Tidewater Community College is proud to host the 20th Annual Virginia Festival of Jewish Film. TCC and the Marilyn and Marvin Simon Jewish Community Center once again bring this rich cultural tradition to Hampton Roads.
Films are planned the week of Jan. 19 - 27, 2013.TCC staff and students are admitted free to all events and can purchase discounted tickets for the Opening Night Gala at the door with TCC ID. Please encourage your students to attend this respected cultural festival. Or consider bringing your class; these films will be especially relevant to history, sociology, religion, philosophy, and political science courses. Students and faculty who have attended in past years have shared their experiences and the importance of this event in their personal and professional social and cultural enrichment.
Two films (“David the Movie” and “Free Men”) center around Jewish-Muslim relations so are sure to stimulate interesting dialogue among the audience.
You can read more about these films and view trailers below.
Opening Night Gala “Hava Nagila (The Movie)” Saturday, Jan. 19, at 7 p.m. Opening Night Film and Reception at The Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, Virginia Beach
Tickets $25 for TCC students and staff
"Hava Nagila (The Movie)” is a documentary romp through the history, mystery and meaning of the great Jewish standard. Featuring interviews with Harry Belafonte, Leonard Nimoy, Connie Francis, Glen Campbell, Regina Spektor and more, the film follows the ubiquitous party song on its fascinating journey from the shtetls of Eastern Europe to the kibbutzim of Palestine to the cul-de-sacs of America. High on fun and entertainment, “Hava Nagila (The Movie)” is also surprisingly profound, tapping into universal themes about the importance of joy, the power of music and the resilient spirit of a people. (HavaNagilaMovie.com)
“David The Movie” Sunday, Jan. 20, at 2 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
As the son of the Imam of the local Brooklyn mosque, 11-year-old Daud has to juggle the high expectations of his Father (Maz Jobrani) and his feelings of isolation and difference – even from his peers in the Muslim community. Through an innocent act of good faith, Daud inadvertently befriends a group of Jewish boys who mistake him as a fellow classmate at their orthodox school, in the neighboring Jewish community. A genuine friendship grows between Daud and Yoav, one of the Jewish boys, and his family. Unable to resist the joy of a camaraderie that he has never felt before, David, as he is known to the kids, is drawn into a complicated dilemma inspired by youthful deceit and the best of intentions.(www.david-themovie.com)
“Lea and Daria” Sunday, Jan. 20, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
This is the inspiring true story of two 13-year-old girls who were, on the eve of World War II, great dancing and acting stars in Zagreb. Selling out theater venues, they were praised by the Croatian and European press and filmed by Parisian Pathé and Universum Film AG, the German government’s film producer. During the Nazi persecution of Jews and the later German nationals' flight from communists, a dramatic friendship was born through entertainment, dance, but also anxiety. This led to an unexpected end. (IMDb.com)
“Mendelsohn's Incessant Visions” Monday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
In March of 1933, German Jewish architect Erich Mendelsohn fled Berlin, having been stripped of his membership in the Architects’ Union and foreseeing even graver consequences from Hitler’s rise to power. He and his wife, Luise, stepped off the train in Amsterdam and bumped into an acquaintance. Surprised at seeing the head of what was then Germany’s largest architectural firm in the Netherlands, the man asked Mendelsohn what he was doing there. The architect took a pencil out of his pocket and held it in the air.
“I’m relocating my office,” he declared.
This revealing anecdote is recounted in “Incessant Visions,” a seductive and complicated new documentary from Israeli director Duki Dror. The film melds the story of Mendelsohn’s many triumphs, from his rise as an architectural superstar in Berlin and his triumphant designs in the Middle East and America, to bitter disappointments in all the same places. The personal lives — Mendelsohn and his wife are presented here as equals — of these towering 20th-century figures are explored, too, beyond the blueprints, from friendships with Albert Einstein and Frank Lloyd Wright to Luise’s affair with leftist German poet-politician Ernst Toller. (Ross Ufberg, Galo Art Magazine)
“Yossi” Tuesday, Jan. 22, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
Returning to the role that won him the Tribeca Film Festival's Best Actor award in Eytan Fox’s “Yossi & Jagger” in 2003, Ohad Knoller gives another extraordinary performance as Yossi, a closeted gay man living a solitary existence in Tel Aviv. A perennially sad, workaholic doctor, Yossi has his quiet world shaken when a middle-aged woman walks out of his past and into his examination room. Their brief but emotionally charged reunion unnerves Yossi enough to make him spontaneously leave Tel Aviv. On the desolate roads of southern Israel, a chance encounter with a group of lively soldiers ignites Yossi's desire to awaken from his emotional slumber. (Tribeca Film Festival)
“Free Men” Wednesday, Jan. 23, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
In German-occupied Paris in 1942, Younes, a young unemployed Algerian, earns his living as a black marketeer. Arrested by the French police but given a chance to avoid jail, Younes agrees to spy on the Paris Mosque. The police suspect the Mosque authorities, including its rector, Ben Ghabrit (played by Michael Lonsdale), of aiding Muslim Resistance agents, as well as helping North African Jews, by giving them false certificates. At the Mosque, Younes meets the Algerian singer Salim Halali, and is moved by Salim’s beautiful voice and strong personality. A deep friendship develops, and soon after Younes discovers that Salim is Jewish. In spite of the risks it entails, Younes stops collaborating with the police and gradually moves from being a politically ignorant immigrant worker into a fully-fledged freedom fighter.
