The 12th Festival
November 29 - December 9, 2001
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 29, 2001
Contact: Jennifer L. Katz
301-365-0660
[email protected]
GERMAN-SWISS FILM
GRIPSHOLM
BASED ON LIFE OF GERMAN WRITER KURT TUCHOLSKY
OPENS 12TH WASHINGTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
39 films · 22 countries · 5 venues · 10 days
WASHINGTON, DC -- The 12th Washington Jewish Film Festival: An Exhibition of International Cinema presents 39 features, documentaries and shorts from 22 countries, in five venues, during the Nov 29 – Dec 9, ten-day Festival. The Festival kicks off November 29 at 7 pm with the DC Premiere of the German-Swiss film Gripsholm at the historic Lincoln Theatre (1215 U Street NW). Based upon the semi-autobiographical novel "Schloss Gripsholm" by brilliant and prolific author/ journalist Kurt Tucholsky, Xavier Koller’s sensuous film Gripsholm plunges the viewer into the decadent, hedonistic world of Berlin cabaret. Special Guest Swiss Director Xavier Koller will be in attendance at the film and at the post-screening reception at the theatre.
Now in its 12th year, the Washington Jewish Film Festival is one of the largest Jewish film festivals in the world. The Festival has presented more than 200 films on the Jewish experience from 30 countries. An audience of 7,000-plus is expected to attend this year’s extraordinarily diverse Festival. In addition to Lincoln Theatre, the remainder of the Festival screenings will be presented in the Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater at the DC Jewish Community Center (16th & Q Streets NW); 4000 Wisconsin Avenue 6 Cinemas (4000 Wisconsin Avenue NW), National Museum of Women in the Arts (1250 New York Avenue NW), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW). For the third year, an Audience Award will be presented for the Best Feature Film and Best Documentary. The winning films will be announced at the closing night reception.
Program Highlights: Closing Night Film: Once We Grow Up, a charming French comedy directed by Renaud Cohen, who will attend the December 9th 7 pm screening and post-film reception at The Lincoln Theatre. · Enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the Mediterranean, in Jeanine Meerapfel's visually stunning Anna's Summer, starring the exquisite Angela Molina. ·
See the late show starring the Divine Ms. M in the outrageous Bette Midler: Dirty Girl in A Bathtub - A Video Clip Presentation by Andrew Ingall (Sat, Dec 8, 11 pm) · Waiting for the Messiah is a delightful romantic comedy directed by Daniel Burman, one of the rising stars of Argentine cinema. · A tragic love song leads to heart-break among the ménage à trois in the romantic drama Gloomy Sunday, starring Ben Becker (starred in The Harmonists). · Elsa Zylberstein (star of Man Is Woman) stars in Martine Dugowson's (dir of Mina Tannenbaum) stirring French drama Louba's Ghosts. · One of the last films produced in Europe before the Holocaust, The Vow captures authentic scenes of Jewish shtetl life, traditional folk melodies and Yiddish love songs, while telling the classic tale of love, fate and mysticism as adapted from Anski's ancient folk tale the Dybbuk. · Director Sandi Simcha Dubowski's taboo-shattering, Sundance Film Fest 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. Special Guests Sandi Simcha Dubowski, Director and Rabbi Steve Greenberg, the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi will attend this special screening.
Based on true stories . . . Jeff Goldblum and Greta Scacchi star in One of the Hollywood Ten, 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. · Director Steve Suissa’s autobiographical film Taking Wing stars the ruggedly handsome Clement Sibony (also stars in Dante Desarthe's comedy Dad on the Run) as Stan Keller, a scrappy Parisian Al Pacino-esque youth determined to become an actor.
Israeli features and docs . . . The award-winning Promises documents the lives of Israeli and Palestinian children during a period of relative calm from 1997 - 2000. Deeply insightful and compassionate, Directors Justine Shapiro, B.Z. Goldberg and Carlos Bolado's film allows the children to create and tell their own stories in a time when the need for voices and dialogue is more critical than ever. · Time of Favor, the recipient of six Israeli Academy Awards including Best Picture. Assi Dayan stars in this gripping film about a plot hatched that will inflame tensions in the holy city of Jerusalem. · Based upon an A.B. Yehoshua story, Facing The Forest is a crisp film-noir that unleashes a deluge of paranoia from the outset. · The Komediant is a unique, bittersweet epic about the history of Yiddish theater and the Burstein family.
