Schedule

Date	Time	Film
Saturday, November 22	7:45 PM	The Hebrew Hammer
Sunday, November 23	3:00 PM	Five Jewish Comedies from Around the World: Xada: Jewish American Warrior Princess Lashon Harah (Gossip) Advice And Dissent 72 Virgins The Purimspiel
Sunday, November 23	5:00 PM	Les Lapirovs Passent à L'Ouest (The Lapirovs Go West)
Sunday, November 23	8:00 PM	All I've Got preceded by Foolish Me
Monday, November 24	7:30 PM	Brother Daniel - The Last Jew preceded by The Secret
Tuesday, November 25	7:30 PM	Quest For the Lost Tribes
Wednesday, November 26	7:30 PM	Perlasca
Thursday, November 27	7:30 PM	Trembling Before G-d
Saturday, November 29	8:00 PM	A Special Presentation in English and Chinese subtitles: Nowhere In Africa
Sunday, November 30	1:00 PM	Shanghai Ghetto
Sunday, November 30	3:30 PM	Atlantic Drift
Sunday, November 30	5:30 PM	Quand On Sera Grand (Once We Grow Up)
Sunday, November 30	7:30 PM	The Great Dictator

Films & Synopses

Advice And Dissent
USA, 2002, 21 minutes, DVD, English
Director: Leib Cohen

A frustrated businessman tries to end his hopeless marriage by asking his local Rabbi to place a curse on his wife. The rabbi refuses, but gives the man peculiar advice on how to do away with her, setting into motion a series of unexpected events.

All I've Got
Israel, 2002, 70 minutes, video, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Karen Margalit

A 72-year-old grandmother dies and finds herself on a ferry that will take her across the river to the hereafter. On the ferryboat she meets her first love, who was killed in a road accident in which they were both involved when they were young. She is presented with a fateful choice: to start life afresh as a 22-year-old -- her age at the time of the accident -- and to relinquish all her memories of the life she has lived with her husband and children; or to remain a 72-year-old woman with all her life's memories intact. If she chooses the second alternative she will get off the boat when it reaches its destination and will never be truly reunited with her beloved, who has been waiting for her on the ferryboat for fifty long years.

Best Script Award, Fipa-Biarritz Film Festival, France, 2003
Makor Foundation Best Producer Award, Jerusalem Film Festival, 2002


Atlantic Drift
Austria/France, 2001, 86 minutes, 35 mm, German, English and French w/ English subtitles
Director: Michel Daëron

When 2000 Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler boarded the ship, the Atlantic, they hoped to make it to Palestine - and safety. But they did not reckon with the British, who stopped them from entering the country. Then, horribly, they deported them to, what were in effect, concentration camps in Mauritius, where amidst illness and deprivation, they sat out the war. Many years later, Hannah Haendel and her son Shlomo, who was born during the war, return to Mauritius to try to understand what happened to Hannah and why her husband had to die there. A heartbreaking, evocative portrait of a troubled man whose legacy and memories reside in his late father's paintings, ATLANTIC DRIFT is a moving and touching film. It's also a shocking and damning expose of a heretofore unknown and shameful slice of British history.


Brother Daniel - The Last Jew
Israel, 2001, 57 minutes, video, English, Hebrew and German w/ English subtitles
Director: Amir Gera

Brother Daniel is Oswald Rufeisen, who converted to Christianity during World War II but still maintained that he was born and would die a Jew. Terming himself a Catholic Jew and determined to be identified as Jewish, he took his case to Israel's Supreme Court in order to get the proper designation on his identity card. It was a case that rocked the nation and brought forth, once again, the vexing question of who is a Jew? BROTHER DANIEL - THE LAST JEW, however, goes beyond Oswald's legal challenge. It also delves into his heroism, when he helped rescue Jews from the Nazis, and his guilt, about denying his Judaism in order to survive the Holocaust. Can one cast stones at such a man? A provocative documentary that removes the obvious barriers between Jew and gentile in order to reach their common humanity.

Honorable Mention, Haifa International Film Festival, 2001


Foolish Me
Israel, 2002, 38 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish, German and English w/ English subtitles
Director: Gabriel Bibliowicz

When two Jewish refugees in 1944 Europe enter a café, they are transported across the ocean to a café in Palestine. There they attempt to tell the Jews what is happening to their compatriots in Nazi-occupied Europe, even as a Polish woman follows them through the portal. An Israeli science-fiction journey, FOOLISH ME is a fantastical, original and thoughtful drama.


The Great Dictator
USA, 1940, 124 minutes, 35 mm, English and Esperanto
Director: Charles Chaplin

During the last days of the WWI, a clumsy soldier saves the life of devoted military pilot. Unfortunately, their flight from the advancing enemy ends in a severe crash with the clumsy soldier losing his memories. After some years in the hospital, the amnesia patient gets released and reopens his old barbershop in the Jewish ghetto. But times have changed in the country of Tomania: Dictator Adenoid Hynkel, who coincidentally looks very similar to the barber, has laid his merciless grip on the country, and the Jewish people are discriminated against. Dictator Hynkel soon decides he wants to rule the world and he needs a scapegoat for the public. As luck would have it, the barber is picked up by Tomanian forces and is mixed up with Hynkel himself. The small barber now gets the once-in-a-lifetime chance to speak to the people of Osterlich and all of Tomania, who listen eagerly on the radio.

