OPENING NIGHT FILM

Wednesday, March 25
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

WAITING FOR ARMAGEDDON

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUESTS Director Franco Sacchi; Producers Hermine Muskat & Roberta Dougan
INTRODUCTION Professor Jonathan Sarna, Brandeis University

Fifty million Evangelicals believe that the apocalypse is foretold in Biblical prophecy. This startling documentary explores the growing clout of Christian Evangelicals, their impact on American foreign policy in the Middle East and the central role of Israel and Israeli Jews in their theology and public policy.

“When I turn on the television and I see what’s happening either in Iraq or Israel, I don’t look at what’s happening with the hope that it will work out because I see that there are certain things that have to happen for the world to be ready for the return of Christ.” - Gary Derickson, Professor of Biblical Studies, Corban College

USA | 2008 | 74 min | DigiBeta | English | Directors: Franco Sacchi, Kate Davis & David Heilbroner

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SPONSORS International Center for Ethics, Justice & Public Life; Department of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies

Thursday, March 26
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

LADY KUL EL ARAB

BOSTON PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST Director Ibtisam Mara’ana

Du’ah Fares, a 17-year old from a Druze village in the Galilee, forfeits her place as a finalist in the Lady Kul el-Arab beauty pageant to compete on a bigger stage, the Miss Israel contest. When the Druze elders learn of her participation, the backlash against Du’ah and her family is swift and dangerous. Arab Israeli filmmaker Ibtisam Mara’ana won the Best Director award at the New Delhi (India) Int’l Women’s Film Festival. Winner, Special Jury Award, Int’l Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Israel | 2008 | 56 min | Beta | Arabic & Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director: Ibtisam Mara’ana

CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

Saturday, March 28
5:30 pm & 8:30 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

LOST ISLANDS Iim Avudim

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST, 5:30 SCREENING Lawrence Lowenthal, Visiting Scholar at Northeastern University
SPECIAL GUEST, 8:30 SCREENING Rony Yedidia, Deputy Consul General of Israel to New England

Supplanting NOODLE as Israel’s top-grossing film of 2008, this endearing, funny drama set in the early 1980s centers around the large, slightly-loopy Levi family. TV re-runs and 80’s pop hits give way to more serious concerns when twin brothers Erez and Ofer fall for the same girl and war and family troubles intervene, forcing them to put their dreams on hold. Winner of four Israeli Ophir Academy Awards, including Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor

Israel | 2008 | 103 min | 35mm | Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director: Reshef Levy

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CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
SPONSOR Jack & Ziva Paley

The screening of GERDA'S SILENCE has been
canceled.

See below for new screening.

Sunday, March 29
1:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

GERDA’S SILENCE
Gerda’s Schweigen

Sunday, March 29
1:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

A WOMAN'S PALE BLUE HANDWRITING
Eine blaßblaue Frauenschrift

Director: Axel Corti
Starring: Gabriel Barylli, Friedrich von Thun, Krystyna Janda, Friederike Kammer

WINNER Prix Italia for Drama
WINNER Best Fiction Prize, International Critics of TV Magazines

It is Austria 1936 and Leonidas Tachezy (Gabriel Barylli), an Austrian government official happily married to the daughter of a prominent family, receives a unsettling letter. Twelve years before, as a student in Germany, he had an affair with a Jewish woman. Now she is asking for his help in placing a half-Jewish eleven year old boy in an Austrian school. This dramatic and complex film, based on a novella by the Jewish author Franz Werfel (1890-1945) delves into a man's ethical crisis. Is the child his? Should he help, and at a time when the Nazis are on the rise?

"Axel Corti, assisted by Kurt Rittig, has written a screenplay with the poetic force of its literary parent...Corti looks at one man's troubled heart with unspeakable clarity." - Steve Seid, Pacific Film Archive

Austria | 1984 | 103 min | Beta | German w/ English subtitles

About Axel Corti: Well known and respected, but not always loved, for his regular commentaries on domestic politics and the arts, Axel Corti (1933-1993) was a leading figure on the Austrian cultural scene for over thirty years in a career that included television, radio, and film writing and directing, opera production, championing modern Austrian drama and literature, and teaching.

"A filmmaker whose restless, intelligent camera eye is always fixed on the fresh and illuminating phrase, gesture, moment." - John Powers, L.A. Weekly

"A committed and often controversial purveyor of uncomfortable home truths." - Ian Traynor, The (London) Guardian

CO-PRESENTED BY Goethe-Institut Boston; Center for German and European Studies; Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry
SPONSORS HBI Families, Children and The Holocaust; Hans & Mavis Lopater

Sunday, March 29
4:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

WILL EISNER: PORTRAIT
OF A SEQUENTIAL ARTIST

BOSTON PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUESTS Filmmakers Andrew Cooke & Jon Cooke
MODERATOR Professor Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University

Godfather of the comic book and graphic novel, Will Eisner (1917-2005) was a rigorous innovator whose reinvention of visual storytelling matured comics into a rich combination of art & literature. Eisner’s The Spirit (adapted for the screen in 2008), Contract with God, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and countless other graphic works were towering influences on artists Jules Feiffer, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, Harvey Kurtzman and Stan Lee all of whom are interviewed in the film, along with novelists Kurt Vonnegut and Michael Chabon, whose book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay was based in part on Eisner's life. Art Spiegelman (Maus) narrates.

