Arts & Culture | Film

Phil Ochs: No Direction Home

01/04/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

It is undoubtedly simplistic to suggest that a single incident can shape the way a person lives his entire life. Even the survivor of a catastrophic accident is more than the accumulated scars and physical deficits thus incurred. But watching Kenneth Bowser’s new documentary, “Phil Ochs: There But For Fortune,” it is impossible not to register a story that the great singer-songwriter’s brother Michael recalls from their childhood in small-town Ohio.

The Life And Times Of The Jewish Artist

01/04/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

The price one pays for being an artist is frequently sizeable. The call to the arts is often rooted in alienation and a sense of difference. To follow that path is to risk ostracism and penury. And other than your fellow artists, who else will understand your choices?

The Year Of Myth-Busting

12/28/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

The schlemiel is dead. A beloved figure in post-World War II Jewish-American fiction, drama and film, he suffered a spectacular death by vivisection over the course of a couple of fascinating years of films that re-imagined him in a rather less affectionate light.

Culture Group Rebuffs Bid To Condemn Boycotts

12/28/2010 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Film

In recent years David Eisner and Karen Lehmann Eisner, prominent funders of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, had become uncomfortable with the some of the films the organization helped produce.

The foundation has given grants to films like “Waltz With Bashir,” the Oscar-nominated Israeli film about the massacre of Palestinians in the 1982 Lebanon war, as well as a documentary the foundation funded this year about military tribunals in the Occupied Territories. Content like that, the Eisners felt, was beyond the pale of acceptable Israel criticism.

Answering The Call

12/14/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

Albert Maltz, blacklisted screenwriter, novelist and one of the Hollywood Ten, once said that the trouble with America was that “everyone has a job when what they’re really seeking is a calling.” But how many of us would recognize a calling if we heard it? And what would it mean to be called?

Of Rabbits And Mourning

12/08/2010 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

Sometimes all it takes to make a short film work is a strong central metaphor. Consider the fascinating pairing of short documentaries about German history, “Rabbit a la Berlin” and “Loss,” opening at Film Forum on Dec. 8. Each is structured around a single overriding conceit and both rise or fall on the strength of that spine. Happily, both films are pretty effective and as a pair they complement one another surprisingly well despite a wild disparity in tone.