When the Boston Jewish Film Festival was founded in 1989 by filmmaker Michal Goldman, no one could have anticipated that it would grow from ten films to 45 in only 13 years. Thanks in part to the efforts of Artistic Director Kaj Wilson, the festival this year will feature an array of international short films, documentaries, dramas, and comedies that deal with the Jewish experience and themes relating to Jewish culture, heritage, and history.
The festival runs until Nov. 11 and begins this evening at the Museum of Fine Arts with the Boston premiere of Neal Slavin's film Focus, which is based on Arthur Miller's play of the same name. William H. Macy and Laura Dern deliver stellar performances in this tale of a husband and wife erroneously identified as Jews in the final days of World War II.
Like Focus, the majority of the films featured in this year's festival are Boston area premieres. Director Joseph Cedar's highly anticipated Time of Favor won six Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Picture. This psychological thriller follows a young man named Pini, the mastermind behind a plot to blow up the Dome of the Rock mosque on the Temple Mount, and his plans to test the loyalties of his best friend Menachem.
In the French film I'm Alive and I Love You, which is directed by Roger Kahane and based on a true story, a railway employee in occupied France finds a scrap of paper bearing the message "I'm alive and I love you. Sarah." The note leads the worker to Sarah's four-year-old son who has escaped the Nazi raids that claimed his mother and grandparents. The film promises to be simultaneously heartwarming and heartbreaking.
In addition to separate showings of feature-length films, various festival locations will host special short film series according to certain themes. The B'Nai Mitzvah Program on Nov. 4, which will celebrate the Festival's 13th anniversary, features a collection of short films with Bar and Bat Mitzvah themes. Danny Greenfield's Allerd Fishbein's In Love documents Allerd's preparations for his Bar Mitzvah during the 1980s. In The Seventh Day, directed by Gabriel Lichtmann, a Buenos Aries family celebrates a Bar Mitzvah despite encountering one problem after another. Wanderings: A Journey to Connect, is a documentary detailing the journeys of director Nikila Cole and her daughter Sarah on a "travelling Bat Mitzvah" to help them both connect with their Judaism.
The short film series on Nov. 7 will show films about relationships from American and Canadian directors. Hosted by the Coolidge Corner Theatre, the series will also be the Boston premiere for the six films, which range from tragic to comic and anywhere from five to 26 minutes in length.
The MFA will host a series of shorts entitled Local Ties a collection featuring the creative talents of artists with ties to Boston. Directors Alla Kvogan and Alissa Cardone's Surface is a nine-minute experimental film inspired by Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. In 'Til Death Do Us Part, director Cindy Kleine interviews her parents individually about their marriage and is told astonishingly different stories. Director Barbara Hammer explores issues ranging from human rights to anti-Semitism in a search for her roots in My Babushka: Searching Ukranian Identities.
Besides the variety of fictional films offered, the festival will feature several documentaries. Emmanuel Finkiel's Casting is a collection of the interviews he conducted while casting for his films Voyage and Madame Jacques Sur La Croisette. He auditions Yiddish-speaking men and women ranging in age from 60 to 90 who tell the director their own personal stories. Directed by Robert Cohen, The Travellers: This Land is Your Land features footage of performances by musical group the Travelers, interviews with the band members, and the role of their Jewish upbringing in the group's evolution.
Hany Abu-Assad's Nazareth 2000 is unique in that it is part fiction and part documentary. The director returns to his hometown to tell the story of Nazareth at the dawn of the new millennium. This story, however, is told through the eyes of two sharp, cynical gas station attendants.
The festival will close with the Italian film The Sky is Falling, a powerful drama about two daughters coming to terms with their recently deceased father's fascist ideology while acclimating to life in war torn Italy. Actress Isabella Rossellini stars in the film with Jeroen Krabbe and will be there in person at a special reception to follow the screening.
With such a wide variety of films and shorts, the Boston Jewish Film Festival is the perfect way to learn about Jewish culture and history without having to stray too far from home. You can forget the popcorn, but don't forget to bring the bagels and lox.
In addition to the MFA and the Coolidge Corner Theatre, screening locations will include smaller theaters in surrounding towns such as Danvers, Randolph and Sharon. Go to the festival's website http://www.bjff.org for information about show times and locations.
