Schedule

Date	Time	Film
Saturday, November 12	7:30 PM	Ushpizin (Guests)
Sunday, November 13	2:15 PM	The Ritchie Boys
Sunday, November 13	4:00 PM	Seres Queridos (Only Human)
Sunday, November 13	5:45 PM	Ushpizin (Guests)
Sunday, November 13	7:30 PM	Medurat HaShevet (Campfire)
Thursday, November 17	7:30 PM	Knafayim Shvurot (Broken Wings)
Saturday, November 19	7:30 PM	Va, Vis et Deviens (Live and Become)
Sunday, November 20	1:00 PM	The Great Communist Bank Robbery
Sunday, November 20	3:30 PM	Professor Mamlock
Sunday, November 20	5:40 PM	Mendy
Sunday, November 20	8:00 PM	Va, Vis et Deviens (Live and Become)
Thursday, November 24	7:30 PM	Alles Auf Zucker! (Go For Zucker! - An Unorthodox Comedy)
Saturday, November 26	7:30 PM	LaLechet Al HaMayim (Walk On Water)
Sunday, November 27	1:00 PM	Europa Europa
Sunday, November 27	3:30 PM	The Mascot
Sunday, November 27	5:40 PM	The Danish Solution followed by The Man Who Loved Haugesund
Sunday, November 27	8:00 PM	Sof HaOlam Smola (Turn Left At the End of the World)

Films & Synopses

Alles auf Zucker! (Go For Zucker! - An Unorthodox Comedy)
Germany, 2004, 90 minutes, 35 mm, German w/ English subtitles
Director: Dani Levy

The conniving wheeler-dealer Jaeckie Zucker is up to his neck in trouble -- his wife wants a divorce; the court bailiff is threatening him with jail. The only hope left for the former GDR sports reporter is his mother's inheritance. In her will, she stipulated that Jaeckie must reconcile his differences with his brother Samuel, an orthodox Jew. As Samuel and his entire clan move into Jaeckie's chaotic household, the clash of civilizations is inevitable but the two stubborn brothers have no choice. They have to get along.

Ernst Lubitsch Award, 2005
Outstanding Feature Film and five other awards, German Film Awards, 2005


Danish Solution, The
Denmark/USA, 2003, 58 minutes, English and Danish w/ English subtitles
Director: Karen Cantor and Camilla Kjærulff

When Hitler threatened Denmark's Jews, the community arose overnight to save them. Danes from all levels of society stood up to the German might at a time when most of Europe turned a blind eye. Together they hid over 7,000 people and sailed them to safety in neutral Sweden. After the war, more than 95% of the Jewish population returned to Denmark, finding their homes and belongings untouched.

CINE Golden Eagle Award, Spring 2004


Europa Europa
Germany, 1990, 114 minutes, 35 mm, German and Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Agnieszka Holland

Separated from his family at the age of thirteen, Solomon "Solly"; Perel takes on various identities to hide his Jewish heritage. First passing himself off as an orphan and later as one of the Hitler Youth, Solly carries on his charade, hoping desperately to keep his identity hidden... and make it through the war alive.

Best Foreign Language Film, Golden Globes, 1992
Best Foreign Language Film, Boston Society of Film Critics Awards, 1991
Best Foreign Language Film, National Board of Review, USA, 1991
Best Foreign Language Film, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 1991


Great Communist Bank Robbery, The
Romania/France, 2004, 75 minutes, video, English and Romanian w/ English subtitles
Director: Alexandru Solomon

In 1959 there was robbery at the Romanian National Bank in Bucharest. This was a peculiar occurrence since the local currency (the lei) could only be spent inside Romania, and bank robberies, along with most other kinds of crimes, were presumed not to happen in the socialist utopia. The Romanian police scoured the country and ultimately arrested six people -- all intellectuals, medium-ranking nomenklatura Party members and Jewish -- who they declared to be guilty. After confessing, the six agreed to re-enact their crime. An hour-long film was made in which they duly played themselves. There is some evidence that they thought by so doing they would be spared a death sentence but after trial, also filmed, they were shot. Alexandru Solomon's film is both a bizarre recreation of a crime of which the motive is still difficult to fathom and an astonishing evocation of a lost world of Romanian Stalinism.


Knafayim Shvurot (Broken Wings)
Israel, 2002, 87 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Nir Bergman

Nine months after her husband died, Dafna Ullman has just gone back to work as a night shift hospital midwife. Sixteen-year old Yair has dropped out of school, abandoned a potential basketball career and now hides inside a mouse costume, distributing flyers on the subway. Eleven-year-old Ido deals with his building aggression by trying to break the world free jump record, while six-year-old Bahr begins a lonely first day of school. So it's left to 17-year-old Maya, a gifted budding singer/song writer, to act as a surrogate mother to her youngest siblings. Everyone tries to navigate their daily lives as best as they can but when Maya forgets to pick up little Bahr from school, it's an incident that causes a major upheaval in their lives. Told with sincerity, drama and self-deprecating humour, Nir Bergman's feature debut has a remarkable freshness and a keen sense of observation of the contemporary family.

