24 Jewish Film Festival opens in New York

Creativity of the Jewish writer Isaac Bashevis-Singer is familiar to many from the comedy melodrama “Enemies. Love Story ”directed by Paul Mazursky. The prototype of the protagonist, a charming and amorous immigrant Herman Broder, entangled in relations with women, was, of course, the writer himself, whose novel is the basis of the film.

The new documentary The Muse of Isaac Bashevis-Singer (The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer) for the first time opens the veil of secrecy over the personal life of the Nobel laureate Bashevis-Singer. His books were translated from Yiddish into dozens of languages, and with many translators, a loving writer developed relationships far beyond professional ones.

This tape by Israeli directors Asaf Galay and Shaul Bezer on January 14 opens the New York Jewish Film Festival, the 24-th annual Jewish Film Festival, in New York.

Its organizers, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum, offer viewers 47 films, gaming and documentary, full-length and short, shot in 11 countries and united by a Jewish theme, represented in various genres and angles. 21 film will receive a New York, American or world premiere. The festival will be held until January 29 in the halls of the Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, members of the Lincoln Center entertainment complex.

“I have been working on this project since its inception,” one of the curators of the Jewish Museum Aviva Weintraub, director of the film festival, told Voice of America. - He initially focused on films from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Then it was important, because there was a farewell to communism, and films reflected this process. But every year we expanded our geography with films from Western Europe, Israel and the USA. ”

“At the closing ceremony of the festival,” said Avia Weintraub, “a modern love story, Felix and Meira, by Canadian director Maxim Giroud, will be shown. Hasidka falls in love with an atheist, and the vicissitudes of their "forbidden" love story unfolds against the backdrop of one of the districts of Montreal, where Jewish Jews live. The role of Meira is played by the phenomenal Israeli actress Hadas Yaron, pay attention to her. ”

As Aviva Weintraub stressed, among the festival premieres, the Gett: Process by Vivian Amsalem (Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem) film, nominated by Israel for the Oscar award in the Best Foreign Language Film category, will not go unnoticed. This is the real story of a woman from the Orthodox Jewish community, who for five years sought a divorce from her unloved husband through the courts. According to the religious regulations of the community, this required the consent of her husband. Ronit Elkabetz plays a major role in this drama, which she staged as a director with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz.

The Zionist Idea, co-directors Yosef Dorman and Oren Rudawski, analyzes the birth, principles and evolution of Zionism, one of the most influential and controversial political ideologies of our time. The authors of the film will take part in the discussion, which will be held 25 January.

Another film document, “In the Sky of the Distance” (Above and Beyond), tells the story of a group of American military pilots of Jewish origin, who in 1948 year went to fight in the skies of Israel for the independence of the Jewish state. For the first time will be shown unique shots taken in those days from the board of Israeli fighter aircraft. The film was directed by Robert Grossman, and produced by Nancy Spielberg, Steven Spielberg's sister.

As Aviva Weintraub noted, this year the festival programs have been significantly expanded at the expense of the “side sections”, thematic programs and exhibition projects. Among them are screenings of works by Israeli video artist Keren Cytter, a selection of commercials for “noir films”, an exhibition of anti-war films posters, a midnight show of the Breakn 'cult film Breakin', a master-class of a director and editor Susan Korda and the special screening of the comedy The Bird Cage (The Birdcage), recently deceased by outstanding director Mike Nichols, comes from an immigrant Jewish family. The film was brilliantly played by Robin Williams, also retired last year.

The 25 anniversary of the Jen Is Livingston documentary “Paris Is Burning” (Paris Is Burning) is dedicated to the commemorative display of this film about the carnival gay culture of New York, as well as two more films selected for display by the director himself.

Of course, the Jewish festival could not ignore the theme of the Holocaust. “Let's go!” (Let's Go!), Directed by Michael Verhoeven, is a sharp and merciless analysis of life in Germany in the early post-war years.

“Forbidden Films” directed by Felix Möller is a kind of excursion to the most secret rooms of the German film archive, where the infamous Nazi propaganda films like the Jew Süss are kept.

A well-known Israeli film director Amos Gitai in the Tsili film adapted Tsari’s novel Aharon Appelfeld for the screen about the fate of a young Jewish girl fleeing Nazis in a deep forest near Chernivtsi.

Several films participating in the festival are directly or indirectly connected with Russia, Eastern Europe. Sophie Tucker was born in 1887 in a poor Jewish family in Russia, emigrated to the USA, where she became an icon of theater, radio and television. William Gazeki’s film The Outrageous Sophie Tucker is dedicated to the incredible career of the Queen of Vaudeville.

Hilla Medalia tracked the ups and downs of the famous Israeli duo of film producers and directors Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus. In the documentary The Go-Go Boys, she focuses on the most sensational moments of their international career, including the success of Cannon Films and its painful collapse. We will see in the frame of the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, whom Golan and Globus helped to implement a number of American projects, including The Runaway Train.

Experimental director Bill Morrison followed in the footsteps of his grandfather, who traveled to the Soviet Union in 1927 year and took unique shots in rural areas of Ukraine and Belarus. “Back to the soil” (Back to the Soil) includes these shots, which today are remounted by Morrison in the style of an intriguing and tragic “retro”.

The Russian film “Angels of Revolution” by director Alexei Fedorchenko (“First on the Moon”, “Oatmeal”, “Heavenly Wives of Meadow Mari”) pushes the culture of ancient pagan Samoyeds and the Russian revolutionary avant-garde 20-30 into a whimsically grotesque film collage -y's The Soviet utopia tried, as you know, to combine the incompatible, and this intractable conflict of civilizations and mentalities Fedorchenko reports in her “trademark” style of ironic romanticism.

“This time there was a rather poor selection of films from Russia and Poland for Jewish films,” said Aviva Weintraub. - But I am very proud that we show Alexey Fedorchenko's “Angels of the Revolution”. I appreciate his work. And I am also pleased to announce that we are expecting both Alexei and the leading actors Darya Ekamasova to come to the festival ”.

Source - Voice of America