• ' Me 44 Z 4 tmGi —IWO( RPS'r1" 1 1, 2-1758 MEDITERRANEAN 40 410 It , GRILLE e:L ) 410 WEDNESDAYS- V2 OFF ALL OUR MEDITERRANEAN BOTTLED WINES $5.99. DAILY LUNCH SPECIALS SOUP AND SALAD OR SANDWICH STARTING AT SAVE TIME AND CALL AHEAD TO PLACE YOUR DINE-IN LUNCH ORDER. had come from Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia or Darfur, would we be watching films about genocides in their countries? Sharon Rivo, executive director of the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, is convinced that personal ties and far* experi- ences strongly influence laer pro- fessional decisions. "At least once a week I get a pitch by someone who feels that he or she must make a film about parents or grandparents who survived the Holocaust:' Rivo said. Even as consummate a profession- al as Steven Spielberg believes that personal background counts. Well before the release of Schindler's List, he told JTA that he learned to count numbers by tracing the scratches on the forearm of a survivor befriended by his parents. Suber holds a strongly divergent view, asserting that ethnic or other kinds of sentiments play no role in the tough, bottom line-obsessed entertainment business. Forty years ago, tackling the subject in a study on the interaction between Jewish culture and film culture, he con- cluded there was none. The Eastern European immigrants who founded the film industry went out of their way to downplay their Jewishness, he recalled. Even today, Suber maintained, "Hollywood Jews are secular Jews; they are American businessmen who don't put their race or religion first." Whatever the reason, a new wave of Holocaust films can and will soon be found in a theater near you. • In theaters now is Inglourious Basterds. Pitt is the leader of the ferocious band of American Jewish GIs, and writer-director Tarantino infuses the film with his stylized camera work and violence — his GIs don't take prisoners but slowly scalp the German soldiers or crack their skulls with baseball bats. • A slyer and less bloody satiri- cal fantasy about turning the tables comes from Germany in Dani Levy's My Fuhrer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler. With the Third Reich crumbling, Hitler's henchmen figure that only a fiery speech by the Fuhrer on New Year's Day 1945 can rouse the German masses and turn the tide. But Hitler is in a funk, locked in his room, and only the great acting coach Adolf Grunbaum, currently in a concentration camp, can restore the dictator to his old form — and in the process extract his own form of revenge. The German import, previously seen in this country at a number of Jewish film festivals, is in the midst of opening its first American theatrical run in various cities. • Due in the fall is Four Seasons Lodge, a feature documentary about a community of Holocaust survivors who come together in New York's Catskill Mountains every summer to celebrate their lives. • In Tickling Leo, three genera- tions of a Jewish family, with roots in Hungary and branches in New York and Israel, try to connect its members to one another. The key to their reconciliation involves the still controversial World War II Rudolph Kastner Affair, in which a Jewish leader bargained with Adolf Eichmann, the "architect of the Holocaust:' for the lives of 1,000 community leaders in return for money and supplies for the Nazi war machine. • Being Jewish in France details the love-hate relationship between the French and their Jewish compa- triots from the anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s to the present. Excellent archival footage strength- ens the focus on the World War II era, when the Vichy government and the French police did much of the dirty work for the German occupi- ers. The three-hour documentary is now on the film festival circuit but is worthy of wider theatrical distri- bution. • Denmark, which saved nearly all of its 7,500 Jews, contributes Flame & Citron, based on the true story of two legendary Danish resistance fighters who sabotaged the Nazi occupiers and assassinated their local collaborators. Waiting in the wings are two com- pleted independent films on little- known aspects of the war. • Karin Albou's Wedding Song follows the story of two 16-year-old Tunisian girls, one Muslim and the other Jewish, whose lifelong friend- ship is tested by the six-month Nazi occupation of their country. • About Face is a well-researched documentary by Steve Karras about young Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who fought their one-time tormentors by join- ing the U.S. Army and an elite British commando unit. Pi • USTOMER I 0 OCY OFF ENTIRE BILL &a rats alcohol. auc and gratuity. ton•-in or carry out. Must have coupon. 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