Maine Jewish Film Festival Schedule 2002

March 8 - 13, 2003
Portland, Maine

2002 Festival Schedule

All screenings at The Movies, 10 Exchange St., except where otherwise noted

THURSDAY, MARCH 7

5-7 p.m. Special Pre-Festival Event
Documenting Intolerance: The Zaitlin Photographic Collection
Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 110 Exchange Street, Portland

A reception featuring photographs of the American civil rights movement by Ernest Withers and Danny Lyon and works by the famed Soviet documentarian Evgueni Khaldei, whose World War II photographs include the fall of Berlin, raising the Red flag over the Reichstag and the Nuremberg trials, among many others. Exhibit hours are Monday-Friday 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through May 31. Call Salt at 761-0660 for more information.

SATURDAY, MARCH 9

7:30 p.m. Opening Night Feature
Three Days in April
(Germany, 1996, 103 min., 35mm, German w/subtitles) Directed by Oliver Storz.
Near the end of the war a train arrives at the village station with three car loads of concentration camp prisoners. The dying stay on the tracks for three days, strangers for whom nobody seems to be responsible. Some villagers are paralyzed with fear and uncertainty about what to do. Others try not to notice.

In person: Director Oliver Storz.
Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar.

Sponsored by Greenhut Galleries and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Storz's visit made possible by the generous assistance of the Goethe-Institut Internationes Boston and Lufthansa.

SUNDAY, MARCH 10

12 p.m. Women Filmmakers Forum
At the Portland Museum of Art
A Letter Without Words
(USA, 1998, 60 min., video, English and German w/subtitles) Directed by Lisa Lewenz.
American filmmaker Lisa Lewenz is the granddaughter of Ella Lewenz, an enterprising amateur filmmaker who documented upper middle class German Jewish life in the 1920s and 30s. She retraces the journey of the grandmother she never met through film, diaries and interviews.

Shadows of Memory
(Germany, 2000, 43 min., video, German w/subtitles) Directed by Claudia von Alemann.
German director von Alemann and her teenage daughter confront the passivity, and in effect collaboration, of the director's 84-year-old mother during the Holocaust.

In person: Directors Lisa Lewenz and Claudia von Alemann.
Panel discussion: "Perceptions of Reality: History, Memory, and Truth" with the directors and others. Moderated by Eileen Eagan, Ph.D., associate professor of history, USM, and member of the Women's Studies Council.

In association with the Women's Studies Program of the University of Southern Maine.
Von Alemann's visit made possible by the generous assistance of the Goethe-Institut Internationes Boston and Lufthansa.

1:30 p.m. High School Program
Free to middle and high school students. Parents and general audience welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m.
Black to the Promised Land
(USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., video, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali.
A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born.

In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made, and Stephen Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at USM.

3 p.m. Common Ground: The Search for a New Black-Jewish Agenda
At the Portland Museum of Art
From Swastika to Jim Crow
(USA, 1999, 57 min., video, English) Directed by Lori Cheatle and Martin Toub.
In the 1930s, a number of Jewish intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany for America and were denied teaching positions elsewhere sought refuge at black colleges in the still-segregated South. The little-known story of the enduring link between two very different cultures that shared a history of oppression.

Panel discussion with civil rights era activists Gerald Talbot and Rabbi Harry Sky; Rev. Roy Partridge, St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Windham; Rev. Margaret Lawson, Green AME Zion Church; Madeleine Ali, director of Black to the Promised Land; and Adilah Sabreen Muhammad, Portland Islamic Society. Moderated by Abraham Peck, professor of history at USM and director, Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian and Jewish Studies at USM.

Sponsored by Preti Flaherty.

5:30 p.m. High School Program
Free to middle and high school students. Parents and general audience welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m.
Black to the Promised Land
(USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., video, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali.
A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born.

In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made, and Stephen Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at USM.
Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar.

Sponsored by The Law Offices of Joe Bornstein.

