14th Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival
Monsieur Batignole
Gerard Jugnot, a director of popular social comedies, finds just the right tone for this wild adventure. Monsieur Batignole just wants a peaceful life. He is the proprietor of a butcher shop and lives in a comfortable but small apartment. Unfortunately, it is 1942. The Nazis occupy Paris. His pretentious wife and conniving future son-in-law involve him in efforts to curry favor with the Nazi commandant. One night, a Jewish neighbor's young son appears on the doorstep and shatters his passivity. In an attempt to unite the boy with some of his relatives, Batignole finds himself with not one, but three Jewish children on his hands! Astounding even himself, Batignole conceives a daring plan to save them.
Director: Gerard Jugnot
France/USA, 2002; 35mm, 100 min., Color; French with English subtitles
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The Soul Keeper
In 1905, at nineteen, Sabina Spielrein became Jung's first psychoanalytic patient. Her intellect and beauty confound his treatment and they enter into a passionate relationship. Jung seeks the advice of Sigmund Freud.
This leads to a pioneering correspondence between all three that explores the concept of counter-transference. Spielrein's cure is bittersweet as it must be predicated on ending her relationship with Jung. She goes on to attend medical school and becomes a psycholanalyst. As a Russian Jew, she is attracted to the early promise of the Soviet State and returns to Moscow where she founds the White Nursery, a psychoanalytic children's school. Sabina Spielrein deserves to be more than just a footnote in the history of mankind's attempts to understand the mysteries of the mind.
Director: Roberto Feanza
Italy/France/UK, 2002; 35mm, 95 min., Color; English; Adult Content
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The Burial Society
Who is Sheldon Krasner and why are those mobsters dangling him headfirst from a bridge? Sheldon was the loan manager for the Hebrew National Bank. But who is he now? Fleeing his captors, Sheldon seeks refuge in a chevurah kadisha (burial society) of a small town. The wary old men, who prepare and sit with the dead before burial, are reluctant to have him join their group. But after all, how long do they have to live? Rob LaBelle and Seymour Kassel head a terrific cast in this quirky cruise through the -- in more ways than one -- underworld.
Director: Nicholas Racz
Canada, 2002; 35mm, 95 min., Color; English
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God's Sandbox
Liz, a successful author, arrives at an exotic beach in the Sinai desert to find her runaway daughter, Rachel. Rachel objects to her mother's interference, but Liz insists on staying. One evening, the handsome young Bedouin who runs a café on the beach tells a haunting story about a young woman who visited there many years before. It's the story of Leila, a beautiful, free-spirited Western tourist who began a passionate relationship with Najim, the son of a Bedouin sheik. Najim's tribe was then expelled into the Sinai desert wilderness, but before leaving, Leila witnessed a brutal female circumcision ceremony. Tormented by the story, Liz experiences her own psychological passage as the consequences of Leila's long-ago journey into another world affect both the past and the present.
Director: Doron Eran
Israel, 2002; 35mm, 85 min., Color; English/Hebrew/Arabic with English subtitles; Adult Content
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Monsieur Batignole
Gerard Jugnot, a director of popular social comedies, finds just the right tone for this wild adventure. Monsieur Batignole just wants a peaceful life. He is the proprietor of a butcher shop and lives in a comfortable but small apartment. Unfortunately, it is 1942. The Nazis occupy Paris. His pretentious wife and conniving future son-in-law involve him in efforts to curry favor with the Nazi commandant. One night, a Jewish neighbor's young son appears on the doorstep and shatters his passivity. In an attempt to unite the boy with some of his relatives, Batignole finds himself with not one, but three Jewish children on his hands! Astounding even himself, Batignole conceives a daring plan to save them.
