FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 2000
Contact: Jennifer L. Katz
301-365-0660
[email protected]

WASHINGTON, DC -- The 11^th Washington Jewish Film Festival: An Exhibition of International Cinema presents 45 features, documentaries and shorts from 13 countries, in six venues, during the Nov 30 – Dec 10, ten-day Festival. The Festival kicks off November 30^th with Opening Night at the Lincoln Theatre (1215 U Street NW), where Directors Andrea and Antonio Frazzi will introduce the US Premiere of the award-winning Italian film The Sky Falls (Il Cielo Cade), starring Isabella Rossellini and Jeroen Krabbè. A touching and poetic family saga set against the stunning backdrop of 1940s Tuscany, Italy, this film is based on the autobiographical novel by Lorenza Mazzetti, "Il Cielo Cade." Ms. Mazzetti will also be in attendance for this special screening. Additionally, Mayor Anthony A. Williams will make brief welcoming remarks. Immediately following the 7 pm screening, there will be a wine reception at the Lincoln Theatre.

Now in its 11^th 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. Not only will the size of the audience grow, but this year the Festival will add two new venues. In addition to the Lincoln Theatre, the remainder of the Festival screenings will be presented in the Cecile Goldman Theater at the DC Jewish Community Center (16^th & Q Streets NW); the Loews Cineplex Foundry Theatres in Georgetown (1055 Thomas Jefferson Street NW); Visions Cinema Bistro Lounge (1927 Florida Avenue NW); the National Gallery of Art (4^th Street & Constitution Avenue NW); the Goethe-Institut Washington (814 Seventh Street NW). For the second 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: Divided We Fall, a Czech dark comedy directed by Jan Hrebejk (Cosy Dens), December 10 at 7 pm at The Lincoln Theatre, followed by a reception at the Embassy of the Czech Republic (3900 Spring of Freedom Street NW). · Agnieszka Holland introduces the US Premiere of her made-for-Polish-TV version of The Dybbuk, a luminous retelling of S. Ansky’s famous tale of a wandering soul in search of an earthly body. Local Filmmaker Aviva Kempner will introduce Ms. Holland. · Inspired by the real life experiences of English stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly seven-hundred Czech Jewish children in 1939, Director Matej Minac’s visually stunning film, All My Loved Ones, focuses on the Silberstein family, as they navigate the rapids and doldrums of life in Czechoslovakia. ·

Filmmaker Pola Rapaport will be in attendance at the screening of her documentary Family Secret, a film which reveals Ms. Rapaport’s discovery of a half brother whose existence was kept a secret by their father. · Fighter is a powerful combination of friendship, adventure, and the inner strength of two friends whose different paths, 50-years earlier, lead to collisions along the way today. Arnost Lustig, Author and American University Professor will be in attendance.

Following the screening of After The Truth, Director Roland Suso Richter and Marc Fisher, The Washington Post Columnist, former Berlin Bureau Chief and Author of "After the Wall: Germany, the Germans and the Burdens of History," will have a dialogue about this chilling drama in which Josef Mengele is delivered to present-day Berlin, where he is forced to stand trial for the atrocities which afforded him the title "Auschwitz's Angel of Death." · Another film about moral responsibility and the "banality of evil" is Eyal Sivan’s The Specialist, a controversial black and white experimental documentary about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. This film will be preceded by Director Elida Schogt’s short Zyklon Portrait, a personal and powerful experimental film that meshes home movies, archival films, underwater photography, family snapshots and hand painted imagery to create an elegy for her Dutch grandparents. ·

Another experimental doc comes from award-winning Hungarian Director Pèter Forgács, who creates an unsentimental yet personal journey, in The Maelstrom, with the help of home movie footage and a haunting score from composer Tibor Szemzo. · This film is paired with first time Director Joan Stein’s (she will attend Dec 3 only) One Day Crossing, a stunning short set in the tumultuous closing years of the Second World War, when a mother is faced with the moral decision of saving another mother’s child. ·

Hailed as one of America’s last great comic strips, Ben Katchor’s "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer," is familiar to readers of alternative weekly papers throughout the nation. With Katchor as our guide and narrator, Pleasures Of Urban Decay takes the viewer on a tour behind New York City’s facades and through its cracks. Filmmaker Sam Ball and Ben Katchor will attend this program. ·