8 p.m. Trembling Before G-d
(USA/France/Israel, 2001, 94 min., 16mm, English) Directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski.
A potent, painful look at the struggles of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews to reconcile their deeply felt faith with the sexuality that faith forbids. Interviews with Jews from Brooklyn to Jerusalem merge into a multi-layered testament to tradition and survival.

In person: Howard M. Solomon, a professor at Tufts University who teaches the history of homophobia and anti-Semitism.
Reception to follow at Maine Speak Out Project offices, 7 Dana Street, second floor.

Sponsored by Videoport and Maine Speak Out Project.
In association with GLBTQARP at USM, Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance, Outright and GLSEN.

MONDAY, MARCH 11

5:30 p.m. The Optimists
(Israel/USA, 2000, 82 min., English, Hebrew, Bulgarian w/subtitles) Directed by Jacky Comforty.
On March 9, 1943, police rounded up Comforty's family in Bulgaria. It was the beginning of the end, the journey to Treblinka. But the Comfortys and 50,000 other Bulgarian Jews were saved from the Holocaust by their Christian and Muslim neighbors. This is the compelling story of their rescue.

Obsessed with Jews
(USA, 2000, 10 min., video, English) Directed by Jeff Krulik.
Jewish? Only God and Neil Keller know for sure, and guess which one has the trading card to prove it?

Sponsored by Adele Aronson, broker, RE/MAX By The Bay and by Century Tire Co. and Auto Centers.

7:30 p.m. Black to the Promised Land
Free to middle and high school students. General audience welcome at regular ticket price.
Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.
(USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., 16mm, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali.
A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born.

In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, and Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made.
Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar.

TUESDAY, MARCH 12

5:30 p.m. Evgueni Khaldei: Photographer Under Stalin
(Belgium, 1997, 60 min., video, Russian w/subtitles) Directed by Marc-Henri Wajnberg.
Evgueni Khaldei was born in the Ukraine in 1917, and at age 12 built himself a camera from his grandmother's glasses. Over seven decades, through pogroms, gulags, war and famine, the Jewish Khaldei took pictures of what he saw, including the fall of the Reichstag and the Nuremberg trials. A lively portrait, with interviews before he died in 1998, of one of the greatest Soviet photographers of all time.

Blue and White in Red Square
(USA, 1998, 60 min., video, Hebrew and English w/subtitles) Directed by Elan Frank.
On July 15, 1998, one thousand young musicians from eleven countries gathered in Moscow to create the "Orchestra of the World" under the baton of Russian maestro Valerie Gergeyev. Some of the 1,000 are members of the Young Israel Philharmonic, many of whom were born in the Soviet Union and who feel alienated from the home of their birth. This is the story of that concert and the youth whose music bridged the chasm between past and future homes.

Be sure to see the exhibit of photographs by Evgueni Khaldei, as well as civil rights photographers Danny Lyon and Ernest Withers at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 110 Exchange St. See description at March 7, above.

Bates College Screening
Saturday, March 9
7:30 p.m.

The Bates College Jewish Cultural Community, Office of the Dean of Faculty, Hewlett Diversity Fund, and Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn, in conjunction with the Maine Jewish Film Festival, will present Trembling Before G-d in Room G52 (the Keck classroom) at Pettengill Hall, Bates College, in Lewiston. Howard M. Solomon, who teaches the history of homophobia and anti-Semitism at Tufts University and was recently named scholar-in-residence of the Lesbian and Gay Archives at USM's Jean Byers Sampson Center on Diversity, will lead discussion following the film.

Tickets and
information for this screening only are available by calling 207-786-6330.

8 p.m. Yidl Mitn Fidl
(Poland, 1936, 92 min., 35mm B&W, Yiddish w/new subtitles) Directed by Joseph Green.
Molly Picon plays a young woman who poses as a man in order to join a band of musicians traveling the Polish countryside. She falls in love with one of her colleagues with delightfully humorous results. Filled with music and charm. Also with Simche Fostel, Max Bozyk and Leon Liebgold.

