LIVE
AND BECOME
DIRECTOR: RADU MILHAILEANU
FRANCE/ISRAEL 2005
SAT JAN 14 7 PM
Whitsell Auditorium
SUN JAN 15 4 PM Guild
Theatre
 Winner
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 part of “Operation Moses.” Her parting
words to her child are that he should never tell anyone his
true identity. And so, Shlomo grows up pretending to be both
Jewish and an orphan in modern Israel, where he embraces Judaism
and Western values, but must also confront cultural divides—
black, white, secular, orthodox—that compete for the
soul of his country. Though he maintains his secret as he
comes of age, the tension between his truth and the reality
challenge his deepest fears and cherished desires. (140 mins.)
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LITTLE JERUSALEM
DIRECTOR: KARIN ALBOU
FRANCE 2005
SUN JAN 15 7 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 Karin
Albou’s impressive first feature takes us into the lives
of a working class Tunisian-Jewish family in the lower-income
suburbs of Paris. Laura is 18 and torn between the traditional
religious life adhered to by her family and the study of philosophy
which excites her mind and keeps her reading Kant late into
the night. Her intellectual and spiritual ideals are further
challenged when she finds herself irresistibly attracted to
her co-worker Djamel, an Algerian Muslim. Meanwhile, her Orthodox
older sister, Mathilde, struggles with the shortcomings of
her marriage and the strictures of her faith. Set against
the rising tide of modern anti-Semitism in France, LA PETIT
JERSUALEM builds to an emotional standoff between the head,
the heart and the soul. Adult content. (94 mins.)
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THE THREE RABBIS
PRODUCERS: JESSICA MARTIN, GLORIA LOHMAN FEVES
US 2005
TUE JAN 17 7 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
THE THREE RABBIS tells the story of three devoted and passionate
men—Rabbi Joshua Stampfer, Rabbi Emanuel Rose and Rabbi
Yonah Geller—each of whom has played a pivotal role
in the growth and emergence of Portland’s Jewish community
over the last 50 years. Their extraordinary contributions
to Oregon through their education and leadership, exemplified
in their outreach to other faiths and numerous civic endeavors,
parallel an era of tremendous change and conflict within both
the religious and secular world. Through interviews and historical
accounts, important issues—discrimination, civil rights,
the Vietnam War and Israel, along with their views on women’s
rights, intermarriage and life in Portland—are seen
through the eyes of these inspirational leaders. (60 mins.)
WITH
CROSSING THE ABYSS
DIRECTOR: ELLE MARTINI
US 2005
CROSSING THE ABYSS traces one
woman’s journey from Auschwitz to Oregon. Sent to the
death camp as a child, Miriam Greenstein managed to survive
the Nazis, but her family was not so fortunate. After the
war, having nothing left in her native Germany, she arranged
with an American uncle to make her way to the United States
and to Oregon. Martini allows Greenstein to tell her story
in her own voice, providing a powerful and encouraging example
of perseverance and survival. (10 MINS.)
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USHPIZIN
DIRECTOR: GIDI DAR
ISRAEL 2004
WED JAN 18 7 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 Set
on the eve of the Jewish festival of Sukkot, this heartwarming
and humorous drama focuses on Moshe and Mali, a married couple
struggling to make ends meet. Naturally, they pray for help,
but instead of a miracle, two suspicious strangers appear
on their doorstep. The couple faces what they consider a test
sent by God; if they wholeheartedly welcome these shady visitors,
they believe they will be blessed with children. But the guests’
outrageous behavior makes their visit truly a test of faith.
This groundbreaking depiction of life among Jerusalem’s
ultra-Orthodox population resulted from the first film collaboration
between Israel’s religious and secular communities.
USHPIZIN is a sympathetic portrayal of a little-seen tradition,
punctuated with wit, intelligence and plenty of spirited klezmer
music. “A film about man’s clumsiness and God’s
grace—a touching and amusing tale that expands our horizons
and also should open our hearts.”—CHICAGO TRIBUNE.
(88 mins.)
USHPIZIN IS OPENING AT THE HOLLYWOOD THEATRE JANUARY
20. THANKS TO PICTURE HOUSE FILMS FOR THIS SPECIAL PREVIEW
SCREENING FOR THE FESTIVAL AUDIENCE.
