Virtual screening

Israel’s only woman prime minister defends her clouded legacy in this riveting portrait backboned by a blunt, unaired TV interview. During her turbulent tenure, Golda Meir, idolized globally but often reviled in Israel, confronted sizable domestic and international challenges. Shortly before her death, she was interviewed by Israeli television. Once the show ended, cameras kept rolling as hard- nosed Meir spoke freely between cigarette puffs about her stormy premiership and its personal toll. This extraordinary off-air exchange is buttressed by testimonials from devotees and detractors alike, as well as rare archival footage charting Golda’s trailblazing rise to power and tragic demise.

Film: 85 minutes

Directors: Sagi Bornstein, Udi Nir, Shani Rozanes

Production countries: Israel, Germany

Year: 2019

Community partner:

Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of all time, was a world-renowned celebrity. He was greeted like a rock star when he appeared in public. An anti-war firebrand, Einstein also spoke out on issues ranging from women’s rights and racism, to immigration and nuclear arms control. But today, his image has been neutered into that of a charmingly absent-minded genius. He was, in fact, a powerful force for social change and a model for political activism. Using a wealth of rarely-seen archival footage, correspondence, and new and illuminating interviews, filmmaker Julia Newman makes the case that Albert Einstein’s example of social and political activism is as important today as are his brilliant, ground-breaking theories.

Film: 80 minutes

Director: Julia Newman

Production country: USA

Year: 2020

Community Partner:

“Dutch filmmaker Jean van de Velde captures a dark period in South Africa’s recent history, balancing a nail-biting political thriller with spectacular courtroom intrigue.”
In 1963, apartheid is rampant in South Africa. Nelson Mandela and nine other defendants, including Jewish anti-apartheid fighters, are arrested on a farm for conspiring to commit sabotage and treason against the repressive South African government. Tenacious white Afrikaner lawyer Bram Fisher steps up to the challenge as lead counsel whose defendants faced a possible death sentence. Fisher risks his career and family to defend Mandela and his inner circle in this historical thriller set in South Africa’s incendiary segregation era. As Mandela fights to expose South Africa’s corrupt, unjust system, Fischer attempts to hide his own ties to the resistance. This riveting drama combines nail-biting political and courtroom intrigue to explore South Africa’s seminal struggle against racism, and it highlights the little-known Jewish figures who sought to end entrenched discrimination in their country.
CONTAINS VIOLENCE

Film: 123 minutes

Director: Jean van de Velde

Production country: Netherlands

Year: 2018

Curmudgeonly widower Nat Dayan (Jonathan Pryce) clings to his way of life as a Kosher bakery shop owner in London’s East End. Understaffed, Nat
reluctantly enlists the help of teenager Ayyash (Jerome Holder), who has a secret side gig selling marijuana to help his immigrant mother make ends meet. When Ayyash accidentally drops his stash into the mixing dough, the challah starts flying off the shelves and an unlikely friendship forms between the old Jewish baker and his young Muslim apprentice. Dough is a warmhearted and humorous story about overcoming prejudice and finding redemption in unexpected places.

Film available to watch Sept. 10-12 in the USA only.

Note: This presentation is supported by Congregation Beth Israel and is a part of CBI’s Selichot program. The film is available to all.

Cast: Jonathan Pryce

Director: John Goldschmidt

Writer: Jonathan Benson

Two great films and a panel discussion in one program:

A CANTOR’S HEAD (2020) – One of the world’s leading cantorial masters departs the bema, prompting questions about the dwindling tradition of Jewish sacred music. Cantor Jack Mendelson has been dubbed the Michael Jordan of Hazzanut. He has inspired legions of admirers worldwide, combining spiritual exploration, communal bonding and dazzling showmanship. But after years of service, his operatic voice is no longer wanted by his congregation. Running the gamut of emotions, Cantor Mendelson, his protégés, and other musical luminaries explain the magic of this centuries-long art form, and what its loss represents.

A CANTOR’S TALE (2005) Explores chazzanut past, present and future through the prism of Chazzan Jack Mendelson”s career. In addition to heavenly singing, the film visits a bar-mitzvah at the legendary Beth El Synagogue in Borough Park and interviews luminaries such as Ben-Zion Miller, Mati Lazar, Alberto Mizrahi, Alan Dershowitz, Neil Shicoff, Dr. Larry Hoffman, and Debbie Friedman.

