Adventures of Rabbi Jacob, The
France, 1973, 95 minutes, video, dubbed in English subtitles
Director: Gerard Oury

A classic French farce starring Louis de Funes.  A man must disguise himself as a New York rabbi to avoid detection.  This catchall comedy pokes fun at virtually every human and social foible, and does it with total abandon.  Writer/director Oury lampoons bigotry, Arab nationalism, gangsters, the police and practically everything Jewish!


Allerd Fishbein's In Love
USA, 2000, 20 minutes, 16 mm, English
Director: Danny Greenfield

Lack of co-ordination, nausea, Bar Mitzvahs and the intricacies of kissing.  This is what life is like at age 13.  But Allerd (played by Freaks and Geeks star John Daley), his older brother, parents and grandparents go to the Nevele/Fallview Hotel in the Catskills for a week, where Allerd meets a girl.  A comedy about a boy's first big crush.


Austeria
Poland, 1983, 109 minutes, 35 mm, Polish w/ English subtitles
Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz

On the first day of WWI, a group of Jews flee from the Cossak Army in Polish Galicia and find themselves trapped overnight in a border inn.  Relationships develop, love affairs are snatched, the religious pray.  Full of warmth and vitality, the film captures the Jewish sense of humour, which seems, uniquely, to draw inspiration from disaster.   Music by Leopold Kozlowski (THE LAST KLEZMER).


The Believer
USA, 2001, 100 minutes, 35 mm, English
Director: Henry Bean

Based on a true story, The Believer recounts the life of Danny Balint from fervent religious student to rising star in a neo-fascist political movement that subverts almost everything he was brought up to believe.  In a fascinating series of twists and turns, Danny exhibits all the passion of the converted as he browses militia-movement Web sites, utters hate-filled but articulate discourses on Judaism and its teachings, and promotes the violent attack upon and ultimate destruction of his most hated enemies.  When his own suppressed identity seems likely to be revealed, he flees to an upstate training enclave, further galvanising his desire to act out the vicious and heinous vilification subscribed to by him and his compatriots.  But as events ensue and striking contradictions multiply, something in Danny's soul prompts a complex and incredible resolution.


Beyond Hitler's Grasp
Israel, 2000, 67 minutes, 35 mm, English and Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Nitzan Aviram

A Holocaust film with a happy ending, BEYOND HITLER'S GRASP tells the story of Bulgaria -- a small and somehow forgotten European country which managed to protect a minority in its midst from annihilation.


Divided We Fall
Czech Republic, 2000, 117 minutes, DVD, Czech w/ English subtitles
Director: Jan Hrebejk

In the waning days of World War II, infertile couple Josef and Marie hide young Jewish prison camp escapee David in their storeroom -- right under the noses of the Nazis occupying their small Czech town and pre-war pal and current collaborator Horst.  When Marie rejects Horst's advances and he begins to suspect David's presence, he gets even by trying to move an emotionally shattered German officer into their flat.


Echo
Belgium, 1999, 13 minutes, 35 mm, French w/ English subtitles
Director: Frédéric Roullier-Gall

An elderly couple travels by train.  She is blind; he is deaf.  The noisy and visual environment creates an echo, a period of their life when they were physically and psychologically mutilated.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.


Finbar Lebowitz
USA, 2000, 25 minutes, video, English
Director: Rona Mark

Finbar O'Leary is 17 years old, gawky, and the head of his dysfunctional, fatherless family.  He's also in love with an older, intellectual woman.  The problem is that she's Jewish.  In this funny, sweet short film, Finbar decides to do something to win the girl of his dreams.


Fiddler on the Roof (30^th Anniversary Edition)
USA, 1971, 179 minutes, DVD, English
Director: Norman Jewison

To life, to life, l'chaim!  What can you say about FIDDLER that hasn't been said a hundred times before?  We are proud to be screening the brand-new, special edition release of this classic film.  Presented in widescreen format, come see FIDDLER again for the first time!


