At The Movies

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SundancelSchmoozeDanc

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Director Marc Levin
enjoyed the opening-night
slot at Sundance's
neighboring Slamdance
festival this year with
"Brooklyn Babylon,"
a black-Jewish "Romeo
and Juliet" inspired
by the "Song of Songs."

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NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles

111

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This year's Sundance Film Festival has
a decidedly Jewish twist.

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ove over Sundance, Slamdance, Digidance
and Nodance.
The two-week showbiz schmooze-fest in
Park City, Utah, which runs through Jan.
28 and includes competing festivals in addition to the
venerable Sundance, is traditionally a launching-pad for
Jewish indie cinema, and is now home to
SchmoozeDance, a forum for Jewish filmmakers, journal-
ists, observers and studio
execs to celebrate Jewish film.
"Since everyone's schmooz-
ing at Sundance, I thought
the Jews should, too," says
founder Larry Mark.
Mark has dedicated the last
five years of his life to Jewish
cinema. A circulation marketer
at the New York Times by day, the movie buff was annoyed
by the ubiquitous stereotypes he heard about Jewish film.
"It was, 'Oh, Jewish cinema — that's Fiddler on the Roof
or Holocaust stuff-,"' he says. "But there's so much more."
Mark proved his point by starting JewishFilm.com , the
online Jewish film archive; there are now some 800 list-
ings, including past Sundance entries like Boaz Yakin's A
Price Above Rubies and Darren Aronofsky's TC.
To keep his site current, Mark compulsively studies
Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and worldwide film festi-
val lineups. (He's also the editor of MyJewishBooks.com .)
Now he's turning his attention to Park City. "I've
always wanted to go to a film festival," explains the affa-
ble Mark, who's using his New York Times vacation time
to attend the Park City fests.

SchmoozeDance is starting small. This year, it was an
oneg Shabbat and Kiddush sponsored by JewishFilm.com
on Friday, Jan. 19, at Park City's only shul, the Reform
Temple Har Shalom.
"I even had yarmulkes made up that say
`SchmoozeDance at Sundance,"' says Mark, who invited
everyone from Village Voice critic J. Hoberman to
Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein.
In 2001, movies to watch at Sundance have included
Michael Apted's Enigma, based on Robert Harris' best-
selling novel about Britain's elite team of code-breakers

facing their worst nightmare in March 1943: Nazi U-
boats unexpectedly change their enigma code, endanger-
ing a merchant shipping convoy of 10,000 men.
Sundance opened with Birmingham, Mich., native
Christine Lahti's My First Mister, a March-October
romance starring Albert Brooks and Leelee Sobieski. The
festival also premiered Divided We Fall, about a Czech
family that harbors an escapee from Theresienstadt; the
documentary Ralph Bunche: An American Odyssey, about
the life of the remarkable African-American mediator of
the 1949 Arab-Israeli armistice; and Trembling Before G-
d, a highly anticipated documentary about gay and les-
bian Orthodox Jews by Sandi Simcha DuBowski.
Then there's director Marc Levin, winner of the 1998
Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Slam, a lyrical feature about