A Cantor’s Tale Panel Program: The Past Present, and Future of Jewish Cantorial Music on Sunday October 18 at 2:00PM Central.

Co-presented by AJFF, Congregation Agudas Achim, and Temple Beth Shalom.

Cast: Cantor Jack Mendelson

Director: Erik Greenberg Anjou

Yoav, a successful architect, has everything he’s ever wanted. His lover of 15 years, Dan, is a younger lawyer who adores him. Alma is a successful artist and Yoav’s best friend—she is like a mother and a sister to him.
However, when Alma announces she is pregnant, it ignites Dan’s desire to become a father himself. But Dan’s parental urges have the opposite effect on Yoav, who is haunted by long-buried demons. Yoav’s tight grasp on his life begins to come apart, leading to self-destructive behavior that threatens to destroy his relationship with Dan, unravel his friendship with Alma, and cost him everything.
MATURE THEMES, STRONG SEXUAL CONTENT

Film: 90 minutes

Director: Yuval Hadadi

Production country: Israel

Year: 2019

Community Partner:

Composer Benjamin Till explores what it means to be British and Jewish in this quirky and heartwarming musical film. Till set about finding 100 British Jews, one born in every year between 1918 and 2017. Each scene features a person who is a year older than in the prior scene, reflecting the true celebration of the diversity of Jewish people. A ”musical postcard from British Jewry to the rest of the world.”

Film: 12 minutes

Director: Benjamin Till

Production country: UK

Year: 2018

“This is not a Holocaust film but rather a drama that looks at life beneath the simple surface in a quaint Hungarian village after WWII.”
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Two orthodox Jewish men, dressed in black, arrive at the train station of a small Hungarian village on a hot August day in 1945, one year after the German troops have left.  Their homecoming disrupts the established rhythm of life in the village, where preparations are underway for the wedding of the town clerk’s son. The clerk fears the men may be heirs of the village’s’ deported Jews and expects them to demand the return of their illegally seized property. Their reappearance forces the local residents to confront and come to terms with the horrific events of the previous year. Based on the acclaimed short story HOMECOMING by Gábor T. Szántó.
MATURE LANGUAGE, MATURE THEMES

Film: 91 minutes

Director: Ferenc Török

Production country: Hungary

Year: 2017

A Palestinian-Israeli boy named Eyad is sent to a prestigious boarding school in Jerusalem, where he struggles with issues of language, culture, and identity. Gifted Eyad (Tawfeek Barhom) is given the chance to go to a prestigious Jewish boarding school in Jerusalem. As he desperately tries to fit in with his Jewish schoolmates and within Israeli society, Eyad develops a friendship with another outsider, Jonathan (Michael Moshonov), a boy suffering from muscular dystrophy, and gradually becomes part of the home Jonathan shares with his mother, Edna (Yael Abecassis). After falling in love with Naomi (Daniel Kitsis), a Jewish girl, Eyed leaves school when their relationship is uncovered, and he discovers that he will have to sacrifice his identity in order to be accepted. Faced with a choice, Eyad will have to make a decision that will change his life forever.

Film:  104 minutes

Director: Eran Riklis

Production country:  Israel

Year:  2014

Four overweight friends from the Israeli city of Ramle are fed up of dieting and the dieting club they belong to. When Herzl (342 lbs.), the main protagonist, loses his job as a cook and starts working as a dishwasher in a Japanese restaurant in Ramle, he discovers the world of Sumo where large people like him are honored and appreciated. Through Kitano (132 lbs.), the restaurant owner, a former Sumo coach in Japan (who is supposedly hiding from the Yakuza in Israel), he falls in love with a sport involving ”two fatsos in diapers and girly hairdos”. Herzl wants Kitano to be their coach, but Kitano is reluctant—they first have to earn their spurs. A MATTER OF SIZE is a comedy about a ‘coming out’ of a different kind – overweight people learning to accept themselves.

Film: 94 minutes

Director: Erez Tadmor, Sharon Maymon

Production country: Israel

Year: 2010