The 11th annual Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival will take place next week at Jerusalem’s Cinematheque theater, featuring films of Jewish interest of the past 75 years.
Among the 72 featured films at the week-long festival, beginning Dec. 12, are the following:
* Two films on Peter Bergson: Not Idly By, by Pierre Sauvage, and Against the Tide, by Richard M. Trank and narrated by Dustin Hoffman. Both document the Holocaust-era struggle of Peter Bergson (born Hillel Kook, nephew of Rabbi A. I. Kook) as he took on the Roosevelt Administration and the leaders of American Jewry in an attempt to make the rescue of European Jewry a top priority. Both movies make use of a first-hand account of the events given by Bergson in a never-before-screened interview from 1977.
* East and West, a silent comedy made in 1923 depicting American Jews returning to the European shtetl. Starring Molly Picon.
* The Kiddush Man, by Yitz Brilliant. A ten-minute drama about a boy’s reaction to the absence of someone he attempted to avoid.
* Three Daughters Plus, by Aliza Eshed and Amnon Ben-Ze’ev. About three sisters who became observant at different points in their lives, a fourth sister who became a radical feminist Arab-rights activist, and their fascinating family dynamics.
* Religion.com, by Ron Ofer and Yochai Hakak, about the ideological struggle between those who would bring in and those who would keep out Internet from the hareidi-religious world.
One film that will demonstratively not be screened during the festival is "A Light for Greytowers," by director Robin Garbose. The film was rejected last year by the Festival because the actresses and director asked that the audience be women-only. For reasons of modesty, they explained, they do not wish men to see them singing and dancing. The movie will be screened at the Cinemateque before and after the Festival, however.
The movie, a musical, tells the story of a Jewish girl taken from her Russian family and placed in an orphanage in Britain, where she struggles to keep her faith as her mother continues to search for her. The movie has played before all-women audiences before, but this is the first time the Jerusalem Cinemateque – and its Tel Aviv sister theater – have agreed to host such an event.
During the Festival week, films are screened from Israel and around the world, exploring themes of Jewish faith and practice, history, culture, music, the Holocaust, contemporary life in Israel and the Jewish Diaspora, the relationship between Judaism and other world religions and the role of Jewish identity in the State of Israel. Taking place every December since 1999, the Festival has become an important component in Jerusalem’s cultural fabric. In addition to screening movies, it also features competitions, lectures, panel discussions, and live music performances.