Director: Gerard Jugnot
France/USA, 2002; 35mm, 100 min., Color; French with English subtitles
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Welcome to the Waks Family
Adhering to the strict tenets of their Lubavitch belief, without movies, pop music, or novels, the Waks family of Australia achieves a level of shared purpose and joy that makes this film a privilege to watch. Hava and Zephaniah Waks have seventeen children, some still in diapers, one in the uniform of the Israeli Army. Waks family births, bar mitzvahs, deaths, and marriages are some of the milestones we witness during the five years documented in this intimate film, along with the daily rewards and challenges of the religious life they've chosen.
Director: Barbara Chobodsky
Australia, 2002; BETA SP, 52 min., Color; English
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On the Fringe
Motti Klein is sad. "It is a disgrace to walk through my neighborhood in an Army uniform. I run so that I will not be seen." Meir Alboim's mother laments about her son's marriage prospects. "He is third rate in Haredi society. He's in the army." Schmuel Greenfield's father tells him that he won't attend his swearing in. Many young religious Israeli men are torn. Their motives vary, but some feel that it is not ethical to remain in Yeshiva while others protect the State of Israel. Recently, a special Nahal unit has been created where religious observance is integrated into daily military life. This fascinating film follows four determined young men as they undergo the Nahal's rigorous training while trying to remain in touch with their families and their culture.
Director: Noam Damsky
Israel, 2000; BETA, 52 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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Fire Within
San Diegans Gary and Jerri-Ann Jacobs founded the Jacobs International Teen Leadership Institute (JITLI) to bring together San Diego teenagers, Israeli Bedouins, and Israelis for an experience of friendship, confrontation, and change. The journey starts in Spain to explore the Golden Age, when Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together. It ends in Israel, where the conflicts of the modern age emerge. As tensions builds, Gary Jacobs poignantly states "Friends. Remember. The idea of JITLI is not to convince people that you're right and they are wrong, but to understand each other's views." This is a "search for peace... one heart at a time."
Director: Richard Berman
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 90 min., Color; English/Hebrew/Arabic with English subtitles
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Underwater
Fourteen-year-old Michal's life is complicated. She is a competitive swimmer trying to secure her place on the team. The popular Efrat taunts her and makes her school life miserable. Her boyfriend, Dror, pressures her for sex. Her mother, who sells beads and tells fortunes, is overly focused on her young lover. Into this tumult of teenage anguish enters Michal's estranged father. He left the family ten years earlier to live an ultra-Orthodox life her mother refused to share. In the intervening years, he remarried and had two sons. Michal desperately wants a place in her father's life and to connect with her young half-brothers. Her attempts to navigate between her two worlds, the religious and the secular, mirrors the conflicts in Israeli society and, like those conflicts, courts tragedy.
Director: Eitan Londner
Israel, 2002; 35mm, 90 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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Hiding and Seeking
Menachem and Rivka Daum journey to Poland to find the Polish family that hid her father during the war. Their sons, married Yeshiva students who live in Jerusalem, accompany them. Daum, an Orthodox Jew, is proud of his sons' religiosity but disturbed by their insularity. The film traces the Daums' attempt to heal the wounds of the past and widen their sons' views of the world, particularly the non-Jewish world.
Directors: Oren Rudavsky & Menachen Daum
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 86 min., Color; English/Polish with English subtitles
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The Hanged Dog Tree
A story of the rebirth of a family after the terror of war.
Director: Oliver Malderghem
Belgium, 2001; BETA SP, 14 min., Color; French with English subtitles
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Divan
In turn-of-twentieth century Hungary, filmmaker Pearl Gluck's family status in the Hassidic community was such that the Kossonye Rebbe honored them and slept upon their divan. A hundred years later, Pearl is someone that her Hassidic family doesn't understand--an unmarried woman living alone, making movies. Motivated in part by a desire to repair her relationship with her father, Pearl travels to Hungary to reclaim the ancestral couch. In the ruins of the Hungarian Jewish landscape, she is forced to confront her act of leaving the Hassidic community of her youth.
