Portland Jewish film festival
16th annual event bills 14 films from 10 nations
By Paul Haist
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The Portland Jewish Film Festival opens April 3 for a two-week run in which 14 films representing the work of filmmakers in eight nations will be presented.
The festival was reset this year from January to April in order to avoid scheduling conflicts with the Northwest Film Center’s Portland International Film Festival, according to Jewish Film Festival Director Merridawn Duckler.
The Northwest Film Center sponsors the Jewish Film Festival with the Institute for Judaic Studies. The Jewish Review is a co-sponsor of the festival with additional support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland.
The upcoming festival is the 16th annual installment of the event. It is intended to explore themes of spirituality and Jewish identity throughout all parts of the world, especially how American Jews perceive themselves in a larger social context.
Over the many years of the festival the films have touched on tragedy, embraced humor and recounted the emotional and tangible gains and losses of a people.
This year’s festival touches all of those bases, starting on April 3 with “Fugitive Pieces,” a dark and poetic drama in which Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa explores one man’s fractured life as an orphaned Holocaust survivor. Film critic Roger Ebert called Podeswa’s interpretation of Anne Michaels’ award-winning novel a “film of special humanity.”
Next up on April 5 is a bright documentary by American director Rachel Talbot. “Making Trouble” pays tribute to Jewish American comediennes and actresses Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers and Gilda Radner, and playwright Wendy Wasserstein.
There follows on April 6 “The Champagne Spy,” a documentary about colorful Israeli secret agent Wolfgang Lotz (a pseudonym) made by his son Nadav Schirman.
Also on April 6, two teachers at a Brooklyn public school, one a Muslim woman, the other a Jewish woman, rely on each other in the U.S. film “Arranged” to transcend challenges in their respective lives while they demonstrate that friendship doesn’t discriminate.
On April 7 Israeli director Tali Shemesh’s “The Cemetery Club” provides a variously moving and hilarious look at a group of Polish-born Jerusalemites and Holocaust survivors who meet every Sabbath morning at the National Cemetery on Mount Herzl to debate just about everything under the sun while together they cope with successive losses.
There was a time when Jews figured prominently in the then emerging sport of basketball. On April 8 the festival will present “The First Basket,” which traces the little-known history of basketball and its spread to turn-of-the-century New York settlement houses.
It’s back to Israel on April 10 for a joint Israeli-German feature film called “Sweet Mud” that is a coming-of-age tale that takes place on a Kibbutz. The film won the International Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival and the Best Feature Prize at the Israeli Film Academy Awards.
In “Aviva, My Love,” on April 12 Israeli director Shemi Zarhin blends humor and gravitas to tell the story of Aviva, a hotel cook who dreams of becoming a writer and, after it seems the dream could become a reality, the reality of her family life becomes an issue.
“A Hebrew Lesson” on April 13 is a joint Israeli, Chinese and Russian production by directors David Ofek and Ron Rotem. The film follows the experiences of immigrants to Israel from Europe, China and Latin America as they come to grips with Hebrew at an ulpan, an intensive Hebrew school for newcomers to the Jewish state. The film sheds light on the little-know fact that Israel is one of the world’s most culturally diverse societies.
The next three films on April 13, 14 and 15 comprise a trilogy by Austrian director Alex Corti. The films were written by George Stefan Troller and are loosely based on Troller’s life as a Viennese Jew who fled Europe as a teenager only to return to Europe during World War II as an American soldier.
The films, in the sequence they were made and will be screened, are “God Does Not Believe in Us Anymore,” “Santa Fe” and “Welcome in Vienna.” While each film can stand alone, in sequence they form a powerfully realized whole.
On April 16 the U.S. documentary “Refusenik,” co-directed by Laura Bialis and Stephanie Howard, chronicles the 30-year movement to free Soviet Jews, beginning in the early 1960s.
The festival concludes on April 17 with the dark but charming comedy “My Mexican Shiva” directed by Alejandro Springall. The film features a mariachi-inflected score by the Klezmatics.
Ticket Info:
General admission tickets are priced at $7. Students, seniors and Portland Art Museum members pay $6. A festival pass for admission to all 13 films is $75. Pass holders are entitled to express entry. Festival director Merridawn Duckler encourages the purchase of festival passes as the best way to help the Institute for Judaic Studies, which created the Portland Jewish Film Festival and presents it today with the Northwest Film Center. Purchase passes by phone at 503-246-8831 or online at www.judaicstudies.org. Tickets may be purchased at the door or from the NWFC: 503-221-1156, or www.nwfilm.org. All films will be shown in the Northwest Film Center’s Whitsell Auditorium in the Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave.