January, 2010

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Tobaron Waxman is the winner of The Jewish Museum’s first-ever Audience Award

Friday, January 29th, 2010

The first transgendered artist to be exhibited in a major Jewish museum exhibition has won the Audience Award for the favorite work in the exhibition Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life.

Tobaron Waxman is the winner of The Jewish Museum’s first-ever Audience Award, selected from nearly sixty international artists. Votes were gathered from visitors to the exhibition in person and online, between September 13, 2009 and January 11, 2010. Waxman was selected for his provocative installation Opshernish, 2000/2009. The piece examines the construction of gender in Judaism by recreating and condensing a multi-part performance installation.

During the original performance at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2000, Waxman sat on a stool for 5 hours, focused and silent, his waist-length hair twisted into locks, clamped with metal brackets and pulled tightly upwards to the ceiling with airplane cable in a typical white-walled art gallery. Click to continue »

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“Ajami” in the running for Best Foreign Film by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Updated, February 2, 2010:
Ajami has been officially nominated  for a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for the 82nd Academy Awards.
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The New York Jewish Film Festival has learned that Ajami, which screened twice to a sold-out crowd at the Walter Reade Theater earlier this month, has been shortlisted for best foreign film at the Oscars.

Co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker Scandar Copti and his Israeli collaborator Yaron Shani, Ajami presents a story about the complex relationship between Jews and Arabs in Israel and the Occupied Territories, a relationship that is often painful, but one that teaches a lesson. Click to continue »

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A message from Adam Elliot, writer & director, “Mary and Max”.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

A message from Adam Elliot that was read out before the New York Jewish Film Festival 2010 screenings of Mary and Max:

“Hello Jewish Cinefiles and Lovers of Quality Plasticine Films!

My name is Adam Elliot and I am the writer and director of the film you are about to see, Mary and Max.  Sadly due to geographical and financial restraints, I cannot leave Australia and be with you tonight in New York. What you are about to see is a five year labour of love involving a crew of over one hundred and a budget that was miniscule and pathetic! Click to continue »

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Mutual Understanding in ‘Gevald!’ and ‘Eyes Wide Open’

Saturday, January 23rd, 2010

Among the impressive line-up of films at this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival are two of many films that deal with pressing social issues. Both Gevald!, a documentary that delves into the lives of anti-Zionist Hassidic Jews, and Eyes Wide Open, a story about homosexuality within the ultra-Orthodox, raise questions and prompt needed discussion.

“Extremism exists in all religions,” says Rachel Chanoff, NYJFF committee member, about the film Gevald!. “When we think of the term ‘mutual understanding,’ we think of it on the warm and fuzzy end. There are ways of understanding each other from our not-so-pretty commonalities.”

Gevald! presents the lives of two of Israel’s most prominent ultra-Orthodox leaders, Shmuel Chaim Pappenheim, an anti-Zionist radical activist who organizes mass protests against the secular state, and the late Avraham Ravitz, a former IDF soldier and a longtime Knesset member who worked within the system to advance his constituency’s religious agenda. Click to continue »

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“The Peretzniks” with Director Slawomir Grünberg

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

Documentary filmmaker  Slawomir Grünberg describes in an exclusive interview with the New York Jewish Film Festival what it was like to gather together alumni of the Jewish Peretz School who fled from Lodz,  Poland as a result of the 1968 anti-Semitic campaign.

NYJFF: What led you to the decision to produce The Peretzniks?

Grünberg: The events of March ‘68 are still somewhat obscure in Poland and remain relatively unknown or remembered outside of Poland. At the same time almost completely unknown to the outside world is the fact that there was Jewish life in Poland after the War. A quarter million Jews lived in Poland at its peak just after World War II and more then 30 thousand prior to 1968. There were Jewish schools, clubs, and theaters; there were Jewish summer camps and the Jewish family life. It was a proud society with a will not only to survive, but to flourish. Click to continue »

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Director Michael Verhoeven on his film “Human Failure”

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Michael Verhoeven, director of the jaw-dropping documentary Human Failure, describes his own sense of shock as he learned how much was stolen from the Jews during the Third Reich. Even ordinary Germans, he says, could not believe that many of their parents and grandparents may still use furniture and live in homes sold to them by Jews and at auctions, for irregularly low sums. In an exclusive commentary for the New York Jewish Film Festival, Verhoeven describes his personal quest for the truth in an otherwise heavily guarded secret.