Director: Pearl Gluck
USA/Hungary/Ukraine, 2003; BETA, 72 min., Color; English/Hungarian with English subtitles
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Black Hats and Short Skirts
Payas and tzisis meet mini-skirts and makeup on the New York subway.
Director: Micah Smith
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 7 min., Color; English subtitles
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The Last Letter
Frederick Wiseman, America's premier documentary filmmaker, and Catherine Samie, doyen of the Comedie-Francaise, combine to create what Variety calls "the perfect conjunction of director, cast, and material." In this, his first narrative film, Wiseman uses subdued lighting with shifting shadows and camera angles to focus on the solo performance of Madame Samie. Samie brings to life the last letter written by a Jewish woman to her son as she awaits her fate at the hands of the Nazis.
Director: Frederick Wiseman
France/USA, 2002; 35mm, 61 min., Black & White; French with English subtitles
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Foolish Me
In 1944 Palestine, two Auschwitz survivors wander along a Tel Aviv beach. Coming upon a café, only one enters. An enormous chasm develops between the two men and the non-survivor café patrons.
Director: Gabriel Bibliowicz
Israel, 2003; BETA SP, 45 min., Color; Hebrew/Yiddish/Polish with English subtitles
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James' Journey to Jerusalem
James will be the minister of his African village. His people send him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the joyous sounds of gospel. At Ben Gurion Airport, he explains his mission to the cynical immigration officer. She thinks he has come illegally to make money. Rather than Jerusalem, James goes to jail. Shimi arrives and frees him. But he is not an angelic messenger, but a labor contractor. James ends up in a prison-like dormitory doing hard, menial work while Shimi pockets the better part of his pay. As James begins to learn the way of capitalism, his mission changes. This film is Israeli to the core, but it explores with balance and even humor a worldwide phenomenon: Third World immigrants illegally seeking economic survival in a developed country.
Director: Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
Israel, 2003; 35mm, 87 min., Color; English/Hebrew/Zulu with English subtitles
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The Burial Society
Who is Sheldon Krasner and why are those mobsters dangling him headfirst from a bridge? Sheldon was the loan manager for the Hebrew National Bank. But who is he now? Fleeing his captors, Sheldon seeks refuge in a chevurah kadisha (burial society) of a small town. The wary old men, who prepare and sit with the dead before burial, are reluctant to have him join their group. But after all, how long do they have to live? Rob LaBelle and Seymour Kassel head a terrific cast in this quirky cruise through the -- in more ways than one -- underworld.
Director: Nicholas Racz
Canada, 2002; 35mm, 95 min., Color; English
Back to Top
Divan
In turn-of-twentieth century Hungary, filmmaker Pearl Gluck's family status in the Hassidic community was such that the Kossonye Rebbe honored them and slept upon their divan. A hundred years later, Pearl is someone that her Hassidic family doesn't understand--an unmarried woman living alone, making movies. Motivated in part by a desire to repair her relationship with her father, Pearl travels to Hungary to reclaim the ancestral couch. In the ruins of the Hungarian Jewish landscape, she is forced to confront her act of leaving the Hassidic community of her youth.
Director: Pearl Gluck
USA/Hungary/Ukraine, 2003; BETA, 72 min., Color; English/Hungarian with English subtitles
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Black Hats and Short Skirts
Payas and tzisis meet mini-skirts and makeup on the New York subway.
Director: Micah Smith
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 7 min., Color; English subtitles
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Taking Sides
Is it moral to pursue art while compromising with an immoral world? Do moral deeds balance the acceptance of evil in the pursuit of art? In his New York Times review of this film, critic Stephen Holden writes, "These arguments, as familiar as they are, still bear repeating... they, sparked by the actors' powerful performances, make for a dramatically compelling clash."
