The 12th Festival
November 29 - December 9, 2001
The 12th Washington
Jewish Film Festival:
An Exhibition of International Cinema
The Washington Jewish Film Festival: An Exhibition of International Cinema is here! Presented by the DCJCC's Morris Cafritz for the Arts and co-sponsored by The Embassy of Israel and Washington Jewish Week, the Festival opens on Thursday, November 29th at the historic Lincoln Theatre, located in the heart of Washington DC, and closes on Sunday, December 9th, 2001. Now in our 12th year, this year's Festival promises to the best yet, with documentaries that will stir the mind, dramas sure to warm the soul, and short films that'll keep even those with the shortest attention span riveted in their seats!
Here's a sneak preview of what you'll see at The Lincoln Theatre, the DCJCC's Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater and other satellite venues throughout DC:
Opening Night Film
The 12th Washington Jewish Film Festival opens on Thursday, November 29th at 7:00pm with the DC premiere of the Swiss-German co-production, Gripsholm.
Xavier Koller's sensuous film plunges the viewer into the decadent, hedonistic world of Berlin cabaret. Thanks to his cheeky chanson lyrics, Kurt, an aggressive journalist and ironic Jewish author, has become something of a star in the revue scene. In what seems to be an endless summer, Kurt and his girlfriend, Lydia, travel to Gripsholm Castle in Sweden where, prompted by his publisher, Kurt is hoping to find the inspiration to create a 'lightweight summer story'. Two friends- passionate flier Karlchen and seductive cabaret singer Billie - soon join the lovers at their idyllic holiday retreat. However, Karlchen's political stance provokes plenty of arguments, while Billie's presence leads to many an erotic disruption. As summer gives way to melancholy fall, political events threaten to engulf Kurt's world. Based upon the semi-autobiographical novel Schloss Gripsholm by brilliant and prolific author Kurt Tucholsky, Gripsholm is a richly hewn piece that immerses the viewer in the time just before the second World War.
Co-sponsored by the Embassy of Switzerland, the Goethe-Institut Washington and in cooperation with the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, the film will be screened at the historic Lincoln Theatre in the heart District of Columbia. Director Xavier Koller has been invited to the screening. A reception at the Lincoln Theatre will follow.
Closing Night Film
On Sunday, December 9th, the Festival comes full circle and closes at the Lincoln Theatre at 7:00pm with the charming French film Once We Grow Up.
Thirty-year-old Simon is at his wits end, trying to juggle his job as a writer, his girlfriend with whom he's trying to have a child, his colorful friends, dodgy parents, not to mention his grandma who has taken to wandering the Paris streets. Add Claire, his alluring pregnant neighbor who has been abandoned by her husband, and you have the ingredients for a witch's brew of comedy and romance. With Matthieu Demy (Jeanne Et Le Garçon Formidable) and Amira Casars (Would I Lie to You?, 2000 WJFF).
This screening is co-sponsored by the Embassy of France and in cooperation with The Alliance Française de Washington, DC. Director Renaud Cohen has been invited to the screening. A Chanukah candle lighting ceremony with plenty of coffee and traditional Chanukah treats will follow at The Lincoln Theatre.
International Features
Imagination is non-linear and memory is not orderly in Jeanine Meerapfel's beautifully languid film, Anna's Summer. Upon readying her inherited family Greek home for sale, Anna is revisited by memories of her own past and that of her Sephardic-Jewish family. She discovers old telegrams from her grandmother and the diaries of her father's first love. All help her to soothe the pain of losing her husband and to ignite the flame of passion between Anna and a mysterious younger man. A unique Greek-German-Spanish co-production, Anna's Summer is alive with the sights, sounds, and smells of the Mediterranean (with Angela Molina, star of Pedro Almodovar's Live Flesh, as Anna).
Dante Desarthe's light comedy, Dad On the Run, is set against the backdrop of the Pope's August 1997 visit to Paris. Jonas (Clement Sibony, star of Taking Wing), a "professional" Bar Mitzvah entertainer, has just become a father for the first time. Because his family is of mixed Sephardic and Ashkenazi heritage, he and his wife are unsure of which ritual to observe for their son's circumcision. Finally, they decide to follow a North African custom which requires Jonas to bury the foreskin. Things take an unexpected turn when Jonas loses the precious bit of flesh after attempting to bury it at a construction site. A madcap chase ensues through the streets of Paris as Jonas attempts to complete his mission.
