meryl Streep, Uma Thurman, Bryan Greenberg, Jon Abrahams. Theatrical Release Date: 10/28/2005. Comedy, Romance, Rating: PG-13. When two people fall in love, it throws their entire world into upheaval - this much is well-covered territory. But one love affair can have enormous ramifications for all those linked to the two lovers. This is the premise of 'Prime.' Set in New York City, the movie follows Rafi (Uma Thurman), a recently divorced 37-year-old career woman from Manhattan, and what happens when Dave (Bryan Greenberg), a talented 23-year-old painter from Brooklyn, falls in love with her. The film looks at love from everyone's point of view -- friends, relatives and even Rafi's Jewish therapist (Meryl Streep) -- and follows all who come apart, and some who pull it together, when two people fall in love. Ben got the idea when he was dating a woman on the UWS, and she was seeing a therapist, and he thought, "what if she is seeing my mom, who is a therapist who practices under her maiden name" Filled with Jewish family scenes and humor. Filled with arguments about not dating people outside your chosen religion, etc.
Meryl Streep plays Lisa Metzger, MS, CSW, a Jewish mother and therapist. Younger, who wrote the film and directed it (and Boiler Room) was raised in a Modern Orthodox
Before the Fall / NAPOLA
TITLE: Before the Fall also known as Napola
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Dennis Gansel
COUNTRY: Germany
LANGUAGE: German with English Subtitles
TIME: 110 minutes
SOURCE: Picture This! Is the distributor
http://www.comingofagemovies.com/titles/beforethefall/
TEXT: How does seduction work? As Hitler launches the first major military aggressions of World War II, the strongest and smartest German young men enter exclusive schools known as "Napolas" to train as future leaders of the Third Reich. They will rule over Moscow and London once Russian and the UK are conquered. In 1942, a recruiter from one such Napola sets his sights on Friedrich, a talented adolescent boxer, who sees the training and prestige offered by the Napola as his ticket out of an impoverished family unit run by his anti-Nazi father. In the Napola, Friedrich learns to fight without pity, becoming a formidable killing machine. Propagandistic classes reinforce a hardened worldview of his Aryan superiority.
Meanwhile, Friedrich forms a bond with fellow cadet Albrecht Stein, an aspiring writer and son of the local Nazi governor. Governor Stein dotes on Friedrich, barely masking his contempt for his own son's sensitivity. But Friedrich admires and empathizes with his friend, even though Albrecht criticizes Friedrich's brutality in the ring. As the war escalates, the school's military training also intensifies. Unscrupulous trainers humiliate the more vulnerable cadets in front of their peers and send the others out on dubious war game exercises. In one such nightmarish event, they instruct Friedrich and Albrecht to shoot escaping POW's who turn out to be unarmed Russian civilians. Tormented with guilt, Albrecht rebels, and Friedrich must choose between his sworn allegiance to the Fuehrer and his best friend's moral imperative.
Bittersweet Palace
TITLE: Bittersweet Palace
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Alexandra Brodsky
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English Subtitles
TIME: 96 minutes
SOURCE: Eric Bender Schaffer & Son Productions 200 East 15th Street , Apt. 15L
New York, NY 10003 Phone: 212-279-3636 x204 Fax: 917-836-1717 Email: eric.bender@bravado.com
TEXT: When the head of the Schaffer family becomes ill, everyone struggles to cope. Paulie, the youngest daughter, who is bipolar, goes off her medications. Her husband is a ne'er do well. Susannah, the eldest daughter, resents having to put her life on hold to care for the family's dynamics.
Alexandra Brodsky's debut feature is a portrait of the Schaffer family, which consists of an aging father, Pappy (Seymour Cassel) and his two daughters. The Schaffers still live in the house the girls grew up in and their lives, as well as their neighborhood, are insulated from the outside world. The entire family works for the limousine business they own, including youngest daughter Paulie's husband (Michael Esper). From the beginning it is evident that things cannot continue as they are. Our heroine and the family's backbone, Susannah (Jen Albano), is tired of holding things together and sick of living in a world where nothing changes. When her father's health starts to fail, and Paulie (Elisabeth Moss) goes off her lithium, Susannah wearily continues her struggle to keep her family's world from shattering. In his waning days Pappy embraces the Jewish faith and Susannah resists his sudden zealotry. But when a young Jewish man Pappy has befriended turns his attentions to Susannah, she sees an opportunity to escape her seemingly hopeless situation through a man whose beliefs she does not share. Jen Albano's performance as Susannah is so stunning that she is sure to be tagged as one of the up-and-coming actresses of her generation. Bittersweet Place also shows startling promise from Brodsky, who handles her material with sympathy and ability many seasoned pros would find hard to match. Her film leaves the viewer feeling like its perceptive title indicates-bittersweet
Christ in the City
TITLE: Christ in the City
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Yitz Brilliant
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 25 minutes
SOURCE: christ_in_the_city at hotmail dot com
TEXT: a satire of the Passion of the Christ. What would happen if Christ came to the city (NYC) today in order to see The Passion of the Christ, and then got stuck on NYC's Upper West Side on Friday before sunset and had to find a shul for Shabbat.. and what if two of the congregants were NYC's top Jewish comedic Friars.
The Outskirts of earth
TITLE: The Outskirts of earth
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: David Shemtov
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 58 minutes
SOURCE: check with makor in Nyc
TEXT: a pair of soldiers journey across a mysterious foreboding zone
BERNIE
TITLE: Bernie
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Jay Heyman
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 62 minutes
SOURCE: http://www.berniefilm.com/ Right Eye Productions
Jay Heyman | jayheyman@hotmail.com
TEXT: Jay Heyman documents the work of his grandfather, who grew up in a Jewish orphanage, and returned to the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York as a social worker. Bernie is a story about the varied interpretations of the family unit. As filmmaker Jay Heyman grew older, he was compelled to document the story of his grandfather. Grandpa Bernie grew up in the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City, never knowing a parent and never having an identity of his own. After spending eleven years there as an "inmate", he returned to the institution as a professional social worker in an effort to bring about much needed change. Amidst professional success, Bernie suffered through the premature losses of loved ones, yet moved forward to create new relationships with a contagious enthusiasm that lasted almost ninety-seven years.
BELLE
TITLE: BELLE
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Ruth Sergel
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 16 minutes
SOURCE: Women Make Movies Wmm.org Rsergel at StreetPictures.com
TEXT: a touching look at old age and beauty that explores the roles age and race play in our expectations of each other. Ruth Sergel's BELLE premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival (2004) and was made with the generous support of the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts. Ruth's previous film, CUSP (2000), premiered at the Museum of Modern Art's New Directors/New Films and is distributed by Women Make Movies
Jews of Iran
TITLE: jews of Iran
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ramin Farahani
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 60 minutes
SOURCE: http://www.geocities.com/raminbox/
TEXT: Jews have lived in Iran / Persia for over 2700 years. Since 1979, when there were 100,000 Jews in Iran, the community has shrunk to 20,000. The Jewish settlement in Iran dates back to 2700 years. The Islamic Revolution of 1979 resulted in the departure of many Jews from the country. This film concentrates on Jews living in Iran presently, with an eye on recent historic developments.
In Tehran, young and old Jews speak about different kinds of discrimination. However, there are also positive aspects, such as a close friendship between two tolerant Muslim and Jewish families. There is a strong and responsive bond between the Jewish community. A lonely elderly woman from the old Jewish neighborhood of Tehran is treated for free at the Jewish hospital. In Isfahan, we witness the love and passion that the main characters have developed for the place they live in. Soleiman Sassoon is a Jewish artist who finds inspiration in Iranian art and Islamic architecture. In Shiraz, the film focuses more on an espionage case against the Jews. Parallel to this, we follow a young Jewish boy who is interested in computers and music. The film ends with a prayer before the Jewish New Year at a synagogue in Tehran
Contact rfarahani@yahoo.com
Jews of Jedwabne
TITLE: Jews of Jedwabne
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Slawomir Grunberg
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 72 minutes
SOURCE: Log In Productions, 607.589.4709 Spencer NY USA
TEXT: The Legacy of Jedwabne is a feature-length documentary that tells the story of a pogrom in 1941 in Jedwabne, Poland and explores the implications of the past for present constructions and negotiations of personal, national and religious identity. In the small town of Jedwabne in Northeast Poland, Jews lived side by side with local Poles for over two centuries; by the outbreak of the Second World War, they constituted more than half of the town's 2,500 inhabitants. Relations were peaceful for the most part until July 10, 1941 when, just days after the Germans occupied Jedwabne, almost the entire Jewish population of the town was murdered. Beginning in the morning, Jews were chased, beaten and killed with clubs, knives and iron bars. Women were raped; a small girl's head was cut off and kicked about. Jews were rounded up from their homes and brought to the market square where the town rabbi and others were forced to carry the statue of Lenin and to sing, "The war is because of us." At the end of the day, all remaining Jews were forced into a nearby barn that was then doused with gasoline and set on fire. Music was played to drown out their cries. No Jewish witnesses were meant to survive, but seven managed to escape.
Visit http://www.logtv.com/films/jedwabne/ for the full story
Saved by Deportation
TITLE: Saved by Deportation
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD:
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 87 minutes
SOURCE: www.savedbydeportation.com Log In Productions, 607.589.4709 Spencer NY USA grunberg@logtv.com
TEXT: Saved By Deportation is the first feature length documentary film to tell the dramatic story of Polish Jews who escaped the Holocaust through their deportation to the Soviet Union. The film recounts the 1940 deportations of Polish Jews from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland to Gulag labor settlementsin the Arctic north; life in Soviet Central Asia after release from the Gulag; and the deportees' experiences upon returning to Poland at the end of World War II and confronting the aftermath of the Holocaust. In recounting the epic saga of the deportations the film examines the essential constructs - family, culture, religion, personal relationships - upon which the deportees relied during their years of exile from 1940 to 1946. The film also addresses how inter-ethnic relations played out in the remote areas of the Soviet Union among the disparate nationalities of Jews, Poles, Russians, and Central Asians. 87 minutes www.savedbydeportation.com
Saved
TITLE: Saved
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Brian Dannelly / Sandy Stern, Michael Stipe, Michael Ohoven, William Vince
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: Amazon.com, United Artists
TEXT: "Good girl Mary (Jena Malone) can't believe it when she gets pregnant by her newly-gay boyfriend. She also can't believe the actions of her popular, relentlessly devout best friend, Hilary Faye (Mandy Moore), who's looking after her wheelchair-bound brother Roland (Macaulay Culkin), attempting to convert adamantly Jewish Cassandra (Eva Amurri), and trying to snag cute newcomer Patrick (Patrick Fugit), a hip skateboarding missionary. By the time Mary's secret is revealed, Hilary Faye has gone to extremes to get the outsiders expelled from school, with spectacular results, and Mary is forced to decide what's worth believing in the first place. In this dark comedy, a young, talented cast comes together to get Saved.
Jena Malone, Eva Amurri, Macaulay Culkin, Martin Donovan, Chad Faust, Patrick Fugit, Heather Matarazzo, Mandy Moore, Mary-Louise Parker
Joshua's Echo: Punk Rock in the Holy Land
TITLE: Joshua's Echo
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Liz Nord
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: English Subtitles
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: http://www.jerichosecho.com/
TEXT: Mohawks, stage diving, fists flying. Homemade band t-shirts, circle pits, singalongs. These scenes are not unfamiliar; They have flooded pop culture imagery for over 25 years. The punk rock ethos gains new relevance in Israel when band members' choices are often between picking up a guitar or picking up a gun. Jericho's Echo introduces us to some of the colorful characters of the little-known Israeli punk scene, and gives us insights into their lives through interviews, verite' scenes, and live musical footage. The young people in these bands represent the future of this important region, and their views are not those usually portrayed by the mainstream media. A topic that figures greatly in these young punks' lives is the decision of whether or not to fulfill their mandatory military service. One of the only ways to avoid service is to undergo evaluation by the Military Psychiatrist and be legally deemed psychotic. This is the route that many punks have decided to take. The implications of this decision are thoughtfully covered in the documentary, along with topics ranging from the Israeli Religious Right, to suicide bombings and the future of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Ultimately, Jericho's Echo displays a positive message by showing the perseverance of these relative outcasts to make their art and make changes in society despite the pressures to conform and the difficulties of living in a seemingly un-ending war zone.
