The 15th annual Portland Jewish Film FestivalThis year's films, while they express specific Jewish experiences, resonate beyond their cultural inspiration and speak to ideas, experiences and issues that confront our common humanity. We invite you to explore, discover and acknowledge as we do the generosity of our individual program sponsors and patrons, whose ongoing investments make the Festival possible.JAN 18 THUR 7 PMFAMILY LAWARGENTINA 2005DIRECTOR: DANIEL BURMANBurman's warm dramatic come...
In the past two years the subject matter of this festival concentrated heavily on themes of the Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations. This year the program is of a spicier variety with a heavier than usual input of films from Israel. The big discovery and surprise so far has been a rib-tickling comedy from Israel entitled "Like a Fish Out of Water" (RT, 56 minutes) by 28 year old helmer Leon Pudovsky. The story centers on a freewheeling Argentine immigrant to Israel, a thoroughly unkosher Lat...
The NY International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, the first festival dedicated to showcasing international films with distinctly Sephardic themes, celebrates 10 years of cinematic explorations of Sephardic Jewry presented in a weeklong series of screenings, compelling panel discussions, and events. The festival, co-sponsored by the Yeshiva University Museum and the Manhattan JCC will take place from February 2 to 8, 2006 with screenings at the Center for Jewish History and one screening at t...
Madeinusa/ClaudiaLlosa Madeinusa is a sweet girl who lives in an isolated religiously zealous village in mountainous Peru. Everything changes when a geologist from Lima arrives and unknowingly reshapes Madeinusa's destiny. Kinky Boots/Julian JarroldIn an effort to save his father's small town shoe factory, a man finds an unlikely ally in Lola, a brassy cabaret singer. DeNADIE/Tin DirdamalThe story of Maria, a Central American immigrant forced to leave her family in search of a better life. O...
14TH PORTLAND JEWISH FILM FESTIVALSAT JAN 14 7 PM WHITSELL AUDITORIUMSUN JAN 15 4 PM GUILD THEATRELIVE AND BECOMEFRANCE/ISRAEL 2005DIRECTOR: RADU MILHAILEANUWinner of (cheering) Audience Awards at the Berlin and Vancouver International Film Festival, LIVE AND BECOME is an epic, emotional story of one boy's chance survival amidst the Ethiopian famine of the mid-1980s. A mother conspires to place her nine-year-old, non-Jewish son with a group of Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) bound for Israel as par...
"Just an Ordinary Jew" ('Ein Ganz Gewohnlicher Jude') directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel of the Berlin Bunker drama "The Downfall", and starring Ben Becker in a mesmerizing 89 minute screen monologue, turned out to be the capstone of the Hamburg film festival. Based on a recent book by Swiss author Charles Lewinsky, this heady piece of work adresses itself to the thorny issue of what it means to be a Jew in contemporary Germany. Emanuel Goldfarb, a German journalist of Jewish heritage, but not a...
2ND WARSAW JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL (MAY 19 -- 25, 2005)A ROUSING SUCCESSBy Alex Deleon-PevnyThe second convening of the new International Jewish Film Festival in Warsaw proved to be an even bigger success than the first edition a year ago. The official Polish designation, directly translated, comes out as "The Warsaw International Film Festival on Jewish Motifs" which seems to leave room for a broad interpretation of just what it is that counts as a "Jewish film". Indeed, as we shall see, some of ...
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL IN WARSAWBy Alex Deleon-PevnyTHE First International Festival of Jewish films ever to be held in Warsaw --officially "FILMS ON JEWISH MOTIFS -- '04"-- took place from 18 to 27 April. Produced essentially on a shoestring budget, by Mirek Chojecki,himself a veteran documentary film maker, it was also given a good dose of moral support by various luminaries of the Polish film world, including Andrzej Wajda, awarded a Hollywood Oscar for his life's work two years ago. Sixty f...
