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UPCOMING:
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2010
NEW
DOCUMENTARY
USA
Grace Paley: Collected Shorts
Lilly
Rivlin’s intimate documentary is a rich, inspiring portrait
of writer, activist and New York icon Grace Paley (1922-2007).
Paley’s brilliant, poignant, and funny short stories place
her in the pantheon of great American writers.
Grace Paley: Collected Shorts casts an
important and penetrating light on a brilliant and highly principled
woman whose life illuminates the major protest movements of the
latter part of the 20th century.
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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
DENMARK
Me and the Jewish Thing
In
this witty and thoughtful meditation on the collision of two cultures,
Danish Jewish filmmaker Ulrik Gutkin and his Danish non-Jewish girlfriend
find themselves on opposites sides in deciding whether to circumcise
their new baby boy. What follows is Gutkin’s reconsideration
what it means to be a Jew in Denmark.
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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
USA
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg
The
funny and surprising story of television pioneer Gertrude Berg,
creator of America’s hit sitcom, The Goldbergs.
As an actor, writer (12,000 scripts for CBS!) and TV celebrity,
Berg’s trailblazing blend of comedy and social commentary—with
Jewish characters at the center—endeared audiences and made
her a cultural icon. By Aviva Kempner (The
Life and Times of Hank Greenberg).
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UPCOMING:
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2010
NEW
DOCUMENTARY
FRANCE
Einsatzgruppen
Nazi
mobile killing squads, led by highly-educated officers and aided
by local collaborators, systematically murdered over a million
Jews. Who were the men who carried out mass murder at close range?
Prazan's definitive masterwork features a powerful array of astounding,
never-seen-before film and photographs. “Essential viewing”
– Variety
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UPCOMING:
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 2010
NEW
FEATURE FILM
ROMANIA
Gruber's Journey
An
Italian journalist suffering from debilitating allergies searches
for a Jewish allergist named Gruber amid the outrageous, and increasingly
sinister, bureaucracy of Nazi-occupied Romania. What begins as
an absurdist wild goose chase leads directly to the heart of the
final solution, and the disastrous fate of the local Jews. Radu
Gabrea’s “Perfect yet subdued” film is Romania’s
first drama about the Holocaust.
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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
FRANCE
A Pause in the Holocaust
In
the summer of 1943, thousands of Jewish refugees in Italian-occupied
southern France enjoyed a rare respite from persecution, protected
by an unusual force: the occupying Italian Army, who temporarily
shielded local and foreign Jews despite pressure from the Germans
and the French Vichy administration. In one Alpine village, Saint
Martin Vesubie, life was, briefly, renewed as Jews attended synagogues,
schools and cafes, and Yiddish was heard as often as French. With
the invasion of Nazi troops in September the lull was broken and
most of the Jews were deported. Veteran French filmmaker Andre
Waksman, whose family survived the Holocaust in southern France,
reconstructs this little known World War II history. Torino
Film Festival (Italy) 2010 (France, 2009, 52 min)
Details
Soon!

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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
USA
Angel of Ahlem
While
liberating the Ahlem concentration camp, GI Vernon Tott felt compelled
to photograph the horror. 50 years later, Vernon sets out to find
the men he photographed, a quest that transforms all their lives.
The evidence—of unbearable cruelty and miraculous survival—cements
a sustaining bond between Vernon and the Jewish survivors.
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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
IRELAND
Till the Tenth Generation
The
first major documentary about the Holocaust made in Ireland, Till
the Tenth Generation
tells the story of Dublin resident Tomi Reichental, who for nearly
60 years remained silent about his boyhood in Bergen-Belsen. One
of three remaining Holocaust survivors in Ireland, Tomi travels
back to Slovakia with veteran filmmaker Gerry Gregg to recall
the life, and death, of Slovakia’s Jews.
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NEW
"MOCKUMENTARY"
ISRAEL
Shund
In
this clever and heartfelt mockumentary, a renowned Yiddish actor
disappears under criminal circumstances. Searching for him twenty-five
years later we meet the colorful characters that made up Israel’s
vibrant Yiddish scene during the country’s first decades.