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ODESSA ODESSA
DIRECTOR: MICHALE BOGANIM
ISRAEL/RUSSIA 2005
THUR JAN 19 7 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
SAT JAN 21 5:15 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 They
say “Odessan” is a nationality. Whether in Brighton
Beach, New York, or Jerusalem’s Little Odessa, exiles
still see Odessa, pearl of the Black Sea, in their dreams
and call it home. They want to go back to the ancient city
just to breathe the air. They walk, sit, play chess, sing
songs, and toast the Odessa that raised them like a mother.
Meanwhile, on Odessa’s vacant streets, neglected buildings
suggest a glorious past. Here a few very old women reminisce,
in a mix of Yiddish and Russian, about World War II, their
ideologies and their vibrant youths. With their city now nearly
emptied of Jewish life, it is as if they live in the Odessa
of fantasy. ODESSA ODESSA poetically evokes profound truths
about the soul of the Jewish people, the wider experience
of exile, and the dreamlike and sustaining nature of that
faraway place called home. “A memorable portrait of
cultural dislocation.”—HOLLYWOOD REPORTER. (97
mins.)
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GO FOR ZUCKER!
DIRECTOR: DANI LEVY
GERMANY 2004
SAT JAN 21 7:30 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 Zuckermann,
a roguish, middle-aged reprobate in Berlin, drinks, gambles,
and gets in bar fights. His wife kicks him out. His son and
daughter are fed up with his irresponsible ways. When his
mother dies in Frankfurt, his estranged Orthodox brother comes
with his family to bury her in Berlin. Her will specifies
that the family must sit Shiva together and reconcile in order
to receive her inheritance. How can he attend the funeral,
sit Shiva, play in high-stakes pool tournament and fool his
family all at once? He can try. But it won’t be easy.
Levy’s, politically incorrect, madcap film is Germany’s
first Jewish comedy, irreverently daring to present Jews in
a guilt-free context beyond the Holocaust. “A genial
comedy for anyone who ever wondered how to become kosher in
one day, how orthodox patriarchs dance and what a retro-East
German sex club looks like.” —VARIETY. (90 mins.)
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A CANTOR’S TALE
DIRECTOR: ERIK GREENBERG ANJOU
US 2004
SUN JAN 22 4 PM Guild
Theatre
Great cantors used to be celebrities as adored as athletes
and movie stars. Greenberg Anjou’s exhilarating film
is a tribute to Chazzanut, the cantorial art, as Jacob (Jack)
Mendelson, a cantor with a personality as big as his voice,
offers a guided tour of his Brooklyn neighborhood, where,
when he was a boy, cantors reigned supreme and music was the
air he breathed. A loving tribute to a Golden Age in American
Jewish life when people would travel miles to hear dizzying
cantillations spilling from the windows of crowded synagogues.
“The clips of legendary cantors (both local and European,
many of whom died in the Holocaust). . . truly remain thrilling
enough to convey why this was truly ‘the popular Jewish
music’ for several 20th century decades.”-VARIETY.(90
mins.)
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ONLY HUMAN
DIRECTORS: TERESA DE PELEGRI, DOMININ HARARI
SPAIN/ARGENTINA/PORTUGAL 2004
SUN JAN 22 7:30 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
When Leni brings her fiancé
home to meet her loveable, dysfunctional family for the first
time, everything goes smoothly until her boyfriend Rafi reveals
he is Palestinian. Troubles compound when he accidentally
drops a frozen block of soup out their seventh-floor window
with disastrous results that spiral out of control. Thanks
to a series of hilarious misunderstandings, a zany cast of
characters including the caring but neurotic mother (Norma
Aleandro), and rapid-fire script combine to skewer assumptions
about human nature and love’s ability to test ethnic
boundaries. ONLY HUMAN offers a breezy, black comedy take
on “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” meets
“Meet the Fockers”—Madrid style.“A
spirited farce that delivers the laughs with regularity.”—THE
GUARDIAN, London. (89 mins.)
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PROTOCOLS OF ZION
DIRECTOR: MARC LEVIN
US 2004
MON JAN 23 7 PM Guild
Theatre
 What
Elie Wiesel called “the oldest collective bigotry in
history” is the focus of Marc Levin’s engrossing
film. In 1905, the infamous anti-Semitic propaganda treatise
called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was first published.