Director Seth Kramer and Miles Lerman, Chairman Emeritus, US Holocaust Memorial Council and former member of a Jewish partisan unit, will lead a dialogue following the screening of Resistance: Untold Stories of Jewish Partisans, the story of thousands of Jewish men and women in the lands which are now Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia who were saved by their fellow Jews (Tues, Dec 4, 6 pm, Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater). · Meet Uncle Chatzkel, great uncle of Australian filmmaker Rod Freeman. Still living in his native Lithuania after more than 95 years, Uncle Chatzkel has lived a remarkable life, having survived exile and the Bolshevik Revolution, the Nazi invasion, the Holocaust and the anti-Semitism of the Communist post-war era and break-up.
Documentaries and shorts directed by women . . . Directors Tamar Rogoff and Daisy Wright will introduce their remarkable doc Summer in Ivye which brings together dancers, actors, musicians and townspeople as they try to recreate a performance that surrealistically echoed life in the once vibrant Jewish town of Belarus before WWII. · Special Guest Director Yael Katzir introduces Company Jasmine, a superb in-the-trenches doc that for five months follows 50 female cadets in training for the prestigious Israeli Women Field Officers School. · Visit with acclaimed artist/actor Israel Becker in Ruth Walk's The Balcony, and meet the subject of Nina Baker Feinberg's Isa Kremer: The People's Diva, a fabulous performer who, in the face of totalitarianism and despotism, sang proudly in Yiddish the world over. · Director Elida Schogt (directed last year's Zyklon Portrait) uses photographs saved by her family as they fled Europe during WWII in The Walnut Tree. · In Still (Stille), Director Wendy Oberlander uses archival footage and montages of faces to look back to the world of assimilated European Jews during the 1930’s. · A search for identity drives both Ronit Kertsner's A Family Secret, 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; and Caterina Klusemann's Matrilineal, in which the filmmaker discovers she is not of Venezuelan-Polish Catholic ancestry, but rather the descendent of Holocaust survivors.
Two Saturday Night Shorts Programs bring us laughter, tears, anguish, ecstasy and ambivalence. · Jewish Briefs I – A Shorts Program (Sat, Dec 1, 10 pm, Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater; replays Mon, Dec 3, 1 pm, Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater) includes six shorts from around the world. From Israel - Grief · Offside; from Argentina - The Seventh Day; from France - They Came To Pick Me Up; from USA - Packing For Two · Three Kisses. -- Jewish Briefs II – A Shorts Program (Sat, Dec 8, 8:45 pm, Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater) includes six more shorts from around the world. From Israel - The Bicycle · Expecting · Good Morning Cinderella · Minus-Plus; from Belgium - The Hanged Dog Tree; from Canada - Passengers.
Free Program: The Optimists: The Story of the Rescue of the Jews of Bulgaria. Award-winning filmmaker Jacky Comforty's family was among the fifty-thousand Bulgarian Jews that 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. (Sun, Dec 2, 2pm, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum -- to reserve seats call tickets.com at 800-400-9373) Co-sponsored with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and supported by a grant from The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation; the Embassy of Israel and the Embassy of Bulgaria.
For Festival Catalog: The 24-page Festival Catalog will be inserted in the Friday, November 16th edition of The Washington Post (on top of the weekend section with the circulars) and in the Thursday, November 22nd edition of The Washington Jewish Week. The catalog can also be downloaded from the web site -- www.wjff.org, and can be picked up at the DCJCC and other Festival venues.
Ticket prices: Opening Night: $25; Closing Night: $20 film, music, wine; $8 evenings & weekends; $5.50 weekdays (before 6 p.m.); Seniors & Students receive $1 discount off regular ticket price. Tickets go on sale November 18 (priority ticket purchasing for DCJCC members and Film Fest Funders on November 15th and 16th ).
To Order Tickets: Box Office
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For information: www.wjff.org or 202-777-3248.
The Washington
Jewish Film Festival: An Exhibition of International Cinema
is presented by The District of Columbia Jewish Community Center’s
Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts
and co-sponsored by the Embassy of Israel &
Washington Jewish Week.
PHOTOS · SCREENING TAPES · INTERVIEWS · AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
FOR ELECTRONIC IMAGES, PLEASE CONTACT JENNIFER KATZ ([email protected])
FOR ACCESS TO SECURED PRESS/PHOTO PAGES
###
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.
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