An Ancient Practice Meets the Modern World
Social & External
Self
A nuanced portrait of a new generation, Dear Thirteen is a cinematic time capsule of coming of age in today’s world. Through the eyes of nine thirteen-year-olds, we see how pressing social, geographical and political challenges are shaping, and being shaped by, young people: rising anti-Semitism in Europe, guns in America, gender identity and racial divisions across Australia and Asia. With no adult commentary outside the filmmaker, Dear Thirteen offers an intimate view into the universal uncertainty inherent in growing up.
From the Marx Brothers to Schindler's List, this compilation of Jewish film trailers offers a glimpse at the history of Jews in American cinema. A mixture of humor, social commentary, and drama, these original coming attractions trailers offer insight into the relationship between Hollywood's studio marketing departments and the growing visibility of Jews in American life. Trailers Schmailers includes spotlights on Woody Allen and Barbra Streisand, an overview of films about New York Jewish life, a look at the evolution of films about the holocaust, and more.
In 1961, history was on trial... in a trial that made history. Just 15 years after the end of WWII, the Holocaust had been largely forgotten. That changed with the capture of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina. Through rarely-seen archival footage, The Eichmann Trial documents one of the most shocking trials ever recorded, and the birth of Holocaust awareness and education.
An offbeat, irreverent musical documentary that tells the story of a group of Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, Gloria Shayne Baker and Johnny Marks, who wrote the soundtrack to Christianity’s most musical holiday. It’s an amazing tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream – a generation of songwriters who found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world, and for at least one day a year, make us believe.
During the economic boom of the 1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish factory workers managed to build the house of their dreams, a cooperative apartment complex at the edge of Bronx Park. Then they were hit by the Great Depression. At Home in Utopia bears witness to an epic social experiment across two generations in the Coops - a place known as "little Moscow" - where people tried to change the American dream into one that included racial justice and workers' rights.
When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the mistreatment of Palestinians, they battle the old guard to create a new movement opposing Israel’s occupation, and recentering Judaism itself.
The film tells about a previously unknown episode of Paul Robeson’s biography — a secret conversation in 1949 in a room at the Moscow Hotel with the Jewish poet Itzik Feffer, who told Robeson the circumstances of Mikhoels' death. Paul Robeson Jr. shares his memories, having learned about this secret just before the death of his father, and it is the first time he tells the filmmakers about it.
Moscow, January 1948. In the bitter cold, a large crowd attends the State Funeral of the Yiddish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels. An official proclamation mourns the death of "a great People's Artist of the Soviet Union." What people are really mourning is the death of the most popular Jewish theater in the Soviet Union, and the man who kept it alive against all odds for over 20 years. No doubt many suspected the truth: he had just been assassinated by Stalin's secret police.
An astounding exposé that gives voice to the unwitting subjects of an infamous American scientific experiment: the 1960s Neubauer-Bernard study of separated twins. Told from the perspective of the Jewish identical twins and triplets who were secretly split up in infancy and adopted through Louise Wise Services, a Jewish adoption agency, the documentary examines the traumatic, long-term effects of the separations — and continuing deception — on the children and their adoptive families.
Under Their Skin: Tattoos of Memory and Resilience is a character-driven film featuring grandchildren of survivors (3Gs) who have made the controversial decision to tattoo their grandparents’ concentration camp numbers on their own bodies. The film follows subjects as they navigate personal relationships and public interactions that alternately celebrate and challenge their decision—and raise questions about the reenactment of trauma, and the act of transforming that trauma into healing. In interweaving storylines, we will meet 3Gs whose stories reveal that historical remembrance is an essential part of engaging with social issues and the rise of hate and intolerance today.
The Holocaust began with the indiscriminate mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen in the bloodlands of Eastern Europe and was perfected in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. “Bullets And Blueberries” explores the motives, methods and madness of the perpetrators, using never-before-seen images captured by the killers themselves — images that fully capture the banality of evil.
Adam remains a consistent favorite among fans who are comforted that they will always have a good time. Get the inside story on this fascinating actor, comedian, screenwriter, producer, husband, father, and forever FUNNY GUY.
Documentary Tells Story of Maud Dahme, One of Thousands of Jewish Children in the Netherlands Who Were Hidden and Saved From Nazi Death Camps by Christians.
Pearl Gluck travels to Hungary to retrieve a turn-of-the-century family heirloom: a couch upon which esteemed rabbis once slept. En route for the ancestral divan, Pearl encounters a colorful cast of characters who provide guidance and inspiration.
Can a language save your life? Yes it can, even an ancient one from the 15th century. Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino/Judeo-Spanish, his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian Colonel who helped him escape to a Partizan refuge after he ran away from the train taking Yugoslavian Jews to Nazi death camps. By speaking in Ladino to a Spanish-speaking US pilot in 1944 he was able to survive and lead the pilot, along with his American and British colleagues, to a safe Partizan airport.
Can a secret change who you are? Mysterious events unfold and reveal how Martha, a Polish holocaust survivor, managed to lead a double life in Australia. The vivacious Jewish artist and doting mother, died without ever revealing her secret. The film follows Martha’s daughter Eve, over a decade, as she unlocks the mystery behind the streets named Eve and Martha. Clues are found in old recordings and Martha’s home movies revealing a mystery man gazing into the lens. Eve’s investigation leads her to the Sobieski castle in the Ukraine, the site of a massacre where her grandmother died, and the Eichmann trial as she explores her parents’ holocaust survival and her father’s heroic escape from a concentration camp. When a ‘doppelgänger’ contacts Eve, her life is forever altered, as she uncovers lies, tracks down her mother’s young lover and reveals the family secret that led her to rewrite her entire life.
A documentary drama addressing the shared tribulations and historical unity between Black and Jewish Americans.
Documentary about Finnish Jews during WWII and their unique position as German allies.
This Ukrainian-Jewish teenager immigrated to San Francisco as a young child. Now on the brink of adulthood, she interviews her grandparents about their new lives yearning to see her American world through their eyes. Yelena understands that life in the US has changed her profoundly.
This intimately photographed film offers a peak into the lives of a culturally diverse group of young American Jews.
