Tag Archives: new york jewish film festival

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL: THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK

The Prince and the Dybbuk makes its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival

THE PRINCE AND THE DYBBUK (Piotr Rosolowski & Elwira Niewiera, 2017)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Wednesday, January 10, 2:45, and Thursday, January 11, 9:00
Festival runs January 10-23
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.org
prince-dybbuk.com

The New York Jewish Film Festival gets under way January 10 with an intriguing look at enigmatic filmmaker Michał Waszyński, the director of one of the most important Yiddish movies of all time, the 1937 supernatural tale The Dybbuk. In The Prince and the Dybbuk, directors Piotr Rosolowski and Elwira Niewiera find that discovering who Waszyński was is like chasing a ghost, as he continually reinvented himself while being haunted by a past he tried to erase. Like the characters in many of the films he produced and directed, he was constantly searching for his true identity as he journeyed from Poland and Germany to Italy and Spain. “He was in his world, so mysterious and exciting. Nobody really knows what he’s really like,” one of his assistant directors, Enrico Bergier, says. Throughout the eighty-minute documentary, friends, relatives, colleagues, and others describe Waszyński, who produced and/or directed nearly 150 films, as a gentleman, Jewish, Catholic, noble-minded, lonely, elegant and refined, an exceptional boss, generous, isolated, very smart, a larger-than-life character, an aristocrat, a bit strange, and a mythomaniac. He married a countess, dubbing himself the Polish Prince, and took one of his actors, Albin Ossowski, to gay restaurants. “He was longing for his youth,” Ossowski says. He hobnobbed with Orson Welles, Sophia Loren, Audrey Hepburn, and Claudia Cardinale. He appeared in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1954 film, The Barefoot Contessa. He was singled out by Josef Goebbels as an enemy. He was involved with such 1960s blockbusters as El Cid and The Fall of the Roman Empire as well as smaller Eastern European films, most famously The Dybbuk, about a young bride possessed by a spirit. Rosolowski and Niewiera, who previously collaborated on the award-winning Domino Effect, include newsreel footage, family photos, home movies, a behind-the-scenes promotional piece narrated by James Mason about the making of Anthony Mann’s budget-busting The Fall of the Roman Empire, spoken excerpts from Waszyński’s diaries, and clips from such Waszyński films as His Excellency the Shop Assistant, Unknown Man of San Marino, Dvanáct kresel, Gehenna, Wielka Droga, Zabawka, and Znachor, many of which feature lost characters.

Enigmatic filmmaker Michał Waszyński (in red shirt) plays cards in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Barefoot Contessa

Waszyński was born Moshe Waks in the village of Kovel in Poland (what is now Ukraine) in 1904 and later changed his name to Michał Waszyński and converted to Catholicism. Even when facts are revealed about him, there is no evidence about why he did the things he did in his personal life. “To me he was a great magician. He lived in a dream world, because cinema is a dream,” explains Maurizio Dickmann, a member of the Italian family that took him in. Later, in an Under the Flag of Love radio broadcast, Waszyński explains, “I do what I love. Cinema is my passion and it stimulates my intellect. . . . To me, film is like a second reality, subject to completely different rules. In a split second, a king can become a shepherd or a beggar a rich man.” His diaries divulge a dark side about his search for who he is and who he was as he transformed himself from shepherd to king. “My city vanishes from my mind, as if the place of my youth had never existed,” he writes. “But I can never rid myself of you. You were the one who abandoned us. Although, even now, in my dreams and when awake, you return to me every night, like a stab to the heart. You drive deep inside me. Like an evil spirit, you circle around me.” Waszyński was chased by spirits his entire life — he passed away suddenly in 1965 — and turned to the movies for answers, which only led to more questions. Named Best Documentary on Cinema at the Venice Film Festival, The Prince and the Dybbuk is making its U.S. premiere at the New York Jewish Film Festival, screening at the Walter Reade Theater on January 10 at 2:45 and January 11 at 9:00, preceded by Daria Martin’s short film A Hunger Artist, based on the Franz Kafka story. The January 11 screening will be followed by a Q&A with Rosolowski, Niewiera, and Martin. A copresentation of the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the festival, which runs January 10-23, is also showing the world premiere of a brand-new restoration of The Dybbuk on January 14 and 17.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL: THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

The women have a bone to pick with a new rabbi in Emil Ben-Shimon’s THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

THE WOMEN’S BALCONY (Emil Ben-Shimon, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, January 14, 7:00, and Tuesday, January 17, 3:30
New York Jewish Film Festival runs January 11-24
212-875-5601
www.nyjff.org
www.filmlinc.org