Land of the settlers
TITLE: Land of the settlers
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Haim Yavin
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English Subtitles
TIME: 120 minutes, several parts
SOURCE:
TEXT: Haim Yavin (b. 1932), also known as "Mr. Television", is a popular Israeli television anchor and a critic of Israel's presence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Yavin was born in 1932 in Oberschlesien, Germany (now Upper Silesia, Poland). He would later immigrate to Israel. Since 1968, Yavin has read the nightly news on the "Mabat" program of Israel's public TV station, Channel 1, which he helped found. This continued presence on Israeli TV has led him to be called "Mr. Television" by his viewers and also "Israel's Walter Cronkite" by the American press. He is often considered the "voice" of Israel, and was the chief editor for the nightly news casts. Yavin caused controversy when his five-part documentary series-Land of the Settlers-was shown on Israeli's Channel 2 station Telad, beginning May 30, 2005. The documentary shows Yavin concluding that Israeli settlements are endangering Israel, and that the Israel must withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
King of Beggars
TITLE: King of Beggars
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Uri Paster
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English Subtitles
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: www.KingofBeggars.com
TEXT: For Wisdom is more valuable than rubies (Proverbs)
Stars Shahar Sorek. This is termed the "Jewish Braveheart." Based on the character of Fishke der Krumer (Fishke the Lame) created by the great Hebrew and Yiddish writer Mendele Mocher Sforim, the film follows the adventures of Fishke from humble bathhouse attendant in a 16th century Russian shtetl to leader of a fighting brigade of Jewish outcasts. Late 16th century. Inside the small cemetery of the Jewish village of "Lodonia" by the Russian-Polish border, two social outcasts are joined in matrimony under the moonlight sky. FISHKE, a lame orphaned bath attendant, weds an older mysterious blind orphaned woman who has come to the village just days before. The marriage, believe the people of "Lodonia," will exorcise the spell of pogroms that has been haunting the village and its Jewish community. But the wedding night proves a disaster, as Fishke, a devoted scholar of Torah, learns the truth about his new wife, a renegade vagabond belonging to a group of Jewish beggars. Now that the villagers have been satisfied she wastes no time and makes a run for it through the dark night, and Fishke, albeit being forced into the marriage, follows her into the woods believing her to be his destined lawful wife in the eyes of his God.
When he finally tracks her down, Fishke is exposed to a world he did not know exist. The group of Jewish outcasts survives by the way of the sword, victimizing their own people in the same way the Polish and Russian soldiers do. Fishke spared for his life by the Beggar's cruel leader and eager to keep his marital vow, joins them at first against his better judgment. However, after a short while, appalled and aghast by their sinister actions he decides to run away and things get complicated as the leader's young and pretty mistress uses the opportunity and follows suite. Fueled by anger the leader hunts and tracks Fishke down opting for a struggle for revenge and respect in which he finds his death in the hands of his young trainee. Deprived of a leader the beggars now turn to Fishke who reluctantly gives in for the request and takes on the challenge. But Fishke wishes to change their ways, and instead of preying on his own pitiful people turns his criminal vagabonds against the Russians themselves. His controversial actions reach all the way up to the Tzar who proposes Fishke a deal of a lifetime -- Join your army of Beggars into the escalating war against the Poles and your people will be granted equal rights. Inspired by the ideology of coexistence and the belief in earning one's rights by fulfilling one's duties, Fishke sets out to liberate his people through war and to try and earn his vagabond and torn nation its own piece of land... Co-executive producer is Jerry's Deli owner Ike Starkman.
Spark Among the Ashes
TITLE: Spark Among the Ashes
YEAR: 1986
DIR/PROD: Oren Rudavsky
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 56 minutes
SOURCE: http://www.frif.com/new99/sparkash.html
TEXT: Jews of Cracow Await US Bar Mitzvah Boy," read the New York Times headline, as Eric Strom, a 13-year-old Connecticut boy, stood at the center of a complex human drama that attracted world-wide attention. Cracow's handful of Jews, survivors of one of the largest Jewish communities prior to World War II, were eager to participate in his bar mitzvah in their synagogues for over forty years.
In following the emotional journey of Eric and his family to Poland, the filmmakers capture a riveting story: a woman rabbi faces a storm of controversy over religious traditions and modernity; a holocaust-devastated Jewish community reflects on its past, present and future; a boy comes of age; an elderly woman, Maria, sees her wish of forty years come true.
These remarkable events are set against the backdrop of the rich heritage of Polish Jewry. As archival footage reveals, Poland was once the center of the Jewish world. Before World War II, Cracow's Jewish population was 60,000; now only 200 remain. Members of the younger generation of Poland's remaining Jews wonder if they will be able to maintain religious and cultural identity in contemporary Poland. Elderly holocaust survivors explain why they remained in a place of painful memory.
Eric's mission to fill a spiritual need of an elderly survivor many miles away evokes poignancy, humor and debate. The gesture becomes a symbol of renewal, a testament to the continuity of a people. Spark Among the Ashes is a landmark film for audiences concerned with the holocaust, cultural survival, and the conflict between orthodox and contemporary religious movements. **Silver Plaque, 1986 Chicago International Film Festival **1986 Margaret Mead Film Festival **1986 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Common Ground
TITLE: Common Ground
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Oren Rudavsky
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: IN PRODUCTION.. The filmmakers of Common Ground are returning to Poland to film their attempt to heal Polish-Jewish relations in the town of Dzialosyzce. Common Ground is to be produced by Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky as a follow-up to their award-winning film Hiding and Seeking. These filmmakers also directed and produced the A Life Apart: Hasidism in America. No Jews have lived in Dzialosyzce since World War II, when only 300 of the 8,000 Jews who had lived there perished. The filmmakers have invited today's Dzialosyzce residents, especially the town's youth, to reclaim the largely neglected Jewish portion of their own local history. The film will be framed by a concert of Jewish and Polish music held in the ruins of the town's synagogue. Jewish survivors and their descendents from throughout the world will be invited to return to the town and will join the towns' residents and students for a day of commemoration and healing, to be concluded with a concert inside the roofless ruins of Dzialoszye's once magnificent synagogue. Hartley Update: The filmmakers have just submitted a grant request to the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities). Daum and Rudavsky are in the research and development phase and have initiated efforts to elicit the town's cooperation in two specific projects: to build markers delineating the borders of the now invisible Jewish cemetery and to have the high school students undertake historical research projects aimed at uncovering the role that Jews played in their town's past.
The budget for Common Ground is $311,409.00.
How to Donate: contact: Oren Rudavsky Production Company: Oren Rudavsky Productions 2255 Broadway, #312 New York, NY 10024 orudavsky at AOL dot com
Hiding and Seeking
TITLE: Hiding and Seeking
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00067BBQY/sefersafarianonl
TEXT: Menachem Daum, the son of holocaust survivors, and a New York Orthodox Jew worries that both of his sons, full time yeshiva students who live with their families in Israel, are becoming seduced to intolerance by their religious studies. "All religions today are in danger of being hijacked by extremists." To open their perspectives just a little he sets off with his wife, Rifka, and both sons, Tzvi Dovid and Akiva, to visit the Polish towns where his parents grew up and to try to find the Catholic farmers who hid his father-in-law from the Germans. Enduring the bemused tolerance of his sons, Menachem persists until they find Honorata Matuszezyk Mucha who as a young woman brought food nightly to Rifka's father and his two brothers for 28 months until the end of World War II. The Daum sons perspectives widen a bit to allow for good Gentiles, but they also encounter some resentment from the Poles who heard no word from the three brothers after they left their hiding place, not even a postcard with a thank you. A lot of issues are surfaced but left unresolved in this well crafted documentary. Distributed by First Run Features
Private
TITLE: Private
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Saverio Costanzo
COUNTRY: Italy
LANGUAGE: Arabis and Hebrew with English subtitles
TIME: 90 minutes
SOURCE: Distributed by Typecast Releasing, Seattle WA | (206) 322-0882 | www.typecastfilms.com
TEXT: Emotions have no nationality. Inspired by real events, documentary filmmaker Saverio Costanzo's feature debut is a minimalist psychological drama about a Palestinian family of seven suddenly confronted with a volatile situation in their home that in many ways reflects the larger ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel. Mohammad, his wife and their five children live in a large, isolated house located halfway between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement. The house, in the crossfire of the two sides, is a strategic lookout point that the Israeli army decides to seize, confining the family to a few downstairs rooms in daytime and a single room at night. Mohammad refuses to leave his home and, reinforced by his principles against violence, decides to find a way to keep his family together in the house until the Israeli soldiers move on. Winner of a Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, PRIVATE is convincingly shot in a documentary style with a hand-held camera and a quick pace. Director Costanzo has created a unique occasion for both Israeli and Palestinian actors to work together, and being an outsider himself, he has worked to maintain a neutral standpoint while dramatizing the conflict.
The New York Times, November 2005 (Stephen Holden): ... Saverio Costanzo's film "Private" distills the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a nightmarish microcosm when a midnight raid by Israeli soldiers on the house of a peaceful, well-educated Palestinian family turns the home into an occupied territory. Imprisoning the family on the ground floor and commandeering the upstairs as a lookout, the soldiers tell the confined that under no circumstances are they to go upstairs. The home is that of Mohammad (Mohammad Bakri), a Palestinian school principal who believes in nonviolence; his wife, Samiah (Areen Omari); and their five children: a large, isolated two-story stone house in a crossfire zone between a Palestinian village and an Israeli settlement on the West Bank. While their house is occupied, the family members are allowed to go about their business during the day; at night they are confined to the living room.
Their predicament, their internal conflicts and their edgy relationship with their captors, who become a bit more humanized as the story goes along, make "Private" an emotionally and politically loaded allegory. Like the recently released "Syrian Bride," it is a film in which a no man's land, in this case the gray area between battle lines, acquires a symbolic weight..... To leave or to stay: that is the question posed throughout the film. The family members have different answers. Mohammad, dead set on remaining, offers compelling reasons for staying put. Mr. Bakri, a Palestinian actor, personifies a benign but strict paternal authority who holds the divided family together. You can see his backbone stiffen when challenged. He refuses to show fear, even during a hair-raising scene in which a gun is pointed at his head for a very long moment, while his family watches in terror.... Mariam (Hend Ayoub), who has just been accepted into a German medical school, would rather stay, defying her father's insistence that she seize her academic opportunity. She and Jamal (Marco Alsaying), the older of two teenage boys, endanger the family with their acts of rebellion. In scenes that build an excruciating tension, Mariam sneaks upstairs, hides inside an armoire and observes the soldiers through a crack in the door that she narrows and widens. As she observes her captors watching television and bickering, she glimpses their confusion and boredom, and they become real.... Jamal rigs an explosive device and catapult near the greenhouse that the soldiers repeatedly tear down because it interferes with their sightlines. Militant Arab television stokes his fantasies of himself as a holy Islamic warrior. Upstairs in the rooms occupied by the soldiers, their commander, Ofer (Lior Miller), copes with the same challenges to his authority as those faced by Mohammad. But "Private" also shows the human instinct to fight oppression, even if that rebellion risks disaster. It's what oppressed people do.
Der letzte zug - The Last Train
TITLE: Der letzte zug - The Last Train
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Joseph Vilsmaier / Artur Brauner
COUNTRY: Germany
LANGUAGE: German w/ English ST
TIME: 90 minutes
SOURCE: CCC-Filmkunst GmbH Artur Brauner, Fela Brauner-Rozen
Kleine Eiswerder Strasse 14/16 13599 Berlin/Germany phone +49-30-3 23 06 20
fax +49-30-32 30 62 22
TEXT: the harrowing story of the last deportation of Jews from Berlin to Auschwitz. 87 yr old Artur Braunur has tried to make this film for decades and went through 4 directors. Stars Sibel Kekilli and Lale Yavas and Gedeon Burkard. In April 1943, the Gestapo dispatched the last remaining Berlin Jews, 648 people crammed into cattle wagons, to Auschwitz. With that, Berlin was declared judenfrei, or "Jew-free"; it was a birthday present for the Fuehrer. Der letzte Zug ("The Last Train", working title) tells the story of a handful of those people on this torturous final journey to certain death, during which more than half died of hunger or thirst. But what marks Der letzte Zug out from other Holocaust films is that this time the story, as told by veteran producer Artur Brauner, concentrates on individuals. With the use of flashbacks, we come to know Gabrielle Hellman and Jacob Noschik, two musicians; Henry and Lea Neuman and their children, Nina and David; the young lovers Ruth Zilbermann and Albert Rosen. There is no escaping the fact Der letzte Zug is a hard film about a monstrously hard time in recent history. But, at the same time, it is a human film about human beings trapped in a terrible predicament through no fault other than an accident of birth. "Artur Brauner is the only producer to do such a film," says line producer Wolf Brauner (Artur's brother and business partner for almost forty-nine years). "The characters are human beings and not clichées. The flashbacks show their former lives. The real-time scenes show the tragedy that unfolds in the cattle wagon. But there is also optimism." That "optimism" comes in the form of Albert, who has smuggled an axe and a saw with him onto the train and who tells Henry he is planning to escape from wherever he is taken. Der letzte Zug is directed by Joseph Vilsmaier, perhaps best known for Comedian Harmonists and Stalingrad. Der letzte Zug almost came off the rails when Vilsmaier fell during a crane shot three meters above the ground. He was hospitalized but is now back at work, in a slightly reduced capacity and ably supported by director of photography Helmfried Kober.