“Yentl” Thursday, Jan. 24, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
“Yentl” is a 1983 romantic musical drama from MGM that Barbra Streisand co-wrote, co-produced, directed and starred in. It was based on the play of the same name by Leah Napolin and Isaac Bashevis Singer, which was itself based on Singer's short story ”Yentl the Yeshiva Boy.” The story incorporates humor and music to relate the odyssey of an Ashkenazi Jewish girl in Poland who decides to dress and live like a man so that she can receive an education in Talmudic Law after her father dies. The film’s musical score and songs, composed by Michel Legrand, include the songs “Papa, Can You Hear Me?” and “The Way He Makes Me Feel,” both sung by Streisand. The film received the Academy Award for Best Original Score and Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture-Comedy and Best Director for Streisand, the first woman to win the award. (Wikipedia)
“A.K.A. Doc Pomus” Saturday, Jan. 26, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
Paralyzed with polio as a child, Brooklyn-born Jerome Felder reinvented himself first as a blues singer, renaming himself Doc Pomus, then emerged as a one of the most brilliant songwriters of the early rock ’n’ roll era, writing “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “This Magic Moment,” “A Teenager in Love,” “Viva Las Vegas,” and dozens of other hits. For most of his life, Doc used crutches and a wheelchair, but he lived more during his 65 years than others could experience in several lifetimes. “A.K.A. Doc Pomus” brings to life Doc’s joyous, romantic, heartbreaking, and extraordinarily eventful journey. In his later years, Doc was a mentor to generations of younger songwriters, and a fierce advocate for downtrodden rhythm and blues musicians. He wrote a thousand songs including some of the most recorded songs in the history of popular music – but his most lasting gift may have been his uniquely generous spirit. “If the music industry had a heart,” the record producer Jerry Wexler remembered, “it would be Doc Pomus.” Packed with incomparable music and rare archival imagery, “A.K.A. Doc Pomus” features interviews with Doc’s collaborators and friends, including Dr. John, Ben E. King, Joan Osborne, Shawn Colvin, Dion, Leiber and Stoller, and B.B. King. Passages from Doc’s private journals are read by his close friend, Lou Reed. Doc Pomus’ gripping life story makes for a powerful and lively film that introduces this unique American character to a new, much wider circle of admirers. (IMDb.com)
“Six Million and One” Sunday, Jan. 27, at 2 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
“Six Million and One” is a documentary in which Israeli filmmaker David Fisher and his two brothers and sister journey to Austria and the U.S. in the footsteps of a memoir written by their father, a Holocaust survivor. Joseph Fisher's memoir was discovered only after his death. His children refused to confront it, except for David, for whom it became a compass for a long journey. When he found it unbearable to be alone in the wake of his father's survival story and his struggle not to lose his sanity, David convinced his brothers and sister to join him in the hope that this would also contribute to releasing tensions and making them as close as they used to be. They, for their part, couldn’t understand why anyone should want to dig into the past instead of enjoying life in the present. In the dark depths of the tunnels, part of an Austrian forced labor camp, where their father had slaved during the Holocaust, illuminated only by flashlights, the Fishers seek meaning in their personal and family histories. As their deepest pains are exposed, they find themselves crying and laughing, in bitter-sweet scenes that give this personal film a rare sense of intimacy. (Wikipedia)
“Leon the Pig Farmer” Sunday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. TCC Roper Performing Arts Center
An irreverent comedy from the production company of Monty Python's Eric Idle, “Leon the Pig Farmer” is considered a cult classic in Europe. The movie’s zany story is set in motion when Leon Geller (the late Mark Frankel), a sensitive Jewish boy from London, accidentally learns that he is the product of artificial insemination. Leon’s search for his biological parents leads him to the still more startling discovery of a sperm bank mix-up proving that he is the son of a Yorkshire pig farmer. The inevitable confusion results in a comic Jewish identity crisis. (National Center for Jewish Film)