The iconic hit song of the 1930's, Gloomy Sunday, is the inspiration behind this highly charged romantic drama set in pre-war Budapest. Told in flashback, director Rolf Schübel's film recounts a tragic love between a Jewish restaurant owner László, his beautiful assistant Ilona, and a pianist András who pens this memorable melody. The fragile balance of their ménage à trois spirals out of control -- first with the arrival of Hans, a young German business man who falls in love with Ilona. Later with the outbreak of the war, Hans, now an SS colonel, returns offering Jews free passage out of Hungary in exchange for money
A woman's past and present overlap each other in Martine Dugowson's stirring drama, Louba's Ghosts. Abandoned by her father, young Louba is taken in by a French family in the countryside. Angry and isolated, she latches firmly onto her charismatic friend, Jeanie. When Jeanie steals the object of her affections, the handsome Charlie, Louba feels betrayed and alone again. Fast forward to modern day Paris where fate conspires to bring Charlie, Jeanie and Louba together once again.
Set in the United States at the height of the Red Scare, the riveting film One of the Hollywood Ten boldly retells the true story of Jewish director Herbert Biberman's struggle to continue making films in the face of Cold War paranoia and Blacklisting of the 1940's and 50's. Hauled before Senator Joseph McCarthy's infamous House UnAmerican Activities Committee, Biberman (played by Jeff Goldblum, from The Big Chill) refuses to falsely denounce his fellow filmmakers as communists and, for this refusal, is imprisoned. Jailed with nine other filmmakers, Biberman became part of the group dubbed the "Hollywood Ten".
Taking Wing stars the ruggedly handsome Clement Sibony as Stan Keller, a scrappy Parisian youth who is determined to become an actor. Defying his parents' wishes, Stan quits his job at the family butchery, drops out of high school, and applies to a drama academy. His audition monologue, a matchless interpretation of Al Pacino's speech from The Godfather Part II ("Kay, did you think I'd let you take my children?"), wins him entry to the school but his travails have just begun. Director Steve Suissa's autobiographical film immerses the viewer in a world accented by the love of theater, film and the art of acting.
Set amidst Buenos Aires' Jewish porteño neighborhood of Once, Waiting for the Messiah is a delightful romantic comedy directed by one of the rising stars of Argentine cinema. Twenty-something Ariel is being groomed to inherit his father's kosher restaurant, marry a nice Jewish girl and settle down. Instead, Ariel abandons his close-knit community and takes a night job as a video editor at a cable network. At the same moment, Santamaria, a newly homeless bank employee tries to put his life back together after world stock markets plunge. Their lives overlap when Ariel's tempting bisexual co-worker, Laura, convinces him to work on a documentary about the banker's story. As his affection for Laura grows, Ariel finds himself drifting ever further from, Estela, his longtime neighborhood sweetheart.
Thought-Provoking Documentaries
On a brisk winter morning in a Tel Aviv neighborhood, filmmaker Ruth Walk saw a simple scene unfold before her eyes: perched on a balcony above the street, a dapper old man in a red tie was waving to his seven year-old grandson below. Intrigued by this gentle event, Walk knew she had to make the old man's acquaintance. From that chance meeting came this enchanting film, The Balcony. The man, it turned out, was acclaimed artist Israel Becker, best known for his autobiographical film, Long Is the Road (1947), which was the first film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish point of view. Wading into his home amidst a sea of paintings, Walk soon learned that Becker was an artist still possessed by a great lust for life. Now 83, his balcony has become his new stage from which he and his family testify to the resilience of Jewish life and Jewish culture.
Turning 18 is a significant moment
in a young Israeli's life, for it marks the time when both women and men must
begin compulsory military service. In Company Jasmine, director
Yael Katzir's superb in-the-trenches documentary, 50 female cadets in training
for the prestigious Israeli Women Field Officers School are
shadowed over a grueling five-month period in the field.
The award winning Promises documents the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children during a period of relative calm from 1997 to 2000. Through first hand interviews, Yarko, Daniel, Moishe, Mahmoud, Shlomo, Sanabel and Faraj, all aged between 11 and 13, tell their stories of growing up amid conflict and violence. Deeply insightful and compassionate, directors Justine Shapiro, BZ Goldberg, and Carlos Bolado's film rises above the din of rhetoric, politics and jingoism, thus allowing these children to create and tell their own stories in a time when the need for voices and dialogue is more critical than ever.
Director Sandi Simcha DuBowski's taboo-shattering, Sundance Film Festival winner, Trembling Before G-d, is a measured and powerful documentary that, for the first time, brings to light the subject of homosexuality within the Orthodox Jewish community. Set in Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Miami, Jerusalem and San Francisco, Orthodox Gays and Lesbians speak about their struggles to integrate their deep love of Judaism with the biblical edict that forbids homosexuality.