Wellstone
TITLE: Wellstone
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Laurie Stern, Lu Lippold, Dan Luke / Pamela Colby and Shayna BerkoWitz
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 88 minutes
SOURCE: Hard Working Pictures. Carry It Forward Productions
2395 University Ave., W. St. Paul, MN 55114, USA Tel.: 651-641-0792
Fax: 651-641-8573 dan@hwpics.com http://www.carryitforward.org/ u can buy the dvd from their website
TEXT: Documentary on the short life of Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). In these bleak times, progressives may find some comfort in celebrating their heroes. Few champions of progressive values touched as many lives as the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and his amazing wife Sheila who, tragically, died in a plane crash only 11 days before the 2002 election. This invigorating film uses rare home video and archival footage as well as interviews with the couple's close friends, family, and staff, to illustrate the indelible mark Wellstone left on the U.S. Senate and the scope of political discussion in America. Funny, charismatic, idealistic yet pragmatic, Wellstone believed that politics could be a source of power for ordinary citizens. Wellstone! follows a rough chronology of his career as he moved from Carleton college professor to greenhorn senator to national leader. It provides insight into his worldview and passion for justice by examining his upbringing. No hagiography, it examines his learning curve by looking at some of his mistakes and missed opportunities. Most crucially, it keeps his legacy alive by showing that that change only happens when people organize, work together, and fight for what they believe in.
Kings and Extras. Digging for a Palestinian Image
TITLE: Kings and Extras. Digging for a Palestinian Image
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Azza El Hassan
COUNTRY: Palestinian Authority / Germany
LANGUAGE: Arabic with English ST
TIME: 60 minutes
SOURCE: http://www.deckert-distribution.com/films/deckert_188.htm
Deckert Distribution GmbH • Peterssteinweg 13 • 04107 Leipzig • Germany Phone: +49 (0)341 215 66 38 • Fax: +49 (0)341 215 66 39 • e-mail: info@deckert-distribution.com
TEXT: The films of the PLO Media Unit were supposed to show a self-determined image of Palestinian reality - and they went missing during the Israeli invasion of Beirut in 1982. In a "road-movie" from Palestine to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, the director Azza El-Hassan follows the contradicting and confusing clues as to the whereabouts of the lost archive. The increasingly absurd search finally leads her to a martyr's graveyard, where the films are said to be buried - but no one really wants to dig over the whole place. While Azza's search for lost images leads her down various dead ends, she is confronted with new clues and starts to construct her own story. The film reflects the situation in the Middle East - a failed revolution, the problematic relationship with the Arab neighbours, the question of a Palestinian identity today.Azza El-Hassan shows myths, life stories and life lies, the personal effects of defeat and loss. She even brings some humour to the tragedy of the situation - to which she simultaneously feels a sense of belonging and opposition.
VAULT KEYS
TITLE: VAULT KEYS
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Harvey Wang
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 5 minutes
SOURCE: Harvey Wang 309 East 4th Street New York, NY 10009 212-777-5918
hw@harveywang.com www.harveywang.com
TEXT: In 1992, Leo Wang asked his son, Harvey, to videotape him at home explaining his finances and important papers so that his children would know what to do when he died. The seemingly mundane becomes a poignant comment on the passage of time in this short gem.
Naomi's Corset
TITLE: Naomi's Corset
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Gérard Allon
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 57 minutes
SOURCE: Cinephil 18 Lerontin St. Tel Aviv. 65112 Israel 972-3-5664129 info@cinephil.co.il www.cinephil.co.il
TEXT: Ten-year-old Naomi Allon must wear a corset 23 hours a day to counter the severe curvature of her spine, caused by Williams syndrome, a rare genetic condition. She and her father, an artist, decide to make a film to help soothe her many anxieties. Despite her father's attempts to present loving, artistic images of his daughter, Naomi must face the unstinting eye of the camera. As she rages against the restrictions of her life, she also battles for control of the film itself. All this dissolves when Naomi enters the hospital for a crucial operation. Regardless of who controls the filming, neither father nor daughter can predict what will emerge on the other side.
Golub: Late Works Are the Catastrophes
TITLE: Golub: Late Works Are the Catastrophes
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 82 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: This documentary offers a glimpse into the private studio of the late New York artist Leon Golub, whose monumental paintings call attention to human rights violations and the abuse of power. Directors Blumenthal and Quinn update their original tour de force Golub (New York Film Festival, 1988) with recent footage of the artist shortly before his death. The film also includes warm and comic exchanges between Golub and his wife, artist Nancy Spero. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Pork and Milk
TITLE: Pork and Milk
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Valérie Mréjen
COUNTRY: France
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English subtitles
TIME: 52 minutes, 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: Shot in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, this documentary concerns ten Israelis who abandon their ultra-Orthodox traditions and embrace secular lifestyles. As they take their first steps in a strange new world, their difficult decision leads to a break with family and community. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Rosehill
TITLE: Rosehill
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Mari Cantu
COUNTRY: Hungary/Germany
LANGUAGE: Hungarian with English ST
TIME: 94 minutes, 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: Two ten year old siblings, secluded in their idyllic Budapest villa, witness the unfolding of the 1956 Hungarian revolution. They live out their happy childhood largely under the watchful eye of their superstitious and colorful nanny. Their Jewish father, a high-ranking official in the Rákosi regime, is put in a complicated and ultimately dangerous position. And one fine day, a Russian tank appears in their garden.... Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Only Human
TITLE: Only Human
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Dominic Harari and Teresa de Pelegrí
COUNTRY: Spain/United Kingdom/Argentina/Portugal
LANGUAGE: Spanish with English subtitles
TIME: 89 minutes, 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: Guess who's coming to dinner at the Dalinsky home? In this Spanish screwball comedy, Leni introduces her Palestinian fiancé to her Jewish family. Murder, mayhem, and belly dancing ensue in this cross-cultural romp that provides comic relief to a seemingly irresolvable conflict. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Living Orphan
TITLE: The Living Orphan
YEAR: 1939
DIR/PROD: Joseph Seiden
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: Yiddish with English subtitles
TIME: 90 minutes, 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: RESTORED PRINT. Based on Sholom Secunda's Yiddish play Der Yusem, this is a film about the dramatic and often traumatic lives of immigrants on and off-stage. The melodrama centers on a theater couple experiencing marital problems, and includes encounters with alcoholism, separation, and poverty. The film features rare footage of the Lower East Side. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Loser Who Won
TITLE: The Loser Who Won
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Jack Feldstein
COUNTRY: AUSTRALIA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 19 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Jack Feldstein's neon animation describes how a 90 year-old Jewish pensioner helps a shlemiel find true love. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Best Sister
TITLE: Best Sister
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ira Wohl
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 59 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Ira Wohl (Best Man, Academy Award winner) returns with Best Sister, an intimate portrait of his 80 year-old cousin, Frances Reiss. In Best Man, Frances was the primary caretaker for her mentally retarded brother Philly, also the subject of Wohl's Academy Award-winning Best Boy. In the latest "Best" film, Frances finds herself in the difficult position of depending on others. During one week of filming in Queens, Wohl captures Frances in an emotional arc of exhaustion, loneliness, dignity, and joy. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
A Cantor's Tale
TITLE: A Cantor's Tale
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Erik Greenberg Anjou
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 94 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Charismatic cantor Jack Mendelson is today's heir to the great Eastern European cantorial tradition that fermented in postwar Brooklyn. With missionary zeal, Mendelson teaches a new generation of hazzanim-men and women-the art of Jewish liturgical music. The film features commentary by Alan Dershowitz, Jackie Mason, and Metropolitan Opera tenor Neil Shicoff. Klezmatics composer Frank London provides the original score. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
CHAIM
TITLE: CHAIM
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Jonathan Greenfield
COUNTRY: GERMANY
LANGUAGE: German with English ST
TIME: 14 minutes, 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: A letter from America forces a 73 year-old Berliner to confront a traumatic experience from his childhood. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Two Lives of Eva
TITLE: The Two Lives of Eva
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Esther Hoffenberg
COUNTRY: FRANCE
LANGUAGE: French, English, and German with English subtitles
TIME: 84 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Filmmaker Esther Hoffenberg pieces together the enigmatic history of her late mother Eva, a privileged German, raised Lutheran, who left her husband in Poland after World War II, remarried, and reinvented herself as a proud Jewish woman in Paris. Using archival film, vintage home movies, and her mother's recorded voice, Hoffenberg uncovers Eva's struggle with mental illness, her feelings of guilt and cowardice, and her impulse to survive.
How does it feel to have been pregnant or nursing for 25 out of 26 years of your married life? Director Shosh Shlam poses this question and others in this frank documentary about the impact of childbearing on four ultra-Orthodox women. In the film, one mother dramatically transforms from an obedient wife into an independent woman who rebels against social conventions. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
TITLE:
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD:
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Roots
TITLE: Roots
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Pavel Loungin
COUNTRY: Russia/France
LANGUAGE: Russian, English, and Yiddish with English subtitles
TIME: 107 minutes 35mm
SOURCE:
TEXT: Edik is a smooth-talking grifter who devises a grand money-making scheme in a backwater Ukrainian town. With the support of the local mob, he casts the citizens of Golutvin as long-lost relatives of Jewish tourists. In this bawdy, dark comedy, director Pavel Loungin takes his audience on a heritage tour run amok. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
From Philadelphia to the Front
TITLE: From Philadelphia to the Front
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Judy Gelles and Marianne Bernstein
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 36 minutes, video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Six American Jewish octogenarians recall serving their country during World War II while fighting anti-Semitism at home and abroad. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Jews of Iran
TITLE: Jews of Iran
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ramin Farahani
COUNTRY: Netherlands
LANGUAGE: English, Hebrew, and Farsi with English subtitles
TIME: 52 min., video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Ramin Farahani turns his lens to Persian Jews-whose community in Iran dates back 2,700 years-focusing on those who remained after the mass exodus following the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Jews in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz relate various kinds of discrimination they face, but the film also describes positive aspects of Iranian society, including the friendship between two tolerant Muslim and Jewish families. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Love Iranian-American Style
TITLE: Love Iranian-American Style
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Tanaz Eshaghian
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English and Farsi with English subtitles
TIME: 62 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Tanaz Eshaghian is a first-generation Iranian Jew, and self-described "weirdo," who doesn't conform to her community's standards: she's independent, artistic, and outspoken. Tanaz reluctantly agrees to blind dates with businessmen and dentists, but can't stomach the idea of a practical marriage with a Persian yuppie. This guided tour through New York and "Irangeles" maintains a wry sense of humor while examining issues of shame and sexual purity. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Orders of Love
TITLE: Orders of Love
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Jes Benstock
COUNTRY: UK
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 10 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Comedy director Jes Benstock visits the dark corners of his family tree armed with a camera, his dad, and a therapist. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Chosen People
TITLE: The Chosen People
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Igal Hecht
COUNTRY: CANADA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 68 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: This documentary takes us on a deep, personal tour of Messianic Jews, the controversial religious movement also known as Jews for Jesus. Followers preach and proselytize that Jews can accept Jesus as the messiah while maintaining their Jewish identity. Through interviews with converts and counter-missionary activists in Toronto, Hungary, and Israel, Igal Hecht offers a window into a growing phenomenon. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Goodbye Holland
TITLE: Goodbye Holland
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Willy Lindwer
COUNTRY: The Netherlands
LANGUAGE: English and Dutch with English subtitles
TIME: 90 minutes, video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Goodbye Holland is a shocking documentary that uncovers the painful truth about a country's indifference and collaboration during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands. The film also deals with the period during and after liberation when citizens and government officials met Jews with an icy reception. In a moving personal exploration of a national betrayal, Willy Lindwer shatters myths about Dutch tolerance. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Night Trotsky Came to Dinner
TITLE: The Night Trotsky Came to Dinner
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: November Wanderin
COUNTRY: Austria/Germany
LANGUAGE: English and Yiddish with English subtitles
TIME: 12 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: Parodying historical fiction, documentary, and early silent Yiddish film, November Wanderin deconstructs a family legend. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Melting Siberia
TITLE: Melting Siberia
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Ido Haar
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, English, and Russian with English subtitles
TIME: 72 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Young Israeli director Ido Haar documents a search for his grandfather, a Red Army hero who abandoned his pregnant wife and disappeared somewhere in the Siberian steppes. With his mother Marina's permission, Ido is able to locate his grandfather. Marina ponders what secrets this discovery might reveal. The resulting reunion is full of surprises for all involved. Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
The Diaries of Yossef Nachmani
TITLE: The Diaries of Yossef Nachmani
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Dalia Karpel
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
TIME: 60 minutes video
SOURCE:
TEXT: This documentary explores the life and work of a Jewish National Fund administrator largely responsible for Jewish settlements in the Galilee in the 1930s and 40s. Through Nachmani's extensive diaries, the film examines critical years of Zionism and the beginning of the Jewish-Arab conflict from the unique perspective of a man who displayed determination on one hand, and fear and doubt on the other. The film will be followed by a panel discussion.
