Boston Jewish Film Festival manages to delight

For the past fifteen years, the Boston Jewish Film Festival has taken the city by storm. It was created in 1989 by filmmaker Michal Goldman to fill what she saw as a void of great Jewish films in Boston theaters.

Goldman brought such cinematic gems as Promises, The Long Way Home, and Diane Keaton's 1995 film, Unstrung Heroes to this year's festival.

But the festival, which ran from Nov. 6-16, also aimed to attract non-Jews. This year's lineup included films of many genres to please many tastes. The classic musical Fiddler on the Roof, was featured. In addition, the gay-themed army feature Yossi and Jagger, and Shalom Ireland, a documentary focusing on Ireland's little-known about Jewish population were shown.

The festival itself is non-competitive and the films screened addressed many Jewish themes. Recently, the festival has begun to attract more media attention because of the showcased films' high quality. In 1999, it was recognized as one of the best film festivals in the country by the Boston Film Critics Association. Held primarily at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the festival also screened films at auxiliary locations around Boston, including the Harvard Film Archive and The Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline. The festival's well-chosen locations helped to expand its capability to reach a broad audience, successfully bringing international films to movie buffs all over the city.

Upon entering the screening, each audience member was handed a booklet of academic essays about each of the films shown. In addition, the board of directors presented a speaker following every screening who either held a question-and-answer session or lead a formal discussion on a relevant topic.

For instance, at Keaton's Unstrung Heroes screening, actor Maury Chaykin was available to answer the audience's questions regarding his personal preparation for his role in the film. Chaykin played a slightly eccentric man living with his even more eccentric brother, played by Michael Richards, in a claustrophobia-inducing apartment. Audience members were also curious about what it was like working with Seinfeld's Kramer (Richards), Diane Keaton as a director, as well as why Chaykin felt the film did not achieve great fame during its initial release.

The audience was comprised mostly of an older clientele, who perhaps could relate to Unstrung Heroes on a different level than the scattered college students present. Set in the '50s, the film portrays Andie MacDowell and John Turturro as a married, completely secular Jewish couple with two young children living in suburban California. The crux of the film rests on Steven (Nathan Watts) the family's eldest child who decides to leave home when he discovers that his sickly mother is indeed dying of cancer.

He lives with two crazy uncles (Chaykin and Richards), two conspiracy-obsessed middle-aged men. But through this Steven discovers his Jewish roots as well as the joy of living without caring what other people think. While living with his uncles, Steven learns to say blessings over food before eating and attends Hebrew school in order to learn important prayers and he prepares for his Bar Mitzvah. He also learns not to use public phones for too long as they may be tapped, to dress incognito so as to deter potential followers, and to collect rejected toys and balls in the streets so that he can add to the increasingly cluttered apartment.

But this joyriding comes to an end when Richards' character decides to commit himself to a sanitarium. As a result, Steven returns to live at home with his father, younger sister and inevitably dying mother. The end is particularly affecting, as the failing MacDowell dies, leaving her children with her imaginative, unconventional, yet ultimately loving husband. Now, Steven and his father must learn to relate and learn to love one another while accepting the fact that their respective mother and wife is no longer alive.

Unstrung Heroes is about family first, contemporary history next, and Jewish identity last. But these broad, sweeping films like Unstrung Heroes, while quiet upon release, are the works of art that make film festivals like the Boston Jewish Film Festival so outstanding. These small films have the ability to speak to many types of people, without the fake glitz of big Hollywood. In turn, these small festivals have the ability to promote these independent gems, helping them to live up to their fullest cinematic potential.