Judaism may be matrilineal, but that doesn’t mean that women are treated as equal to men, especially among sects espousing fundamentalist religious beliefs, although women are considered holier than men in Orthodox communities. In Emil Ben-Shimon’s absolutely wonderful debut feature, The Women’s Balcony, that all comes to a head when wives, mothers, girlfriends, and daughters, relegated to a balcony in the back of a small, local shul — as if on a pedestal, farther away from the Torah but closer to G-d — come crashing down when the structure breaks, suddenly putting them on the same level as the men. It’s no coincidence that this happens during an Orthodox bar mitzvah, when a boy becomes a man, which is much different from an orthodox bat mitzvah, when a girl becomes a woman. When a fundamentalist rabbi from a nearby congregation offers to help rebuild the Mizrahi synagogue, the place of women in the shul are far from his main concern, leading to a furious and delightful battle of the sexes. With the elderly Rabbi Menashe (Abraham Celektar) flustered because the accident has left his wife in a coma, Rabbi David (Avraham Aviv Alush) is only too happy to step in, demanding further separation between the men and the women, which causes problems for such couples as gabbai Aharon (Itzik Cohen) and Tikva (Orna Banai); mild-mannered Nissan (Herzi Tobey) and Margalit (Einat Sarouf); and warmhearted shopkeeper Zion (Igal Naor) and Etti (Evelin Hagoel), who have a terrific marriage and equal partnership until things start changing at the shul. Meanwhile, everyone is hoping that Yaffa (Yafit Asulin) finds the right man as she expands her dating search, until she and Rabbi David’s assistant (Assaf Ben Shimon) take an interest in each other, a potential Romeo and Juliet romance.

Not even the Passover seder can bring order to the chaos surrounding the reconstruction of a synagogue in THE WOMEN’S BALCONY

The Women’s Balcony was written by first-time screenwriter Shlomit Nehama, Ben-Shimon’s ex-wife, who was inspired by the religious extremism she saw in an Israeli neighborhood where she had once lived. The film evokes such sweet-natured favorites as Local Hero and Waking Ned Devine as well as Aristophanes’s Lysistrata as the women fight for their rights. Ben-Shimon (Mimon, Wild Horses) maintains an infectious pace throughout, as cinematographer Ziv Berkovich puts the audience right in the middle of the action, accompanied by Ahuva Ozeri and Shaul Besser’s playful, Jewish-flavored score. Naor and Hagoel are outstanding as Zion and Etti, the emotional center of the film, a lovely couple with a bright view of life, at least until exclusion and sexism get in the way. Asulin is excellent as Yaffa, the young woman who is part of the next generation of Judaism — and who is not extremely knowledgeable about her religion. But even when situations are at their most tense, Nehama and Ben-Shimon keep it all lighthearted; if only more religious (and marital) disputes could be handled with such grace and wit.

Nominated for five Israeli Academy Awards, including Banai for Best Supporting Actress, Rona Doron for Best Costume Design, Vered Mevorach for Best Makeup, the late Ozeri (who passed away last month at the age of sixty-eight) and Besser for Best Score, and Alush for Best Supporting Actor, The Women’s Balcony is screening January 14 and 17 at the New York Jewish Film Festival, with Ben-Shimon participating in a Q&A after both shows. The twenty-sixth annual New York Jewish Film Festival, a joint production of the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, runs January 11-24, with more than three dozen programs, from new fiction and nonfiction films to special tributes to Valeska Gert and the duo of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder and a master class with Israeli documentarian Tomer Heymann.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT: MOON IN THE 12th HOUSE

Mira (Yuval Scharf) returns home but younger sister Lenny (Yaara Pelzig) is not yet ready to have her back in her life in MOON IN THE 12th HOUSE

MOON IN THE 12th HOUSE (Dorit Hakim, 2016)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. at Amsterdam Ave.
Wednesday, January 11, 3:30 & 9:00
New York Jewish Film Festival runs January 11-24
212-875-5601
nyjff.org
www.filmlinc.org