Shown at NY Jewish Film Festival, January 2006
Munich
TITLE: Munich
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Steven Spielberg
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 164 minutes
SOURCE: Dreamworks
TEXT: Starring: Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Eric Bana
HEY! It's a film.. it isn't a history of documentary... just as Olver Stone's JFK is not a history.
NYT REVIEW: With his latest film, "Munich," Steven Spielberg forgoes the emotional bullying and pop thrills that come so easily to him to tell the story of a campaign of vengeance that Israel purportedly brought against Palestinian terrorists in the wake of the 1972 Olympics. An unsparingly brutal look at two peoples all but drowning in a sea of their own blood, "Munich" is by far the toughest film of the director's career and the most anguished. Mr. Spielberg has been pummeling audiences with his virtuosity for nearly as long as he has been making movies; now, he tenders an invitation to a discussion. The film's title suggests that this is the story of what happened at Munich in September 1972, and it is, though only in part. Most of the action - and if nothing else, this nail-biter is a full-on action movie - takes place in the immediate aftermath of Munich, after 11 Israeli hostages were murdered by members of a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September. Based on George Jonas's disputed book "Vengeance: The True Story of an Israeli Counter-Terrorist Team," and adapted to the screen by the oddball couple of Eric Roth and Tony Kushner ("Forrest Gump" meets "Angels in America"), the film pivots on five Israeli agents, who, recruited to exact revenge by a country that will officially deny their existence, zigzag Europe as they hunt suspects over months and then years. - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times
CAMERA.. the Middle East Media accuracy group reviewed the film and stated... Steven Spielberg and an army of well-paid consultants and spinmeisters are pulling out all the stops to promote Munich and fend off damaging criticism of the movie about the murder of Israeli Olympic athletes and the effort to track down the crime's masterminds. The campaign has even included courting family members of the slain men for endorsements to blunt a gathering storm of negative commentary from the likes of David Brooks in the New York Times, Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic and Andrea Peyser in the New York Post. Briefly, the movie presents, via pulse-pounding scenes of kidnaping, death, stalking and more death, the message that Israel was brutal, bungling and immoral in its reaction to the massacre. True, the hostage-takers were also brutal; but dispossessing Palestinians, we soon learn, lies at the root. Cultured Palestinians passionately explain: "We are for twenty-four years the world's largest refugee population. Our homes taken from us. Living in camps. No future. No food. Nothing decent for our children." In Munich there are no Palestinians clamoring for the destruction of Israel - as all Palestinian groups did then and, regrettably, leading groups continue to do today. On the contrary, in a contrived encounter between Avner, the movie's lead, and a PLO member, the latter insists he simply wants a homeland. He also blames Jews for turning the Palestinians "into animals" and charges them with exploiting guilt over the Holocaust. In all of this one sees the biases of Tony Kushner, the radical playwright brought in by Spielberg to reshape the script. Kushner has repeatedly called the creation of Israel a "mistake," blamed Israel for "the whole shameful history of the dreadful suffering of the Palestinian people,"and advocated policies to undermine the state. Israelis in the film, including Prime Minister Golda Meir, do make their case. But the language is often self-incriminating and vengeful. Meir says: I don't know who these maniacs are and where they come from. Palestinians- they're not recognizable. You tell me what law protects people like this...Every civilization finds it necessary to negotiate compromises with its own values. The charge that Israel believed targeting terrorist leaders compromises its values rather than affirms its obligation to seek every means to defend itself against aggression is pure Hollywood concoction. But spiraling self-doubt about the use of force is central to Munich, with one team member, an ambivalent bomb-maker who eventually blows himself up, lamenting: ,,, In fact, historical accounts of Israel's decision to target leaders of Black September, the group responsible for Munich, emphasize that the assault at the Olympics was part of a worsening series of terrorist attacks against Israel in 1972. Lod Airport had been struck twice in May with 32 killed.
Only days after the September 5 Munich atrocity, an Israeli official was shot in Brussels, and two weeks later a letter bomb killed an Israeli in London. visit Camera.ORG for their full review
And the Jerusalem Post published the following: ...The carefully documented details of the Olympic killings serve only as the starting point of Munich, director Steven Spielberg's latest film and the most highly scrutinized of his career. Shot primarily in Malta, Hungary and New York on a budget of $70 million, the film sparked controversy even before specific details came to light about its storyline, which focuses on the historically murkier topic of Israel's reaction to the killings. Early critics condemned the project, assailing the film's allegedly critical take on the Israeli response - as well as for the disputed book it uses as its source.
With the approach of Munich's US opening today - a month before its premiere in Israel - media coverage has only intensified, putting those on both sides of the debate on guard. In a short telephone interview, the film's Israeli public relations representative slammed the "anti-Spielberg rumors" he says have been circulating in the Israeli press. Israel's consul-general in Los Angeles, not normally looked to for his views on film, generated international headlines after attending a pre-release screening and calling Munich "pretentious" and "presumptuous" in interviews with Voice of Israel radio and The New York Times.
... The film is intended, according to Spielberg spokesman Marvin Levy, to be "a historic thriller." "We weren't making a documentary," Levy said by phone from his Los Angeles office, "and there's always a degree of literary or cinematic license."
...That Spielberg made Munich at all is something of a surprise. Budgeted at $70 million, the film opens with the capture and killing of 11 Israeli athletes, coaches and athletic judges at the 1972 Summer Olympics, one of the first major international events hosted by Germany following World War II. With the Dachau concentration camp just 10 kilometers from the Olympic stadium, the games had been designed in part to wash away the stain of Germany's recent past. An official memorial service recalling the Holocaust was attended by Israelis and representatives of most of the European athletic squads, while the hours before the fateful pre-dawn attack saw members of the Israeli team attending a local production of Fiddler on the Roof. In an attempt to avoid recalling the overt militarism of the 1936 Berlin Olympics, security was provided by 2,000 unarmed guards dressed in light blue suits.
To read more, visit:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1134309630280&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FshowFull
Louie Louie: A Portrait in Parkinson's
TITLE: Louie Louie: A Portrait in Parkinson's
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Cynthia Salzman Mondell
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: Michele Goodson at mail@mediaprojects.org or call 214-826-3863
TEXT: From the makers of WEST OF HESTER STREET and MAKE ME A MATCH...
Media Projects, Inc. releases Louie, Louie: A Portrait in Parkinson's, a powerful new film - with a Jewish soul - that touches the hearts and minds of anyone who has ever had to care for an aging parent. Louis Salzman had at least one thing in common with Pope John Paul II, Muhammad Ali and Michael J. Fox - Parkinson's Disease. Along with these famous figures, he is but one of the estimated 4 million people worldwide affected by this neurological disorder. Louie, Louie: A Portrait in Parkinson's is filmmaker Cynthia Salzman Mondell's latest effort documenting her father's 30-year battle with the disease and her family's struggle to cope with the tremendous emotional and physical responsibilities associated with his care giving. Louie is a realistic, yet endearing film, which offers audiences an intimate look into a family ordeal affecting millions of Americans.
Encounter Point
TITLE: Encounter Point
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Ronit Avni, Julia Bacha, Nahanni Rous and Joline Makhlouf
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew Arabic, English, ST
TIME: 88 minutes
SOURCE: Just Vision Production
TEXT: An Israeli settler, a convicted Palestinian fighter, a bereaved Israeli mother, and a wounded Palestinian ex-prisoner risk their lives to promote non-violence. A story of everyday leaders in our midst. 250 Israelis and 250 Palestinians who have all lost loved ones come together as the Bereaved Families Forum. The docu follows some of them, including Robi Damelin, an Israeli woman whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper, Ali Abu Awwad, whose brother was killed by an IDF soldier, and Shlomo Zagman, an ex settler.
In search of bene israel
TITLE: In search of bene israel
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Sadia Shepard
COUNTRY:
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: As a young adult, the filmmaker discovered that her mother's mother was a Bene Israel, a Jewish Indian from Western India. This grandmother left this community at the age of 17, when she married the filmmaker's grandfather, a Muslim. This is a one hour digital video documentary about Ms. Shepard's journey to India (under a Fulbright grant) to reconnect with her Jewish heritage and discover the origins and traditions of the Bene Israel community
A note on the Bene Israel... The Jews of Maharashtra of the Konkan Coast and Mumbai / Bombay. According to legend the Bene Israeli people were shipwrecked off the western coast of India in the village of Navgaon more than two thousand years ago. Here they settled in villages along the Konkan coast, and practiced what they remembered of their religion-to rest on the Sabbath, to recite the Shema prayer, to perform male circumcision on the eighth day, and to observe dietary laws known as kosher. In these villages they became oil pressers and lived peacefully for generations among their Hindu and Muslim neighbors, completely isolated from mainstream Judaism. In many ways they behaved as any other small caste defined group; they lived together, ate together, and frowned upon intermarriage. After learning the Old Testament and English through interaction with Christian missionaries in the early 1800's, the Bene Israel migrated in large numbers to Mumbai, where they took jobs in offices, joined the British Army, and rose in number to approximately 20,000 people. Here they came in contact with other Jewish groups in India and around the world and became active participants in city life until Israel was founded in 1948, when much of the community began to emigrate in order to be reunited with their co-religionists. The Torah, the religious book of the Jewish faith, promises that all Jews will be reunited in the Promised Land. Despite increased communal tensions in the area, it is still a strong desire for the Bene Israel to move to Israel and join the international Jewish community. For many this is a difficult decision; happily settled in India, they are reluctant to leave. Yet many Bene Israelis sum it up this way: "India is my fatherland, but Israel is my motherland." In 2004, the approximate number of Bene Israel in India is about 4,000, most of whom live in Mumbai and surrounding areas. Approximately 350 Bene Israel remain in the Konkan Villages. Of course there are a lot of drugged out Israelis there too.
PRAYING WITH LIOR
TITLE: PRAYING WITH LIOR
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ilana Trachtman
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Praying with Lior introduces Lior Liebling, a 13-year-old boy with an extraordinary spirituality, who also has Down Syndrome. The exuberance and intensity of Lior's praying has earned him a following among three Jewish synagogues in Philadelphia, and the title, "little rebbe." Six years after Lior's mother, a beloved Reconstructionist rabbi, died of breast cancer, Lior is being called to the Torah to become a Bar Mitzvah. The film chronicles the four months leading up to Lior's Bar Mitzvah, seen through the eyes of the unique "village" that is nurturing Lior - his Reconstructionist rabbi dad, stepmother, siblings, late mother, community and Orthodox yeshiva at which he is mainstreamed.
From Mediarights.org: It was Lior's open-hearted praying that first captivated documentary filmmaker Ilana Trachtman (Lifetime's Our Heroes, Ourselves, Showtime's What's Going On: Child Poverty in America, HBO Family's My Favorite Book). As Trachtman struggled to focus during a Rosh Hashanah service at Elat Chayyim, a multi-denominational Jewish retreat center in the Catskills, she was mesmerized by the soulfully attentive off-key voice that came from behind her. When she saw the source, a boy with Down syndrome, she was shocked. Lior's praying shattered her expectations of what people with disabilities can do. She stalked him because of her own spiritual curiosity. When Trachtman heard Lior was going to have a Bar Mitzvah, she thought somebody should tell his story on film and shortly after, she decided to be that person. Anxiously, Trachtman approached Lior's parents, who greeted her with open arms. Knowing only that Lior could pray like no one she'd ever met, Trachtman started filming. Getting to know him proved continually astounding. Audiences may debate whether this photogenic young person's "star quality" sets him apart from other people with disabilities. Some may argue that Lior's integration is dependent upon his recognition by and attractiveness to non-disabled society. Others may think his charisma is connected to his disability. The film certainly brings to the foreground issues of the aesthetics of disability, and non-disability, in film.
Lior and the people from Lior's family and extended community tell Lior's story. There are scenes narrated by his father, neighbors, stepmother, rabbi, non-religious siblings, Orthodox principal and barber. Lior's community's intense feelings for him are connected to their self-reflections, offering viewers immediate insight into each person's struggles, dreams and beliefs.
A central figure in this community is Lior's biological mother, Rabbi Devora Bartnoff, who died of breast cancer seven years ago, when Lior was six. For Trachtman, Bartnoff's writings and memory infuse this project with significant purpose. "When I was still deciding about making this film, I read an article that Lior's mother wrote in 1997. She talks about Lior's young and unusual spirituality, and she wonders what his Bar Mitzvah will be like. She died months after writing that. Reading it felt like a charge. Her spirit certainly nurtures Lior, and along with the rest of the family, informs the film. We are using a lot of home movies of her to help tell the story."
