Arts & Culture | Film

Life Is A Cabaret

01/15/2013 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

The musical thread that began this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival (with films about blues singer Doc Pomus and the iconic song “Hava Nagila,” among others) has persisted quite charmingly into the annual event’s final week.

Two Takes On Mixed-Mood Comedies

01/11/2013 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

It could be argued that comedy is the most utterly subjective of film genres. A half-bright filmmaker can make an audience cry without much effort.

Light And Dark At N.Y. Jewish Film Fest

01/08/2013 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

If the first week of the New York Jewish Film Festival was largely about music, both as reality and metaphor, the second is a spectrum that ranges from dark to light,

Common Chords At N.Y. Jewish Film Festival

01/02/2013 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

Svigals, Lerner Team Up On Score For Silent Film

01/02/2013 | George Robinson | Special To The Jewish Week | Film

Alicia Svigals, one of the great klezmer violinists working today, had written music for feature films and documentaries before, so she thought she knew what she was getting into when someone suggested she score a silent film. “The Yellow Ticket” is a 1918 German-made drama, restored under the auspices of the Foundation for Jewish Culture.

The Lubitsch-Wilder Connection

12/26/2012 | George Robinson | Special to the Jewish Week | Film

It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that Billy Wilder worshipped Ernst Lubitsch. On the wall in Wilder’s office years after Lubitsch’s death hung a sign that read, “What would Lubitsch do?” Wilder’s best work as a comedy director is indebted to Lubitsch’s visual inventiveness and lightness of touch. The verbal fireworks, however, were Wilder’s own.