Gloomy Sunday
Germany, 1999, 114 minutes, video, German w/ English subtitles
Director: Rolf Schubel

Restaurant Szabo in Budapest.  Hans, an elegant old German who has come here to celebrate his 80th birthday, collapses and dies at the sounds of an old song played in his honour.  Sixty years earlier the same Hans is a regular at the restaurant of the Jew Laszlo Szabo and his lover Ilona.  For Szabo the restaurant is a symbol of his harmonious life.  This perfection isn't even marred when Ilona falls in love with the new, shy piano player, Andras.  After all, he believes in freedom of choice, and the musician is really a pure soul.  Three years pass and Hans is once more a regular at the restaurant -- this time in the uniform of a Nazi colonel.  He still protects his "friend" but meanwhile takes control over property belonging to Budapest's Jews.


Isa Kremer: The People's Diva
USA, 2000, 56 minutes, video, English
Director: Nina Baker Feinberg

A charismatic stage performer who criss-crossed the world and was feted by princes, sultans and czars; a diva activist who confronted totalitarianism and despotism with her music; an internationally acclaimed artistic pioneer who sang in 24 languages and was the first woman to bring Yiddish songs to the world's concert stages, Isa Kremer has been almost forgotten.  Until now.  This fascinating documentary recovers her remarkable story through a wealth of archival footage and photos as well as interviews with family members, friends, and performing artists.  In reclaiming Isa for posterity, the film takes us from her earliest years in pre-Revolutionary Russia through an eventful personal and professional life in Europe, the United States, and South America where it was inextricably linked with five turbulent decades of twentieth-century history.  This multifaceted portrait of a complex, passionate woman bridges a vanished past and a continuing legacy that transcends both borders and time.


Kapo
Israel, 1999, 55 minutes, 35 mm, English and Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Directors: Dan Setton and Tor Ben Mayor

The Nazis understood all too well how to exploit the fears of the Jews in the ghettos and in the concentration camps.  And thus they created an entire system of Jewish workers/collaborators, who agreed to work for them.  These Jews, perhaps unwillingly or even unwittingly, helped the Nazis to round up the Jews for deportation, keep order in the ghettos and oversee blocks of prisoners in the concentration camps.

In 1961, at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, numerous Jewish defendants also stood trial -- in fact, more than 40 trials were held in Israel during the early years.  These people were accused of collaboration.  Former Supreme Court Justice Chaim Cohen grapples with the issue of how we can judge these people, how we can understand what they went through.  Is it possible that the threat of death justifies any and all actions?


Komediant, The
Israel, 2000, 82 minutes, video, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Arnon Goldfinger

A look at the history of Yiddish theatre, from its heyday to its tragic decline, through the story of one marvellous family -- Pesach'ke Burstein, his wife Lillian Lux and their talented children, Susan and Mike Burstein.  An epic family saga that spans decades, the film begins with Pesach'ke's youth in Eastern Europe, takes us through the couple's theatre tour across Eastern Europe and brings us to the birth of their twin children after the war and the family's arrival in Israel.  The filmmaker does not shy away from the bittersweet and human stories of the difficulties in acclimating to Israel during the years in which Yiddish culture was stigmatised, the hardships of bringing up children as the family wandered the globe and the clash when the children inevitably broke away from their parents.


Last Klezmer, The
USA, 1995, 84 minutes, video, English, Yiddish, Polish, and Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Yale Strom

Yale Strom travels to Krakow, Poland to focus this documentary on Leopold Kozlowski, who continues to teach, direct and play Klezmer music in Poland.  Strom and Kozlowski venture back to Kozlowski's birthplace in the Ukraine, where Kozlowski relates his family's hiding in the forest from the Nazis, as well as the murders of his brother and other family members.


Lech Lecha
Israel, 2001, 13 minutes, video, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Rebecca Levy

Jonathan is 12 years old, and doesn't understand why his mother never drinks from the kiddush wine on Friday night.  When he asks his father and grandfather about this, they avoid the issue.  Jonathan decides to learn with a Torah teacher to find out the truth.


