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Israel / 2006 /106 minutes / Hebrew with English subtitles / Director: Dina Zvi-Riklis Sat. showing followed by THREE MOTHERS, Mon. showing followed by THE TOLLBOOTH, Tues. and Wed. showings followed by IT'S ABOUT TIME Sat. showing Following WEST BANK STORY  A stunningly beautiful, evocative tale of family relationships
at their best and worst. Full of twists and turns and fabulous
singing, Three Mothers traces the lives of the Hakim sisters,
triplets who were born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1942. The sisters
were blessed by King Farouk of Egypt and given the names
of fflowers: Rose, Flora and Yasmin. Today, they live together in
a Tel Aviv apartment under a cloud of unhappiness. One sister
is a former cabaret singer who dreams of a comeback.
Another is a retired midwife. The third is in dire need of a kidney
transplant. In fashbacks spanning six decades, the women
reveal the truth about their harrowing family history. Sponsored by the Bunis Family Cultural Arts Fund in memory of Anne and Louis Bunis and Maer Bunis. |
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Israel / 2005 / 22 minutes / Hebrew with English subtitles / Director: Ari Sandel Sat. showing followed by THREE MOTHERS, Mon. showing followed by THE TOLLBOOTH, Tues. and Wed. showings followed by IT'S ABOUT TIME  A little singing, a little dancing, a lot of hummus.
A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food
world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank.
David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with the beautiful
Palestinian cashier, Fatima, despite the animosity
between their families’ dueling restaurants. Can the
couple’s love withstand a 2000 year old conflict and
their families’ desire to control the future of the chick pea
in the Middle East? |
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USA / 2006 / 15 minutes / English / Director: Tiffany Schlain Sunday and Thursday shows followed by PAPER DOLLS, Tuesday showing followed by HINEINI  What can the most successful doll on the planet show
us about being Jewish today? Narrated by Peter Coyote,
THE TRIBE combines old school narration with a new
school visual style. The film skillfully weaves together
archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas,
and slam poetry to take audiences on an electric ride
through the complex history of both the Barbie doll and
the Jewish people from Biblical times to present day.
By tracing Barbie’s history, the film sheds light on what
it means to be an American Jew in the 21st Century. |
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Israel / 2006 / 80 minutes / Hebrew, English, Tagalog (subtitled) / Director: Tomer Heymann Following THE TRIBE  A thoughtful and poignant look at people whose lives
redef ine the conventional notions of gender, family and
love. Throughout the world, struggling people cross
borders illegally to f ind work and make a better life for
themselves. But only Israel has a population of illegal
Filipinos of indeterminate gender who are home care
providers for the elderly Orthodox. This documentary
follows f ive such men, refugees from families that reject
them, who have made a home in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most
swinging city. Close friends, they spend their evenings
on stage as the drag queen ensemble, Paper Dolls.
They express mixed attitudes toward Israel, which they
f ind less sexually repressive than the Philippines, but
also more materialistic and bureaucratic. The Filipinos
are ineligible for Israeli citizenship and their visas can be
revoked if they lose their jobs. Most are ffluent in Hebrew and have learned to ignore the occasional stares. |
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UK / 1998 / 11 minutes / English / Filmmakers-directors: Orly Yadin & Sylvie Bringas Followed by OUT OF SIGHT  Award winning animated drama-documentary.
SILENCE is an extraordinary and moving tale of Tana
Ross, “a miracle child” who survived the concentration
camps. Five-year-old Tana was sent to join relatives in
Sweden where she was forbidden to ask questions
about the fate of her mother or to speak about her own
experiences. She tells her story for the first time in this
animated drama-documentary. One of the main themes
of this short film is apathy and active disinterest of
neutral countries in the experiences of people who have
gone through the horrors of war. The Swedish
government purchased 900 copies of the film to
educate youth after a survey showed that 60% of
Swedish teenagers thought the Holocaust never existed. |
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Israel / 2005 / 86 minutes / Hebrew with English subtitles / Director: Daniel Syrkin Sun. showing following SILENCE  An intense, engrossing mystery. Ya’ara, an attractive
and bright Israeli young woman, has just begun her
Ph.D. in Mathematics at Princeton University.
