At The Movies

Mendelsohn confides.
"I'd use the words

ungebluzenor shmaltz-
gruben in third-grade
gym, and that didn't
fly. 3,

• Over 50 menu items
• All lunches served
with soup
• Childrens menu
• Thai cookies served
with all dinner entrees

Dine in or carry-out

One per customer • Expires 3/13/00

27903 Orchard Lake Rd. (NW corner of 12 Mile)
Farmington Hills

(248) 553-4220

BORDERS

BOOKS, MUSIC, VIDEO, AND A CAFE.

www.borders.com

30995 Orchard Lake Rd.

Farmington Hills

48334

(248) 737-0110

eig
atai
American Heart
Association.

Fighting Heart Disease
and Stroke

3/3
2000

86

Medical miracles
start with research

MICHAEL FOX
Special to the Jewish News

le

ager, enthusiastic and a
tad innocent, New
York filmmaker Eric
Mendelsohn is a
throwback to an era when mas-
tering one's craft was more
important than manufacturing
hype.
It's not surprising, therefore,
that a tenderness and generosity
of spirit permeates his debut fea-
ture, a droll, low-key tale of
Jewish suburban alienation titled

Judy Berlin.
A black-and-white triumph of
subtle humor and resonant emo-
tion, the film boasts a stellar cast
that includes Barbara Barrie, Edie Falco,
Aaron Harnick, Bob Dishy, Julie
Kavner, Anne Meara and the late
Madeline Kahn in her last film role.
Judy Berlin is being screened through
March 9 at the Star-Great Lakes
Crossing Theatre as part the Shooting
Gallery Film Series. The series is bring-
ing six award-winning independent
films to 17 markets nationwide through
mid-May.
Halfway through a long day of meet-
ing the press at a San Francisco hotel,
Mendelsohn isn't the least bit tired.
He's simultaneously flattered and
embarrassed to have journalists lined up
to interview him, he explains.
"For 35 years, nobody cared what I
had to say," he says with a chuckle.
He learned a raft of Yiddish words as
a child, which got him unwittingly into
trouble. "I never knew which were
Jewish words and which weren't,"

Michael Fox is a San Francisco-based
freelance writer.

Left: Filmmaker
Eric Mendelsohn
with actress Edie
Falco: Mendelsohn
won the Best
Director Award for
"Judy Berlin" at
the 1999 Sundance
Film Festival.

Apparently, he's
still a little confused.
Actress Barbara Barrie
had the lines, "Hello,
Art. How's by you?"
She asked Mendelsohn, "Isn't that a little
Jewish for this character?"
Mendelsohn shrug's as he tells the story. "I
had no concept that was Jewish. I thought that's
what everybody said when they met," he laughs.
The filmmaker was raised in a typically
observant family in Old Bethpage, Long Island,
and he had a memorable
bar mitzvah.
"I completely faked
my Haftorah, and I want
that in print now," he
declares with a smile. "I had
trouble reading Hebrew
and I made the whole thing
up. Only my grandfather
knew. His look was some-
where between a wink and
`I'm going to kill you.
Mendelsohn went on to
earn a fine arts degree and
was an oil painter before
working as an assistant to
Woody Allen's costume
designer. In 1992 he made
a hugely successful short
film, Through an Open
Window, that played

`Berlin'

In "Judy Berlin,"
director/writer
Eric Mendelson salutes
Jewish humor.

two-week industry schn-looze
fest that launched Eric
Mendelsohn's Judy Berlin last year
was once more a launching pad for
Jewish independent cinema this year
The Sundance Film Festival took
place in Park City, Utah, in January
British playwright David Hare
arrived for the world premiere of Via
Dolorosa, the filmed version of his
acclaimed monologue about life in
Israel. Another Brit, writer/director
Ben Hopkins, offered his "Yiddish
biblical western," Simon Magus,
actually a fable set in a 19th-century
Central European Jewish communi-
ty. Maggie Greenwald (The Ballad of
Little Jo) was back at Sunclance with
her film SongCatchers.
Buzz was high for Gurinder
Chadha's What's Cooking?, the fest's

opening night plc, which reflects

-

the filmmaker's fascination with the
melting pot of Los Angeles.
Starring Julianna Margulies,
I inie Kazan, Joan Chen and
Mercedes Ruehl, the broad comedy
provides snapshots of four diverse
families --- Jewish, black, Latino,
Vietnamese -- all preparing for
Thanksgiving on one street in L.A.
An African-American clan antici-
pates WASPY guests; a Vietnamese
emigre worries about her children; a
young Latino man invites his philan-
dering father to Thanksgiving din-
ner; a Jewish lesbian brings her lover
(Margulies) home for the holiday
Another film of note was Yana's
Friends, a quirky tale of life among
Israel's Russian emigres.
Variety called Russian-Israeli
director Arik Kaplun, who dabbled

