Stellar lineup for 20th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival
The festival will screen 45 films, including dramas, documentaries, comedies, classics and short films on every aspect of Jewish life.
By HANNAH BROWNA SCENE from Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s film ‘Never Look Away’(photo credit: Courtesy)
The 20th Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, the highly anticipated winter festival that presents films on Jewish themes, will run this year from December 1-6 at the Jerusalem Cinematheque.The festival will screen 45 films, including dramas, documentaries, comedies, classics and short films on every aspect of Jewish life.The arts will be front and center this year, as the festival will open with a celebration of the life of singer Arik Einstein. The opening event will feature a concerto based on his music performed by graduates of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, as well as a lecture and the screening of two episodes of the television series, A Standard Love Song: Arik Einstein.The 100th anniversary of the birth of legendary choreographer Jerome Robbins will be marked with the screening of a documentary, Jerome Robbins: Something to Dance About, by Judy Kinberg.Another highlight will be a new, digitally restored version of Barbra Streisand’s beloved Yentl, which will be accompanied by a performance by Jerusalem drag queens, Yosale and Moksha.There will be a new competition this year, SIGNIS, which will award prizes to films on interfaith themes.Among the films on the program this year are 93Queen, a documentary by Paula Eiselt about a group of hassidic women in Brooklyn who create the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City; Dovlatov, directed by Aleksey German, a fascinating biopic about a Soviet-era Jewish writer; and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Never Look Away, a portrait of East German artist Kurt Barnert.History is also always an important theme at this festival and there will be screenings of The City Without Jews, by Hans Karl Breslauer, a 1924 Austrian film that presaged the fate of European Jewry. Roberta Grossman’s documentary, Who Will Write Our History tells the story of a resistance group in the Warsaw Ghetto who risked their lives so that the truth would survive even if they did not and who established the Oneg Shabbat Archives and buried hundreds of thousands of eye-witness accounts and recordings.For more information, visit the Jerusalem Cinematheque website at https://www.jer-cin.org.il/en/26021
