Arts & Culture | Film

‘Simon And The Oaks’ Has Too Many Branches

10/11/2012 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

The nuclear family breeds secrets, lies, resentment and anguish. The Jews have known that since Eve enticed Adam with a lunch snack. The entire book of Genesis is a catalog of such behaviors, and it could be argued that all Western literature has followed its example. It would be absurd to expect filmmakers to do otherwise.

Magic, L’ Dor-V-Dor

10/10/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

Once the walls of the ghetto came down, the range of career opportunities for Jews became similar to the one for non-Jews. Even with the burdens of anti-Semitic quota systems, the Jewish people have made a global impact in the physics, medicine, government, literature, the visual arts and — magic.

Magic, you say? Well, there was Harry Houdini, born Erich Weiss, a rabbi’s son but...
Yes, there was Houdini, but he was only the most prominent of many Jewish practitioners of the mysteries of prestidigitation.

From A Haredi Family To Shin Bet Chiefs

10/03/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

In a recent interview in these pages, Richard Peña, the retiring director of the New York Film Festival, remarked on the explosive growth of the Israeli film industry during his quarter-century in that post. Appropriately enough, this year’s festival, celebrating its 50th anniversary, offers three examples of how the industry has matured.

A Grunt’s-Eye-View Of Modern Combat

09/25/2012 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

The Holocaust As Family Affair

09/24/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

The first image one sees in David Fisher’s new documentary “Six Million and One” is a crumbling stone doorway bridged by a spider web. The visual irony is striking, with the rough yellow stone breaking down, the wispy lacework sturdy and undamaged. That irony is, perhaps, at the center of Fisher’s film.

An Activist Voice In The Night

09/11/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

Bob Fass, who has hosted the pioneering “free-form” radio show “Radio Unnameable” on New York’s WBAI-FM since 1963, is a vivid and living reminder of a certain generation of Jewish radicals both cultural and political. “Radio Unnameable,” the motion picture that opens on Sept. 19, is a loving portrait of Fass and, quite consciously, of that generation.