Upon hearing of the suicide of her cousin and best
friend, Talia, she rushes back to Israel. Blind from birth,
Ya’ ara is able to process facts that sighted persons
around her cannot, and she works to understand why
Talia took her own life. Bit by bit, in this powerful story,
she uncovers the secrets in Talia’s life, and reaches a
stunning conclusion. |
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France / 2005 / 94 minutes / French, Hebrew with English subtitles / Director: Karin Albou  A spiritually sensitive and creative film about Judaism,
faith and sexuality. In a Paris suburb dubbed “Little
Jerusalem,” a family of Sephardic Orthodox immigrants
shares a low-income apartment. Beautiful, intellectually
inquisitive Laura distances herself from her family’s religion,
as well as from her own burgeoning desire, by devoting
her energies to secular philosophy. Mathilde, Laura’s older
married sister, worries that strict observance of the Torah’s
marital codes has driven her husband, Ariel, into the arms
of another woman. When Mathilde realizes her fears are
true and Laura falls under the spell of Djamel, a handsome
Muslim journalist, the two very different sisters f ind
themselves in similar crises. A film of graceful delicacy and
luminous sensuality, LA PETITE JERUSALEM subtly depicts
the search for sexual and spiritual identity taken by two
modern women raised in an ancient faith. |
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France & Israel / 140 minutes / 2005 / Hebrew, French, Amharic with English subtitles /
Director: Radu Mihaileanu  An intricate story that deals intelligently and sensitively
with the complexities of race and religion in a rapidly
changing world. The epic story of an Ethiopian boy who
is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel in 1984
during Operation Moses. Shlomo is plagued by two big
secrets: He is neither a Jew nor an orphan, just an African
boy who survived and wants, somehow, to fulfill his
Ethiopian mother’s parting request that he “go, live, and
become.” The boy is adopted by a loving, liberal Israeli
family. He passionately embraces the Jewish faith.
He also discovers love, Western culture, along with racism
and war in the Occupied Territories. Ultimately, he finds an
identity and a happiness all his own. |
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Uruguay / 2004 / 94 minutes / Spanish with English subtitles / Directors: Juan Pablo Rebella & Pablo Stoll  A perversely funny story of two Jewish brothers set in
Montevideo, Uruguay. Jacobo, a lonely sock factory
owner, hears about the impending visit of his
irritatingly cheerful brother that he hasn’t seen in
years. Desperate to prove his life has added up to
something, Jacobo enlists his faithful assistant Marta
to pretend to be his wife. The story unfolds as these
three characters take a short vacation in a decadent
seaside resort. Their contrasting personalities provide
much of the cultural nuances in this bittersweet tale.
A film with masterfully understated performances,
awkward silences, visual surprises, and bizarre
connections between the characters. |
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USA / 2006 / 82 minutes / Hebrew, Yiddish, English / Director: Lisa Leeman Following SILENCE - Discussion to follow Monday showing  Examines the complex and emotionally charged issues surrounding assimilation and interfaith marriage in a Jewish-American family. This documentary follows three generations of family being torn apart by conflicts over interfaith marriage. The indomitable matriarch, Leah Welbel, and her husband, Eliezer, both survived the Auschwitz concentration camp. Now, as her grandchildren stray from their Jewish heritage, Leah f inds herself in a painful family rift, torn between rejection and acceptance of assimilation. She has not spoken to her grandson, Danny, since he married a non-Jew six years ago. She maintains a tense relationship with her granddaughter, Cheryl, who also decides to marry outside the faith. With intimate access to the family’s most personal strife, director Lisa Leeman followed Leah, her children and her grandchildren for several years. The result is a documentary that challenges both Jews and non-Jews with an exploration of conflicting loyalties and the wrenching consequences of family estrangement. |
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USA / 2004 / 84 minutes / English / Director: Debra Kirschner Following WEST BANK STORY  A wonderfully honest coming of age film and portrait of
a loving family stuck between tradition and modernity.
Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan, TOLLBOOTH is a
coming-of-age film about three close sisters and the
disapproval they face from their traditional Jewish
parents. The story is told through the eyes of the
youngest daughter, Sarabeth, a struggling painter just
out of art school, whose revolutionary act is to move
across the East River into Manhattan. Though she
would like to rebel, she is forced to learn from her family:
her loud-mouthed mother, her philosopher quoting
father, her lesbian medical student sister, and her
self-sacrif icing sister. The film exudes the true warmth
and pain of trials within the family with a hilarious edge.