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NEW
DOCUMENTARY
ISRAEL
My 100 Children
When
Lena Küchlar discovered dozens of orphaned Jewish children
in Krakow after WWII, she employed the progressive psychiatric
methods of Janusz Korczak and slowly brought these damaged kids
back to life.
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NEW FEATURE
FILM
ARGENTINA
Camera Obscura
A
lyrical, inventive new film from award-winning, film festival
favorite director María Victoria Menis. At the end of the
19th century, Gertrudis grows into her role as the ugly duckling
in a colony of Argentinean Jews until she meets a nomadic photographer
whose uncompromising vision allows her to see herself for the
first time.
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NEW FEATURE
FILM
FRANCE/ISRAEL
Father's Footsteps
In
the early 1970s, the Maimons, a rambunctious but tight knit Tunisian-Israeli
family, settle in Paris seeking adventure and fortune. Israeli-French
filmmaker Marco Carmel draws on events from his own childhood
in this unusual coming of age story. Starring French celebrity
actor/humorist Gad Elmaleh.
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NEWEST FILM
RESTORATION
USA
Bar Mitzvah (1935)
Starring
Yiddish theater superstar Boris Thomashefsky in his only film
performance, this musical melodrama is a masterwork of shund,
the bread and butter of the Yiddish theater.
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NEW DOCUMENTARY
USA
How To:
Be Or Not To Be
Dutch,
Surinamese, African, Catholics, Muslims, Jews: young people from
all over The Netherlands come to ITS DNA, a unique international,
multicultural theater school in Amsterdam. Under the leadership
of Loes Hegger, they make creative use of their different backgrounds
in adapting the Sholem Aleichem’s 1907 novel The Bloody
Hoax into a poignant production that explores issues of identity
and tolerance.
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SOCIAL CHANGE
DOCUMENTARY
USA
Bewoket: By the Will of God
In
1990, Dr. Rick Hodes went to Ethiopia to set up medical clinics.
He never left. "Dr. Rick" treats thousands of Ethiopians,
among them a group of boys who live with him. An Orthodox Jew,
he typifies the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam ("repairing the
world").
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SOCIAL CHANGE
DOCUMENTARY
AUSTRALIA
Forgotten Children
Amid
the crisis surrounding the education of Aboriginal children in
Australia, there is a ray of hope. The unlikely source: Israeli
teachers. Follow a team of Israeli educators as they bring a new
method for teaching at-risk kids to the Australian outback. More

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FESTIVAL
& THEATRICAL HIT
FRANCE
Being Jewish in France
Yves
Jeuland's sweeping documentary explores the rich and complex history
of Jews in France--the first country to grant Jews citizenship--is
fast becoming the definitive film on the topic.
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SEPHARDIC
MUSIC DOCUMENTARY
USA
Fiestaremos!
Judy Frankel was one of the leading collectors and practitioners
of Sephardic folk music. Fiestaremos!
includes interviews with Frankel, musical excerpts and performances
in an intimate look at Frankel and Sephardic music and songs.
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PERFORMING
ARTS DOCUMENTARY
FRANCE
Rachel de
la Comédie-Française
Before
the era of Sarah Bernhardt, Rachel Felix (1821-1858) was the great
actress of the Comédie-Française-and the first international
dramatic star. Small, plain and fierce, Rachel's ability to convey
passion in her performances thrilled audiences. More

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SOCIOHISTORICAL
DOCUMENTARY
ISRAEL
Tel Aviv-Jaffa
Produced
for the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, Tel
Aviv-Jaffa explores the city's history. Israeli
TV celebrity Modi Bar-On hosts this fast-paced film which uses
archival film and photos intercut with those of contemporary Tel
Aviv.
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CULTURAL
IDENTITY DOCUMENTARY
ISRAEL
Next
Year in... Argentina
Argentinean-born
Israeli filmmakers Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky met in Buenos
Aires before both men immigrated to Israel. 30 years later, they
take up the question of Jewish-Argentine history, identity and
attitudes toward Israel.