The 2017 New York Jewish Film Festival opens with the tender, emotionally wrenching Moon in the 12th House, the debut feature by Dorit Hakim, who won the 1998 Silver Lion for Best Short Film for her eleven-minute Small Change. Hakim, a journalist and filmmaker who was born in Tel Aviv, lived for several years with her husband, Israeli hi-tech success Shlomo Kramer, in Silicon Valley, then moved back to her homeland. For her first full-length work, she reaches deep into her Israeli youth to tell the story of two sisters separated by tragedy when they were girls. Now adults, the vain Mira (Yuval Scharf) works in a glitzy Tel Aviv nightclub, where she does drugs and sleeps with her selfish, mean-spirited boss, Doron (Gal Toren). Her younger sister, twenty-one-year-old Lenny (Yaara Pelzig), has chosen to remain in the family home in the country, taking care of their ailing father (Avraham Horovitz), who is in an assisted living facility after a stroke. Lenny, who goes for a precious swim every day to temporarily escape her overwhelming responsibilities, is also watching her neighbor’s teenage son, Ben (Gefen Barkai), while his artist mother is away. Long estranged, the sisters are reunited when a desperate Mira suddenly shows up on Lenny’s doorstep, but as much as Mira might need her, Lenny is not yet ready to accept her back in her life. “It’s not as easy for me as it is for you,” Mira says, not understanding the sacrifices that Lenny has made, part of the reason why they are estranged.

Lenny (Yaara Pelzig) takes care of her ailing father (Avraham Horovitz) in debut feature by Dorit Hakim

Inspired by events from her life but not wholly autobiographical, Moon in the 12th House is a fragile, delicate film; it feels as if it could break at any moment, echoing how the sisters exist on a psychological precipice. Writer-director Hakim never makes things simple, avoiding clichéd plot twists as details emerge about what tore Lenny and Mira apart. Scharf (Ha-Emet Ha’Eroma, Ana Arabia) and Pelzig (Policeman, Good Family) have a strong chemistry, whether they’re fighting or cuddled together in bed. The film is beautifully photographed by Amit Yasur (The Slut, Next to Her), with a warm, spare soundtrack by Ishai Adar (Mr. Gaga, Bethlehem). Nominated for six Israeli Oscars — Scharf for Best Supporting Actress, Toren for Best Supporting Actor, Yasur for Best Cinematography, Li Alembik for Best Costume Design, Vered Mevorach for Best Makeup, and Adar for Best Music — Moon in the 12th House is screening at the Walter Reade Theater on January 11 at 3:30 and 9:30, with each show followed by a Q&A with Hakim and Scharf. The twenty-sixth annual New York Jewish Film Festival, a joint production of the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, runs January 11-24, with more than three dozen programs, from new fiction and nonfiction films to special tributes to Valeska Gert and the duo of Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder and a master class with Israeli documentarian Tomer Heymann.

FÉLIX AND MEIRA

Meira (Hadas Yaron) takes a long, hard look at her life in Maxime Giroux’s FELIX AND MEIRA

FELIX AND MEIRA (FÉLIX ET MEIRA) (Maxime Giroux, 2014)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema
1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts.
Opens Friday, April 17
212-757-2280
www.felixandmeira.com
www.lincolnplazacinema.com

Named Best Canadian Feature at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival and the closing-night selection of the 2015 New York Jewish Film Festival, Maxime Giroux’s Félix and Meira is a somber, reflective tale starring Israeli actress Hadas Yaron as Meira, a young married woman who is feeling trapped by the constraints of the Hasidic world in which she lives in Montreal’s Mile End district. Her husband, Shulem (Luzer Twersky), is a devout man who follows the tenets of his religion; he and Meira sleep in separate beds, and he seems more intent on ritualistically washing his hands in the bedroom than touching his wife. One morning, while pushing her daughter in a stroller, she is approached by Félix (Martin Dubreuil), a conflicted man whose father just died so he is seeking advice about God and death. Meira tells him to leave them alone, but soon Félix and Meira are meeting in secret, and when Shulem finds out about it, he ships Meira off to Brooklyn. Félix goes after her, wanting to take their relationship to the next level as Meira considers her responsibilities to her husband, her daughter, and herself.

Félix (Martin Dubreuil) and Meira (Hadas Yaron) are both looking for something more in Canadian drama set in Hasidic world

Félix and Meira is a subtle, slow-moving tale that avoids genre clichés, keeping the details tantalizingly vague and mysterious. There’s not a lot of humor in the film; instead, there’s an ominous, moody cloud hanging over everything, the story bordering just on the edge of passion without ever exploding. Yaron (Fill the Void) plays Meira with a dark foreboding, while Dubreuil (Bunker, Ressac) and Twersky (Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish, Where Is Joel Baum?) work well as adversaries who want Meira in their life, albeit for different reasons. Cowriter and director Giroux (Demain, Jo pour Jonathan) doesn’t force any issues, maintaining a low-key approach that is intensified by an overall palette of blacks, whites, and grays.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL: THE GO-GO BOYS