Sponsored by Borders Books Music Cafe.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13

1:30 p.m. Seniors Program
At the Center for Maine History, 489 Congress St.
Free for all seniors. All others welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for seniors, so please call ahead. Isa Kremer: The People's Diva
(USA, 2000, 56 min., video, English) Directed by Nina Baker Feinberg.
The remarkable and little-known story of Jewish diva and activist Isa Kremer, who survived Russian pogroms and revolution to bring Yiddish music to the world. Archival footage and interviews tell the story of a complex woman and a vanished past.

Madame Jacques sur la Croisette
(France, 1995, 40 min., video, French w/subtitles) Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel.
Every spring, a group of elderly Yiddish-speaking French Jews gather in Cannes to reminisce about their long and diverse lives. Among them, Maurice searches for love with the aristocratic Mme. Jacques.

Obsessed with Jews
(USA, 2000, 10 min., video, English) Directed by Jeff Krulik.
Jewish? Only God and Neil Keller know for sure, and guess which one has the trading card to prove it?

Presented with the Chai Society of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.

5:30 p.m. Video Flour
(Israel, 2000, 53 min., Hebrew and Amharic w/subtitles) Directed by Avishai Mekonen.
An offbeat documentary that follows two young Israeli comedians of Ethiopian origin as they try to make it in show business. Riding in the back of a flour van, they take their video of Amharic comic acts on the road to Israeli Ethiopian communities with mixed results. An astute look at the complex life of immigrants in Israel.

Caravan 841
(Israel, 2001, 50 min., video, English and Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Zion Rubin.
Moshe, an 11-year-old Ethiopian boy, lives in a dwindling caravan site in the Western Galilee and is torn between Aharon, a 60-year-old repentant Jew who teaches him Torah, and Walter, an impulsive African-American saxophone player who has a jazz club. Fresh from the Jerusalem Film Festival, July 2001.

Sponsored by Melinda Molin, M.D., P.A.

8 p.m. Waiting for the Messiah
(Argentina/Italy/Spain, 2000, 97 min., 35mm, Spanish w/subtitles) Directed by Daniel Burman.
Ariel, in his 20s, tries to escape his ordered Jewish existence of Shabbat dinners, working at his father's kosher restaurant in Buenos Aires, and his long-time Jewish girlfriend. A parallel story involves a bank clerk who loses everything but finds comfort in an unexpected place. Mature content.

Sponsored by The Racket & Fitness Center.

THURSDAY, MARCH 14

5:30 p.m. Return of Sarah's Daughters
(USA, 1997, 56 min., video, English) Directed by Marcia Jarmel.
The quest for spirituality by three very different women: Rus, a social worker who finds fulfillment in the Hasidic community; Myriam, a lesbian who pursues and then rejects Orthodoxy and ends up in a Reconstructionist rabbinical school; and Jarmel herself.

Grrly Show
(USA, 2000, 18 min., video, English) Directed by Kara Herold.
Interviews with self-publishers of feminist (and Jewish feminist) girl "zines."

Sponsored by Walter's Cafe and by Saltwater Grille.

8 p.m. Desperado Square
(Israel, 2000, 97 min., 35mm, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Benni Torati.
On the yartzeit of his father's death, Nisim has a dream in which his father tells him to break a 25-year-old vow and reopen the neighborhood's theater. Following this dream brings the joy of movies back to the neighborhood, uncovers family secrets, heals old wounds and reunites true love. Winner of five Israeli Academy Awards. New England premiere!

Closing night party - all invited! JavaNet Cafe.

Sponsored by American Pie / Street & Co. / Fore Street.

