Arts Entertainment

At The Movies

A Jewish

R

S M OR G A

The New York Jewish Film Festival celebrates its
10th year with a slew of international films.

LYNNE KONSTANTIN

Special to the Jewish News

n January 1992, the Jewish Museum
and the Film Society of Lincoln
Center teamed up for the first time to
present 11 films: Each film shared a
common thread in the rich fabric of Jewish
life and its diversity.
This year, from Jan. 14-25, the New York
Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 10th year
with 33 films, "a testament to the explosion
of creativity in this genre," says Aviva
Weintraub, director of media and public
programs at the Jewish Museum.
"We're in a Jewish renaissance
moment: People are writing books,
music and films as ways to explore
their own Jewish identity."
Featuring two world, three U.S.
and 12 New York premieres, the
almost three dozen films scheduled
for this year's festival illuminate
the Jewish experience from
Australia, Austria, Canada, the
Czech Republic, France,
Germany, Israel, Italy, Nepal,
the Netherlands, Russia,
Switzerland, the United
Kingdom and the United
States.
Highlights of the festival
include French director
Pierre Grimblat's drama
Lisa (2000), Italian directors
Aridrea and Antonio Frazzi's
The Sky is Falling (2000) and
British director Anthony Wall's
The Brian Epstein Story (1999,
video).
In Lisa, a young French film-
maker, researching a Jewish actor
who vanished during World War
II, forges a special relationship with
the actor's former lover (played by
Jeanne Moreau) and in the process
begins to better understand his own
past. The Sky is Falling is the story of

.

Lynne Konstantin is articles editor

at Country Living magazine in
New York City.

1 / 12
2001

72

two orphaned sisters brought in 1943 to stay
with their aunt and uncle (played by Isabella
Rossellini and Jeroen Krabbe) as World War
II rages and Nazi soldiers take up residence
in their villa. The Life of Brian Epstein offers
a fascinating glimpse at the life of the Beatles
manager and features rare early footage of the
Beatles and interviews with Paul McCartney
and many of Epstein's contemporaries.
Four rarely screened archival films also will
be shown. Russian director Noah
Sokolovsky's 1913 silent with intertitles,' The
Life of the Jews in Palestine, is a feature-length
documentary of Jewish settlements in
Ottoman Palestine that was rediscovered in a
French archive in 1997.
Israeli director Julius Pinschewer's ani-
mated short Hatikvah (1949) illustrates
the Jewish journey from the Diaspora to
early Israeli statehood. Austrian filmmaker
Otto Kreisler's 1921 silent with
intertides, The Wandering Jew

(a.k.a. The Life of Theodore
Herzl), is a film biography

about the founder of modern
Zionism. Swiss director
Leopold Lindtberg's 1945
quasi-documentary-style fea-
ture The Last Chance, about
three Allied soldiers reluc-
tantly helping a group of
Jewish refugees to find refuge,
was co-winner of the Palme
d'Or at the first Cannes Film
Festival.
Two American films will receive
their world premieres. Close to
Home (2000), by German film-
maker Georg Hartmann and
Jewish American filmmaker Abby
Kirban, tells the story of the pair's
travels across Germany, exploring
the conflicts that have faced both
Germans and Jews since World
War II. Director Paula Levine's
video short Convergence (2000)
offers a distinctive view of the
Western Wall in Jerusalem and
its visitors.
Receiving their U.S. premieres
are A Trial in Prague (2000),
Czech filmmaker Zuzana