Documentary looks into the life and career of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus

THE GO-GO BOYS: THE INSIDE STORY OF CANNON FILMS (Hilla Medalia, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Thursday, January 29, 1:00 & 6:15
Festival runs through January 29
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.facebook.com

At the beginning of The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films, director Hilla Medalia asks Menahem Golan, “How do you become a filmmaker?” He answers, “Don’t do anything else.” For most of his life, that is exactly what Golan did. He started out making movies as a kid, then went into business with his cousin, Yoram Globus. The Israeli dynamic duo formed quite a pair, Golan the outgoing, bombastic, viciously driven writer, director, and producer, Globus the behind-the-scenes moneyman and dealmaker. The Go-Go Boys documents their careers as they first succeed in Israel with such movies as Eldorado and Sallah Shabati, the latter starring Topol and earning an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, then setting off to take over Hollywood, where in 1979 they bought Cannon Films, specializing in the rapid-fire release of low-budget schlock and exploitation pictures. All told, Golan and Globus made more than two hundred films, from Death Wish II with Charles Bronson and American Ninja with Michael Dudikoff to Missing in Action and The Delta Force with Chuck Norris and New Year’s Evil with Roz Kelly, from King Solomon’s Mines with Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone and The Last American Virgin to John Cassavetes’s Love Streams and John Derek’s Bolero with Bo Derek. Golan and Globus are perhaps most well known for their biggest failures: The Apple, considered one of the worst films ever made; Over the Top, in which they overspent and overreached with Sylvester Stallone in a misguided mess about arm wrestling; and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, which led to their ultimate downfall.

Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were the kings of Hollywood for a short period

Israeli cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus sought to become the kings of Hollywood — and did for a while

Both Golan and Globus sit down for new interviews with Medalia, who also speaks with Joel Silberg, whose Breakin’ firmly established the duo as real players; Israeli actors Yehuda Barkan (Lupo Goes to New York) and Yehoram Gaon (Kazablan), who share funny vignettes about working with them; director Boaz Davidson (Lemon Popsicle), who says, “They were the Israeli Hollywood”; director Andrei Konchalovsky and actor Jon Voight, who made Runaway Train, which tallied three Oscar nominations; Jean-Claude Van Damme (Bloodsport), who talks about crying in front of Golan while trying to get a job; and writer-director Eli Roth, who discusses the influence of their work on him. Medalia also meets with members of Golan and Globus’s family, as their wives and children relate stories about the pair’s utter dedication to cinema, often at the expense of being around. But as Globus’s son Ram says, “They completed one another. It was a train that couldn’t be stopped.” The film is a bit of a rehashed mishmash; even at a mere eighty-five minutes, it is overloaded with old interviews and entertainment segments; although it’s fun seeing some of Ed Bradley’s 60 Minutes report on how Golan and Globus took over the Cannes Film Festival — where, appropriately enough, The Go-Go Boys premiered, in May 2014 — far too much of the TV program is shown. The documentary also doesn’t delve quite deep enough into how really bad so many of their pictures were, giving their stunning low quality relatively short shrift. When Medalia says to Golan, who passed away last summer at the age of eighty-five, “I want to hear about the failures,” he responds quite defiantly, “There were none.” The Go-Go Boys is screening at the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 29 at 1:00 and 6:15 at the Walter Reade Theater; the twenty-fourth annual festival continues through that night with screenings and special events at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL — WAR AGAINST WAR: FEAR AND DESIRE

Stanley Kubrick’s first film is a curious, intense psychological war drama

FEAR AND DESIRE (Stanley Kubrick, 1953)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Tuesday, January 20, 6:15
Festival runs January 14-29 at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum
212-875-5050
www.nyjff.org
www.filmlinc.com

Fear and Desire, Stanley Kubrick’s seldom-seen 1953 psychological war drama and his first full-length film, made when he was just twenty-four, is a curious tale about four soldiers (Steve Coit, Kenneth Harp, Paul Mazursky, and Frank Silvera) trapped six miles behind enemy lines. When they are spotted by a local woman (Virginia Leith), they decide to capture her and tie her up, but leaving Sidney (Mazursky) behind to keep an eye on her turns out to be a bad idea. Meanwhile, they discover a nearby house that has been occupied by the enemy, and they argue over whether to attack or retreat. Written by Howard Sackler, who was a high school classmate of Kubrick’s in the Bronx and would later win the Pulitzer Prize for The Great White Hope, and directed, edited, and photographed by the man who would go on to make such powerful, influential war epics as Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Fear and Desire features stilted dialogue, much of which is spoken off-camera and feels like it was dubbed in later. Many of the cuts are jumpy and much of the framing amateurish. Kubrick was ultimately disappointed with the film and wanted it pulled from circulation; instead it was preserved by Eastman House in 1989 and restored twenty years later, which was good news for film lovers, as it is fascinating to watch Kubrick learning as the film continues. His exploration of the psyche of the American soldier is the heart and soul of this compelling black-and-white war drama that is worth seeing for more than just historical reasons.

