New York Jewish Film Festival
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That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Jewish: The 2015 New York Jewish Film Festival
I was appalled by a posted comment on this site about the title of my coverage of last year’s New York Jewish Film Festival. A pun on a seminal German novel, “How Jewish Is It” was to me not just incredibly clever but apt. I felt the festival’s mission admirably expansive compared to some earlier editions and sister events in other cities. The commenter, who self-identified only as “The Judge,” felt differently: “How Jewish? Give me a break! Everything about movies is Jewish, or did I miss something?” Lo and behold! The Judge’s snarky observation was prescient. I had commended […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jan 13, 2015 -
How Jewish Is It: Best of the NYJFF
Today it’s fairly easy to order films with Jewish subject matter from Eastern European countries — but think back 22 years. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a number of so-called Jewish films began production in the former Soviet Union and its satellites. In 1990 the huge San Francisco Jewish Film Festival successfully tested the waters of glasnost by holding the event in Moscow. As a result Wanda Bershen, then director of the broadcast archive at New York’s Jewish Museum, approached Richard Pena, who was at that time program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. […]
by Howard Feinstein on Jan 6, 2014