The Rape of Europa
TITLE: The Rape of Europa
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Bonni Cohen
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: The Rape of Europa is a two hour feature documentary that interweaves the history of Nazi art looting during World War II with contemporary investigations into the art that was lost and stolen during that time. The film examines the cost of this loss to the cultural patrimony of Europe while also highlighting the unprecedented heroic efforts of the U.S. Monuments Men who were sent to Europe to safeguard and return the art at the end of the war.
Leap of Faith
TITLE: Leap of Faith
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Steve Friedman and Tony Benjamin
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: in development. Recipient of Hartley grant Westport CT
TEXT: Leap of Faith follows the lives of six individuals of different backgrounds who are pursuing parallel paths in their search for personal meaning. The feature-length documentary is the first cinema verité look at the journey of conversion from gentile to Orthodox Jew. You will meet a 25-year-old black woman from Trinidad, a once devout Christian family from Colorado, a fashion photographer from New York, and a single mother who is an officer in the U.S. Army Reserve and her son. Army life requires the mother to violate the Sabbath and her ex-husband and his born-again wife are suing her for custody.
Woven throughout the verité narrative are interviews with well-known authorities on the subject of faith such as Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz of Jerusalem and Father James Loughrin of the Archdiocese of New York. In Leap of Faith, individuals forsake the religion of their parents, abandon childhood traditions and enter into a wholly new and radically different system of belief and practice of worship. The resulting religious conversions create a host of crises, triumphs and surprising consequences. The story seen from one perspective is a story of ultimate devotion and from another perspective ultimate betrayal. For more information, you can e-mail Steve Friedman or Tony Benjamin at Humble Films, Inc
Learning to Swim
TITLE: Learning to Swim
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Jennifer Fox
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English and Italian
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: in development. Recipient of Hartley grant Westport CT
TEXT: On and off for the past twenty years, award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Fox (Beirut: the Last Home Movie, American Love Story) has followed with her camera the renowned Tibetan Buddhist teacher Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche. Together, they traveled the globe. The outcome is Learning to Swim, a feature-length documentary that chronicles the life of one of the last Tibetan lamas to be trained in Tibet, and his race to plant new seeds of belief so that Buddhism can flourish in the West. The film interweaves the story of the filmmaker's own journey as a student of Buddhism and the journey of Norbu Rinpoche. Jennifer describes herself as a Jewish girl from Philadelphia profoundly drawn to his teachings. Learning to Swim is about two very different people whose lives intersect. Both reflect the changing landscape at the turn of the millennium, where new borders are being crossed not just geographically, but spiritually.
To Donate: please write your check to THE HARTLEY FILM FOUNDATION and designate it to Learning to Swim in the lower left-hand corner. For more information, you can contact Jennifer Fox, the filmmaker, at: (212) 966 4427
e-mail: zohefilms@aol.com Zohe Films Productions 116 Franklin Street New York, NY 10013
The One and The Many
TITLE: The One and The Many
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Maria Finitzo
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: in development. Recipient of Hartley grant Westport CT
TEXT: The U.S. is the most religiously diverse nation on earth, but what happens when this diversity is compressed into a neighborhood no bigger than 2.5 square miles? The One and the Many will focus on a microcosm of world religions in the most ethnically diverse county in this country, Flushing, Queens to explore how America's long experiment with religious pluralism continues today.
Filmmaker Maria Finitzo of the award-winning documentary film company Kartemquin Films is working with historian R. Scott Hanson, who spent more than ten years doing research in Flushing for his forthcoming book, City of Gods: Religious Freedom, Immigration, and Pluralism in Flushing, Queens-New York City, 1945-2001. He is currently a visiting assistant professor of History at Philadelphia University, and he is a Project Affiliate of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University.
Rock N' Roll Rabbis
TITLE: Rock N' Roll Rabbis
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Ilan Saragosti
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: The feature rockumentary Rock n' Roll Rabbis takes viewers on a musical journey into the little-known world of Orthodox rock, profiling religious Jews who reconcile the asceticism of Orthodox Judaism with a rock n' roll lifestyle. This intimate portrait focuses on four of the most prominent rock n' roll acts, as the camera follows these religious individuals backstage, into the studio, and finally on Yidstock, an international tour. The Toronto-based production team for Rock n' Roll Rabbis consists of Director/Co-Producer Ilan Saragosti, whose most recent film was the award-winning A Match Made in Seven about the Jewish SpeedDating phenomenon, and the producers of legendary filmmaker Allan King's most recent film Dying at Grace - Co-Producer Sarah Zammit and Executive Producer Kathy Avrich-Johnson. Interviews and concerts with Yosi Piamenta, "The Hasidic Hendrix," reggae phenom Matisyahu, Greenwich Village folky Rav Shmuel, Israeli rockers Moshav Band, and young heartthrobs Blue Fringe are on the production schedule. The budget for Rock n' Roll Rabbis is $330,000 and the documentary is scheduled for completion in 2005. For more information, you can contact Ilan Saragosti, the filmmaker, at: Saragossa Films 45 Humberside Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M6P 1J6 Fax: (416) 769 9764 isaragosti@shaw.ca
Trust Me Shalom, Salaam, Peace
TITLE: Trust Me Shalom, Salaam, Peace
YEAR: 2003
DIR/PROD: Rob Fruchtman / Rob Fruchtman, Stuart B. Rekant, Cheryl Miller Houser
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 60 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Trust Me Shalom, Salaam, Peace, is a funny, inspiring and deeply moving film about overcoming prejudices and fears at an interfaith summer camp.
An emotional chronicle of 33 children attending a North Carolina interfaith summer camp for Christians, Muslims and Jews, Trust Me was filmed in the wake of the September 11th, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. Rob Fruchtman, producer and director, follows 33 Christian, Jewish and Muslim boys, ages 9-13, who arrive at camp with some trepidation and preconceived notions about the children of other faiths. The film tells the story of the boys, as well as the staff, as they engage in typical camp activities and in the process, forge strong bonds. The week culminates in one of the most stirring moments of their young lives.
Nobody Should Know
TITLE: Nobody Should Know
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD:
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Nobody Should Know focuses on one woman's struggle to integrate her illness and her religious life. It is the story of an Orthodox Jewish woman, a young wife and mother, who has cystic fibrosis. She hides her disease in order to keep her family from the social stigma attached to diagnosis of an inherited, degenerative disease and so that she and her brother have the chance to marry well within the Orthodox community. The film explores her struggle to share her secret with others and the fallout of her decision to reach out for understanding and acceptance.
Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
TITLE: Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Albert Brooks / Herb Nanas and Joann Perritano
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 98 minutes
SOURCE: Warner Independent Pictures
TEXT: I WAS SURPRISED when I realized that the film is set in INDIA and not in an Arab Muslim country.
A mockumentary. Comic and filmmaker Albert Brooks serves his country while struggling to get some laughs in this offbeat satiric comedy. Brooks plays himself, a comedic filmmaker whose most recent success was providing the voice of a fish for an animated feature and who has just been passed by as director for a remake of Harvey. As Brooks wonders what's going to happen next with his career, his wife (Amy Ryan), and his daughter, he's approached by government representatives who want him for a special assignment. The State Department, eager to better understand the cultural gap between the United States and the Middle East, have been directed by the president to make a study of what makes Muslims laugh. Brooks is asked to fly to India and Pakistan and bring back a 500-page report on Muslim humor; told the Medal of Freedom may be his if he comes through, Brooks accepts. With a pair of State Department officials in tow, Stuart (John Carroll Lynch) and Mark (Jon Tenney), and some help from a local assistant, Maya (Sheetal Sheth), Brooks sets out to find the funny bone of India's and Pakistan's Muslim communities, though it doesn't take long to find out what they don't find funny -- his standup act. Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World was originally set for release in the United States by Sony Pictures Classics, but when they became nervous over the film's title, they dropped the project and it was picked up for distribution by Warner Independent Pictures.
IT'S NOW OR NEVER
TITLE: IT'S NOW OR NEVER (Made for TV movie)
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Gur Bentvich
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 3 episodes of 50 minutes each
SOURCE: RIKI SHELACH PRODUCTIONS LTD. 18 HANATZIV ST. TEL AVIV 67018 ISRAEL
PHONE: +972.36243050 / +972.36243126 FAX: +972.36243151 / CELL: +972.522508133 shel@zahav.net.il
TEXT: Beta PAL or DVD. Produced for Reshet - 2nd Israel channel with the assistance of Makor Film Foundation. The resolution on the partition of Palestine was adopted by the UN on November 29th 1947. While all Israelis were dancing and celebrating, David Ben Gurion, the leader of the new Jewish entity, remained ambivalent - after 2000 years in the Diaspora the statehood was within reach, yet the threat of Arab armies invading the Jewish lands in Palestine was very real. Nevertheless Ben Gurion is convinced that declaring statehood right after the British terminate the mandate over Palestine, is immanent, and will not have any bearing on the Arab countries' decision to invade Israel - they will invade anyway. The film "It's Now or Never" depicts, step by step, the crucial and dramatic six months before the State of Israel was inaugurated. It shows the decision-making process and the fierce debate within the leadership and the political parties. Based on the book by Uri Adelman. Cast: Yehuda Levy, Netta Garti, Tinkerbell, Gadi Piterman, Noga Shahar, Guri Alfi Ahron, Marek Rosenbaum, Eden Harel, Aric Kneller, Liat Tamari, Nurit Gefen
A Dios Momo
TITLE: A Dios Momo
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Leonardo Ricagni / Raul Pochintesta
COUNTRY: URUGUAY
LANGUAGE: Spanish w/ English ST
TIME: 109 minutes
SOURCE: Fabrication Films wendy at fabricationfilms dot com
TEXT: With a poetic nod to Fellini, the film uses the carnival atmosphere to transport the viewer to a magical place where realism and surrealism live side by side in Uruguay. It also offers a rare look at the African-Jewish neighborhood of Montevideo where the filmmaker grew up. Music: Emilio Kauderer
Principal Cast: Mathias Acuña, Jorge Esmoris, Wahington Luna. Seen at Palm Springs FF, January 2006
Distant Journey / Daleká cesta
TITLE: Distant Journey
YEAR: 1949
DIR/PROD: Alfred Radok / Václav Rezác, Miloslav Fabera, Bohumil Smida
COUNTRY: Czechoslovakia
LANGUAGE: Czech with English subtitles
TIME: 99 minutes
SOURCE: Narodni Filmovy Archiv www.NFA.CZ
TEXT:, Over the years, the stature of this unaccountably neglected masterpiece has grown. It is one of the few films that succeed in making the horror and inexplicable reality of the concentration camp universe come alive by blending documentary with intentionally intensified, non-realist film techniques derived from expressionist and surrealist traditions. Music: Jirí Sternwald Principal Cast: Blanka Waleská, Otomar Krejca, Viktor Ocásek, Zdenka Baldová, Jirí Spirit, Eduard Kohout
La Maison de Nina
TITLE: La Maison de Nina
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Richard Dembo / Alain Rozanès, Pascal Verroust
COUNTRY: France
LANGUAGE: French with English ST
TIME: 113 minutes
SOURCE: TF1 International www.tf1.FR
TEXT: Rated G. Writer-director Richard Dembo (who died during the production) offers a moving tribute to Nina's "house of hope," one of many orphanages established outside Paris at the end World War II. The residents are largely secular French Jews, but later concentration camp refugees begin to arrive from Poland and Romania provoking conflict. As momentous world events continue the emotionally devastated children seek the means to become re-engaged with life.
Principal Cast: Agnès Jaoui, Sarah Adler, Katia Lewkowicz, Arié Elmaleh
Print Source: TF1 International
The Last Moon / La Última Luna
TITLE: The Last Moon / La Última Luna
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Miguel Littín / Jorge Infante
COUNTRY: CHILE / MEXICO / SPAIN
LANGUAGE: Arabic with English ST
TIME: 106 minutes
SOURCE: Latido Films www.LatidoFilms.com
TEXT: Language: Miguel Littin, a descendant of Palestinian Christian immigrants to Chile, tells the dynamic story of two friends, the Jew Jacob and the Christian Palestinian Soliman, caught up in the beginnings of the Middle East conflict after the First World War. Principal Cast: Tamara Acosta, Francisca Merino, Alejandro Goic, Ayman Zbu Zoulouf
MAROCK
TITLE: MAROCK
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Laila Marrakchi / Stéphanie Carreras, Adeline Lecallier, Alain Rocca
COUNTRY: France, Morocco
LANGUAGE: Arabic, French w/ English ST
TIME: 101 minutes
SOURCE: RoissyFilms.com
TEXT: Seventeen-year-old Rita is smitten with the flashy Youri who she meets at a club in Morocco. But Youri is Jewish and Rita's brother, with his more devout approach to Islam, is watching her every move. This debut feature captures teenage passions set against the Casblanca playground of the rich where religious fundamentalism will rock the casbah. Principal Cast: Morjana El Alaoui, Mathieu Boujenah, Razika Simozrag.