In 1946, Major Steve Arnold, played by a ferocious Harvey Keitel, is a De-Nazification commission officer in the military who conducts an intense pre-trial interrogation of the brilliant conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler. Was Furtwangler simply one of the Nazi's foremost cultural assets, or did he use his position to save hundreds of Jewish musicians from the concentration camps? The Boston Globe sums it all up by saying that the points about art and morality are "so crisply argued that you might find yourself debating with the screen."
Director: Istvan Szabo
Germany, 2001; 35mm, 108 min., Color; English
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Secret Passage
John Tuturro heads a stellar cast that includes the glorious city of Venice in this striking period film. The Inquisition of 1492 forces Converso sisters Isabel and Clara to flee Spain for Holland. When Clara's husband is killed for helping other Jews escape the Inquisition, the sisters flee again, this time to Venice. There, Isabel negotiates their final escape with the Turks, who agree to give the family safe passage to Turkey if Isabel uncovers and hands over the secrets of Venetian glassmaking. To this end, she and Clara infiltrate Venetian society, but Isabel's plans go awry when the romantic and headstrong Clara falls in love with a mercenary Venetian nobleman.
Director: Ademir Kenovic
UK, 2001; 35mm, 100 min., Color; English
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Thunder in Guyana
Janet Rosenberg Jagan became President of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana in 1997 after the death of her husband. In 1943, this nice Jewish girl from Chicago married Cheddi Jagan and shared his life and left-wing politics for fifty-four years. In 1953, Cheddi was elected the first president of the independent republic and she, deputy speaker of parliament. Over the next four decades, they either led the country or were the leaders of the opposition. Filmmaker Suzanne Wasserman (Janet's cousin) has created a film portrait of an incredible life.
Director: Suzanne Wasserman
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 51 min., Color/Black & White; English
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The Collector of Bedford Street
Larry Selman is someone you'd like to get to know, and through this inspirational Oscar-nominated film, you will. Larry not only lives independently as a man with developmental disabilities, he is also a staunch community activist and tireless fundraiser. When his independence is threatened because his elderly uncle can no longer help him, his concerned Bedford Street neighbors gather to create a UJA-Federation Community Trust for Disabled Adults for him so he can continue his activist lifestyle. This marks the first time a non-family group has funded such a trust--an act of tzedaka that not only protects Larry financially, but also brings romance into his life.
Director: Alice Elliott
USA, 2001; BETA, 34 min., Color; English
Oscar nominee for best short film, 2002
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Not By Bread Alone
Reuben Hecht's dream of establishing granaries in a land that didn't exist led him to become a spy. Though he lived a privileged life in Switzerland as the son of a wealthy shipping magnate, Hecht became a Zionist while a student in Berlin. In 1936, he immigrated to Palestine only to return to Switzerland to organize illegal immigration. Until his father blocked his access, he shamelessly utilized family resources to finance his wartime work for the Allies and for fleeing Jews. Ironically, his activities allowed his family to regain assets confiscated during the war. His dream for Israel more than realized, Hecht was awarded the 1984 Israel Prize for Exemplary Lifetime Service to the State for the educational, archeological, and artistic institutions he founded. This documentary stands as a tribute to a valiant and focused life.
Director: Nitzan Aviram
Israel, 2002; BETA SP, 57 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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Le Grand Akshan
In 1942, the Struma set sail with 769 Jews aboard. When the ship's engine failed, the Turks and the British denied it safe haven. Turkish authorities towed the disabled ship out to sea where a Soviet submarine torpedoed it. Knowing that members of his family had been lost in the disaster, filmmaker Ron Goldman set out to find the Struma. Above all, he discovered his dynamic great grandfather, Grisha Starosta, "Le Grand Akshan." He also found stories that traced his family's roots to Romania, Palestine, India, and the new State of Israel, where Grisha and his family finally found a haven.