Shorts and Experimental Films
In Expecting, 17-year-old, rebellious Tzofia is afraid that she's pregnant. To add to her problems, Gila, her older sister, comes home for the weekend. Each of the sisters does a home pregnancy test, but the results get mixed up.
Grief is a moving portrait of a Jerusalem taxi driver who, having just lost his only son, finds himself back at work as usual.
In The Hanged Dog Tree, survivors Zelda and Micha are reunited in Brussels after the war. Together they search for the trail that might lead them to their missing son.
Shaul, a former guitarist and obsessive inventor, is torn between his love for his girlfriend Yael and the war against the electric company that cuts off the power to their house in Minus-Plus.
In Offside, Shahar, a fresh faced army recruit, is confined to his base the weekend before his favorite soccer team plays for the championship. His best friend promises to call him from the game with a play-by-play update when the unexpected happens. Winner of the Wolgin Award for best short film at the 2001 Jerusalem Film Festival.
In The Seventh Day, Matías readies for his Bar-Mitzvah as a severe rainstorm strikes Buenos Aires knocking out power and delaying his already anxious grandparents. They finally arrive at the synagogue, only to be stopped short by security.
In director Ilana Navaro's sun-drenched
short film, They Came to Pick Me Up,
Julia is preparing to leave her beloved city of Istanbul to join her family
in Tel Aviv. As she sorts through the odds and ends of years gone by, she
discovers an old oil painting that's been divided into pieces of which she
has one part. Unable to abandon her past, she embarks on a last minute search
that soon uncovers more than just a missing artifact.
Set at a Jewish wedding, an Italian disco and on the streets of Spain, Three Kisses is an animated interlocking triptych structured like a kiss, with its approach, smack and release.
Mystery and Intrigue
Based upon a story by Israeli author A.B. Yehoshua, Facing the Forest is a crisp film-noir that unleashes a deluge of paranoia from the outset. Alex, an erstwhile graduate student, takes a no-stress job as a fire spotter in Israel's Carmel Forest. Hoping to finish his thesis on the Crusaders, he unwittingly discovers the ruins of a castle built by Eduard La Grand - a 12th Century Christian knight who, it appears may have converted to Islam. He finds an ancient coin that adds more fuel to this archeological fire. Then, Alex unearths more than he bargained for when he stumbles over a dead body which soon disappears from the scene of the crime.
In Time of Favor, the gripping film that won an amazing total of six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture, a plot is hatched that will inflame tensions in the holy city of Jerusalem. Menachem, the commanding officer of an Orthodox soldier's combat unit, is unknowingly drawn into this web of intrigue and is falsely charged with conspiracy. He finds himself torn between his loyalty to his rabbi (actor/director Assi Dayan), his duty as a commanding officer and his love for the rabbi's daughter (Israeli film sensation, Tinkerbell). Joseph Cedar's film provides a unique insight, from an Israeli filmmaker's perspective, of the complicated political landscape in today's Israel.
Yiddish Song and Story
A classic tale of love, fate and mysticism, The Vow, is one of several movie adaptations of the ancient folk tale, The Dybbuk (including director Agnieszka Holland's interpretation from the 2000 WJFF). Two childhood friends make a sacred pact promising a marriage between their unborn children. Competing suitors and clashing ways of life nearly prevent the fulfillment of their vow, but the divine intervention of the prophet Elijah results in a happy ending. One of the last films produced in Europe before the Holocaust, the film captures authentic scenes of Jewish shtetl life, traditional folk melodies and Yiddish love songs.
A unique, bittersweet epic, The Komediant is a look at the history of Yiddish theater through the story of the marvelous Burstein family. Brimming with Yiddish culture, music and song, director Arnon Goldfinger's film charts the family on their amazing journey from Europe, through Israel and South America all the way to New York's Second Avenue.
Divas of the Silver Screen
An amazingly gifted performer who brought Yiddish songs from the shadows of pre-Revolutionary Russia to many of the world's greatest concert stages, nightingale Isa Kremer has been all but forgotten. Nina Baker Feinberg's remarkable documentary, Isa Kremer: The People's Diva, uses archival footage and photos to recover the story of this fabulous performer who, in the face of totalitarianism and despotism, sang proudly in Yiddish the world over.