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The Maine Jewish Film Festival
P.O. Box 7465, Portland, ME 04112-7465
Tel: 207-831-7495 Fax: 661-760-8148 e-mail: filmfest@mjff.org
Web site inquiries: webmaster@mjff.org

THURSDAY, MARCH 7 5-7 p.m. Special Pre-Festival Event Documenting Intolerance: The Zaitlin Photographic Collection Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 110 Exchange Street, Portland A reception featuring photographs of the American civil rights movement by Ernest Withers and Danny Lyon and works by the famed Soviet documentarian Evgueni Khaldei, whose World War II photographs include the fall of Berlin, raising the Red flag over the Reichstag and the Nuremberg trials, among many others. Exhibit hours are Monday-Friday 11:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through May 31. Call Salt at 761-0660 for more information.
SATURDAY, MARCH 9 7:30 p.m. Opening Night Feature Three Days in April (Germany, 1996, 103 min., 35mm, German w/subtitles) Directed by Oliver Storz. Near the end of the war a train arrives at the village station with three car loads of concentration camp prisoners. The dying stay on the tracks for three days, strangers for whom nobody seems to be responsible. Some villagers are paralyzed with fear and uncertainty about what to do. Others try not to notice. In person: Director Oliver Storz. Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar. Sponsored by Greenhut Galleries and the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany. Storz's visit made possible by the generous assistance of the Goethe-Institut Internationes Boston and Lufthansa.
SUNDAY, MARCH 10 12 p.m. Women Filmmakers Forum At the Portland Museum of Art A Letter Without Words (USA, 1998, 60 min., video, English and German w/subtitles) Directed by Lisa Lewenz. American filmmaker Lisa Lewenz is the granddaughter of Ella Lewenz, an enterprising amateur filmmaker who documented upper middle class German Jewish life in the 1920s and 30s. She retraces the journey of the grandmother she never met through film, diaries and interviews. Shadows of Memory (Germany, 2000, 43 min., video, German w/subtitles) Directed by Claudia von Alemann. German director von Alemann and her teenage daughter confront the passivity, and in effect collaboration, of the director's 84-year-old mother during the Holocaust. In person: Directors Lisa Lewenz and Claudia von Alemann. Panel discussion: "Perceptions of Reality: History, Memory, and Truth" with the directors and others. Moderated by Eileen Eagan, Ph.D., associate professor of history, USM, and member of the Women's Studies Council. In association with the Women's Studies Program of the University of Southern Maine. Von Alemann's visit made possible by the generous assistance of the Goethe-Institut Internationes Boston and Lufthansa.
1:30 p.m. High School Program Free to middle and high school students. Parents and general audience welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 5:30 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m. Black to the Promised Land (USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., video, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali. A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born. In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made, and Stephen Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at USM.
3 p.m. Common Ground: The Search for a New Black-Jewish Agenda At the Portland Museum of Art From Swastika to Jim Crow (USA, 1999, 57 min., video, English) Directed by Lori Cheatle and Martin Toub. In the 1930s, a number of Jewish intellectuals who fled Nazi Germany for America and were denied teaching positions elsewhere sought refuge at black colleges in the still-segregated South. The little-known story of the enduring link between two very different cultures that shared a history of oppression. Panel discussion with civil rights era activists Gerald Talbot and Rabbi Harry Sky; Rev. Roy Partridge, St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Windham; Rev. Margaret Lawson, Green AME Zion Church; Madeleine Ali, director of Black to the Promised Land; and Adilah Sabreen Muhammad, Portland Islamic Society. Moderated by Abraham Peck, professor of history at USM and director, Academic Council for Post-Holocaust Christian and Jewish Studies at USM. Sponsored by Preti Flaherty.