In 1920, Henry Ford, notorious Jew-hater and friend of Hitler,
gave a free copy with every car sold. Probably written around
the turn of the century by agents of the Russian Czar’s
secret police, the Protocols have returned and proliferated
with a vengeance since the 9/11 attack with the purported
“fact” that no Jews died in the bombing. With
remarkable restraint, from the streets of New York to the
mountains of West Virginia, Levin interviews White supremacists,
Holocaust deniers, newspaper publishers and radio hosts who,
sometimes coming out with inadvertently hilarious remarks,
have propagated the claim of a diabolical plot by Jews to
control the world. (92 mins.)
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AWAKE ZION
DIRECTOR: MONICA HAIM
US 2004
JAN 25 WED 7 PM
Guild Theatre
 Reggae
enthusiast Monica Haim explores similarities between Judaism
and reggae culture: the Star of David and the ancient African
six-pointed star, Hasidic ear locks and dreadlocks, old Jewish
songs that fit into African grooves. Could they be connected?
Haim’s film celebrates music and its capacity to unite
people of all faiths, featuring reggae artists King Django,
Super Dane and Matisyahu. “The film is, in a way, a
testament to the ridiculousness of looking at differences
all the time and know how closely you are related to other
cultures when you would not expect it.”—Monica
Haim. (60 mins.)
WITH
WEST BANK STORY
DIRECTOR: ARI SANDEL
US 2004
 In
this witty musical takeoff on WEST SIDE STORY, an Israeli
soldier falls for a Palestinian girl. That their families
have dueling falafel stands doesn’t help matters. (21
mins.)
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WALL
DIRECTOR: SIMONE BITTON
FRANCE/ISRAEL 2004
THUR JAN 26 7 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 Winner
of the Best Documentary Prize at the Jerusalem Film Festival
and a Special Jury Award at Sundance, WALL explores the physical
and psychological dimensions of the barrier being built to
divide Israel and the Palestinian territories. Bitton, a Mizrahi
Jew who is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, interviews Israelis
and Palestinians who live and work close to this structure.
Members of both communities are involved in building the wall,
and the rupture it creates in the landscape affects all. Bitton’s
interviewees include a representative of the Israeli Defense
Force who describes the construction, rationale and cost of
the wall, and a kibbutz official who eloquently points out
the irony of a people who were once crowded into ghettos now
intentionally walling themselves in. “WALL will surprise
you! A deeply personal and poetic film.”—LOS ANGELES
TIMES. (94 mins.)
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ISN’T THIS A TIME
DIRECTOR: JIM BROWN
US 2004
THU JAN 26 7:00 PM Guild
Theatre
SAT JAN 28 5:15 PM Whitsell
Auditorium
 In
November 2003, “Arlo Guthrie in concert with special
guests in a tribute to Harold Leventhal” was held at
Carnegie Hall. Over a 50-year career, Leventhal managed some
of the leading icons of folk music, his pivotal role evidenced
by the artists who performed that day—Pete Seeger, the
Weavers, Theodore Bikel, Leon Bibb and Peter, Paul and Mary.
Between songs and the memories of the musicians, Leventhal,
the child of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, expressed
the vision that motivated his passion. Like many Yiddish-speaking
Jews who grew up during the Depression, Leventhal believed
in the promise of American democracy and developed a passionate
commitment to the pursuit of social justice. Finding kindred
spirits in folk musicians, he built an audience hungry for
a music that reflected progressive social values in a culture
suffused by Cold War paranoia and repressive Blacklist tactics.
(90 mins.)
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RASHEVSKI’S TANGO
DIRECTOR: SAM GARBARSKIS
BELGIUM/FRANCE/LUXEMBOURG 2002
SAT JAN 28 7:30 PM
Whitsell
Auditorium
Garbarskis’ film is a warm ensemble comedy that celebrates
the multiplicity of Jewish lives in the modern world. Rosa
Rashevski, the family matriarch, believed that tango could
heal the body better than chicken soup. Famed for hating religion
and rabbis, she shocks her family by requesting an Orthodox
burial. As her extended clan gathers for the funeral in Paris,
a kaleidoscope view of Jewish life in a family of Holocaust
survivors—twenty-somethings, inter-marrieds, newly-observants,
converts, Israelis and Diaspora-dwellers emerges that explores
issues of identity, love, interfaith marriage and long-held
family secrets. “RASHEVSKI’S TANGO wonders...what
on earth it really means to be Jewish... Who are we—as
a family, as individuals, as Jews?—BOSTON GLOBE. (100
mins.)
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