20 April 18 • 2019
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Questions?

Email Sy Manello at 
smanello@renmedia.us 
or call him at 248-351-5147.

Free Listing Submission 
Deadline is May 10, 2019.

The Jewish News will honor all Jewish 
students who are graduating this spring from 
Michigan high schools in our Cap & Gown 
Yearbook 2019, which will be published 
in the May 25 issue.

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friends from West Bloomfield, 
MSU and work. It’
s moments like 
that that make LA feel like a warm, 
welcoming second home. 
Still, I miss Michigan every day. 
I do hope to go back and produce 
another indie feature there soon. 

WHAT MOVIES HAVE 
YOU WORKED ON?
I have worked on Youth in Revolt 
and Miley Cyrus’
 LOL as well as 
Iron Man 3, Batman v Superman 
and two Transformers films.

NEW MONEY DIRECTOR JASON KOHL 
IS ALSO FROM MICHIGAN. HOW DID 
YOU TWO CONNECT?
Jason and I had done a short film in 
2012 and, in 2014, he approached 
me about producing his first 
feature-length film. It’
s crazy to 
think that was almost five years ago 
… It’
s amazing how long the process 
is. 
We filmed in Lansing and the 
Detroit area in 2016. It was an 
intense 21-day shoot with no 
margin for error. It was tough — 
we had to be focused and well 
planned. I’
m really proud of what 
we accomplished. 

WHAT FEEDBACK HAVE YOU 
RECEIVED FROM FILM FESTIVALS?
The response from film festivals has 
been really great. This was the first 

time I did the film festival thing. 
At first, I was intimidated, but 
people aren’
t there to be critical or 
exclusive. Most just want to talk and 
get to know other filmmakers. 
We premiered New Money at 
the Black Nights Film Festival in 
Tallin, Estonia, in 2017. That was 
pretty incredible. Here we have this 
small movie that takes place in mid-
Michigan and we are screening it in 
this Baltic country. You could tell 
it was resonating beyond cultures, 
which was really something to see. 
Then, we premiered New Money 
at the Newport Beach Film Festival 
in 2018. And last fall, the film won 
the Audience Choice Award for 
Best Narrative Feature at the Indie 
Memphis Film Festival. 
Like any art, movies are 
constantly humbling because you’
re 
always going to have people who 
don’
t like what you create. And 
that can get to you and make you 
question if it’
s something you 
should be doing. I think festivals are 
important because, from what I’
ve 
experienced, people there are very 
supportive. 
At Memphis, someone came 
up to me after our screening and, 
knowing this was my first time 
producing, told me they loved 
the film and that I should keep 
doing it. Those moments are really 
necessary. ■ 

Davidoff continued from page 18

Elkus continued from page 18

What will students who take your 
class walk away knowing?
OE: I’
m currently rummaging for 
material for this course, trying 
to weave together the threads of 
Yiddishland to create the fullest por-
trait of this evasive place, a place that 
exists in the summit between every 
Yiddishist’
s imagination. 
This will be a language and culture 
course teaching Yiddish through 
the artistic and political movements 
of (mostly) 19th- and 20th-century 
Ashkenazic Jews, giving students 
the linguistic knowledge to fur-
ther unearth the Yiddish lexicon 
for themselves. Subjects covered: 
Yiddishland, Yiddish dialects, 
Yiddish linguistic theories, Yiddish-
American slang, classics, satire, 
folksongs, poetry, theater, film, 
socialism, communism, anarchism, 
Yiddish expressionism and intro-
spectivism, Yiddish and Hebrew, 

Yiddish and German, and Yiddish 
and Israel.
My hope is that students will be 
properly inspired by this course to 
both mine the relics of our Yiddish 
past and forge our Yiddish future. I 
believe if we understand Yiddish, we 
understand our history and, without 
exaggeration, we understand our-
selves. Yiddishland gets lonely and we 
would love the company! Let culture 
be the fuel for the vehicle of language 
and language the road to the temple 
of culture! ■

Classes will be Sundays in May (5, 
12, 19 & 26) and June (2, 9, 16 
& 23) from 2:30-3:30 p.m. at the 
Downtown Synagogue. Everyone 
is welcome. A $10 donation is 
suggested. To register, send an 
email to ollieelkus.gmail.com.

