Jewish Film Festival February 11-25

The 14th Annual Louisville Jewish Film Festival strives to show the richness and diversity of the Jewish experience by presenting the best contemporary international films. Through feature films, shorts, documentaries and student films, as well as conversations with guest speakers, the festival explores Jewish identity with the hope of increasing tolerance and educating its audiences.

Some of the films we have shown have gone on to be nominated for Academy Awards and remade into Hollywood films. Many of them have received Israel’s highest awards for films. Since our beginning over 100 outstanding films have been shown at a variety of venues accompanied by exciting speakers and receptions.

 

FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION
CALL 459-0660

Opening Event
The Constant Fire (Short)

Saturday, Feb. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Adath Jeshurun Synagogue
Tickets: $20 Purchase Online
Reception following films
Vaad approved options upon advanced request

Stuart Weinstock, the filmmaker, will be present at the opening. A teacher of film at the New York Film Academy and Columbia University where he also received a MFA in film. The Constant Fire is An Israeli woman and her American-born husband’s disagreement about leaving their Haifa apartment at the start of the 2006 Lebanon War forces a confrontation that will test their marriage.
English, 10 minutes

Shown with
The Human Resource Manager

Selected as winner of 5 Israeli Academy Awards for Best Film, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Screenwriter and Best Sound.
Jerusalem’s largest bakery makes headlines when a Romanian foreign worker is killed in a suicide bombing. When the bakery fails to claim her body, the media accuses the owner of the bakery of inhumanity and indifference. The owner responds by sending the HR manager on a journey to return the victim’s remains to her family. In this darkly comic journey, the HR manager finds himself leading a quirky convoy from Jerusalem to Romania.This movie is based on A. B. Yehoshua’s novel, A Woman in Jerusalem.
Israel, 103 minutes, Hebrew and Romanian

Comedy as a Form of Resistance in Holocaust Cinema

Adath Jeshurun Synagogue
Sunday, Feb. 12, 10 a.m.
Free
Stuart Weinstock, filmmaker and teacher of film at Columbia will discuss comedy as seen through such films as The Producers, The Great Dictator and Life is Beautiful.

Nicky’s Family

Sunday, Feb. 12, 3 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
Audience Award Winner at the 2011 Karlovy Vary Film Festival and Best documentary of Montreal World Film Festival.
A young British stockbroker finds himself in Prague at the onset of the German invasion. Spurred into action by the plight of the Jews, Nicholas Winton organizes an ad-hoc operation that saves 669 Jewish children by transporting them to England. Winton, now 102 years old, did not speak about these events with anyone for more than half a century. Dozens of his “children” have been found, and their families have grown to almost 6000 people.
Cambodia, Czeck Republic, Israel, UK, USA, Slovakia, 96 minutes

Restoration

Wednesday, Feb. 15, 7 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
Selected as winner of Israeli Academy Award for Best Film and 11 other nominations
The most honored film of this year tells the complex story of Fidelman, an old-fashioned wood restorer who is lost after his business partner of 40 years suddenly dies and the shop is on the verge of bankruptcy. It traces the shifting bonds between Fidelman, his son, Noah, and Anton, the secretive new assistant. Yaakov and Anton restore a 100 year-old Steinway, while creating a father-son dynamic that tests the relationship between Yaakov and Noah.
Hebrew, 105 minutes

Berlin 36

Thursday, Feb. 16, 7 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
Selected as Audience Award winners at several Jewish Film Festivals
Inspired by the true story of Jewish high jumper Gretel Bergmann, this film portrays a remarkable piece of forgotten Olympic history. Bergmann was considered a top contender for the gold medal during the Nazi controlled 1936 Summer Games. However, the Americans threaten an Olympic boycott if Jewish athletes were barred from competing. So, the Nazis conspire to replace her with an über-athlete. BERLIN ‘36 is the exploration of a tenuous friendship between two outsiders who find themselves in unimaginable circumstances.
Germany, 100 minutes

This is Sodom

Saturday, Feb. 18, 7:30 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
This “Israeli Monty Python” film was a blockbuster when it opened in Israel last year. A raucous, bawdy and silly comedy, the biblical character Lot and other citizens of Sodom try to resist the temptations of gambling, sex and corruption. If rated, it would certainly be an R.
Israel, 88 minutes, Hebrew