In Bette Midler: Dirty Girl in a Bathhouse, time travel back thirty years to a chic bathhouse where "the Jewish Tinker Bell" dazzled the demi-monde of New York City. This clip presentation not only pays homage to Miss M, but also critically examines why gay and Jewish audiences perceive Midler as a celebrity icon. Rarely-seen footage will include Bette's appearance at New York's Gay Pride Rally in 1973 and her outrageous stunt to score a $5,000 pledge at the 1975 UJA telethon. Curated by Andrew Ingall of The Jewish Museum, New York.
Identity, Resistance and Rescue
Truth, it is said, is often more fantastic than fiction. In Uncle Chatzkel, Australian filmmaker Rod Freeman learned that this was truly the case when he rediscovered a long-forgotten great-uncle who was still living in his native Lithuania. 95 at the time of filming, Uncle Chatzkel had indeed lived a remarkable life, surviving exile and the Bolshevik Revolution, the Nazi invasion, the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism of the Communist post-war era and break-up. Amidst all of this he became a distinguished linguist and renowned Yiddish scholar. Freedman's film is a small treasure that knits a rich tapestry of history, family and reunion.
The heroic story of Jewish Partisans fighting the Nazis in World War II is an often forgotten slice of 20th century history. In interviews with eleven Jewish Partisans, Director Seth Kramer's quietly powerful film, Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans, honors these young men and women and reveals the story of their dramatic fight for survival in the forests of Eastern Europe.
The Optimists: The Story of the Rescue of the Jews of Bulgaria tells the remarkable, yet little known, story of how fifty-thousand Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust thanks to the efforts of Bulgarian Christians, Muslims, trade unions, Communists, professional guilds and others who sheltered Jews and defied Nazi deportation orders. A special free screening at The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A Family Secret is the fascinating story of Polish citizens who learn, often after living a lifetime as Christians in a Communist nation, that they are indeed of Jewish origin. Trapped between the familiar Polish world and an alien Jewish world, these "new Jews" often find themselves adrift in a country where religion and nationhood are inextricably linked. Filmmaker Ronit Kertsner's gripping documentary introduces the audience to students, homemakers, and even a Catholic priest, who are on a quest to discover the truth about their pasts and its consequences for their future.
Summer In Ivye chronicles the events that took place during one remarkable summer when American choreographer Tamar Rogoff staged an international theater production in a forest outside a remote, dirt road village in Belarus. Bringing together an unlikely mix of actors, dancers, musicians and local townspeople, she created a performance that surrealistically echoed life in the once vibrant Jewish town before World War II. With warmth and humor, the film captures the group's attempt to transcend differences in language, religion and culture in order to tell a moving story of love and loss. With original music by composer Frank London (of the Klezmer-fusion band, The Klezmatics), and performances by renowned Lithuanian actor Kostas Smoriginas and Yiddish theater veteran David Rogow.
Our Festival Catalog will be available for download from this Web site; at the DCJCC; at our theater venues; inserted among the advertising circulars of selected home-delivery copies of The Washington Post on Friday November 16; and inserted into Washington Jewish Week on Thursday November 22. Tickets go on sale to DCJCC members November 15, and to the general public (including online) on November 18.
If you do not receive the Festival catalog in your copies of either of these newspapers and wish to receive a copy by mail, please leave a voice mail at 202.777.3248 AFTER November 16, and we will be happy to send you a copy of the catalog. In your voice mail message, please leave your name and mailing address as well as your email address, so that we may add you to our email newsletter mailing list as well.
Our periodic email newsletter, WJFFnews, is the best way to receive the most information about future events. Only selected events are publicized through paper mailings. In addition to our email newsletter and occasional paper mailings, all events will also be announced in Center in the City (the DCJCC's monthly publication, available to both members and non-members), as well as on this Web site. Sign up for WJFFnews, our email newsletter, today! If you would like to see sample issues of WJFFnews, you can see the latest issues online.
|
Phone, TDD, & Online
ticketing services by
|
 Order securely online through boxofficetickets.com |
 |
Washington
Jewish Film Festival |
Copyright © 1998-2001, District of Columbia Jewish Community Center. All rights reserved.
Redistribution of any part of this World Wide Web site - including film stills, photographs, multimedia clips, logos, graphics, text, and links -- is prohibited without prior written permission from the District of Columbia Jewish Community Center.
Web development and maintenance by DJ Horowitz Consulting and the WJFF
Volunteer Web Operations Team
Graphic design by Circle Studio, Inc.
Web hosting by Web2010, a HostCentric company
a division of WebSideStory
HitBox privacy information