The family f inally embraces their differences in this highly entertaining film. |
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Israel / 2001 / 52 minutes / Hebrew with English subtitles / Directors: Elona Ariel & Ayelet Menachemi Following WEST BANK STORY  The story of the improvised management of time since
the unplanned birth of the Israeli state. IT’S ABOUT TIME
is a brilliant portrait of the Israeli psyche and the notion
of time in general. The film uses a humorous approach
to question the value of time in Israeli society, and
contains comments from different kinds of people on
the nature of time. In this mosaic of dialogues with a little
girl, a psychiatrist, an Olympic swimmer, a news editor, a
lifeguard, a stand-up comic and other Israelis, Middle
Eastern time coexists with Western time, Jewish time rubs
shoulders with secular time. From the moment of birth,
man is timed. But for Israelis, time ticks double speed -
pursued by a glorious past, an uncertain future, and a
dubious present. In this land of compelling diversity,
everyone-without exception-marches to the beat of time. |
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England & Canada / 2005 / 86 minutes / English, Hebrew, Arabic / Directors: Andrew Quigley & Steven Silver  A harrowing, riveting depiction of the reality beyond the
news headlines. The diameter of a bomb is a circle
without end. In June, 2002, the explosion of a suicide
bomb on an Israeli bus shook the nation.
This documentary combines Israeli army forensic
footage, Hamas military video, the bomber’s home
movie footage, and stunning filming across Israel and
the Palestinian territories. With unprecedented access,
the filmmakers took their cameras inside Israeli prisons,
commando units, Palestinian refugee camps, and
hospital trauma wards as they followed the diameter of
the bomb and its awful trajectory of human suffering.
DIAMETER OF THE BOMB is part thriller as it follows
Israeli police, secret service, and military as they try unsuccessfully to prevent the attack, and then mercilessly
track down the terrorist cell behind it; and part mystery, as friends and relatives struggle to comprehend the
tragedy, and to piece back together fragments of their own lives and of loved ones killed in the blast. |
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Hineini: Coming Out In A Jewish High School USA / 2005 / 60 minutes / English / Director: Irena Fayngold Following THE TRIBE Discussion to follow  An engaging portrait of a pioneering teen activist. Hineini (Hebrew for “Here I Am”) chronicles the story of one student’s courageous fight to establish a gay-straight alliance at a Jewish high school in the Boston area and the transformative impact of her campaign on everyone involved. Shulamit Izen enters 9th grade longing to connect more deeply with her Jewish faith. She also starts school as an out lesbian. Using interviews with Shulamit, her family, teachers, and other students - both those who support her campaign and those who oppose it - the film allows the members of this community to express their feelings candidly. What emerges is a potent story of Jewish pluralism and a community navigating the cross-currents of Jewish tradition and social change |
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England & France / 2004 / 130 minutes / English / Director: Giacomo Battiato Sponsored in part by the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo  He holds a secret that could save a generation.
Amidst the terror of the Second World War, Maria Von
Gall organizes the evacuation of Jews from France
using funds deposited in Swiss bank accounts.
Sensing that her freedom is threatened, Maria trains
her brilliant 11 year-old son Thomas in survival tactics
and entrusts him with a secret list of bank codes.
Thomas soon becomes the target of ruthless professor
Gregor Laemelle, a Nazi collaborator who will do
anything to gain possession of the codes. And, with
his enemy closing in, Thomas' training will truly be
tested as the key to an entire race remains embedded
in his memory. |
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USA / 2006 / 117 minutes / English / Director: Richard Berge, Bonni Cohen, Nicole Newnham Sun. SPECIAL CLOSING DAY screening ( $10 Tickets include all day gallery admission)  The epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during World War II. In a journey through seven countries, the film takes you into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that nearly wiped out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with a campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. Today, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collections recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of spoils of war. Joan Allen narrates this breathtaking chronicle about the battle over the very survival of centuries of western culture. Best Documentary Feature, 2006 Boston Jewish Film Festival |
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