In Liliane Targownik’s Rosenzweig’s Freedom, two Jewish brothers must fight the growing wave of extreme rightist violence in 90s Germany. · Disparus, a film about passion, art and politics. · Simon Magus, a dark fable of love, demonology, and supernatural business practices, starring Shine’s Noah Taylor. · Voyages, a French film that follows three women as they take their separate journeys through Poland, Paris and Tel Aviv. · Would I Lie To You?, a whimsical, romantic comedy surrounding a man who’s mistaken as a Jew, and does all he can to hide the truth. ·

Israeli features and docs include: Aaron Cohen’s Debt, a powerful, fact-based, Israeli-TV film starring the popular Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy. · US Premiere of "It Will End Up In Tears. . ." is Director Gonen Glaser’s touching and compassionate story of how the Talapers, a tight-knit Argentinean-Israeli family, copes and comes to terms with their daughter Maria’s homosexuality. · Amos Gitai’s award-winning film Kippur is a powerful autobiographical chronicle of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. · Director Aner Preminger will attend the screening of Last Resort, a psychologically gripping film about one man’s trial to exorcise the demons of his past. · Inspired by Abraham Yehoshua’s novel, The Lost Lover is a multi-layered dramatic love story. · Eran Riklis’ (Cup Final) Vulcan Junction covers a week in the lives of a group of musicians just before the 1973 Yom Kippur War. · A deeply personal journey through one of the world’s most spiritual places, Fragments*Jerusalem takes an epic voyage through Jerusalem. In seven chapters, this experimental doc reveals the history of the city through clips, footage, personal accounts, and reflections of Filmmaker Ron Havilio. This six-hour program can be screened either in its entirety or in independent segments. (Sun, Dec 3, 1 pm, Foundry Theatres, $10) ·

A special women’s program entitled "Transitions in Traditions" will include the following panelists: local filmmaker Michelle Brafman-Helf (American Lives: Jewish Stories - three separate stories focusing on the challenges and joys of being a Jewish woman in America); and Co-Director/Co-Producer Miriam Chaya (Timbrels And Torahs: Celebrating Women’s Wisdom - introduces "Simchat Hochmah" or "Celebration of Wisdom," a new rite of passage ceremony created for Jewish women making the transition from mid-life to their elder years), and moderator: Rabbi Tamara Miller, Director of Jewish Living and Learning, DCJCC. (Sun, Dec 10, 2:45 pm, Cecile Goldman Theater) ·

Writer/Producer/Director Zuzana Justman will introduce her film A Trial In Prague, the story of an infamous Czech show trial, at the height of the Cold War, at which fourteen leading Communists were tried on charges of high treason and espionage. Although innocent, they confessed, and the fourteen men, eleven of whom were Jews, were all convicted. · Director Debora Duerksen attends the screening of We Were In It Too: American-Jewish Women Veterans Remember World War II, a documentary tracing the fascinating experiences of eight Jewish–American women veterans who served in uniform in World War II, amidst the anti-Semitism and sexism of the times. ·

A special Saturday night shorts program entitled "Jewish Briefs: A Shorts Program" (Dec 9, 10 pm, Cecile Goldman Theater) includes 10 shorts from around the world. From Israel -- Babcha · Cock Fight · Under Control · Cohen’s Wife; from Germany -- Geographie; from Canada – Zummel · and Canadian animator Caroline Leaf’s The Metamorphosis Of Mr. Samsa · The Street; from the USA -- Return of Tuvia; from France -- Madame Jacques sur la Croisette.

In addition to Vulcan Junction, other music-related films include: Jazzman From The Gulag, which retraces the life of legendary jazz musician Eddie Rosner; a man nicknamed "White Louis Armstrong" by Mr. Armstrong himself. · US Premiere of Weintraubs Syncopators, the doc about the career of one of the most sought-after Jazz bands in 1920s Berlin. (free programs) · The Brian Epstein Story traces the rise and fall of the man behind the biggest cultural revolution of our times – The Beatles.

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