Nomi's Bat Mitzvah
USA, 2000, 13 minutes, video, English
Director: Jessica Sharzer

A sentimental comedy about what it means to become a woman.  On the one had there is the family ritual and all the trappings of femininity.  On the other hand, there are the boys -- new, strange and fascinating.  Finally, there is one's own definition of growing up.


Nose Job Jew, The
USA, 2001, 5 minutes, video, English
Director: Micah Smith

All Tim's life he wanted to look more Jewish.  All Maya's life she wanted to date a Christian.  All Maya's parents want is for their daughter to date a nice Jewish boy.  A comedy about a Jewish guy who looks too Christian, and the identity crisis and confusion that ensues.


Seventh Day, The (El Séptimo Dia)
Argentina, 2000, 14 minutes, video, Spanish w/ English subtitles
Director: Gabriel Lichtmann

This is a light-hearted short feature on a serious subject: security measures the Argentine Jewish community was forced to adopt following anti-Semitic bombings of Jewish institutions.  After an intense summer rainstorm, the power is out and Buenos Aires is a jumbled mess of traffic.  As a result, Matías' grandparents arrive very late for his bar mitzvah.  But synagogue security causes an even greater delay.


Something From Nothing
Canada, 1999, 23 minutes, video, English
Director: Stefan Le Blanc

This short animated film, as entertaining for adults as for children, is based on Phoebe Gilman's award-winning book about a poor tailor whose magic needle sews a wonderful blanket to keep his grandson Joseph warm and cosy.  Later, Grandpa's magic needle fixes all the scrapes that Joseph and his friend Mazel, the mouse, get into.  A warm-hearted, optimistic story about love, hope, and renewal, and a celebration of Jewish culture and tradition.


Sweetest Sound, The
USA, 2001, 60 minutes, video, English
Director: Alan Berliner

Alan Berliner is a lawyer in Columbus, Ohio; a social worker in Seattle, Washington; a celebrity photographer in Los Angeles, California.  Tired of being mistaken for these people and anyone else who might share his name, Alan Berliner, the filmmaker from New York -- not to be confused with Belgian filmmaker Alain Berliner -- decides to rid himself of the dreaded Same Name Syndrome.  His solution: invite all the Alan Berliners in the world over to his house for dinner.  A film guaranteed to make you think twice about the who, the why and the where contained in every name, THE SWEETEST SOUND has Berliner's inimitable filmmaking signature written all over it.


Takin' Moses for a Ride
Finland, 2001, 75 minutes, 35 mm, Finnish w/ English subtitles
Director: Kaija Juurikkala

What do today's children think about the Bible's Ten Commandments that teach us to honour our mother and father, keep the Sabbath and rebuke stealing or killing?  With the help of the director, 60 children from all over Finland, aged 11-15 years improvised ten stories for each commandment based on their perspectives.  No written script was used, only a professional film crew and spontaneous dialogue by the children themselves.  The camera crew travelled to ten different locations within Finland and filmed one story in each.  This is a portrait of our times where children show their world the way they see it ¡V a world that is not exactly what adults think it is and oversteps religious boundaries.  Each child has dealt with serious issues in a way adults never could, at least not in a children's film anyway.


Tevye
USA, 1939, 96 minutes, video, Yiddish w/ English subtitles
Director: Maurice Schwartz

Renowned Yiddish theatre and stage actor Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholom Aleichem novel, TEVYE centers on daughter Khave who falls in love with and marries a Ukrainian intellectual, testing Tevye's deep-seated faith, loyalty to tradition, and his love for his daughter.  Running as a thread throughout TEVYE is the tension between parental authority and paternal love, between tradition and change, and between a static way of life and counterrevolutionary upheaval.  Tevye's world is a microcosm of the larger world of Russian Jewry at the turn of the century.


Unfair Competition (Concorrenza Sleale)
Italy, 2001, 110 minutes, 35 mm, Italian w/ English subtitles
Director: Ettore Scola

Set in Rome in 1938, the year that Benito Mussolini's fascist regime imposed strict anti-Semitic legislation, the film tells the story of two neighbouring families, one Jewish and one Catholic, and the effect that the fascist regime and the anti-Semitic laws have on them.

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