Director: Ron Goldman
Israel, 2002; BETA, 60 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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James' Journey to Jerusalem
James will be the minister of his African village. His people send him on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with the joyous sounds of gospel. At Ben Gurion Airport, he explains his mission to the cynical immigration officer. She thinks he has come illegally to make money. Rather than Jerusalem, James goes to jail. Shimi arrives and frees him. But he is not an angelic messenger, but a labor contractor. James ends up in a prison-like dormitory doing hard, menial work while Shimi pockets the better part of his pay. As James begins to learn the way of capitalism, his mission changes. This film is Israeli to the core, but it explores with balance and even humor a worldwide phenomenon: Third World immigrants illegally seeking economic survival in a developed country.
Director: Ra'anan Alexandrowicz
Israel, 2003; 35mm, 87 min., Color; English/Hebrew/Zulu with English subtitles
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It's About Time
To an infectious jazz beat, this film asks us to look at time. In Israel, Western time rubs shoulders with Middle-Eastern time. It is a country where the ticking bomb of uncertainty stands between its citizens and the future; where time passes at double speed pursued by a glorious past and an uncertain future. In this prize-winning documentary, a mosaic of Israelis talks about time.
Directors: Ayelet Menahemi & Elona Ariel
Israel, 2001; BETA SP, 54 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
Winner, Best Documentary and Best Script, Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2001
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All I've Got
Two sweethearts lie in the wreckage of their car. As a paramedic assures them he is there, the young man dies. The camera suddenly focuses on an old woman in a nightgown wandering on a dock. She sees a cruise ship with no apparent destination. The crew is expecting her. Aboard is her long lost first love, who has been waiting for her for fifty years, and a dilemma that will fatefully affect the life she has lived. Karen Margalit's delicate fantasy asks the question: What is important in a worthwhile life?
Director: Karen Margalit
Israel, 2002; BETA SP, 68 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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Jenin Diary
An Israeli soldier stands in a Jenin street. His reserve unit has just lost 13 men in an ambush that took place on April 9, 2002. Filmmaker Gil Mezuman is a member of the unit. The men are dazed. They replay events. Were reservists prepared for the mission? Why were they in Jenin? One says he's "finished" with the reserves while another shouts, "He always says that." In the end, they know that when called, they will answer.
Director: Gil Mezuman
Israel, 2002; BETA SP, 65 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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A Festival Under War
In 17 minutes, filmmaker Yaron Shane, sums up the all the questions, hopes, fears, and dangers of life in Israel as he records a group of dedicated people struggling to create and mount the 2001 Jerusalem Festival in the midst of terrorism.
Director: Yaron Shane
Israel, 2002; BETA, 17 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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God's Sandbox
Liz, a successful author, arrives at an exotic beach in the Sinai desert to find her runaway daughter, Rachel. Rachel objects to her mother's interference, but Liz insists on staying. One evening, the handsome young Bedouin who runs a café on the beach tells a haunting story about a young woman who visited there many years before. It's the story of Leila, a beautiful, free-spirited Western tourist who began a passionate relationship with Najim, the son of a Bedouin sheik. Najim's tribe was then expelled into the Sinai desert wilderness, but before leaving, Leila witnessed a brutal female circumcision ceremony. Tormented by the story, Liz experiences her own psychological passage as the consequences of Leila's long-ago journey into another world affect both the past and the present.
Director: Doron Eran
Israel, 2002; 35mm, 85 min., Color; English/Hebrew/Arabic with English subtitles; Adult Content
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Hiding and Seeking
Menachem and Rivka Daum journey to Poland to find the Polish family that hid her father during the war. Their sons, married Yeshiva students who live in Jerusalem, accompany them. Daum, an Orthodox Jew, is proud of his sons' religiosity but disturbed by their insularity. The film traces the Daums' attempt to heal the wounds of the past and widen their sons' views of the world, particularly the non-Jewish world.
Directors: Oren Rudavsky & Menachen Daum
USA, 2003; BETA SP, 86 min., Color; English/Polish with English subtitles
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The Hanged Dog Tree
A story of the rebirth of a family after the terror of war.
