Film

A Lens For Healing

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 22 May 2012 19:14:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

The Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers behind '5 Broken Cameras', a portrait of life in a West Bank village, look beyond their anger.

Seen together, filmmakers Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi could be one of those clichéd “odd couple” pairs so beloved of unimaginative contemporary Hollywood action comedies. Davidi is Israeli, tall, thin, weedy, mercurial. Burnat is Palestinian, shorter, solid, graying and insistently sober in demeanor. The peculiarly theatrical atmosphere of a morning with them is amplified by the central object in the chic quiet of their Midtown hotel — a large cylindrical aquarium filled with exotic fish.

5 Broken Cameras Emad Burnat filmmakers Guy Davidi

Second Avenue Redux

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 23:45:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Michael Tilson Thomas remembers his grandparents, the Thomashevskys, the first family of Yiddish theater.

The story of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky is a classic American success narrative. Although they were born only a few miles apart in “the middle of a Ukrainian nowhere,” as their grandson Michael Tilson Thomas puts it, they met in Baltimore when he was performing with a traveling Yiddish theater troupe and she was a star-struck girl working in a tobacco factory. They went on to fame and acclaim, stars of the Yiddish theater from the late-19th Century until the Depression.

Bessie Thomashefsky Michael Tilson Thomas Yiddish Theater

Netanyahu Recalls His Heroic Brother

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:08:00 +0000

Film

Staff Report

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, commenting on “Follow Me,” a documentary film opening here this week on the life of his heroic older brother, Yonatan, told The Jewish Week: “This film will show an American audience about Yoni’s humanity, his leadership, and his commitment to Israel.”

Yonatan Netanyahu, a highly decorated Israeli soldier, was killed leading the Entebbe rescue in Uganda in 1976 that saved the lives of more than 100 Israeli hostages.

Benjamin Netanyahu documentary Follow Me: The Yoni Netanyahu Story Yonatan Netanyahu

Israeli Filmmaker Aiming ‘Big’ On Herzl Project

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:10:00 +0000

Film

Eric Herschthal

Staff Writer

Prestigious N.Y. Public Library fellowship a large step forward for Shimon Dotan’s ambitious biopic.

Imagine a biopic about Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Daniel Day-Lewis. Talk about a dream team. But the match-up is a wild dream that the accomplished Israeli director and former Hollywood filmmaker Shimon Dotan got one step closer to realizing last month.

Shimon Dotan Theodor Herzl

A Father-And-Son Team Take On Freud And Mahler

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:05:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Percy and Felix Adlon tease out the famous counseling session in ‘Mahler on the Couch.’

When he began working with his father, Percy Adlon, on the script for their new film “Mahler on the Couch,” Felix O. Adlon felt a heavier than usual weight on his shoulders.

Felix Adlon Mahler on the Couch Percy Adlon

Sebald: ‘Don’t Put Me In A Box

Dani Shetrit — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:35:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Film looks at the life and work of German novelist W. G. Sebald.

There are times when you are out walking that a kind of hypnotic paralysis overcomes you. You are enwrapped in the rhythms of your gait, the pleasant sameness of the countryside, and you become oblivious to anything but the forward motion, the almost imperceptible bobbing of your gaze.

The Art Of The Steal

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 08 May 2012 19:35:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special To The Jewish Week

The story behind the provenance fight over Egon Schiele’s ‘Portrait of Wally.’

It’s not a very large painting, not much more than a square foot of oil on canvas. But Egon Schiele’s portrait of his beloved mistress Walburga Neuzil shook the art world in ways that the Austrian painter could never have imagined. This earthquake had almost nothing to do with the quality of the painting, “Portrait of Wally,” and everything to do with the sinister intersection of the sometimes shadowy world of art dealers and the black hole that was the Shoah.

documentary Egon Schiel

Amos Kollek’s Latest ‘Crisis’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Seven years in the making, the Israeli filmmaker’s new, very personal work to open here.

Amos Kollek is back in New York. Although he has lived in the city “for long periods,” he says, he is now living in Israel full time, and is back for what he suggests is a fool’s errand: supporting the May 4 opening of his latest film, “Chronicling a Crisis.”

Amos Kollek

The Kibbutz At 100

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:40:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Documentary looks at ups and downs of Israel’s noble experiment in collective living; ‘Dolphin Boy’ considers a very different kind of experiment.

For many Jews in the diaspora, the ideal of the kibbutz has always spoken loudly about what the State of Israel was supposed to be. Some of the avatars of modern Zionism would have agreed. After all, they were among the pioneers who created the first kibbutz, just over a century ago, at Degania.

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Eytan Fox’s Yossi, 10 Years On

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 19:54:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

The sequel to ‘Yossi and Jagger’ at Tribeca fest, marks the subtle changes in the former IDF commander.

It has been 10 years since Jagger died, and Yossi (Ohad Knoller), his erstwhile commander and lover, hasn’t recovered yet. Now a cardiologist working in Tel Aviv, Yossi is still closeted, living in an emotional straitjacket woven of loneliness, mourning and the fear of being devastated by more tragedy. If only something would change...

Tribeca Film Festival

Not James Bond’s Goldfinger

Lisa Shimabukuro — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

A German-Jewish-Israeli family’s surprising past and a Joseph Papp biography headline Tribeca festival.

The birth and rapid growth of the Tribeca Film Festival, which began its 11th annual run this week, coincides with the artistic explosion of the Israeli film industry, and the two institutions have enjoyed a close and mutually supportive relationship for a decade. This year’s festival showcases several new Israeli films and filmmakers, as well as “Yossi,” Eytan Fox’s long-awaited sequel to “Yossi and Jagger.”

'Hana's Suitcase' A Well-Traveled Tale

Adam Dickter — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 15:10:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Film Critic

It’s an unprepossessing object, a battered, rather ordinary valise, with a name, date of birth and the German word “Waisenkind” (orphan) painted in broad strokes on its side. But the most neutral objects acquire meaning through association with people and events, and this particular suitcase carries a lot of history along with its meager contents.

Auschwitz Czechoslovakia Fumuko Ishioka Hana and George Brady Hana's Suitcase Larry Weinstein Nove Mesto

In Search Of Simone Weil

Lisa Shimabukuro — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

A new documentary tries, but fails, to gain a deeper understanding of this perplexing and prolific philosopher.

The life and thought of Simone Weil present numerous paradoxes and pitfalls for a documentarian brave enough to take her on. She was a secular Jew who was taken with Catholic thought, a pacifist who bore arms in the Spanish Civil War, a member of the Resistance whose final act of defiance was to starve herself, enabling tuberculosis to triumph over her body. It’s a tangled story made more so by the passage of time, which has swept away almost everyone who knew her.

From A Rabbi’s Talking Cat To The Contested West Bank

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:17:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

Jewish-themed offerings at this year’s New Directors/New Films series.

The annual New Directors/New Films program, now in its 41st year, brings together a program of more than two dozen films from all over the globe, and the only common ground between them is work by fairly new directors who show promise. The programming results in some wild juxtapositions. This year’s event, which opened this week, is typical.

New Directors/New Films

Echoes Of ‘Casablanca’

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:40:00 +0000

Film

George Robinson

Special to the Jewish Week

‘Free Men’ harkens back to a time when Jews and Muslims fought a common Fascist enemy.

Although the film “Free Men” was made in France last year and opens here on Friday, March 16, it feels a lot older. In some ways, that’s not a bad thing. Director Ismail Ferroukhi turned to the straightforward, linear narrative style of the place and period in which the film is set, Paris under the Nazi occupation, and to a subdued palette that gently suggests the black-and-white films of the era.

Ismail Ferroukhi