Best Film and eight other awards, Israeli Film Academy Awards, 2002
Panorama Audience Award and two other awards, Berlinale, 2003
Wolgin Award (Best Israeli Feature), Jerusalem Film Festival, 2002
Grand Prix (Best Film), Tokyo International Film Festival, 2002


LaLechet Al HaMayim (Walk On Water)
Israel, 2004, 104 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew and German w/ English subtitles
Director: Eytan Fox

Eyal, a hitman for Mossad, is given the mission to track down a very old ex-Nazi officer who might be still alive. Pretending to be a tourist guide Eyal befriends the man's grandson Axel, in Israel to visit his sister. Axel wants to convince her to come back to Germany for their father's birthday party. Eyal and Axel set out on an extended tour of the country during which Axel's frank and open attitude challenges Eyal's rigid, clichéd values. To finish his mission Eyal has to go to Germany. He meets Axel once more and succeeds in being invited to the family party where secrets will be revealed.

Winner of two awards, Israeli Film Academy, 2004


Man Who Loved Haugesund, The
Norway, 2003, 60 minutes, video, Norwegian w/ English subtitles
Directors: Jon Haukeland and Tore Vollan

This fascinating documentary represents a big part of untold Holocaust history in Norway that still remains unknown. Moritz Rabinowitz, a Polish Jewish merchant, came to Haugesund, a mid-sized seaport where he built up the largest department store and clothing manufacturing business in Scandinavia. A well-known anti-Hitler activist, he was the prime target when the Germans invaded Norway. The fact that he was captured after he couldn't leave his daughter behind is one emotional kicker; the other is the suggestion that despite his love for his adopted town, a lingering, if mild, anti-Semitism towards him still remains.

Special Mention, Nordisk Panorama Malmö, 2003


Mascot, The
Australia, 2003, 54 minutes, DVD, English and Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Lina Caneva

For most of his life Alex Kurzem harboured a secret. As a five-year-old Russian orphan in World War Two, he had been found by Latvian soldiers, made their mascot and given a new name and birthdate. But Alex was actually a Jew who was being kept alive by those who were exterminating his people. With his real identity hidden, he became a poster boy for the Nazi ideal and was taken into a Latvian family, who later migrated to Australia. This is the story of Alex's search for his true history and the unexpected impact that it had on his family, his community and himself.

Winner, Community Relations Commission Award, Australia, 2003


Medurat Hashevet (Campfire)
Israel, 2004, 95 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Joseph Cedar

The year is 1981. Rachel Gerlik, a 42 year-old widow and the mother of two teenage daughters, wants to join the founding group of a new religious settlement in the West Bank. The problem is that the acceptance committee won't accept her unless she remarries and proves that she and her daughters can meet the group's religious and ideological standards. When her youngest daughter is accused of seducing some boys from her youth movement, Rachel is forced to weigh her alliances. Only Yossi, a 50 year-old bachelor, and the new man in Rachel's life, can show Rachel that living as an outcast is not as bad as it seems.

Best Film and four other awards, Israeli Film Academy Awards, 2004
Don Quixote Award - Special Mention, Berlinale, 2004
FIBRESCI Prize, Chicago International Film Festival, 2004


Mendy
USA, 2003, 93 minutes, 35 mm, Yiddish and English w/ English subtitles
Director: Adam Vardy

Mendy has just left the insular Satmar Hasidic community and his life is in a freefall. Unable to make himself stay in the ultra-Orthodox world and lacking the skills to adapt easily to the secular one, he crashes with Yankel, who left the community a few years earlier. Yankel draws Mendy into his hedonistic lifestyle which revolves around sex and drugs. The only thing stopping Mendy's slide from one extreme to the other is Yankel's roommate Bianca, a Brazilian woman who offers him a different view of the secular world. MENDY is a gritty film that pulls no punches, with a script that was co-written by a former Satmar who also wrote the Yiddish dialogue.

Spirit Award, Brooklyn International Film Festival, 2004
Audience Award, Film Fest New Haven, 2004


Professor Mamlock
Germany (GDR), 1961, 99 minutes, 16 mm, German w/ English subtitles
Director: Konrad Wolf

Professor Hans Mamlock is the distinguished chief of surgery in a university hospital. The year is 1933, and although the Professor is Jewish, he remains unconcerned with politics and the growing Nazi threat. Mamlock identifies strongly as a German, and he believes his culture to be simply incapable of the common barbarism associated with the Nazi party. Accordingly, he shows little understanding for people with strong or unpopular political views, including those of Rolf, his son. Indeed, when Rolf joins the Communists in resisting the Nazis, Mamlock throws him out of his house. As the persecution of Jews intensifies during the 1930s, Mamlock's own daughter is targeted for anti-Semitic attacks at her school. Professor Mamlock, however, refuses to believe her, and at work he disregards the anti-Semitism of his colleague. By 1938, however, anti-Jewish racial laws demand Mamlock's removal from office. Professor Mamlock's devastation drives him to desperate measures.

