News 11/1/2000

The 11th Washington Jewish Film Festival: An Exhibition of International Cinema opens on Thursday, November 30, 2000 with the DC Premiere of the award-winning Italian film The Sky Falls (Il Cielo Cade), starring Isabella Rossellini and Jeroen Krabbè. Co-sponsored by the Italian Cultural Institute and the Embassy of Italy, the film will be screened at the historic Lincoln Theatre. Directors Andrea and Antonio Frazzi and writer Lorenza Mazzetti have been invited for this special screening. Additionally, DC Mayor Anthony Williams will be present at the screening.

The Sky Falls, based on Lorenza Mazzetti's autobiographical novel, begins in summer, 1943, when two young orphaned girls are brought to Tuscany to stay with their aunt (Isabella Rossellini) and uncle (Jeroen Krabbè). Jeroen Krabbè shines in his role as a German Jewish intellectual, and cousin to Albert Einstein. With measured sensitivity, Isabella Rossellini brings grace to her role as Krabbè's wife. After the first moments of awkwardness, the girls fit right into the peaceful life of the house. The time goes by happily, but the violence of the war, until that moment just a remote echo, will fall on this family with all its cruelty and pointless ferocity.

The Festival closes at the Lincoln Theatre on December 10th with the Czech dark comedy Divided We Fall, directed by Jan Hrebejk. In a small Czech village during World War II, a childless couple, Josef and Marie Cizek (played by award-winning actor Boleslav Polivka and Anna Siskova), hides their former neighbor, a young Jewish man who has managed to escape from the death camps but has lost his entire family. Their other neighbor, now a enthusiastic Nazi collaborator, drops by at odd hours and begins to suspect. The collaborator's German boss, shattered by the death of his young sons in the war, announces that he is moving into the couple's spare room, and to keep him out the wife blurts out she is pregnant and needs it for a nursery. Suddenly, the barren couple needs to somehow become pregnant in a hurry and you can see where this is going. Divided We Fall is a remarkable mixture of comedic and dramatic elements a la Life is Beautiful with some of the best production values yet seen in a Czech film. (Film note by Eddie Cockrell.) A reception at the Embassy of the Czech Republic will follow.

In addition to the DCJCC's Cecile Goldman Theater, this year's Festival will be presented at the following venues: The Lincoln Theatre, Visions Cinema-Bistro-Lounge, Foundry Theatres, and free screenings at the Goethe-Institut Washington and the National Gallery of Art.

Below are some of the highlights of the more than 45 titles to be presented this year.

FEATURES
In September 1991, a group of skinheads attacks a foreign worker's hostel in Germany. The same night, a neo-Nazi leader is shot and killed. Michael Rosenzweig is the primary murder suspect in Rosenzweig's Freedom. His brother Jacob, a young attorney, takes on his defense. Passion, art and politics fuel Disparus, a fascinating drama that moves back and forth in time as a woman tries to solve the mysterious disappearance of Alfred Katz: working man, Trotskyite and poet- in Paris in the late 1930's. The Dybbuk is a luminous retelling of the famous Yiddish folktale of a wandering soul in search of an earthly body. From Agnieszka Holland, the director of Europa, Europa (1991); Olivier, Olivier (1992); and The Secret Garden (1993). Set in Poland in the late 19th century, Simon Magus is a dark fable of love demonology, and supernatural business practices. Simon Magus (Shine's Noah Taylor) is an outcast possessed by his strange dreams and visions who becomes the key in a struggle to build a railway station in the town that will bring the village into the modern era. Poland. Paris. Tel Aviv. Voyages, the new film from acclaimed director Emmanuel Finkiel (Madame Jacques Sur La Croisette), follows the lives of three seemingly unconnected elderly Jewish women across borders and cultures as they search for reconstructed or new lives. What does it take to pass as a Jew? Set in The Sentier, Paris' Tunisian-Jewish garment district, Director Thomas Gilou's whimsical, romantic comedy, Would I Lie To You? explores this confounding question when Edouard a down-on-his-luck gentile, is mistaken for a Jew. Starring renowned Israeli actor Moshe Ivgi (Cup Final, Lovesick on Nana Street), Aaron Cohen's Debt is a powerful, fact-based, Israeli TV drama of police brutality and bureaucratic ineptness. In the chilling drama After The Truth, 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." Inspired by the real life experiences of English stockbroker Nicholas Winton, who saved nearly seven-hundred Czech Jewish children in 1939, All My Loved Ones focuses on the Silberstein family, a loving, extended Jewish family, as they navigate the rapids and doldrums of life in Eastern Europe.