USA | 2007 | 98 min | DigiBeta | English | Director/Producer: Andrew D. Cooke | Writer/Producer: Jon B. Cooke Photo Credit: Will Eisner, The Spirit and the Immigrants, 1999-2000

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SPONSOR Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness

Sunday, March 29
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

FATHER'S FOOTSTEPS
Comme Ton Pére

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST Professor Edward Kaplan, Brandeis University

In this vivid, tender drama set in the early 1970s, the Maimons settle in Paris seeking adventure and fortune. Felix, Mireille and their two sons - a rambunctious but tight knit Tunisian-Israeli young family – rely on each other, especially when Felix’s minor crimes escalate to bank robbery after he meets Serge, a local (Sephardic) gangster. Nominated for five Israeli Ophir Academy Awards, including Best Film, Director, Screenplay & Actress (Yael Abecassis, also in SHIVA).

Israel/France | 2007 | 95 min | 35mm | French & Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director: Marco Carmel

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Note: Trailer in French only. JEWISHFILM.2009 screening includes English subtitles.

CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies; Center for German and European Studies

Tuesday, March 31
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

FORGOTTEN TRANSPORTS: TO ESTONIA
Zapomenuté Transporty: Do Estonska

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST Director Lukas Pribyl (Brandeis ‘96)
INTRODUCTION Joanna Michlic, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute

Of the tens of thousands of Czech Jews deported during the Holocaust, most were sent to virtually unknown camps and ghettos. Of those, fewer than 300 survived. (Czech deportees to Auschwitz survived at 10 times this rate.) TO ESTONIA traces the 3-year odyssey of several dozen young women who arrived in Estonia in 1942 aboard a transport of 1000 Czech Jews. Amazingly, the women quickly formed a mutual support network, surviving together through a willful combination of youthful naiveté, denial, humor, optimism and camaraderie.

Czech Republic | 2008 | 85 min | Beta | Czech, English & German w/ English Subtitles | Director/Producer/Writer: Lukas Pribyl

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CO-PRESENTED BY Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry; Center for German and European Studies
SPONSORS HBI Families, Children and The Holocaust; Office of Alumni Relations

Due To Popular Demand
NEW SCREENING ADDED
Wednesday, April 1
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

LOST ISLANDS Iim Avudim

NEW ENGLAND PREMIERE

Supplanting NOODLE as Israel’s top-grossing film of 2008, this endearing, funny drama set in the early 1980s centers around the large, slightly-loopy Levi family. TV re-runs and 80’s pop hits give way to more serious concerns when twin brothers Erez and Ofer fall for the same girl and war and family troubles intervene, forcing them to put their dreams on hold. Winner of four Israeli Ophir Academy Awards, including Best Actor & Best Supporting Actor

Israel | 2008 | 103 min | 35mm | Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director: Reshef Levy

CLICK FOR TRAILER

CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
SPONSOR Jack & Ziva Paley

Thursday, April 2
7:00 pm

@ THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ BOSTON

THE JESTER
Der Purimspiler

SPECIAL EVENT
GO BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE JESTER'S FILM RESTORATION & MUSIC WITH SHARON PUCKER RIVO AND MUSICIAN HANKUS NETSKY

NEW 35MM FILM RESTORATION BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM
INCLUDES PRESERVATION OF RARE COLOR TONING

From the directors of YIDDLE WITH HIS FIDDLE, The Jester stars a lonely wanderer (Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater founder Zygmunt Turkow), a circus performer and Esther the shoemaker's daughter (married 2nd Ave Yiddish theater stars Hymie Jacobson & Miriam Kressyn). Filmed on location in Poland, the films' vaudeville scenes offer a glimpse of Warsaw’s then-thriving Yiddish cabarets. New England Premiere following sold out screenings at the Palm Springs International Film Festival & at Lincoln Center, New York.

Poland | 1937 | 90 min | 35mm | Yiddish w/ NEW English subtitles | Directors: Joseph Green & Jan Nowina-Przybylski

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SPONSORS Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry; National Yiddish Book Center

Note: The ICA galleries are free on Thursdays from 5-9pm

TICKETS: $10/$8 TO PURCHASE, CONTACT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ BOSTON AT www.icaboston.org OR CALL 617-478-3103.