Golden Prize award, Moscow International Film Festival, 1961


Ritchie Boys, The
Canada/Germany, 90 minutes, DVD, English
Director: Christian Bauer

THE RITCHIE BOYS is the untold story of a group of young men who fled Nazi Germany and returned to Europe as soldiers in U.S. uniforms. They knew the psychology and the language of the enemy better than anybody else. In Camp Ritchie, Maryland, they were trained in intelligence and psychological warfare. Not always courageous, but determined, bright, and inventive they fought their own kind of war. They saved lives. They were victors, not victims.


Seres Queridos (Only Human)
Spain/UK/Argentina/Portugal, 2004, 89 minutes, Spanish w/ English subtitles
Directors: Dominic Harari and Teresa De Pelegri

Leni arrives home to introduce her fiancé Rafi to her Jewish family for the first time – her mother Gloria, her promiscuous sister Tania, Tania's contrary 8-year-old daughter Paula, her recently orthodox brother David and her blind grandfather Dudu. Everything goes wonderfully until the lovers reveal that Rafi is Palestinian. With his future mother-in-law unhinged by the news, Rafi tries to ingratiate himself by helping in the kitchen but in his zeal he accidentally drops the soup he was meant to defrost out the seventh floor window, hitting a pedestrian below. Rafi sneaks downstairs to check on the body and retrieve the soup. Having seen the victim, Rafi rushes upstairs not knowing what to do. As he returns to the kitchen he notices a family portrait of Leni's father, which bears a very close resemblance to the corpse lying outside.

Grand Prix, Alpe d'Huez International Comedy Film Festival, 2005


Sof HaOlam Smola (Turn Left At the End of the World)
Israel, 2004, 108 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew, English and French w/ English subtitles
Director: Avi Nesher

A tiny isolated Israeli village on the edge of the Negev in 1969 is where two Jewish immigrant families, one from Morocco and the other from India, become unlikely neighbours who share nothing but the dream of a new life. Obliged to live side by side, they become embroiled in a culture war trying to assert their cultural identities -- the Indian family by putting together a cricket team, the Moroccan family by trying to disrupt the game. Meanwhile, each family has a teenage daughter negotiating the landscape of the sexual revolution. When the sultry Moroccan Nicole and the heady Indian Sara become friends, their youth and desire for freedom help them overcome their differences. In this isolated place, the road to harmony takes many surprising and comical twists and turns and is beautifully filmed against a desert background.

Winner of two awards, Israeli Film Academy, 2004


Ushpizin (Guests)
Israel, 2004, 90 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Gidi Dar

Moshe and Mali, a poor childless Orthodox couple, find themselves penniless on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. As they both pray desperately to the L-rd to help them, the impossible happens. Their prayers are heard and they receive an unexpected charitable donation. However, a miracle doesn't come without a test, as two escaped convicts appear uninvited on the couple's doorstep, friends from Moshe's shady secular past. Moshe and Mali believe it is another sign and that G-d will bless them with children if they follow the religious custom of receiving guests for the holy day. The outrageous behaviour of these unholy messengers and the havoc it brings to the Orthodox community will put Moshe and Mali's faith to the ultimate test.

Best Actor, Israeli Film Academy Awards, 2004


Va, Vis et Deviens (Live and Become)
France/Israel, 2005, 138 minutes, 35 mm, Hebrew, Amharic, French and English w/ English subtitles
Director: Radu Mihaileanu

1984. Hundreds of thousands of Africans from 26 famine-struck countries find themselves in camps in Sudan. Initiated by Israel and the United States, a vast project (Operation Moses) is undertaken to bring the Ethiopian Jews (Falashas) to Israel. A Christian mother pushes her 9-year-old son to declare himself Jewish in order to survive and the child arrives in the Promised Land. Officially an orphan, he is adopted by a French Sephardi family living in Tel Aviv. He grows up fearing that his secrets and lies will be discovered: he is neither Jewish nor an orphan, only black. He will discover love, Western culture and Judaism as well as racism and war. He will become Jewish, Israeli, French and Tunisian all at once -- a human Tower of Babel. Yet he will never forget his real mother who stayed in the camp. Secretly and obstinately, he dreams of finding her again.

Panorama Audience Award and two other awards, Berlinale, 2005