The Yankles

Sunday, Feb. 19, 3 p.m.
Villiage 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
Selected a winner of several Best Comedy and Audience Awards at Jewish Film Festivals
Charlie, a washed-up former pro baseball player, is sentenced to community service following a drunk driving conviction. The only group willing to give him a second chance at rebuilding his reputation and career is a desperate bunch of Orthodox rabbinical students who want to start their own baseball team. In this family film Charlie strives to lead “The Yankles” to victory and attempts to mend fences with those he has wronged in this sensitive comedy about overcoming bigotry and self-doubt.
USA 2009, 114 minutes

The Ma’ale School of Television, Film and the Arts in Jerusalem:
The Orthodox Way
New Year’s Resolution

Monday, Feb. 20, 7 p.m
The Temple, Waller Chapel
FREE
Reception following films
Sponsored by The Temple Brotherhood.
This event will include discussion moderated by Rabbi David Ariel-Joel. The Orthodox Way is a romantic comedy about dating the Orthodox way. New Year’s Resolution is about a 38 year old, single woman announcing to her Orthodox family that she plans to have a child by artificial insemination.
Israel, 50 minutes

Eichmann’s End

Tuesday, Feb. 21, 7 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
In mid-1950’s Buenos Aires, Holocaust survivor Lothar Hermann’s suspicions are aroused when his teenage daughter introduces her boyfriend, Nick Eichmann. Meanwhile, Nick’s father, the notorious Nazi, is dictating his memoirs to a local journalist, proudly recounting his masterminding of the murder of millions of Jews. With her help Eichmann is captured and brought to trial in Israel. A drama based on a true story.
90 minutes, German, Hebrew, Spanish

Dolphin Boy

Wednesday, Feb. 22, 7 p.m.
Village 8 Theatres
Tickets: $8.50 in advance, $10 at the door, $6 Student Purchase Online
Selected as winner of Jury Mention at 2011 Jerusalem Film Festival and nominated for Best Documentary
When Morad, a 17 year old Arab Israeli, is brutally beaten and unable to speak, his trauma psychiatrist recommends controversial “dolphin therapy.” In Eilat, Morad swims with the dolphins and slowly regains speech, but believes he grew up with the dolphins. This documentary tells the story of the devastating havoc that human violence can wreak upon the human soul, and about the healing powers of nature and of love.
Israel, 72 minutes

Closing Event

Lenin in October

Saturday, Feb. 25, 7:30 p.m.
Adath Jeshurun Synagogue
Tickets: $15 Purchase Online
Reception following films
Vaad approved options available upon request

In this off-beat Israeli comedy, Grisha has almost given up on his dream of opening a restaurant, when a rich uncle in Russia leaves all his money to him for this purpose. The catch is that his uncle stipulates that the restaurant must be dedicated to the sacred values of Communism. His search for a statue of Lenin to place in the restaurant has hilarious results.
Israel, 50 minutes

Shown with
Half a Ton of Bronze

Since 1938, the bronze equestrian statue of Alexander Zaid, a legendary Zionist, stood guard in Beit Shearim in Israel. In 2007, thieves toppled the statue, presumably to sell it for scrap. This funny comedy, inspired by that incident, depicts the efforts of Zaid’s grandson to recover the statue after it was stolen by Israeli Arabs and later sold to a sleazy scrap metal dealer.
Israel, 60 minutes


FOR TICKETS AND INFORMATION
CALL 459-0660

Donate to the Film Festival Today! Click here or the button on the right. Just be sure to select “Jewish Film Fest” from the drop down menu.

$500-$999 EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Receive twelve film tickets of your choice, including 2 to the opening and closing events, and name listing in Festival Program

$250-$499 PRODUCER: Receive six film tickets of your choice, including 2 to the opening and closing events, and name listing in Festival Program

$118-$249 DIRECTOR: Receive four film tickets, not including opening and closing events, and name listing in Festival Program

$36-$117 ACTOR: Name listing in Festival Program

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