Saturday, April 4
7:00 pm

@ THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ BOSTON

THE SEVEN DAYS
Shiva / Les Sept Jours

BOSTON PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST Nadav Tamir, Consul General of Israel to New England

Written, directed and starring Ronit Elkabetz (THE BAND'S VISIT, LATE MARRIAGE) and her brother Shlomi, Seven Days boats an ensemble of Israel’s best actors, including Moshe Ivgy. Following the sudden death of their brother, the large, Sephardic Ohaion family gathers at the deceased’s house for the traditional seven days of mourning. Living and grieving together, rivalries and resentments test family unity, but never love. It’s 1991 and the Gulf War’s threat of missile attacks heightens tensions and moments of black humor. Official Selection Cannes Film Festival • Winner Best Film & Best Actress, Jerusalem Int’l Film Festival • Winner two Israeli Academy Awards

Israel/France | 2008 | 115 min | 35mm | Hebrew & French w/ English subtitles
Directors: Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Ecz

CLICK FOR TRAILER
Note: Trailer in French only. JEWISHFILM.2009 screening includes English subtitles.

CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

TICKETS: $10/$8 TO PURCHASE, CONTACT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART/ BOSTON AT www.icaboston.org OR CALL 617-478-3103.

Sunday, April 5
1:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

THE GREEN DUMPSTER MYSTERY
Hataaluma Bamekhola Hayeruka

SNEAK PREVIEW

Traveling on his scooter through Tel Aviv, filmmaker Tal Yoffe finds a discarded box of old photographs in a green dumpster. This docu-detective film, slowly unwinds a family history, beginning in Lodz, Poland, and traveling through the Siberian Gulag, a Samarkand sugar plant, a Ha’apala ship and the battlefields of the Sinai Peninsula. Like Daniel Mendelsohn's bestseller The Lost and David Ofek’s film NO. 17 IS ANONYMOUS, this tightly-paced tour de force vividly evokes the now-extinguished lives of an anonymous—but typical—Israeli family.

Israel | 2008 | 50 min | Beta | English narration & Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director/Producer/Writer: Tal Yoffe

Screening with

TEL AVIV

NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Israeli film and TV star Modi Bar-On hosts this lively documentary celebrating the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv. A treasure trove of archival film and photos intercut with those of contemporary Tel Aviv.

Israel | 2009 | 50 min | Beta | Hebrew w/ English subtitles | Director: Gabriel Bibliowicz; Producers: Modi Bar-On & Anat Zeltser

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CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies
SPONSOR Boston Birthright Israel NEXT

Sunday, April 5
3:45 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

THE SEVEN DAYS
Shiva / Les Sept Jours

BOSTON PREMIERE

Written, directed and starring Ronit Elkabetz (THE BAND'S VISIT, LATE MARRIAGE) and her brother Shlomi, Seven Days boats an ensemble of Israel’s best actors, including Moshe Ivgy. Following the sudden death of their brother, the large, Sephardic Ohayon family gathers at the deceased’s house for the traditional seven days of mourning. Living and grieving together, rivalries and resentments test family unity, but never love. It’s 1991 and the Gulf War’s threat of missile attacks heightens tensions and moments of black humor. Official Selection Cannes Film Festival • Winner Best Film & Best Actress, Jerusalem Int’l Film Festival • Winner two Israeli Academy Awards

Israel/France | 2008 | 115 min | 35mm | Hebrew & French w/ English subtitles | Directors: Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz

CLICK FOR TRAILER
Note: Trailer in French only. JEWISHFILM.2009 screening includes English subtitles.

CO-PRESENTED BY Schusterman Center for Israel Studies

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

Sunday, April 5
7:00 pm

@ WASSERMAN CINEMATHEQUE,
BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE

BOSTON PREMIERE

SPECIAL GUEST Director Judd Ehrlich
MODERATOR Professor Mark Auslander, Brandeis University

An affectionate energetic salute to an unlikely American icon: Fred Lebow, the mastermind behind the New York City Marathon. Raised in an Orthodox Jewish family in Transylvania, Fischl Leibowitz survived the Holocaust and immigrated to New York, a city he later helped unite by transforming a rag-tag runners group into a world class event. Set amidst the urban funk of the 1970s & 80s, the film combines archival footage and interviews with politicians, journalists and some of running’s greats, including Bill Rodgers, Frank Shorter, Grete Waitz, Alberto Salazar, Katherine Switzer and Ted Corbitt in a remarkable story of how one eccentric showman ran for his life—and inspired millions to do the same.

USA | 2008 | 95 min | Beta | English | Director/Producer: Judd Ehrlich

CLICK FOR FILM WEBSITE

SPONSOR Department of Near Eastern & Judaic Studies