DOCUMENTARIES
A photo of a young child in her father's desk. A mysterious letter received from Romania. Beginning with these scant clues, Family Secret reveals how American filmmaker Pola Rapaport discovered 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. Jan Weiner and Arnost Lustig (local Professor) join forces and retrace the steps of a 25-year-old Weiner's courageous journey through Europe. Presumed to be lost for 80 years, the 1913 film The Life Of The Jews In Palestine resurfaced only recently when it was discovered in the vaults of France's national film archive. Shot by Russian documentarian and active Zionist Noah Sokolovsky, the film depicts Jews planting, sewing seeds, constructing schools and laboring side by side to build the nation that would become Israel. This film will be screened for free at the National Gallery of Art. 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 to attend this program. One of the most significant, yet often forgotten, legal fights of the twentieth century, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy reexamines the story of nine black youths, defended by a New York Jewish attorney, who were unjustly accused of raping two white women in Alabama in the '30's. With three intimate narratives (a group of teens at a summer camp, a young woman in an interfaith relationship, and a Baltimore mother's quest for spirituality), local filmmaker Michelle Brafman-Helf's American Lives: Jewish Stories focuses on the challenges and joys of being Jewish in America. Celebrating aging in a youth obsessed culture, 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. Set during the height of the Cold War, A Trial In Prague tells the story of an infamous Czech show trial of fourteen leading Communists who were tried on charges of high treason and espionage. Although they were innocent of these charges, they confessed, and the fourteen men, eleven of whom were Jews, were all convicted. We Were In It Too: American-Jewish Women Veterans Remember World War II: Director Debora Duerksen's documentary traces the fascinating experiences of eight Jewish-American women who served in uniform in World War II.

SHORTS & EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
In the short Babcha, Dror, a hip, third generation Israeli, is the caregiver for his grandmother (Babcha). With the help of a motorcycle, a trip to the beach and much black humor, they both try to cope with the past. A five-minute animated short, Almonds and Wine is a delightful story about the immigrant experience in North America. Set to the rollicking music of KAPELE, one of today's leading exponents of the current Klezmer revival. Israeli chicken breeder, Marziano, arrives at a Palestinian checkpoint just as it's declared closed. Temperatures and tempers soar in Cock Fight, as an argument ensues to reopen the checkpoint. A collage of sounds, Jewish imagery and languages, Geographie is a short experimental film that examines the nature of Jewish geography. Canadian animator Caroline Leaf's The Metamorphosis Of Mr. Samsa is a superb sepia-toned interpretation of Kafka's nightmarish story. In the moving short Return of Tuvia directed by Akiva Potok, the aged Tuvia walks into a watch store in search of employment. Instead, the barrier between past and present is swept away as the shopkeeper is faced with a stunning revelation. One Day Crossing: Budapest, Hungary. October 1944. As the Hungarian Nazi movement Arrow Cross grows stronger, a young mother poses as a Christian to protect her son. Yet, this charade is challenged when her husband invites another Jewish boy into hiding. King of the Jews: After inadvertently catching a sneak preview of The King Of Kings at Radio City Music Hall as a young boy, documentary filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt was inspired to craft this visually arresting 18-minute short that recounts the historical origins of Christian anti-Semitism. Based upon a story by writer Mordecai Richler (author of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz" and "Joshua Then and Now"), animator Caroline Leaf's The Street is a bittersweet tale about sibling rivalry, aging grandparents and "other mysteries of the human heart." The Maelstrom is a remarkable experimental film by Hungarian artist Pèter Forgács (Free Fall). Home movie footage made by the Dutch Jewish Peereboom family from 1938-1942 is used to reconstruct the family's everyday lives, emotions and feelings. In Under Control, Hadar, a young army officer, goes navigating in the desert with one of his soldiers. In the course of the expedition they discover some new facts about their shared past and Hadar is put to the ultimate test. A haunting dance suite, Zummel (gathering in Yiddish) is a metaphorical search for escape, liberation and arrival as six black clad figures are set adrift in this short choreographed by Allen Kaeja. Director Elida Schogt's film Zyklon Portrait is a personal and powerful experimental film that meshes home movies, archival instructional films, underwater photography, family snapshots and hand painted imagery to create an elegy for her Dutch grandparents. From Israeli-born, Paris-based Eyal Sivan, comes The Specialist (Un Specialiste), a controversial black and white documentary about Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and one of the most famous trials in history.