A classic, satirical comedy about Hitler and Nazism that was Chaplin's first talking picture.

Best Actor, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 1940
Nominated for five Academy Awards, 1941

The Internet Movie Database's 109th top movie of all time.
The American Film Institute's 37th funniest American film of all time.


The Hebrew Hammer
USA, 2002, 85 minutes, 35 mm, English
Director: Jonathan Kesselman

Jew Power! The Hebrew Hammer, aka Mordechai Jefferson Carver (Adam Goldberg), swings into action when Santa Claus' evil son, Damien (Andy Dick) decides to destroy Hanukkah. Allied with Muhammad Ali Paula Abdul Rahim (Mario Van Peebles), head of the Kwanzaa Liberation Front, Hammer, the self described "baddest Hebe in the neighbourhood", prepares to kick some gentile ass. Throwing political correctness out the window, and guaranteed to offend everyone, THE HEBREW HAMMER is the most outrageous spoof to come along since THE PRODUCERS. As the earlock-wearing, Manishewitz-swigging, leather-jacketed Hammer, Goldberg is a hoot, a tough as borscht super-hero who cannot handle the pressure of saving the Jewish world or going home for a Sabbath dinner. Sacrilegious, fearless and hysterically funny!

Gerhard-Klein Audience Award winner, Berlin Jewish Film Festival, 2003


Les Lapirovs Passent à L'Ouest (The Lapirovs Go West)
France, 1994, 86 minutes, 35 mm, French and Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Jean-Luc Léon

In May 1981, a Russian family emigrates to the U.S. to begin a new life. Eleven years later, they return to Moscow for a visit and only then realize how much they have changed. An often humorous chronicle of a family's discovery of the West, their wonder and small disillusionments.


Lashon Harah (Gossip)
USA, 2003, 12 minutes, 16 mm, English
Director: Avi Youabian

When an elderly Jewish mother starts a spiteful rumour about the bride at a Jewish wedding, it spreads like wildfire from table to table, through all the generations, until finally reaching the bride. A comedy about someone who heard about somebody eating something somewhere she shouldn't have been... it's complicated!


Nowhere In Africa
Germany, 2002, 141 minutes, 35 mm, German and Kiswahili w/ English and Chinese subtitles
Director: Caroline Link

Just before the outbreak of WW II, the German-Jewish Redrich family escapes the Nazis and begins a new life in Kenya, far from their upper-middle class roots in Germany. For five-year old Regina, it is an adventure, but her parents Jettel and Walter, feel desperate on a small, isolated African farm. For Walter, his inability to cut Germany out of his heart tortures him more than their economic plight. This remains so even when he learns, at war's end, that the Nazis have murdered his family in Germany. His decision to return to build a new Germany throws Jettel and Regina into conflict because they have learned to love living in Africa. This beautifully photographed, subtly crafted film is based on Stefanie Zweig's popular autobiographical novel.

Best Foreign Language Film winner, Academy Award©, 2003
Best Feature Film winner; Best Director winner; Best Supporting Actor winner; Best Director of Photography winner; Best Music winner; German Film Awards, 2002


Perlasca
Italy, 2002, 126 minutes, video, Italian w/ English subtitles
Director: Alberto Negrin

An Italian Oskar Schindler, Giorgio Perlasca showed selfless courage in saving more than 5000 Hungarian Jews during WWII by passing himself off as a Spanish consul. The extraordinary story of a hero, forgotten for nearly a half century.


The Purimspiel
Poland, 2000, 57 minutes, 35 mm, Polish w/ English subtitles
Director: Izabella Cywinska

A provocative and humorous story about an anti-Semitic family living in Lodz in Poland. The husband is unemployed, proud, but poor. He loves his Polish identity and believes that only the true Poles can improve the country's situation. His wife believes in her husband, and his son hates anyone who is different in any way. They are shocked out of their usual patterns of behaviour when the husband suddenly learns that he is Jewish, and that there is surprising news from a distant relative in the USA. Their world is turned upside down.

Willy Brandt's Award winner, Prix Europa, 2000


Quand On Sera Grand (Once We Grow Up)
France, 2000, 102 minutes, 35 mm, French w/ English subtitles
Director: Renaud Cohen

This delightful romantic comedy tells the story of a 30-year-old journalist, Simon, who is struggling to build a family and trying to understand how his Algerian Jewish roots affect his place in contemporary, multicultural Paris. As the film begins, Simon is torn between his job at Tobacco Monthly and his long-distance relationship with his girlfriend Christine. He also has a distant relationship with his father Isaac, whom he sees all the time. When he is not worrying about whether he and Christine will have a child, he is rescuing his grandmother from danger. She has taken to wandering the Paris streets, convinced she is back in Algeria. When Simon meets his pregnant neighbour Claire, a fellow North African Jew who is neglected by her Ashkenazi (European-Jewish) husband, his life takes an unexpected turn.