Melting Siberia / Saba Sibir
TITLE: Melting Siberia / Saba Sibir
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ido Haar / Assaf Amir, Yoav Roeh, Na'ama Pyritz
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, Russian English ST
TIME: 76 minutes
SOURCE: Norma Productions www.Norma.Co.il
TEXT: Documentary. A poignant documentary in the mold of last year's audience favorite Watermarks, this explores familial wounds that may fade but never die. Director Ido Haar instigates a search for his mother's father, a Red Army hero who abandoned his grandmother when she was pregnant, never to be heard from again. Music: Yoav Katsir. Print Source: Norma Productions
Sophie Scholl - the Final Days / Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage
TITLE: Sophie Scholl - the Final Days / Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Marc Rothemund / Fred Breinersdorfer, Sven Burgemeister, Christoph Müller, Marc Rothemund
COUNTRY: GERMANY
LANGUAGE: German, English ST
TIME: 118 minutes
SOURCE: ZeitGeistFilms.com
TEXT: Winner of the German audience award for best film of 2005, Marc Rothemund's beautifully acted drama tells the true story of Sophie Scholl, the young student who became the most famous martyr of the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance movement in 1943 Munich. Julia Jentsch's brilliant lead performance anchors a film of claustrophobic intensity and emotional punch. Principal Cast: Julia Jentsch, Fabian Hinrichs, Alexander Held, Johanna Gastdorf, André Hennicke
What a Wonderful Place / Eize Makom Nifla
TITLE: What a Wonderful Place / Eize Makom Nifla
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Eyal Halfon / Assaf Amir, Yoav Roeh
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, Russian, English, Tagalog w/ English ST
TIME: 105 minutes
SOURCE: www.Norma.co.il
TEXT: A gripping social issues drama tracing the interaction of Israelis alienated from those who should be closest to them and the foreign workers who build and clean their houses, cultivate their fields, provide care for their elderly and infirm, and service their sexual needs. Best Film, Jerusalem Film Festival. Principal Cast: Uri Gavriel, Evelyn Kaplun, Avi Oria, Ramon Bagatsing, Yossi Grabe. This is Israel's submission to the U.S. Academy Awards for 2005.
Year Zero
TITLE: Year Zero
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Joseph Pitchhadze / Lior Shefer, Joseph Pitchhadze, Dov Steuer
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: hebrew
TIME: 132 minutes
SOURCE: www.Cinephil.co.il
TEXT: This provocative adult drama, in some ways reminiscent of the American film Crash, offers multiple interconnected stories of modern Israel that show people at a turning point in their lives as they struggle to redeem themselves from various crimes and misdemeanors. Featuring a fine cast and unusual music track. Principal Cast: Menashe Noy, Sarah Adler, Moni Moshonov, Keren Mor, Ezra Kafri, Danny Geva.
In Her Shoes
TITLE: In Her Shoes
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Curtis Hanson
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Based on the novel of the same name by Jennifer Weiner, adapted by Susannah Grant ("Erin Brockovich") Stars Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette as two Jewish sisters who share only two things in common... they both have size 8 1/2 feet and they both have a mean stepmother.
The Concrete Curtain
TITLE: The Concrete Curtain
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Benny Brunner / Benny Brunner and Alexandra jansse
COUNTRY: Palestinian Authority
LANGUAGE: Arabic and Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 76 minutes
SOURCE: Yella Films
TEXT: A documentary on the WALL being built between Israel and the West Bank and the bizarre Kafka-like predicaments it creates for residents on both side of the wall.
Waiting for Quds
TITLE: Waiting for Quds
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Devorah Blachor / Blachor and Matt Rees
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Arabic and Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 77 minutes
SOURCE: Bo Co Productions
TEXT: Documentary. Allegra Pacheco, an American Jewish woman who works as an Attorney, fell in love with a Palestinian man, Abed al-Ahmar, her client, who has served time and is serving time in Israeli prisons. He is being detained.. no charges have been made. She is pregnant with his child, and has no idea what their future will be like. Will he ever be released from administrtaive detention? Shown at the San Francisco Arab Film Festival
ROOTS
TITLE: Roots
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Pavel Lounguine
COUNTRY: Russia/ France
LANGUAGE: Russian, English, Yiddish English ST
TIME: 107 minutes
SOURCE: Intercinema Art Agency, Moscow, Russia
TEXT: In a small southern city in the former Soviet Union, Edik has built a lucrative business introducing wealthy Russian expatriates to their "relations" in the Motherland, people they have never met or haven't seen in years. Too lazy to find the foreigners' real relatives, Edik recruits locals in small towns to pretend to be the sought-after cousins, siblings or grandparents, and to put up the visiting "kin" for a week's visit. His latest batch of clients are looking for people left behind in the village of Golotvin, but since the shtetl was destroyed during World War II, Edik hires stand-ins in the nearby village of Golutvin. Soon the counterfeit relationships are growing genuine...
"A bawdy, bubbly black comedy... Known outside Russia mostly for more sober fare like Luna Park and Tycoon, (Lounguine) makes an exuberant return to comic form not seen since his inebriated farce The Wedding," writes Leslie Felperin of Variety. Pavel Lounguine was born in Moscow in 1949 Seen at the Haifa Intnl Film Festival, October 2005
Code Name: Silence
TITLE: Code Name: Silence
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Yifat Kedar / Ziv Nave, Idan Regev
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, Amharit, English, Hebrew and English ST
TIME: 50 minutes
SOURCE: Ziv Nave Productions, Jerusalem
TEXT: Cast: Danny Adino Abeba, Michael Feldman, Zimna Brahani, Simon Adamson, Yehuda Dominitz
"Go and tell everyone the dreadful secret feared by all," was Abraham's last request. Ilana (a pseudonym) broke her silent compliance to fulfill her beloved husband's dying request and went public about the rape she endured, thus publicizing the great, long suppressed secret of the Ethiopian Jewish community. Journalist Danny Adino Abebe also carried this secret since his experiences as a 10-year old in the Sudan refugee camps. Twenty years after Operation Moses, which brought Ethiopia's Jewish community en masse to Israel, he breaks the code of silence maintained by the Ethiopian Jewish community, the Mossad, which ran the operation, and the Jewish Agency.
The Komite, or as it called itself, the "Rescue Board," was made up of Ethiopian Jewish agents working on behalf of the Mossad. They were in charge of the distribution of funds, medication and food in the transit camps in enemy territory, Sudan. While most bravely risked their own lives and those of their families by undertaking this responsibility and working as Israeli agents, some abused the enormous power they were given. Certain Komite members created a reign of terror over their refugee brothers during the difficult waiting period preceding the covert air-transport to Israel. A few Komite leaders are suspected of systematic rape, exercising unfair preferences in establishing the order in which individuals would be brought to Israel, and deriving personal gain from public funds. Israeli officials knew and remained silent. "Code Name: Silence" is a story about heroes who abused their power and became criminals. The film likewise exposes the pain of their victims and the unhealed wound of thousands of Ethiopians living in Israel today.
Yifat Kedar directs for programs and reports for Israeli television. Her documentary "Between the Lines" won the Spirit of Freedom Award at the 2001 Jerusalem Film Festival and was broadcast in TV stations around the world.
4.7 Million
TITLE: 4.7 Million
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Limor Pinhasov / Yaron Kaftori
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, English ST
TIME: 65 minutes
SOURCE: Cicero Films Productions, Tel Aviv
TEXT: 6:30 A.M August 19th, 2003 / 4.7 million Cash packed in 30 Sacks, you see 2 guys in a Brinx armored van, / one of them is Ilan Segal Kuperman,,, The man!. they stopped the van and went on to collect more cash but as soon as the chief got out Kuperman Segal hit the gas. So just tell me baby, / just let me know, where the hell's the money...
The fucking fucking money? To get the story real, we have to start from the start
so plug in the mic and I'll describe the art. The hood... Neveh Joseph, a dump if you ever saw one,
momma's sitting on the bench, / blaming all, the government the life, the men. no work, no present, no future, no past, / just drinking off the pain dreaming of a better life, / wanting to sell their apartments, and hit the road,
but all they have to sell is their miserable stories / but no one buys or care. So Kuperman Segal got fed up with all this shit, / he planned for years / and in less than just one minute, changed his life for good... for good... for good??
So just tell me baby, / just let me know, where the hell's the money.. The fucking fucking money?
Alenbi ROmance
TITLE: Alenbi ROmance
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Yanai Goz and Yoi Ziholtz
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew, English ST
TIME: 50 minutes
SOURCE: the filmmakers
TEXT: Cast: Danny Geva, Hili Yalon, Uri Avrahami, Mosko Alkalai, Chen Danon, Nir Manki, Eyal Rozales
Source: Yanai Goz and Yoni Ziholtz, Tel Aviv Nico, 31, is a high school teacher. He hates his job just as he hates his life that has become so different from his youth, out of touch with the music he remembers, the clubs, the streets, the long nights of Tel-Aviv. On an impulse, Nico quits his teaching job and goes out in search of the life he left behind. He goes back to the pub, where once he was a regular and where no one knows him today. At the pub he meets Neta, 18, a bored soldier by day and a rocker by night, who finds him interesting. Together they spend a romantic night in the streets of Tel-Aviv, where Nico finds all the romance of the city that he missed so much, but also much of the pain and suffering of the city, that he tried to forget. "Alenbi Romance" is a romantic drama that tries to find out who wins in the battle between romance and reality, and asks what will happen to the two lovers when morning comes and they have to decide if they want to continue together into the next day. See www.HaifaFF.co.il
Tijuana Jews
TITLE: Tijuana Jews
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Isaac Artenstein / Jude Artenstein
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 52 minutes
SOURCE: www.Brandeis.EDU/JewishFilm the NCJF
TEXT: Throughout the early twentieth century thousands of European Jews sailed to Mexico looking for opportunity and escaping increasing persecution at home. A small group made their way north to the border town of Tijuana. TIJUANA JEWS, is a one-hour documentary and a personal exploration of this community that blended Jewish and Mexican cultures and customs in an unlikely place and time. Growing up Jewish in Mexico, director Isaac Artenstein found reactions of surprise, even disbelief, from many people north of the border: they had no idea there were Jews in Mexico, and especially in Tijuana. Tijuana's dark legend continues to fire up the imagination with stories of free-flowing liquor, cheap narcotics, beautiful senoritas and black velvet paintings. TIJUANA JEWS is an authentic and living testimony set against conceptions and misconceptions of this near-mythic border city. The members of the Tijuana Jewish community are immigrants and their descendants from Eastern Europe --- Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews from countries like Poland, Russia, Lithuania and Rumania. There are also Sephardic Jews from Turkey, Greece and the Balkans, as well as Arabic Jews from Syria and Lebanon. The interviews in TIJUANA JEWS provide insights into the experiences of local pioneers who created the first Jewish temple in Tijuana and subsequent congregations such as the Maguen David, The Hatikvah, and the Centro Social Israelita de Tijuana. They also bring to life Tijuana's history beginning with Prohibition in the 1920s when Tijuana gained much of its colorful reputation. This border town boasted the world's longest bar (one city-block long) for thirsty Americans, the Agua Caliente Casino, the Race Track, and Revolution Avenue. For the film's director, Tijuana was also a place for weddings, bar mitzavahs, graduations and helping out at his father's store on Revolution Avenue. The first-person narration takes the audience in an intimate journey, encountering and re-encountering people and places, while reflecting on a life-long experience that builds to a dynamic present that includes the transformation of Tijuana into the busiest border crossing in the world, and the migration of many Tijuana Jewish families to the American side, adding yet another layer to the rich mosaic that is TIJUANA JEWS.
Song of Hannah
TITLE: Song of Hannah
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Nicole Opper
COUNTRY: USA, Hungary, Israel
LANGUAGE: English, Hungarian and Hebrew with English subtitles
TIME: 45 minutes
SOURCE: www.Brandeis.EDU/JewishFilm the NCJF also www.songofhannah.com
TEXT: "A voice called. I went. I went for it called. I went lest I fall. At the crossroads, I blocked both ears with white frost and cried for what I had lost."- Hannah Senesh
A visionary poet who felt that she had been chosen for a special mission, Hannah Senesh left the Palestine kibbutz she had helped to build and parachuted into her native Hungary to rescue victims of the Holocaust at the tail end of the war. She was caught, imprisoned, tortured and killed at age twenty three. A visually poetic film and love letter to it's subject, Song of Hannah combines intimate interviews with a fellow prison inmate, her mission commander and family members, and weaves them with Hannah's poems and writings as well as with the voices of students at a school founded in her name. These young students keep her spirit alive today, and Song of Hannah embraces them as storytellers, challenging young people to contribute to the collective memory of their history as the students trace Hannah's story from Hungary to Israel and back, from their hometown of Brooklyn, USA.
