Virtual screening

A picture taken in 1919 shows the family of Kopel Gringras. He was a renowned photographer from Kielce. He operated the ”Foto Moderne” atelier, in which he took pictures of people from the area unMl the beginning of the Second World War. Kopel Gringras did not survive the Holocaust. He perished in Treblinka, along with his wife and nearly all of his children. The surviving copy of the Gringras family portrait is blurry, damaged, and out of focus. Roman Gringras, Kopel’s grandson, now living in Paris, enlists the help of his sister from Warsaw and cousin from Israel to find the original photograph in order to get to see the faces of his ancestors clearly.

Length: 7 minutes

Director: Jakub Duszyński

Writer: Jakub Duszyński

This event is supported, in part, by:

We meet Ed Stein, an American Jewish man on a traumatic day in his life. He has received a letter from a tormentor from his past, a neo-Nazi bully named John Bauer who made his life hell when he was a teenager. Mr. Bauer is looking to make amends with his past. Ed Stein has never properly dealt with these issues and though long buried, still haunt him to this day.

Adult language.

Length: 12 minutes

Cast: Mark Schrier, Rodrigo Ternevoy, Joel Farrell

Director: Noel Brady

Writer: Mark Schrier and Noel Brady

This event is supported, in part, by:

‘I want to make a film about women’ is a speculative documentary love letter to Russian constructivist women. The new Soviet Union of the 1920s championed equality for women and great innovation in the creative arts. Until it didn”t. Looking back at that time, history remembers the men who were celebrated and then shut down. But women were there, too, and they were influential, powerful and brilliant. ‘I want to make a film about women’ gazes in to a creative communal kitchen and watches these women transform it into a workshop, then a stage set, then a film, all the while juggling noisy men and the wolves of history. It imagines what the revolutionary women artists of the 1920s said, what they did, and what they might have created had it not been for Stalin”s suppression.

Length: 12 minutes

Cast: Victoria Haralabidou, Liliya May, Inga Romantsova, Violette Ayad, Ever Sliter, Nadia Zwecker, Tug Dumbly and Richard James Allen

Director: Karen Pearlman

Writer: Karen Pearlman

This event is supported, in part, by:

 

July 2014. Israel is at war in Gaza. Uri, an Israeli soldier, is shot and wounded. At the hospital, he is welcomed as a hero. Between treatments and visits from high-profile generals and celebrities, Uri and his family reckon with his new status. An insider’s look at how war as a state-of-mind is shaping Israeli society.

Adult language.

Length: 29 minutes

Director: Adi Mishnayot

Ladino, the old Sephardic Jewish language, is in great danger of being extinct. In Serbia, there are only two surviving native speakers: two old ladies. They fight to save their language.

Length:  8 minutes

Director: Laurent Rouy

Rachel is losing her sight to the point she can”t even manage doing the smallest daily functions, like dialing the phone. She opens her door to passing by strangers, on a tiny but significant journey, to reach out to her daughter, on the other side of the world.

Length: 20 minutes

Cast: Leora Rivlin, Uri Gavriel, Nir di-nur, Erez Kahana, Nathchayanit Elberg.

Director: Or Sinai

Writer: Or Sinai

Long Distance trailer.

At a banquet hall in Israel, at the height of a war, Adam Weizmann’s Bar Mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood—and on the verge of a nervous breakdown—Adam takes a crucial step toward coming to terms with his sexuality.

Adult language, sexual content, mature themes.

Length: 25 minutes

Cast: Amit Rahav, Amir Khoury, Maya Dagan, Yaniv Biton, Ruby Porat Shoval, Peter Knoller, Maayan Selektar

Director: Eli Zuzovsky

Writer: Eli Zuzovsky

Mazel Tov trailer.

Presentation partner:

Photographer Olive returns from work to find her new flatmate, Nina rummaging through her room. Unbeknownst to Olive, Nina is about to miss the deadline to join a beauty pageant dedicated to Adolf Hitler and is in desperate need for photos for the application. She begs Olive to help her take them. Although Olive is bemused by her new flatmates erratic behaviour, she feels sorry for her and relents. As Nina’s behaviour becomes increasingly bizarre, Olive becomes suspicious. When the opportunity arises, Olive decides to investigate. Sneaking into Nina’s room, she discovers the truth behind the beauty pageant – discovering that the pageant is not your regular beauty pageant, but instead, something called Miss Hitler.

Adult language.

Length: 12 minutes

Cast: Gemma Barnett, Bebe Sanders

Director: Ella Marks & Yael Roth

Writer: Ella Marks

Moshe Sneh, Defense Minister and Chief of Staff of State in-the-making, the man who was in command of bringing thousands of Jews, Holocaust survivors, from Europe to Israel in spite of British Mandate opposition. The film focuses on SS Exodus, an operation he initiated, raised funds for the ship.

Length: 14 minutes

Director: Amir Har-Gil

AJFF Festival and Combo passes include participation in this event.   To watch online, go to virtual.goelevent.com and login with the same email and password you used to buy your ticket/pass/membership.

All four episodes are available to watch from November 2 – November 11 in Texas only.

 

Ever wonder how Israelis perceive us American Jews? The New Jew is a four-episode Israeli TV docu-series, showcasing the cultural and political influence of the Jewish community in the United States, the variety of alternative models it offers for living a rich Jewish life, and the intricate relations between American Jews and the State of Israel. The show is presented by Guri Alfi, one of Israel’s most popular comedians—and was produced for the Public Broadcasting Corporation in Israel.

Cast: Guri Alfi, Moshe Samuels

Additional support from: