Arts & Culture | Film

Claude Lanzmann, Briefly

02/22/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

In the death camp at Treblinka there was a fake railroad station that included a clock on which the painted hands always read 6 o’clock. The entire construction was a grotesque joke perpetrated by the camp’s commandant Fritz Stangl; in Treblinka, time stood still because all those brought there were dead from the moment they entered.

No Direction Home

02/15/2011 | Eric Herschthal | Staff Writer | Film

The video-opera “Moscow-NY,” which has its premiere at the JCC in Manhattan this weekend, is based on the life of Isaac Bashevis Singer — sort of.

Foreigners But Not Strangers

02/09/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

To read the Israeli papers is to see a steady stream of stories bemoaning the country's public education system, especially those citing Israeli students' low test scores in science and math.

But American filmmakers Kirk Simon and Karen Goodman found a unique south Tel Aviv school that is doing all the right things with a dizzyingly diverse student body. Their documentary about the Bialik-Rogozin school, "Strangers No More," was just nominated for an Oscar in the documentary short category.

For Jewish-Kashmiri Filmmaker, ‘Identity Is Never Fixed’

02/08/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

Tariq Tapa had a complicated childhood. Not unpleasant, mind you, just unusually busy.

‘Confidence’ Man

01/25/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

More than many filmmakers, Istvan Szabo understands issues of fear and trust viscerally. He and his parents, both of them Jewish doctors, survived the Holocaust in Hungary because friends hid them.

A Gentler Richler In ‘Barney’s Version?’

01/19/2011 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

Published four years before his death at 70, Mordecai Richler’s last novel, “Barney’s Version,” has a certain valedictory feeling, a summing-up at the end of the journey that is uncharacteristically devoid of the nasty edge of early works like “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.”