Kupishok: For Eternal Memory Remembrance and Redemption in the Shadow of the New Anti-Semitism
TITLE: Kupishok: For Eternal Memory Remembrance and Redemption in the Shadow of the New Anti-Semitism
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Norman Meyer and Harvey Sherzer
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 40 minutes
SOURCE: www.Brandeis.EDU/JewishFilm the NCJF
TEXT: In the aftermath of World War II, Christian midwives in Kupiskis, a small Lithuanian shtetl (village) that was called Kupishok by its Jews, compiled a list of the Jews of the town that were murdered by the German Nazis and their Lithuanian accomplices in the summer of 1941. All of the Jewish men, women and children in the town were herded into a makeshift ghetto and then marched to a cemetery reserved for atheists, where they were shot and buried in unmarked pits. The midwives' list of more than 800 precious names was a secret Mitzvah (good deed) until the Soviets left Lithuania in the early 1990's and a small numbers of survivors and descendants of the town's Jews were allowed to visit the town. On July 13, 2004, more than 50 survivors and descendants of the Jews of Kupishok, ages 9 to 86, now living in the United States, Israel, the UK, Denmark, South Africa and Australia, returned to the town to dedicate a magnificent Wall of Memory, designed and constructed in Washington, D.C. Unlike most other Holocaust memorials in Europe, the Wall of Memory is not in a killing field or cemetery: it is in the center of town, where ordinary citizens, particularly children, see its vital and unforgettable message, portrayed in Lithuanian, Hebrew and English. This is the story of what the descendants and survivors came back to find; and how the present administration and residents of the town reacted. For most of the descendants it was a journey of self-discovery. For everyone, Jews and non-Jews, the events in Kupishok offered a ray of hope, perhaps even of redemption, at a time when the so-called "new" anti-Semitism is sweeping across Europe. This is a story of remembrance and sanctification of the precious names of those who were murdered in the Holocaust: but it's also a story for today and tomorrow. Look into the eyes of the 9 year from the UK, the 86 year old from the US, and the many proud residents from Jerusalem and other cities in Israel, and see the gifts of eternal hope and faith Jews cling to even in the most tenuous of circumstances
Close To Home
TITLE: Close To Home / Karov la Bayit
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Vidi (Wardit) Bilu, Dalia Hager / Marek Rosenbaum and Itai Tamir
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 98 minutes
SOURCE: Transfax Film Productions in Israel
TEXT: Two young women in Jerusalem are assigned to army police work and must record the names and identity card numbers of Arabs and Arab-looking non Jews in dowtown Jerusalem. Based on the lives of the directors, the women patrol the neighborhood and find love, desire, politics, lies, comedy, competition, anger, a nice hat, and more. Mirit and Smadar hate the patrol work and checking bags of Arabs. They pretty much hate each other as well. Half way through the film, a bomb goes off, and friendships grow tighter. Seen at Berlinale Berlin Film Fest, February 2006. Tribeca Film Festival NYC April 2006
The Producers
TITLE: The Producers
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Susan Stroman
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 129 minutes
SOURCE: Universal Studios video
TEXT: A remake of Mel Brooks' The Producers, based on the stage musical hit, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick
memory For Max, Claire, Ida and COmpany
TITLE: Memory For Max, Claire, Ida and Company
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Allan King / Allan King and Kathy Avrich-Johnson
COUNTRY: Canada
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 112 minutes
SOURCE: Allan King productions, Canada
TEXT: Shown at Palm Springs FF, 2006, and Berlinale 2006, Toronto, Vancouver. Documentary. Allan King, a trop documentarian, visits the Baycrest Retirement Home in Toronto. There he meets Max Trachter, Claire Mandel, Ida Orliffe, Beverly Zwaigen, Ruth Kogan, Fay Silverman, and others. The have varying stages of Alzheimers, thus the name is MEMORY. Highlight is Claire's 89th B'day
Keeping Up With The Steins
TITLE: Keeping Up With The Steins
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Scott Marshall
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 90 minutes
SOURCE: Keepingupwiththesteins.com Miramax
TEXT: Directed by Scott Marshall, son of Garry Marshall. Stars Jeremy Piven, Jami Gertz, Garry Marshall (Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner declined, but non Jewish Garry Marshall plays a much better and warner Jewish father and grandfather), Doris Roberts, Larry Miller, and Daryl Sabara. A 12 year old in Brentwood approaches his Bar Mitzvah. His father is a top Hollywood agent who is trying to have a better bar mitzvah party than the one thrown by his ex business partner with a Titanic theme (cost half a million). At the same time, the boy is confused about what sort of party he wants, whether his estranged grandfather will come, will the girl like him, and can he even, by any chance, recite his haftorah portion. You get the idea. It is actually not as bad as it sounds, and I enjoyed it. Mark Zakarin wrote it. Scott Marshall then approached Mark in order to direct it. Scott is not Jewish, but his wife is, and he grew up with bar mitzvah envy in LA as a kid. In the words of a character Piven plays on Entourage, "Hug it out, bitch."
Mendy
TITLE: MENDY
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Adam Vardy / Sorsky
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: www.MendyTheMovie.com
TEXT: "Mendy" was inspired by an article by freelance writer Rebecca Segall, for the Village Voice titled "Satmar Bad Boys." In her cover story, Ms. Segall described the moving plight of seven Hasidic youngsters seeking freedom in the larger world. The "dropouts" described in their own words the harshness and insularity of the ultra religious upbringing and the difficulty of learning and adjusting to modern life. It is a warm and frank portrayal of young people embarking upon the most dramatic metamorphosis imaginable. When the Director met some of the Hasidic runaways, he was struck by the enormity of the choices they had to make in leaving their community. Not only did they risk being excommunicated from their tight community and shunned by their own families, they entered the secular world wholly unprepared.
Mendy is a young Brooklyn Hasid, a devout member of an ultra orthodox Jewish sect. His entire life has been spent following the strict rules of this protective, insular and repressive community. He has a deep sense of spirituality and morality, but as the movie begins, Mendy's sexual urges conspire to confuse his solid idea of the world. An unnamed incident causes him shame, guilt, moral turmoil, and ultimately pushes him to flee the community and seek refuge on the sinful island of Manhattan where his childhood friend Yankel lives. The film follows Mendy as he sheds his former 'Old world' garb and worldview, and departs on a search for a new identity. Mendy is ill-equipped to adapt to the secular world. He speaks broken English and lacks a formal education. While he is well-versed in Talmudic texts, Jewish rules and law, he knows nothing of the unspoken 'Book of Rules' on etiquette, popular style and references that unites most of modern western society. As he is exposed to this foreign world, he soon finds that the new rules and choices are infinite and confusing. His friend Yankel, now known as Yankie, had left the community a few years earlier and now leads a hedonistic life revolving around sex and drugs; He went from one extreme to the other, and wants Mendy to join him on his directionless roller coaster ride. Yankie convinces Mendy to try drugs, smuggle Ecstasy from Israel, and make very inappropriate sexual advances towards Bianca, Yankie's smart and tough Brazilian roommate. "Don't be afraid," Yankie says in their native Yiddish, "Give her a kiss at the right moment, from there to sex is a cat's jump away." At first Mendy takes Yankie's lead and acts on his advice with disastrous results. After a series of fumbles and false starts, Mendy finally begins to follow his own instincts and initiates a friendship with Bianca. Bianca is a single black woman and former stripper who is now bartending at the local strip club to put herself through school. She has been through much in life and protects herself emotionally with hard-won tools and defenses. She is at once attracted to Mendy's innocent and genuine point of view and simultaneously put off by his crassness and ignorance.
Only Human
TITLE: Only Human
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri
COUNTRY: Spain
LANGUAGE: Spanish with English ST
TIME: 85 minutes
SOURCE: Magnolia Pictures
TEXT: A savvy new comedy about the politics of family. Set in the apartment-dwelling milieu of middle class Madrid that Almodovar made famous, ONLY HUMAN is the story of a woman, her Palestinian fiancé, and her unsuspecting Jewish family. When Leni comes home to introduce her fiancé Rafi to her idiosyncratic Jewish family, everything goes smoothly until the lovers belatedly reveal that Rafi is Palestinian. Amid the ensuing hysteria - led by Leni's mortified mother (Norma Aleandro, Oscar-nominated for GABY) and featuring a blind grandfather with a shot-gun, Leni's oversexed and half-dressed sister, her newly ultra-orthodox brother, a six-year-old who's convinced she's pregnant, and a duckling on the loose - Rafi escapes to the kitchen to help prepare the dinner. Unfortunately, he drops a block of frozen soup out of the seventh floor window, hitting a pedestrian below. As if the evening's not going badly enough, it turns out the pedestrian may be Leni's father... A classic Spanish farce with strains of political satire, Dominic Harari and Teresa Pelegri's first feature film is also a joyous, contemporary variation on the smart and socially conscious classics of Wilder and Sturges. Through deliriously choreographed and incisively timed humor from its engaging cast, ONLY HUMAN is able to address some of today's most salient issues, from the meaning of family and community in an ever-shrinking world to the challenges and consequences of clashing cultures brought close to home.
NOW OR NEVER
TITLE: NOW OR NEVER
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Eitan Londer / Zvi Shapria and Riki Shelach
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT:
Winner of the Best Drama at the Israeli film festival New York. This moving film depicts the dramatic events that led to the birth of the state of Israel from the view point of David Ben Gurion, the leader of the new Jewish entity, which made crucial decisions against all odds. The resolution on the partition of Palestine was adopted by the UN on November 29th 1947. While all Israelis were dancing and celebrating, David Ben Gurion, the leader of the new Jewish entity, remained ambivalent - after 2000 years in the Diaspora the statehood was within reach, yet the threat of Arab armies invading the Jewish lands in Palestine was very real. Nevertheless Ben Gurion is convinced that declaring statehood right after the British terminate the mandate over Palestine, is immanent, and will not have any bearing on the Arab countries' decision to invade Israel - they will invade anyway. The film "It's Now or Never" depicts, step by step, the crucial and dramatic six months before the State of Israel was inaugurated. It shows the decision-making process and the fierce debate within the leadership and the political parties.
Cast: Rivka Neumann (as Golda Meir) , Liat Goran, Ohad Shachar, Yamit Sol - Feldman, Yigael Sachs, Itsik Seidoff, Yuval Karmi, Michael Varshaviak, Poly Reshef, Ami Weinberg, Zahhi Hanan, Avraham Selectar, Gadi Por, Avraham Moore, Amos Tamam, Johnny Phillips, Jack Cohen, Jack Adalist, Jack Widerker
Like A Fish out of Water
TITLE: Like A Fish out of Water
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Leonid Prudovsky / Yohanan (Jorge) Weller, Freddy Zyskrot
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew and Spanish with English subtitles
TIME: 50 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: A romantic comedy about a new immigrant from Argentina and his relationship with his Hebrew teacher at the Absorption Center. Marcelo is a non-religious young man, an actor and a single parent to his eleven years old daughter, Lucy. He's desperately looking for someone to help him improve his Hebrew accent. So he can pass the auditions for an Israeli Soap Opera.
Anat, his religious teacher, is probably the best solution, but it seems that she hates soap operas, and is not so fund of her pupil either. In fact, she has her own problems: mainly her mother, Bruria, an energetic, not to say pushy lady, frantically seeking a perfect match for her daughter who has, in her eyes, clearly passed the proper wedding age...
Festivals: Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, December 2005; Israeli Film Festival in New York 2006; Vancouver Jewish Film Festival 2006; Warsaw Jewish Motives Film Festival 2006
Cast: Esteban Gottfried, Tal Lifshitz, Fira Kantor, Avraham Mor
Broadcasters: Channel 2, Israel; Sponsors: Reshet T.V, Israeli Channel 2, Gesher Foundation for Multi-Cultural Films, Avichai Foundation
The Red Toy
TITLE: The Red Toy
YEAR: 2004
DIR/PROD: Dani Rosenberg / Gustavo Montiel
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: No dialogue
TIME: 12 minutes
SOURCE: JSFS, The Sam Spiegel Film & TV School - Jerusalem (JSFS) in Collaboration with Unesco, as part of the "Reel Dialogue" Project
TEXT: Mohamad, a Palestinian child from the old city of Jerusalem, finds a red toy and misplaces it. The toy wanders around the alleys of the city, handed from one person to another - between rulers and subjects, strangers and locals, as the police surveillance cameras watch from above.