ISRAELI FILMS
Through a series of cat and mouse games, Noam Wax, the charismatic leader of an Israeli Army communal living experiment, gathers six former members back to their one time mountain settlement in Last Resort. His purpose is to complete a documentary film about the settlement that will help him overcome the trauma and scars left over from those days. It Will End Up In Tears… is a touching story of how a tight-knit Argentinean-Israeli family copes and comes to terms with their daughter's homosexuality. The documentary provides an intimate and compassionate portrait of one young woman's coming out story set amidst the cultural and social upheavals of modern day Israel. Director Amos Gitai's (Kadosh, WJFF 1999) latest film Kippur is an image-driven, autobiographical chronicle of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. "Early scenes in no way prepare the viewer for the extraordinary realism of the battle front material, which is stunningly staged by Gitai and his team." (Variety) In the wake of a rape, a young ultra-orthodox woman awaits the Rabbinical court's decision whether her husband must divorce her. Directed by an orthodox woman, Cohen's Wife is a provocative, modern-day portrait of a couple torn by religious dogma and familial devotion. "A complex, often haunting emotional drama about a woman who identifies a wild-eyed young man with her dead son, The Lost Lover is at the same time a heartfelt affirmation of the need for Jews and Arabs to live in peace. Based upon A.B. Yehoshua's novel." (Variety)

MOSTLY MUSIC
Jazzman From The Gulag retraces the life of legendary jazz musician Eddie Rosner, a man of Polish Jewish descent nicknamed the "White Louis Armstrong" by Mr. Armstrong himself. The Weintraubs Syncopators began their career in 1920s Berlin and quickly became one of the most sought-after Jazz bands in Berlin. Weintraubs Syncopators presents the career of this mostly Jewish ensemble, including performances in some of the greatest concert and music halls, as well as in the legendary film Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich. Vulcan Junction covers a week in the lives of a group of friends just before the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Featuring a cast of talented Israeli screen and TV stars, the film is a nostalgic trip back in time before the county was engulfed in a conflict that would forever change it. The Brian Epstein Story traces the rise and fall of the man behind the biggest cultural revolution of our times: The Beatles. Their manager Brian Epstein's early life was fraught with failures. As both a gay man and a Jew he felt doomed to be an outsider. Falling in love with The Beatles rescued him as much as it catapulted them into stardom.

Our Festival brochure will be available at our Festival Venues and inserted into Washington Jewish Week on Thursday, November 16 and the "Weekend" section of selected home delivery issues of The Washington Post on Friday, November 17.

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, send an email to [email protected] or fill out our online mailing list request form after November 17, and we will be happy to send you a copy of the catalog. In your voice mail or email 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. Be sure to see our program corrections.

Our periodic email newsletter, WJFFnews, is the best way to receive the most information about future events. Only selected events will be 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 and The Screening Room area of the DCJCC's Web site. If you would like to see sample issues of WJFFnews, you can see the latest issues online.