Director: Oliver Malderghem
Belgium, 2001; BETA SP, 14 min., Color; French with English subtitles
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Taking Sides
Is it moral to pursue art while compromising with an immoral world? Do moral deeds balance the acceptance of evil in the pursuit of art? In his New York Times review of this film, critic Stephen Holden writes, "These arguments, as familiar as they are, still bear repeating... they, sparked by the actors' powerful performances, make for a dramatically compelling clash."
In 1946, Major Steve Arnold, played by a ferocious Harvey Keitel, is a De-Nazification commission officer in the military who conducts an intense pre-trial interrogation of the brilliant conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler. Was Furtwangler simply one of the Nazi's foremost cultural assets, or did he use his position to save hundreds of Jewish musicians from the concentration camps? The Boston Globe sums it all up by saying that the points about art and morality are "so crisply argued that you might find yourself debating with the screen."
Director: Istvan Szabo
Germany, 2001; 35mm, 108 min., Color; English
Back to Top
John Tuturro heads a stellar cast that includes the glorious city of Venice in this striking period film. The Inquisition of 1492 forces Converso sisters Isabel and Clara to flee Spain for Holland. When Clara's husband is killed for helping other Jews escape the Inquisition, the sisters flee again, this time to Venice. There, Isabel negotiates their final escape with the Turks, who agree to give the family safe passage to Turkey if Isabel uncovers and hands over the secrets of Venetian glassmaking. To this end, she and Clara infiltrate Venetian society, but Isabel's plans go awry when the romantic and headstrong Clara falls in love with a mercenary Venetian nobleman.
Director: Ademir Kenovic
UK, 2001; 35mm, 100 min., Color; English
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"It is the role of artists to open a channel that politicians are trying to close." Israeli filmmaker Asher de Bentolila Tlalim describes the purpose of this thoughtful meditation -- inspired by his own feelings while living in London -- on the nature of exile and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He interviews the residents of Lisenek, Poland where his wife's family once lived; the current occupants of his family home in Tangiers; and new immigrants to Israel living in former Palestinian homes. He also interviews exiles, including his wife, other Israelis, and Palestinians who bare their unique pain. Tlalim's wife says that through meeting people that she would not have met in Israel, she begins to question former assumptions. Not all exiles agree with her.
Director: Asher de Bentolila Tlalim
Israel, 2003; BETA SP, 99 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
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Samy Goldstein (played by popular Argentinean actor Ricardo Darin) is a nebbishy Jewish Argentinean writer who draws on fantasies about his own life to write comedy for a TV show. He has an overbearing mother and sister who expect him to finance a world-class bar mitzvah for his nephew. His girlfriend, Esther, considers herself his intellectual superior but condescendingly allows him to tag along while she and her girlfriends chatter about what's "in." Through a case of mistaken identity, he meets Mary, a gorgeous Colombian woman. She begins showing up at the TV studio where she conceives a talk show on which he is to portray his own depressed, anxious self. Complete with a marketing plan that includes posters and billboards of Samy all over Buenos Aires, Mary literally launches him into stardom and a witty web of complications.
Director: Eduardo Milewicz
>Argentina, 2002; 35mm, 85 min., Color; Spanish with English subtitles
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Watching their children live in a climate of Intifada, violence, and fear, Israeli filmmaker Michal Aviad and her political activist husband are faced with a moral dilemma: should they stay in Israel, the country that welcomed their families who were forced to flee the Holocaust, or return to the more peaceful life they previously experienced for ten years in San Francisco? Using archival footage, home movies, and television images, Aviad weaves an intimate family history with the realities of contemporary Israeli life. Ultimately, she is forced to examine the age-old Jewish dilemma: When is it time to leave?