Quest For the Lost Tribes
Canada, 1999, 100 minutes, video, English
Director: Simcha Jacobovici

There are few activities more fascinating than digging through the "Where are they now?" file. But this film takes such an investigation to the ultimate level, pondering the mystery of the lost tribes of Israel. Only Judah and Benjamin, from the twelve tribes mentioned in the Bible, survived the Assyrian capture of Israel. Just what happened to the other ten has been a mystery to scholars and theologians ever since. This has led to multiple theories of explanation, some of which are explored here. Join two-time Emmy Award winning director and real-life "Indiana Jones" Simcha Jacobovici as he travels to far-flung, exotic and sometimes perilous locales, tracing the forced migration of the Lost Tribes across the Middle East and Asia. Sifting through speculation, sorting through evidence, Jacobovici illuminates why the story of the Lost Tribes has been one of the most fascinating, enduring and elusive mysteries of all time.

Best Feature Length Documentary nominee, Genie Awards, 2000


The Secret
Israel, 2001, 55 minutes, video, English and Polish w/ English subtitles
Director: Ronit Kertzner

Following World War II, many Holocaust survivors chose to hide behind a Catholic Polish identity to guarantee their families' future. Their children grew up under communist rule knowing nothing of their Jewish heritage. Today, in Poland alone, an estimated 20,000 cases have been reported of Catholic Polish citizens searching to rediscover their true identity and Jewish heritage. Director Ronit Kertzner presents several such cases in her compelling documentary about the resurgence of Judaism in Poland today and the obstacles faced by the "new Jews" living in a Catholic country where religion and nationhood are inextricably linked. Personal stories include that of Father Jakub Weksler, who, twelve years after being ordained a priest, discovered that he was the son of Jewish parents who had given him up to a Catholic family to save his life.


72 Virgins
Israel, 2002, 3 minutes, DVD, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Uri Bar-On

If you were willing to do anything, even the most absurd thing, to have peace in Israel, how far would you go? A humorous look at what some Israelis would do to have peace. From the MOMENTS ISRAEL 2002 series.


Shanghai Ghetto
USA, 2002, 95 minutes, 35 mm, English, German and Putonghua w/ English subtitles
Directors: Dana Janklowicz-Mann, Amir Mann

Escaping certain death in Europe, 10,000 Jewish refugees managed to reach Shanghai, China, before the outbreak of the Second World War. China was one of the few countries the Jews could get into without a passport and, more importantly, one of the few places on earth which took them in. In Shanghai, the penniless Jews eked out a meagre living, among equally poor Chinese, all the while worrying about their families trapped in Nazi-occupied Europe. Even when the Japanese invaded the city and ghettoized the Jews, fortune still smiled upon them. The story of the Shanghai Jews has been filmed before but never with such clarity, depth and poignancy. The interviews, including those with co-director Dana Janklowicz-Mann's father, are uniformly penetrating and memorable and the anecdotes related by these hardy survivors are remarkable in their emotional effect. One of the few inspirational stories to come out of the Holocaust, SHANGHAI GHETTO, which brilliantly recreates what daily life was like then, is history brought to thrilling, vivid life.

Audience Choice Award winner, Santa Barbara International Film Festival, 2002.


Trembling Before G-d
USA, 2001, 84 minutes, 35 mm, English
Director: Sandi Simcha Dubowski

TREMBLING BEFORE G-D is an unprecedented feature documentary that shatters assumptions about faith, sexuality, and religious fundamentalism. Built around intimately-told personal stories of Hasidic and Orthodox Jews who are gay or lesbian, the film portrays a group of people who face a profound dilemma -- how to reconcile their passionate love of Judaism and the Divine with the drastic Biblical prohibitions that forbid homosexuality. As the film unfolds, we meet a range of complex individuals -- some hidden, some out -- from the world's first openly gay Orthodox rabbi to closeted, married Hasidic gays and lesbians to those abandoned by religious families to Orthodox lesbian high-school sweethearts.

Many have been tragically rejected and their pain is raw, yet with irony, humour, and resilience, they love, care, struggle, and debate with a thousands-year old tradition. Ultimately, they are forced to question how they can pursue truth and faith in their lives. Vividly shot with a courageous few over five years in Brooklyn, Jerusalem, Los Angeles, London, Miami, and San Francisco, TREMBLING BEFORE G-D is an international project with global implications that strikes at the meaning of religious identity and tradition in a modern world. For the first time, this issue has become a live, public debate in Orthodox circles, and the film is both witness and catalyst to this historic moment. What emerges is a loving and fearless testament to faith and survival and the universal struggle to belong.

Best Documentary Film winner, Berlin International Film Festival, 2001
Mayor’s Prize for the Jewish Experience, Jerusalem Film Festival, 2001
Best Documentary winner, Chicago International Film Festival, 2001


Xada: Jewish American Warrior Princess
USA, 2000, 3 minutes, video, English
Director: Sheldon Gleisser

At a time when the one god was replacing the many, a mighty princess rose to defend the innocent. She was Xada!