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NEW TO DVD
AUSTRALIA
Mamadrama:
The Jewish Mother in Cinema
A
funny, penetrating look at how the loving and affectionate portrayals
in early Yiddish and Hollywood silent movies developed into the
Jewish Mother of modern Hollywood and, conversely, the more flesh
and blood characterizations in contemporary Israeli cinema.
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NEW TO DVD
FRANCE
The Last Marranos
Despite
being forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497 many of the Jews
of Portugal continued to practice Judaism in secret. Today, residents
of the village of Belmonte practice an amalgam of Christian and
Jewish rituals.
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NEW TO DVD
ISRAEL/POLAND
The
Secret: Poland's New Jews
Through
accidental discovery or deathbed confessions many Catholic Polish
citizens have made an unsettling discovery: they were born Jewish.
These “new Jews" must decide what this new truth means
to them, as Poles and as Jews.
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DOCUMENTARY
ISRAEL
The House on August Street
The
remarkable, unknown story of Beate Berger, a German Jew who single-handedly
rescued over 100 children during the Holocaust, smuggling them
from Berlin to Palestine in the 1930s.
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DOCUMENTARY
ISRAEL
Settlement
Twelve
years after the release of his landmark film Shtetl,
Marian Marzynski, a pioneer of European cinéma-vérité,
returns to one of his favorite subjects - the mystery of survival
during the Holocaust.
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RE-RELEASE:
FEATURE FILM CLASSICS
AUSTRIA
The Axel Corti Collection
God
Does Not Believe in Us Anymore, Santa
Fe, and Welcome
in Vienna comprise a trilogy of films directed
by Axel Corti and written by Georg Stefan Troller. The films are
loosely based on Troller’s life as a Viennese Jew who fled
Europe as a teenager, emigrated to the United States, and returned
to Europe during World War II as an American soldier.
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FEATURE FILM
ISRAEL
Dear Mr. Waldman
In
Tel Aviv in the 1960s 10-year-old Hilik knows his goal in life–to
make his parents happy and compensate for the grief they both
suffered in the Holocaust.
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GROUND-BREAKING
DOCUMENTARY
GERMANY
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him
Malte
Ludin's documentary about his father, Hanns Ludin, a prominent
Nazi who was tried and executed as a war criminal in 1947.
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PERSONAL
DOCUMENTARY
USA
Yippee: A Journey to Jewish Joy
Iconic
filmmaker Paul Mazursky chronicles his journey to Uman, Ukrane,
the site of a unique annual gathering of Jewish men making pilgrimages
to the burial place of Rabbi Nachman.
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ART &
THE HOLOCAUST
USA
Multiply by Six Million
This
short film is the culmination of Evvy Eisen's fifteen-year long
project photographing Holocaust survivors and collecting their
stories.
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All
Restored Yiddish Films
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35MM RESTORATION
NEW SUBTITLES
POLAND
The Jester
Der
Purimspiler
(1937)
The
Jester's lively circus and vaudeville music and
set pieces provide a glimpse of Warsaw's then-thriving Yiddish
revues and cabarets, which were destroyed soon after.
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35MM RESTORATION
NEW SUBTITLES
USA
His Wife's
Lover Zayn
Vaybs Lubovnik
(1931)
Billed
as the "first Jewish musical comedy talking picture,"
His
Wife’s Lover stars the popular comedian
of the Yiddish theatre Ludwig Satz in his only film performance.
This fast-paced comedy revels in its role reversals and love triangles.
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35MM RESTORATION
NEW SUBTITLES
USA
The
Cantor's Son Dem
Khazns Zundyl
(1937)
This
toe-tapping Yiddish musical drama marks the screen debut of Moishe
Oysher in the title role critic J. Hoberman calls the “anti-Jazz
Singer.” Leaving behind his Shtetle Belz for New York's
Lower East Side, Sol eventually lands the American dream, becoming
a popular singer and radio star.
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