Commentary by Michael Verhoeven
My documentary premiered at the Hof Film Festival in November 2008 and with great response. It was aired twice on German public television late in the evening, as is common with films of that genre. Then the film was screened in the Munich Forum Theatre for four weeks. During Q&As, people seemed to feel guilty and ashamed even being in the third generation and absolutely not guilty themselves (When I address younger people, I avoid the term “guilt”). Click to continue »

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“Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness” with Producer & Director of Research Vincent Brown.

Sunday, January 17th, 2010

Melville J. Herskovits, a Jew struggling to define his own identity, pioneered African-American studies into the growing field of research that exists today, and greatly influenced the way we identify ourselves. In an exclusive interview, Vincent Brown, producer and director of research of “Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness” and a Harvard professor, talks to The New York Jewish Film Festival about the inspiration behind this illuminating documentary.

NYJFF – Several debates are currently taking place around the ideas of whether someone is Black or African American, from information circulated by press to ideas being promoted by film stars. How does the film deal with this debate? How much of an influence did Herskovits have in leading to debates such as this one? Click to continue »

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U.S. Premiere of ‘Saviors in the Night’ kicks off The New York Jewish Film Festival

Friday, January 15th, 2010

“I will leave this film a changed person” said one audience member of Saviors in the Night, a German World War II drama about the lives of German farmers harboring Jews during that country’s darkest of periods.

Telling the story in German, by Germans and for Germans proved one of the trickiest feats, recalls the Amsterdam-born director, Ludi Boeken, whose own parents survived thanks to the bravery and hearts of farmers.

Marga Spiegel, on whose life the story is based, told of the difficulties she and her husband faced as both Germans and Jews. “My husband spoke not a word of English,” said Mrs. Spiegel in response to a question from the audience. “It was difficult to know where to go after the War.” Click to continue »

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Conserving Adolph Gottlieb’s Torah Ark Curtain

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

Created for the Congregation B’nai Israel synagogue in Millburn, New Jersey, Adolph Gottlieb’s Torah Ark Curtain is decorated with symbols in a compartmentalized form, a scheme that the artist also used in his Pictograph paintings at the time. Gottlieb was inspired by forms and expressions associated with non-Western art as well as Jungian philosophy of the unconscious. In this curtain, he abstracts elements of Jewish religious belief such as the Tablets of the Law, the twelve tribes of Israel, the Temple, and the Ark of the Covenant. He also includes stylizations of objects developed for synagogue use (Torah mantles and Torah shields) and emblems that have become synonymous with Judaism (the Lion of Judah and the Star of David). The curtain was designed by Gottlieb and sewn by the women of the congregation.

Abstract Expressionist works–including Gottlieb’s curtain, a mural by Robert Motherwell and a monumental relief sculpture by Herbert Ferber–will be included in the upcoming exhibition Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber, and Gottlieb, on view March 14 – August 1, 2010. Click to continue »

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The Jazz Baroness

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Hannah Rothschild leads us through the inspiring life of her aunt, Baroness Pannonica “Nica” Rothschild, in The Jazz Baroness, screening at the upcoming New York Jewish Film Festival. Nica escaped her privileged London life in search of musical answers, embodied in characters such as Thelonious Monk and recalled by household names such as Quincy Jones, Sonny Rollins and Clint Eastwood.

New York City is encapsulated as the ideal venue for this screening, as Helen Mirren, the voice of Nica, takes an emotional journey down the city’s memory lane to the jazz scenes of the 1950s and 60s. The city’s still thriving jazz scene at venues such as Lincoln Center’s Rose Hall owe tribute to those who made this city famous for this soothing yet intense musical form that has spread its reaches globally.

Nothing does better than to tell this story before a backdrop of Thelonious Monk’s improv piano accompanied by the lively conversation of a large audience of jazz-goers.

The film is so engaging you are transplanted into the audience of a jazz parlor fifty years ago, into a post-war decade still recovering from recent events. Jazz was and still is a refuge for those who are searching, a place where people like Nica would find themselves.

“No words,” Nica would say. “Just listen”

The Jazz Baroness will screen at the Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater at the following times:
Sat Jan 16: 9:15pm
Sun Jan 17: 4:15pm
Mon Jan 18: 8:30pm

The Festival program and ticket links are available on both websites: TheJewishMuseum.org and Filmlinc.com. Tickets can also be purchased in person at the Walter Reade box office, or by calling CenterCharge at 212.721.6500.

The dates of The New York Jewish Film Festival are January 13-28, 2010.

Entries about the 2010 New York Jewish Film Festival are written by  Jaron Gandelman, Film Festival Intern, at The Jewish Museum.

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