Director: Michal Aviad
Israel, 2002; BETA SP, 65 min., Color; English/Hebrew with English subtitles
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The Radomskys are literally living behind bars in their Johannesburg home, in constant fear of violent crime. Their children cannot play outside. An aunt is mugged. But Marc and Vivienne Radomsky's decision to "choose exile" in Australia and leave South Africa, where three generations of their Lithuanian family have found a refuge, is still a painful one. Careers, friends, family, and even the dog must be left behind. But is there any hope for a secure future for the family in South Africa?
Director: Marc Radomsky
Australia, 2002; BETA SP, 55 min., Color; English
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This emotionally powerful film tells a story of immigrant life in Israel. Moshe, a young Ethiopian immigrant boy, lives alone in a dwindling immigrant camp, desperately awaiting the arrival of his mother. Two men have taken an interest in him: Aharon, a strict but caring Orthodox teacher, and Walter, an African-American saxophone player. Aharon tells Moshe to trust in God. Walter encourages him to believe in himself. A score featuring the music of Billie Holiday and Bob Marley add to the movie's magic.
Director: Zion Rubin
Israel, 2001; BETA SP, 52 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
Winner, Best Script, Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2001
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For five years, Daresh, a 19-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, has struggled to find a place for herself within Israeli society. One dream has sustained her: She wants to bring her mother from Ethiopia to live with her.
Director: Chava Schein
Israel, 2000; BETA SP, 20 min., Color; Hebrew/Amharic with English subtitles
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The breathtaking vista of the Salk Institute is familiar to San Diegans. Designed by Louis Kahn, the building is a major example of his architecture, which the LA Times called "life changing." But in 1974, when he died in a men's bathroom in Grand Central Station at age 73, he was unknown and massively in debt. While Kahn's artistic vision was clear, truthful, and uncompromising, his personal life was filled with secrecy and chaos. Nathaniel Kahn--Louis's only son--eleven at the time of his father's death, sets out to meet his father through his work, the people who knew him, and the architects he influenced. Nathaniel shows us his father's creations and interviews those who can shed light on his life, from I.M. Pei, Frank Gehry, and Phillip Johnson to the cab drivers who ferried him around his native Philadelphia.
Director: Nathaniel Kahn
USA, 2003; 35mm, 116 min., Color; English
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This emotionally powerful film tells a story of immigrant life in Israel. Moshe, a young Ethiopian immigrant boy, lives alone in a dwindling immigrant camp, desperately awaiting the arrival of his mother. Two men have taken an interest in him: Aharon, a strict but caring Orthodox teacher, and Walter, an African-American saxophone player. Aharon tells Moshe to trust in God. Walter encourages him to believe in himself. A score featuring the music of Billie Holiday and Bob Marley add to the movie's magic.
Director: Zion Rubin
Israel, 2001; BETA SP, 52 min., Color; Hebrew with English subtitles
Winner, Best Script, Jerusalem International Film Festival, 2001
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For five years, Daresh, a 19-year-old Ethiopian immigrant, has struggled to find a place for herself within Israeli society. One dream has sustained her: She wants to bring her mother from Ethiopia to live with her.
Director: Chava Schein
Israel, 2000; BETA SP, 20 min., Color; Hebrew/Amharic with English subtitles
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Here is Golan, almost thirty; still at The University; his apartment rent paid by his parents. It's a fun life. Does he need to grow up? The real question is: Does he want to? Golan's friends are mostly focused on enjoying life. As for his relationships with women, how can he settle on one flavor of ice cream, when there are so many more out there? He finally allows his friend Guy to fix him up with his sister, a wonderful, vibrant, independent woman. As long as she is elusive, Golan craves her company. But once she decides that they have a future, Golan feels stifled and wants his freedom. As his friends move on with careers and relationships, he's suddenly alone. And his father is finally cutting the purse strings. He has serious decisions to make. What will they be?
Director: Ilan Heitner
Israel, 2002; 35mm, 97 min., Color; Hebrew with English Subtitles; Adult Content
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