Awards: Best short film - Wolgin Award competition, The Jerusalem International; Film Festival, Israel 2004; Best Short Film - Busan Asian Film Festival, Korea 2005; Best Short Film, Best Foreign Film, Miami Shorts, Miami, U.S.A., 2005
Cast: Muhamed Eliwat, Ahmed Abo Salem, Shlomi Hayun, Jonathan Giron, Mako Otomo, Renana Raz, Daniel Hamel
BRUNO'S IN LOVE
TITLE: BRUNO'S IN LOVE
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ilan Heitner / Shay Werker
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: "Bruno's in Love" is a dramatic romantic-comedy a new film by Ilan Heitner and Shay Werker, makers of "Wisdom of the Pretzel" It is the story of Asaf Bruno, a 30 years old guy, who's trying to find the way to happiness in life. Does happiness relies on complete freedom, or is commitment the key to happiness. And if it is commitment, how do we know to whom? In his thirties Bruno's is rich, successful, intelligent and the owner of a Hummus company, successfully in exporting Hummus. He's surrounded by beautiful girls. But he's got a problem: He's not an expert in relations matters: his time divided between Anat, his present girlfriend or "half a girlfriend" as he defines her, who's desperately in love with him and eager to finally get the ring. And Rachel, a beautiful 23 of age Jewish American "flower girl", who suddenly enters into his very fixed life. But now he's getting nervous -What if Rachel will get tired from life in Israel and she'll want to get back to the States? But more over he's afraid from something else - "Ok, so I fall in love with her, but how can I be sure that she's the one? Isn't there another "right girl"? And maybe Anat is the one after all? Till that moment he was always in full control, used his mind and logic, always thought carefully and was organized and concerned. His shrink almost lost hope and there he is out of control, starts feeling a new organ pumping his body; exciting confused and doesn't allow him to think at all, his heart.
CAST: Ohad Knoler , Michal Furas, Shimrit Lustig, Zvi Shissel, ILan Dar, Smulik Shilo, Tchia Danon, Davida Karol, Shalom Asiag, Beni Avni, Miki Geva, Ami Smolarchik, MIchal Levi.
Produced for HOT cable movie channel.
A Tropic of Venus
TITLE: A Tropic of Venus
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Gur Bentvich / Riki Shelach
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 150 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Television Drama. This is a fascinating drama of love and suspense Yoav "Joov" Noyman is a young successful star. His best friend, Shiri sets him up on a blind date with Noga, who is married to a very powerful man.
A few hours later, Shiri is found dead by the police in front of her house under her window. Soon, Yoav finds himself caught in the middle of a dangerous triangle. He discovers that the new, young and ambition police investigator, Yenon Harel, has marked him as the prime suspect. Now Yoav is running for his life. He finds out things about himself and about the phony world that surrounds him. He would do everything to prove his innocence. But would everything be enough? Remi Award in The 39th Annual WorldFest-Houston. Script: Omer Tadmor, based on a story by Uri Adelman. Cast: Yehuda Levy, Netta Garti, Tinkerbell, Gadi Piterman, Noga Shahar, Kirill Safonov, Guri Alfi
Chefzi On Air
TITLE: Chefzi On Air
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Dalit Eliraz / Orit Ben-Hur Raz
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 18 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Chefzi is a religious radio broadcaster who offers romantic advice to her single, religious female callers. One night, she decides to take her own advice, and proposes marriage on live radio to her boyfriend Yonatan. To Chefzi's surprise, her theories don't work in practice and her world begins to collapse.
Actors: Maya Greenberg, Yonatan Uziel, Hila Goshen, Iris Pan, Michal Mendelovich
The First Night
TITLE: The First Night
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Chen Galon Klein / Isca Gur
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 21 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Emuna, a twenty-year-old religious bride, comes home with her new husband on their wedding night. Emuna is full of trepidation and expectations about their first night together, but it turns out quite differently from what she imagines. Their lack of experience coupled with feelings of embarrassment and a gap between reality and imagination burden the newly married couple.
Actors: Tal Yahalomi, Oren Shakedi, Hadas Ma'or, Moshe Margaliot
Come Back Shulamit
TITLE: Come Back Shulamit
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Sheva Schrader / Ohad Domb
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 19 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: This romantic comedy tells the story of Shulamit and her fiancé. On her way to a wedding-dress fitting, Shulamit is involved in a bizarre car accident. As a result, she experiences selective memory loss and remembers nothing of her relationship with her fiancé. The real problem is that in three weeks they are supposed to marry. Actors: Liat Azar, Tomer Ben David
FIRST LESSON IN PEACE
TITLE: FIRST LESSON IN PEACE
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Yoram Honig
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 56 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: A personal letter of a father to his six-year-old daughter, Michal, starting first grade at the united Jewish-Arab school at "Naveh Shalom", a letter she will read only when she will have grown up. Both film and letter mature during Michal''s first school year, addressing the objection of the Zionist grandfather and the rightist uncle to Michal''s parents decision expressed through fear, tactless thoughts and confrontation. The film reaches a climax during the events commemorating the Israeli Memorial Day and the Palestinian Nakbah Day bringing all the participants to distressing and unexpected situations.
Original Music: Shalom Hanoch
Trailer: http://www.docmovies.com/He/docaviv22.html
Alenbi Romance
TITLE: Alenbi Romance / Allenby Romance
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Yanai Goz & Yoni Zicholtz
COUNTRY: ISRAEL
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 50 minutes
SOURCE: Eden Cinema Ltd. Caroline Boneh Diane Gaillaud
TEXT: "All of those romantic movies are always in foreign cities. It's always Tokyo, Paris, Rome, New York. It's easier over there. The hardest thing is being romantic in your own city. Your city is always against you, trying to ruin it for you. It's not easy, all this romance". Nico and Neta, two lonesome souls, embark on a romantic journey through the moonlit streets of Tel-Aviv, where they will meet all the beauty and vitality of the city, but also all of the hurt and suffering lying beneath its glittering veneer.
CAST: Danny Geva, Hili Yalon, Mosko Alkalai, Uri Avrahami, Kais Nashef,
Statement: "Alenbi Romance" is about the clash between the two sides of Tel Aviv, both the most romantic and the most painful city in the world. In the movie, the closer Nico and Neta are drawn together, the harder the city tries to ruin their romantic moments. Like Nico says, "the hardest thing is being romantic in your own city". So will romance triumph over harsh urban reality? We can't tell you just yet, but we would like to think that hope is never lost.
The Hungry Heart
TITLE: The Hungry Heart
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: / Avishag Leibovich
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew w/ English ST
TIME: 11:30 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Nissim is going to make a last effort to change his ex-girlfriends' mind. He will stand down her block, and on a live popular radio show, he'll try to get back with the love of his life. An impossible love story, offering a different view on new intimacy. Festivals: The Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2005; British Short Film Days in Turkey, Eskisehir, 2006; Ashdod International Film Festival, Israel, 2006
The Better Half
TITLE: The Better Half
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: / Shir Shoshani
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 19 minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT: Boaz, a shy bachelor, works as a car decorator at a bridal parlor owned by his opinionated mother. He is in love with Osnat, an absent-minded inventor of patents for bridal canopies, but each time they meet Boaz acts foolishly. On the eve of Valentines Day, Boaz dares to act and faces unpredictable consequences.
Festivals: Haifa Film Festival, Haifa, Israel, 2005; Ashdod International Film Festival, Israel, 2006; Made In Israel Film Festival, N.Y., U.S.A., 2006. CAST:
Yaniv Nahmias, Shira Arad, Irit Gidron, Shiran Ginsberg
Skitopolis
TITLE: Skitopolis
YEAR: 2005
DIR/PROD: Ofir Dery
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 15 minutes
SOURCE: Sam Spiegel Film & TV School - Jerusalem (JSFS)
TEXT: Nissim is a 75 year old maintenance gay in an archeological site. On his spare time, he wears his own Roman outfit and turns into a tour guide, despite his boss's reservations .One day ,Nissim discoverers that his own son ,Marco, was appointed to be the guide and he is forced to sacrifice his dreams.
The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
TITLE: The Cult of the Suicide Bomber
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Kevin Toolis
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: English Subtitles
TIME: minutes
SOURCE:
TEXT:
OUT OF SIGHT
TITLE: OUT OF SIGHT
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Daniel Syrkin
COUNTRY: Israel
LANGUAGE: Hebrew with English ST
TIME: 86 minutes
SOURCE: lilach@metrocom.co.il www.metrocom.co.il
TEXT: Cast: Tali Sharon, Avigail Harari
Ya'ara is good looking, independent, confident, intelligent and has just begun her PhD in Mathematics at Princeton University - and she is blind. She rushes back to Israel when she hears of Talia's suicide, her cousin and best friend. During the Jewish Mourning period she discovers, bit by bit, the secrets in Talia's life. Ya'ara finally discovers the horrible cause that led Talia to commit suicide and reveals the guilt of the people around her as well as her own. The mourning is over and Ya'ara goes back to her studies, but now she must define herself in a different way. SHANGHAI FILM FESTIVAL 2006.
SHEM
TITLE: SHEM
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD:
COUNTRY: USA
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: minutes
SOURCE: www.HPReleasing.com or www.shemthemovie.com
TEXT: Daniel, an arrogant, restless young Londoner is bored with his meaningless life. When he seeks sympathy from his old Jewish grandmother, she sends him on a mission to Europe to find the grave of her father who disappeared during the Second World War. Following his great grandfather's trail, Daniel's journey leads him to Paris, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, Belgrade and Sofia, finally having to flee to Rome. As he passes from one intense experience to the next, he is caught up in the turmoil of change taking place in the former communist countries, in the process discovering his Jewish roots which had previously never mattered to him. What started as an excuse simply to travel and have fun soon becomes an obsessive quest and a journey of personal discovery.
WHATS YOUR NAME? DAVID? DANIEL? STEVE?
SHEM means "name" in Hebrew. The Nazis tried to deprive the Jews of their names by tattooing a number on their arms. The memorials bearing the names of the victims are incredibly striking The names hit us with the power of reality of a unique life shattered, suddenly. A name defines somebody. Names are essential to us, names we change, our maiden names, our religious names, our nicknames, our many and only names. Looking for your own social, sexual, spiritual identity is an every day's concern. Our name is part of that. Naming is a powerful ritual shared by all. Naming is celebrating a new life by linking it with the names of the past. Looking for a past to build your future.
I felt the urge to express the turmoil of change in the world overwhelming me every day. All the old ideologies based on economic, materialistic values seem obsolete. I feel our old Western world is yielding irrepressibly towards the imperious need of ethics and spirituality. It can be expressed in very negative ways in various religious fundamentalisms we unfortunately know too well. It can lead also to airy-fairy New Age fantasy. Or it can be a definite step towards a better world.
I think we have everything to learn from the younger generations. I do believe they can teach us to respect life. Their love of life can express itself in a wild and sometimes even destructive way, through extreme sports, wild sexual pursuits and drugs... But the motivation is beautiful. It is the thrush towards embracing life totally.
THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI - THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL
TITLE: THE JOURNALIST AND THE JIHADI - THE MURDER OF DANIEL PEARL
YEAR: 2006
DIR/PROD: Ahmed Jamal, Ramesh Sharma
COUNTRY: UK
LANGUAGE: English
TIME: 80 minutes
SOURCE: HBO FILMS and DISTANT HORIZON-LOS ANGELES
TEXT: A Pakistani and an Indian director have made this documentary (UK/.India) 79 minutes. It will play on HBO in October 2006.. Everyone remembers the kidnapping and brutal beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Karachi, Pakistan. Some of us even followed the events on television and on the Internet, shocked at what depths our post-September 11 world had reached. The Journalist and The Jihadi - The Murder of Daniel Pearl tracks the parallel lives of Pearl and jihadi Omar Sheikh. Both men were highly educated and came from privileged backgrounds, and both were committed passionately to fixing the wrongs of their worlds. Pearl was a Renaissance man. He believed deeply that through his writings he could bridge the divide between the Islamic and the Western worlds. Sheikh was just the opposite. Although born in England and educated at the London School of Economics, he became an Islamist militant and believed that violence was the solution for his people. September 11 changed the world and put these two people on a path that would eventually end in tragedy. Ahmed Jamal and Ramesh Sharma have created a powerful film that documents the events leading up to Pearl's death and the way in which his death is still affecting his family. Ramesh Sharma is an award-winning film and television producer-director based in India. His debut film Rumtek, about a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, won India's National Award for best short film in 1979. He also directed the critically acclaimed feature New Delhi Times, which was shown at numerous international film festivals. Recently, he has worked on the documentaries Jihad - The Sword of Islam and Afghanistan - The Taliban Years and Beyond, which will soon air on the Discovery Channel. Sharma is the chairman and managing director of Moving Picture C