The sudden arrival of a local woman (Virginia Leith) complicates things in FEAR AND DESIRE

“There is a war in this forest. Not a war that has been fought, nor one that will be, but any war,” narrator David Allen explains at the beginning of the film. “And the enemies who struggle here do not exist unless we call them into being. This forest then, and all that happens now, is outside history. Only the unchanging shapes of fear and doubt and death are from our world. These soldiers that you see keep our language and our time but have no other country but the mind.” Fear and Desire lays the groundwork for much of what is to follow in Kubrick’s remarkable career. Fear and Desire is screening with Peter Watkins’s The War Game on January 20 at 6:15 at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the War Against War sidebar program of the twenty-fourth annual New York Jewish Film Festival, which focuses on antiwar films from the 1950s and 1960s; the schedule also includes Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers, Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, Konrad Wolf’s I Was Nineteen, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Les Carabiniers, centered by a panel discussion on January 19 at 3:00 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center (free with advance RSVP) with Kent Jones, Martha Rosler, Harrell Fletcher, and Trevor Paglen, moderated by Jens Hoffmann. Dr. Strangelove is part of the NYJFF as well, showing at the Walter Reade on January 18 at 9:15, introduced by Jennie Livingston.

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT: THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER

Documentary delves into Isaac Bashevis Singer’s love of women and their work as his translators

THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER (Asaf Galay & Shaul Betser, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Wednesday, January 14, 4:00 & 8:45
Festival runs January 14-29
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.the-muses-of-bashevis-singer.com

Who ever thought that little old Yiddish mensch Isaac Bashevis Singer was such a horndog? Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser begin The Muses of Bashevis Singer, their light and playful documentary, with the following quote from the Nobel Prize-winning author: “In my younger days I used to dream about a harem full of women. Lately I’m dreaming of a harem full of translators. If those translators could be women in addition, this would be paradise on earth.” Well, it seems that Singer, who was born in Poland in 1902, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in Florida in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, found that paradise, as Galay and Betser meet with a series of women who were among many hand-picked by Singer, the man who nearly singlehandedly preserved Yiddish literature in the twentieth century, to serve as his translators, and not necessarily because of their language skills. “There were certain women who were more than just translators to him. It happened quite often,” says his Swedish publisher, Dorothea Bromberg, who also talks about Alma, Singer’s wife of more than fifty years. “He loved her, I’m sure, in his own way,” she adds. “She was very jealous of him, and she was completely right.” Galay and Betser meet with translators Eve Fridman, Evelyn Torton Beck, Dvorah Telushkin, Marie-Pierre Bay, Duba Leibell, and Dr. Bilha Rubenstein as well as Singer biographers Florence Noiville and Janet Hadda, his granddaughters Hazel Karr and Merav Chen-Zamir, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy playwright Leah Napolin, and his longtime secretary and proofreader, Doba Gerber, who share intimate, surprising tales about the author of such books as The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, Shosha, and Enemies, a Love Story and such short stories as “Gimpel the Fool,” “A Friend of Kafka,” and “Zlateh the Goat.”

The seventy-two-minute film, lifted by a bouncy, airy soundtrack by Jonathan Bar-Giora, also includes footage of Singer making speeches, appearing on interview programs, going to a Jewish deli, walking on the Coney Island boardwalk, and writing with pen on paper and on a typewriter with Yiddish characters. But as the title implies, The Muses of Bashevis Singer doesn’t depict him as a callow cad but as a determined writer — and father and husband — who just loved women, loved being surrounded by women, using them as inspiration for his marvelous stories that mixed fiction with reality. “Isaac was a very frisky old man,” says Leibell, who worked with Singer in his later years after he moved to Florida with Alma. “That’s to put it very mildly.” The Muses of Bashevis Singer will have its U.S. premiere as the opening-night selection of the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 14 with screenings at 4:00 and 8:45 at the Walter Reade Theater, both followed by Q&As with the directors. The twenty-fourth annual festival continues through January 29 with screenings and special events at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.