CONEY ISLAND

Greek and American Cuisine
OPEN 7 DAYS A WEEK

154 S. Woodward. Birmingham
(248) 540-8780

Halsted Village
(37580 W. 12 Mile Rd.)
Farmington Hills
(248) 553-2360

6527 Telegraph Rd.
Corner of Maple (15 Mile)
Bloomfield Township
(248) 646-8568

4763 Haggerty Rd. at Pontiac Trail
West Wind Village Shopping Center
West Bloomfield
(248) 669-2295

841 East Big Beaver, Troy
(248) 680-0094

SOUTHFIELD SOUVLAKI
CONEY ISLAND
Nine Mile & Greenfield
15647 West Nine Mile, Southfield
(248) 569-5229

FARMINGTON SOUVLAKI
CONEY ISLAND
Between 13 & 14 on
Orchard Lake Road
30985 Orchard Lake Rd.
Farmington Hills
(248) 626-9732

NEW LOCATION:
525 N. Main
Milford
(248) 684-1772

UPTOWN PARTHENON
4301 Orchard Lake Rd.
West Bloomfieid
(248) 538-6000

HERCULES FAMILY RESTAURANT
33292 West 12 Mile
Farmington Hills
(248) 489-9777
Serving whitefish, Iamb shank,
pastitsio and moussaka

II•11 OM MIN

I 0% Off

4/20
2001

74

NMI =I 1M NMI =I =II MI MI

Andrew Goodman was quite the eligible Jewish
bachelor in the 1930s. The heir to Bergdorf-
Goodman, he was good looking, monied, dressed to
the nines and open to adventure.
adventure came
His greatest
and longest
with a whirlwind romance that culminated in mar-
riage to the woman able to win the first divorce in
Cuba, then a hotspot for vacations. His wife, nick-
named Dita, is the anchor for the film about the
family directed by grandson Joshua Taylor.
"I was so entranced with her," says Taylor, 33, who
was raised as a Catholic and made to work in the
family business for a time before it was sold. "She
was a great storyteller, and as she got older, the sto-
ries she'd been telling became truth."
Using more than 60 years of his family's own home
movies, Taylor shows the origins of the family business,
which has been sold although the building remains in
the Goodman stockpile, and documents the parallel rise
of the fashion industry The film also features interviews
with the children of Andy and Nena (Dita) Goodman,
who strip away much of the Bergdorf-Goodman
mythology that has been created over the years.
"This is a real love story," says Taylor, a stage,
screen and television actor who has appeared in a
Michigan production of Antigone. A graduate of
Boston University, where he earned a bachelor's
degree in dramatic studies, Taylor also has worked as
a producer and script consultant.
Taylor decided to do the film after his grandfather,
a University, of Michigan alum, died in 1993. At his
death, he had been married 55 years.
"\XThen the family had the business, everyone's life
was fashion," says Taylor, who dresses casually but
still makes sure he is in nice- clothes. "None of the
Goodmans are Jewish anymore. Everybody's a prac-
ticing Catholic or neutral."
"Dita and the Family Business" will be shown with
Daring to Resist, an award-winning documentary in
which three women recall their lives of resistance in
Holland, Hungary and Poland, 5 p.m. Tuesday, May I.

In addition to those already previewed, this year's fes-
tival will feature other films of note.

• A Tickle in the Heart (12:30 p.m. Sunday, April
29) showcases the history of Jewish music by follow-
ing the Epstein brothers over 50 years. It will be
paired with the animated short Almonds and Wine,
which tells two-thirds of a century of Jewish history
in five minutes. Arnie Lipsey, the short's
producer/director, will appear at the screening.

• Dad on the Run (Cours Toujours) (3 p.m. Sunday,
April 29) is a new French comedy set against the
Pope's August 1997 visit to Paris. Following the bris
of his first child, a bar mitzvah entertainer decides to
bury the foreskin. When he loses it at a construction
site, a wild chase to find it ensues.

• Aviva Kempner's acclaimed documentary The Life and
Times of Hank Greenberg (5 p.m. Sunday, April 29)
welcomes the baseball season and will be paired with
The Schvitz, a look at an unlikely Jewish community in
one of the last traditional steambaths in North America.

• Films about two thrilling escapes from the Nazis
will be shown together 5 p.m. Monday, April 30.
Co-sponsored by the Zionist Organization of
America-Detroit District, a discussion will follow
Exodus 1947, the real story upon which the film
Exodus was based. Visas and Virtues dramatizes
Japanese Consul General Chiune Sugihara's heroic
issuing of thousands of transit visas to Jews in
Kovno, Lithuania.

• Films documenting what happens when cultures
collide include the Oscar-nominated From Swastika
to Jim Crow (2 p.m. Tuesday, May 1), about Jewish
intellectuals who escaped the Nazis and formed an
alliance with historically black colleges in the South.
A discussion with Professor Robert Burgoyne of
Wayne State University and filmmaker Joel Sucher
follows. It will be shown with Oscar and Jack, a film
about identical twins separated during childhood;
one grows up a Nazi, the other an Orthodox Jew.

• The Jew (5 p.m. Wednesday, May 2), a beautifully
photographed Portuguese film, is a harrowing take
on the trials of a suspected marrano.

Receive

Entire Bill

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

caw and the Family Business"• A look at intermarriage.

MIMI =I NM MI NEN al

not to go with any other offer
with coupon
Expires 4/30/2001

`DITA AND THE FAMILY BUSINESS'

I

1

• JCC Director of Jewish Education Rabbi Hal
Greenwald and U-M Dearborn Professor Sidney
Bolkosky will lead a post-film discussion on Train o
Life (5 p.m. Sunday, May 6), a tragicomedy about a
small European village that tries to outwit the Nazis.

• Finally, the festival ends with a restored print of the
groundbreaking 1971 film The Garden of the Finzi-
Continis (8 p.m. Sunday, May 6). Following the
screening, Detroit Free Press critic Terry Lawson will
make closing remarks about the festival. ❑