5:30 p.m. High School Program Free to middle and high school students. Parents and general audience welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and Monday at 7:30 p.m. Black to the Promised Land (USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., video, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali. A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born. In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made, and Stephen Wessler, director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence at USM. Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar. Sponsored by The Law Offices of Joe Bornstein.
8 p.m. Trembling Before G-d (USA/France/Israel, 2001, 94 min., 16mm, English) Directed by Sandi Simcha DuBowski. A potent, painful look at the struggles of gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews to reconcile their deeply felt faith with the sexuality that faith forbids. Interviews with Jews from Brooklyn to Jerusalem merge into a multi-layered testament to tradition and survival. In person: Howard M. Solomon, a professor at Tufts University who teaches the history of homophobia and anti-Semitism. Reception to follow at Maine Speak Out Project offices, 7 Dana Street, second floor. Sponsored by Videoport and Maine Speak Out Project. In association with GLBTQARP at USM, Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance, Outright and GLSEN.
MONDAY, MARCH 11 5:30 p.m. The Optimists (Israel/USA, 2000, 82 min., English, Hebrew, Bulgarian w/subtitles) Directed by Jacky Comforty. On March 9, 1943, police rounded up Comforty's family in Bulgaria. It was the beginning of the end, the journey to Treblinka. But the Comfortys and 50,000 other Bulgarian Jews were saved from the Holocaust by their Christian and Muslim neighbors. This is the compelling story of their rescue. Obsessed with Jews (USA, 2000, 10 min., video, English) Directed by Jeff Krulik. Jewish? Only God and Neil Keller know for sure, and guess which one has the trading card to prove it? Sponsored by Adele Aronson, broker, RE/MAX By The Bay and by Century Tire Co. and Auto Centers.
7:30 p.m. Black to the Promised Land Free to middle and high school students. General audience welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for students, so please call ahead. Program also shows Sunday at 1:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. (USA/Israel, 1991, 75 min., 16mm, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Madeleine Ali. A Jewish high school teacher takes a class of African-American students from Brooklyn to an Israeli kibbutz for 10 weeks. Over time, stereotypes break down and kinships are born. In person: Director Madeleine Ali, an African-American Jew who spent eight years in Israel, and Opal McCalla, a student who participated in the program the year after the film was made. Flickschmooze with the director to follow at JavaNet Cafe. Cash food and coffee bar.
TUESDAY, MARCH 12 5:30 p.m. Evgueni Khaldei: Photographer Under Stalin (Belgium, 1997, 60 min., video, Russian w/subtitles) Directed by Marc-Henri Wajnberg. Evgueni Khaldei was born in the Ukraine in 1917, and at age 12 built himself a camera from his grandmother's glasses. Over seven decades, through pogroms, gulags, war and famine, the Jewish Khaldei took pictures of what he saw, including the fall of the Reichstag and the Nuremberg trials. A lively portrait, with interviews before he died in 1998, of one of the greatest Soviet photographers of all time. Blue and White in Red Square (USA, 1998, 60 min., video, Hebrew and English w/subtitles) Directed by Elan Frank. On July 15, 1998, one thousand young musicians from eleven countries gathered in Moscow to create the "Orchestra of the World" under the baton of Russian maestro Valerie Gergeyev. Some of the 1,000 are members of the Young Israel Philharmonic, many of whom were born in the Soviet Union and who feel alienated from the home of their birth. This is the story of that concert and the youth whose music bridged the chasm between past and future homes. Be sure to see the exhibit of photographs by Evgueni Khaldei, as well as civil rights photographers Danny Lyon and Ernest Withers at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, 110 Exchange St. See description at March 7, above.	Bates College Screening Saturday, March 9 7:30 p.m. The Bates College Jewish Cultural Community, Office of the Dean of Faculty, Hewlett Diversity Fund, and Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center in Auburn, in conjunction with the Maine Jewish Film Festival, will present Trembling Before G-d in Room G52 (the Keck classroom) at Pettengill Hall, Bates College, in Lewiston. Howard M. Solomon, who teaches the history of homophobia and anti-Semitism at Tufts University and was recently named scholar-in-residence of the Lesbian and Gay Archives at USM's Jean Byers Sampson Center on Diversity, will lead discussion following the film. Tickets and information for this screening only are available by calling 207-786-6330.
