New York Jewish Film Festival January 12 – 27, 2005

In cooperation with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the New York Jewish Film Festival presented its 14th annual edition at the Read Theatre, screening also at the Jewish Museum and a local venue. The fest was organized by the Jewish Museum with support from several foundations, New York City’s Department of Cultural Affaires, the Israeli Office of Cultural Affairs in the US and other sources. The festival is part of the thriving ethnic film festival phenomenon in the United States. With more than 60 festivals each year, the Jewish circuit is among the biggest, comparable in size to the Gay/Lesbian film festival circuit.

Given the large number of Jews in major metropolitan settings, amounting to close to 1.5 million for the New York City area and the large proportion of upscale and well educated segments with their interest in culture, Jewish festivals have no problems attracting an audience there. Thus the films screened at the Jewish Film Fest in New York played for full houses, not only for the opening and closing dates bookended by social events, but also for most other days as well. The festival’s selection of 29 films synched with the interests of the audience and the perennial themes of prosecution, the holocaust, traditional and modern Jewish identity, and Israel.

By including numerous productions not directly tied to holocaust issues or Jewish identity questions, the festival broadened the scope. Among these films were intriguing recent Israeli productions like NINA’S TRAGEDIES (Savi Gabizon, Dir. 2003) an adolescent coming-of-age tale, Nurith Aviv’s FROM LANGUAGE TO LANGUAGE (Israel/France/Belgium), a meditation on language, and Dov Gil-Har’s BEHIND ENEMY LINES (2004) on variations of truth, that is perspectives on the Palestinian – Israeli conflict held by an Israeli policeman and his friend, a journalist from Palestine. Pairing IMAGINARY WITNESS: HOLLYWOOD AND THE HOLOCAUST (2004) by Daniel Anker, with Frank Borzage’s THE MORTAL STORM (1940) and Sideney Lumet’s THE PAWNBROKER (1964) showed innovative programming. Anker documents the U.S. film industry’s reluctance to condemn Nazi anti-Semitism until after the war, Borzage chronicles the descent of a small German university town into Fascism with Lumet’ portraying a holocaust survivor.

Four of the 29 films selected will be released theatrically, Daniel Burman’s LOST EMBRACE (Argentine, 2004) on the biographical exploration and discovery of family secrets by a young Jew, Gabizon’s NINA’S TRAGEDIES, Yaron Zilberman’s WATERMARKS (Israel, 2004), a documentary of the champion women swimmer of the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna in the thirties, and Danae Elon’s ANOTHER ROAD MOVIE (Israel 2004) on her search for the Palestinian who raised her.

Claus Mueller
New York Correspondent