Filmmaker

Bringing Dank
Home

Aviva Kempner's

Pho to by James Kegley

Entatiainment

"The Lift 6-

Times of Hank

Greenberg" opens

at the Detroit

Film Theatre.

SUZANNE CHESSLER

Special to the Jewish News

hirteen has to be a lucky
number for former
Detroiter Aviva Kempner.
That's the number of years
she's been working on her documen-
tary film The Life and Times of Hank
Greenberg, released just months ago to
reviews beyond her best dreams.
"I'm floating," says Kempner, who
is taking her 95-minute movie about
the late Tiger slugger and American
Jewish hero to 40 cities around the
country. "I got a standing ovation at
the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor,
where I sold movie tickets when I was
going to the university."
Kempner will speak at showings
planned by the Detroit Film Theatre,
where the film is scheduled March 31-
April 2. Besides capturing Greenberg's

3/24

2000

80

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years as a stellar athlete, the film
AK: The American premiere was a
shows him as a people person gener-
year ago last fall at the Hamptons
ous with his time and celebrity.
International Film Festival, but it real-
Kempner, who began the -
ly wasn't the finished film. I consider
Greenberg film after completing
[the premiere] to be the one I had on
Partisans of Vilna, had to start and
Jan. 12, when I went from the lab, by
stop her production as she raised
cab, down to the Film Forum, where I
funds, which still are not
had my New York the-
complete. Some of the
atrical release. I've had
Filmmaker Aviva
premieres have been bene- Kempner: `.4 lot of jour-
these wonderful bene-
fits with baseball legends
fits to pay off these
nalists have written that
present to salute one of
enormous rights [to
this film is my love letter
their own.
to Detroit, and that's film clips and music]
During a recent inter-
absolutely true." — $300,000. In
view with The Jewish
Washington, we had
News, Kempner, 53, now
Sen. and U.S. Rep.
a Washington, D.C., resident, dis-
Levin. In Baltimore, for the Babe
cussed her experiences with the film,
Ruth Museum, we had Jim Palmer. At
its roots in Detroit and the role of the
the Yogi Berra Museum, we had Yogi
Greenberg family.
Berra and Ted Williams. In Louisville,
we had Ken Holtzman, another
JN: How are you introducing your
Jewish former player. We're working
film around the country?
on Shawn Green for Los Angeles.