The Arts

“Dorfman in Love,” a new feature film opening on March 22, directed by Bradley Leong from an original screenplay by Wendy Kout, betrays its true origins almost from its opening shots of a sun-gilded Los Angeles and its suburbs.

Call it a play that dares not speak its name.

In April 1850, Peter Still, a slave, purchased his freedom from Joseph Friedman, a sympathetic Jewish businessman in Tuscumbia, Ala.

A man in shorts and dark knee socks walks outside to take out the garbage and returns with yesterday’s newspaper, and morning begins again in Kings Point, a condominium community in Delray Beach, Fla., now the subject of a new film.

After having read all of his novels and autobiographical books, you might be forgiven for thinking you know Philip Roth. As novelist Jonathan Franzen says, Roth “exposed parts of himself no one had ever exposed before.”

One of the most colorful and controversial performers of his generation, Oscar Levant was an immensely gifted composer, pianist and raconteur whose life and career were hobbled by a ferocious addiction to prescription drugs.

Givatayim, Israel –‘The Retrospective” is a work of art inspired by another work of art, a novel with roots in a painting.

With its multiplicity of rituals and its insistence on punctilious observance, Judaism is often jokingly referred to as a religion for obsessive-compulsives. Now comes Adam Strauss’ one-man show, “Varieties of Religious Experience,” which details the Jewish stand-up comedian’s struggles with real OCD, his last-ditch effort to cure it with psychedelic mushrooms, and his ultimate discovery of spiritual enlightenment.

The world is made of stories.

Usually the prospect of yet another film festival in New York City wouldn’t fill me with gleeful anticipation. It’s easier to find a film festival here than an uptown bus. But the idea behind the First Time Fest, which kicks off its inaugural event on March 1, is a good one; it highlights directors’ first feature films.