Arts & Entertainment

ON THE COVER

e Jewish Film Festiv
collection of films from around the vvorld,
with something for everyone

Top left: Winner of the fifth annual Sarah and Harold Gottlieb Award for

Contributions to Jewish Culture, Steel Toes asks what it "costs" to be Jewish and

whether it is worth it. Top right: Natalie Portman stars in Israeli filmmaker Amos

Gitai's Free Zone. Bottom right: Jews of Iran is a portrait of a people tyrannized but

rrMIM

Elizabeth Applebaum
Special to the Jewish News

W

hen the Lenore Marwil Jewish
Film Festival made its debut,
100 was a very good number.
Organizers had less than four months
to pull off the whole festival. In that time
they arranged for 15 films to be shown in
Metro Detroit, and they sold a nice num-
ber of tickets. Still, a crowd of 100 in any
theater was great news.
This year, some of the 46 films showing
at the ninth annual Lenore Marwil Jewish
Film Festival are likely to be so crowded it
could mean front-row seats only.
Milton "Bud" Marwil would have been
pleased.
Marwil had been looking for a way
to honor the memory of his wife. The
two had adored movies, and Bud wooed
Lenore by taking her to the best of the
silver screen. There, with the glorious
images of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman,

„mil at home nowhere else.

Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart
before them, lush velvet curtains on the
side, balconies ornate and austere over-
head, Lenore and Bud fell in love.
When Lenore died, "Bud wanted to do
something to memorialize his wife says
Film Festival Director David Magidson.
In 1998, Marwil approached the Jewish
Community Center with a donation for
a film festival to be named in his wife's
memory.
Magidson was a natural choice to serve
as director. A professor of theater at Wayne
State University who has directed numer-
ous plays throughout Metro Detroit and
a volunteer at the JCC, Magidson began
by assembling a dedicated cast of volun-
teers who also loved films. Early support
came from Film Festival Chairmen Mindy
Sable and Mark Chessler, soon followed
by Martin Hollander, Susan Marwil and
Nancy Glass Kanat.
Bud Marwil, meanwhile, was off to
see the world. At 90 years old, he set out

alone in his car and headed for California.
It was now or never: see the world and
visit friends, he decided. He died in 2002,
which gave him time to see the Film
Festival become a masterpiece. Within
a few years, Magidson and his crew had
created the fifth-largest Jewish film festi-
val, after Toronto, San Francisco, Boston
and San Diego, in North America, and
one of the largest in the world. (England,
you might imagine, has one — but so do
Mexico, Iceland and Hong Kong.)
"Every year we see growth and even
more enthusiasm:' says Film Festival
Chairman Betty Pernick. "People tell us
they are waiting for the names of the films
to be announced."
Pernick is working to oversee more than
120 volunteers this year — volunteers
who come back time and again.
Pernick herself began volunteering
at the first film festival, which she says
provides not only the opportunity to see
great movies but "to be part of a venue

where members of the Jewish community
can get together and meet and experience
Jewish life in so many different ways. This
is a community event that Detroit very
much needs, and it has been fun watching
it grow and become a major event:'
"Working on this festival has been a
very interesting and enjoyable experience,'
added Film Festival Assistant Frannie
Shepherd-Bates. "It is a joy to be a part of
such an enthusiastic and involved Jewish
community."

The Jewish World
Despite the preponderance of Jewish pro-
ducers and studio heads, few of the early
movies had much Jewish content. Like
other immigrants, Jews just wanted to fit
in, to be American like everyone else. No
one wanted to seem "too Jewish:'
Today, though, many films are decid-
edly Jewish, and about being Jewish and,
according to Magidson, they all share
common ideals.

Dreams Come True on page 45

44

April 19 • 2007