8 p.m. Yidl Mitn Fidl (Poland, 1936, 92 min., 35mm B&W, Yiddish w/new subtitles) Directed by Joseph Green. Molly Picon plays a young woman who poses as a man in order to join a band of musicians traveling the Polish countryside. She falls in love with one of her colleagues with delightfully humorous results. Filled with music and charm. Also with Simche Fostel, Max Bozyk and Leon Liebgold. Sponsored by Borders Books Music Cafe.
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13 1:30 p.m. Seniors Program At the Center for Maine History, 489 Congress St. Free for all seniors. All others welcome at regular ticket price. Tickets are required, even for seniors, so please call ahead. Isa Kremer: The People's Diva (USA, 2000, 56 min., video, English) Directed by Nina Baker Feinberg. The remarkable and little-known story of Jewish diva and activist Isa Kremer, who survived Russian pogroms and revolution to bring Yiddish music to the world. Archival footage and interviews tell the story of a complex woman and a vanished past. Madame Jacques sur la Croisette (France, 1995, 40 min., video, French w/subtitles) Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel. Every spring, a group of elderly Yiddish-speaking French Jews gather in Cannes to reminisce about their long and diverse lives. Among them, Maurice searches for love with the aristocratic Mme. Jacques. Obsessed with Jews (USA, 2000, 10 min., video, English) Directed by Jeff Krulik. Jewish? Only God and Neil Keller know for sure, and guess which one has the trading card to prove it? Presented with the Chai Society of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.
5:30 p.m. Video Flour (Israel, 2000, 53 min., Hebrew and Amharic w/subtitles) Directed by Avishai Mekonen. An offbeat documentary that follows two young Israeli comedians of Ethiopian origin as they try to make it in show business. Riding in the back of a flour van, they take their video of Amharic comic acts on the road to Israeli Ethiopian communities with mixed results. An astute look at the complex life of immigrants in Israel. Caravan 841 (Israel, 2001, 50 min., video, English and Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Zion Rubin. Moshe, an 11-year-old Ethiopian boy, lives in a dwindling caravan site in the Western Galilee and is torn between Aharon, a 60-year-old repentant Jew who teaches him Torah, and Walter, an impulsive African-American saxophone player who has a jazz club. Fresh from the Jerusalem Film Festival, July 2001. Sponsored by Melinda Molin, M.D., P.A.
8 p.m. Waiting for the Messiah (Argentina/Italy/Spain, 2000, 97 min., 35mm, Spanish w/subtitles) Directed by Daniel Burman. Ariel, in his 20s, tries to escape his ordered Jewish existence of Shabbat dinners, working at his father's kosher restaurant in Buenos Aires, and his long-time Jewish girlfriend. A parallel story involves a bank clerk who loses everything but finds comfort in an unexpected place. Mature content. Sponsored by The Racket & Fitness Center.
THURSDAY, MARCH 14 5:30 p.m. Return of Sarah's Daughters (USA, 1997, 56 min., video, English) Directed by Marcia Jarmel. The quest for spirituality by three very different women: Rus, a social worker who finds fulfillment in the Hasidic community; Myriam, a lesbian who pursues and then rejects Orthodoxy and ends up in a Reconstructionist rabbinical school; and Jarmel herself. Grrly Show (USA, 2000, 18 min., video, English) Directed by Kara Herold. Interviews with self-publishers of feminist (and Jewish feminist) girl "zines." Sponsored by Walter's Cafe and by Saltwater Grille.
8 p.m. Desperado Square (Israel, 2000, 97 min., 35mm, Hebrew w/subtitles) Directed by Benni Torati. On the yartzeit of his father's death, Nisim has a dream in which his father tells him to break a 25-year-old vow and reopen the neighborhood's theater. Following this dream brings the joy of movies back to the neighborhood, uncovers family secrets, heals old wounds and reunites true love. Winner of five Israeli Academy Awards. New England premiere! Closing night party - all invited! JavaNet Cafe. Sponsored by American Pie / Street & Co. / Fore Street. Back to top