Nashvillle Jewish Film Festival Coming Next Week

2009 festival happening November 7 to 12..

BROAD APPEAL AND MIX OF FILMS TOUCH THE HEART AND CHALLENGE THE MIND

Films of art, drama, romance, comedy, animation, Jewish history, and even, baseball and sumo wrestling, are among those selected for this year’s 9th Annual Nashville Jewish Film Festival (NJFF), scheduled for November 7 – 12, 2009.

Event organizers say that the Nashville Jewish Film Festival speaks in several different languages. But no matter what the language, the festival tells stories we all can understand – stories of social justice, moral courage, conflict, determination to reach for a dream, triumph and failure as well as humor.

With more matinees and late-night screenings, film connoisseurs will have a veritable buffet of movies to choose from. Thirteen powerful and entertaining films for audiences of all ages are planned for screening over six days at the Belcourt Theatre in Hillsboro Village, 2101 Belcourt Avenue, Nashville, Tenn. Most of the films have won numerous awards throughout the world. To encourage dialogue and exploration, several of the filmmakers will be on hand for discussions immediately following the screenings.

“The selection and range of films to be shown exemplifies the festival’s commitment to Nashville’s art scene and support of the art of filmmaking,” says NJFF Co-Director Laurie Eskind. “The films also are windows for non-Jews into the Jewish world. The films carry us from New York City to Hungary to Israel, telling stories of the past, or directly from today’s headlines.”

In a special partnership with the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Nashville Jewish Film Festival will offer a free pre-festival screening of “Herb & Dorothy” in the Frist Auditorium as part of the Frist’s Films at the Frist series on Sunday, November 1, 2009, at 3 p.m.. This documentary film will appeal to artists, art collectors and art lovers, alike. “Herb & Dorothy” is a story about Herb and Dorothy Vogel, two of the most unassuming and the most remarkable collectors on the contemporary art scene who amassed over 4,000 pieces of minimalist and conceptual art. It is one of the largest and most important collections in the world.

Another film about art from a powerful historical perspective is “As Seen Through These Eyes,” a never-before-seen window into the surviving art and artists of the Holocaust. To be shown on Tues., Nov. 10, 7 p.m., this documentary, narrated by renowned poet Maya Angelou and directed by Hilary Helstein, brings together artwork, archival footage and firsthand interviews to reveal a powerful story of a brave group of people, many of whom were children, who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds.

Opening night, on Sat., November 7, starts at 7:15 p.m. with “Seven Minutes in Heaven.” It is a quietly powerful Israeli neo-noir thriller, brilliantly directed by first-time feature filmmaker Omri Givon. Showing exactly one year after a Jerusalem bus bombing, the story is full of drama and romance about a woman who spends the last year recovering from this terrorist bus bombing, and trying to piece the events surrounding the bombing in order to move forward with her life.

“Mary and Max” follows at 9 p.m. as the film festival’s first late-night screening. It is an animation by Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot and brought to life by the bravura voice work of Toni Collette and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The story is a bittersweet tale of a friendship between two oddballs at their wits’ end with the world, but at peace with each other. This film was also the opening night selection for the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and has received numerous awards in 2009, including the AniMovi Award for Best Animated Feature Film by the Festival of Animated Film Stuttgart in Germany.

Films entertaining for 13-year-olds and up, include “Sixty-Six,” a hilarious, family-friendly story based on the real life experience of Director Paul Weiland. To be shown on Sun., Nov. 8, 4:45 p.m., the story is about Weiland’s coming-of-age tale in planning his long awaited bar mitzvah after living in the shadows of his charismatic older brother and discovering that his big event falls on the very same day as the World Cup Final.

Another film for young teens and the family is the heroic, historical account of Hannah Senesh in “Blessed is the Match: The Life & Death of Hannah Senesh,” to be shown Sun., November 8, 12 p.m. This film is a gripping story of a 22-year-old poet, resistance fighter and modern-day Joan of Arc who left the safety of Palestine to bravely join a rescue mission with a small band of Jewish volunteers to parachute into her native Hungary during World War II to save her mother and others. This documentary, with moving eyewitness accounts, won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the Garden State Film Festival (2009), 10 audience awards in Jewish film festivals around the world.

The Nashville Jewish Film Festival closes on Thurs., Nov. 12, starting at 4:30 p.m. with “At Home in Utopia.” This epic documentary about the United Workers Cooperative Colony, a housing complex, commonly known as “the Coops,” created and populated 80 years ago by American Communists and their sympathizers, is the tale of the struggle for human justice and racial equality.

This film tracks the rise and fall of this experimental community from the 1920s into the 1950s where historians claim that the Coops helped to pioneer a whole format of nonprofit cooperative housing in New York.

Following At Home in Utopia is “A Matter of Size,” at 7 p.m., the Nashville Jewish Film Festival’s closing night film. A Matter of Size is a poignant comic drama, à la “The Full Monty,” about self-acceptance and determination of four overweight Israelis who start a Sumo wrestling club. This film is a winner of Best Comedy by Traverse City Film Festival in Michigan (2009) as well as a nominee for Best Picture at the Israeli Academy Awards (2009).

The Nashville Jewish Film Festival, founded in 2000 by The Temple – Congregation Ohabai Sholom, was established to educate, enrich and create a forum for the Nashville community to become acquainted with the complexities and realities of Jewish life, culture and history in the 20th and 21st centuries through a mix of documentaries, feature length films and shorts. The Nashville Jewish Film Festival is not a fundraiser, but a community educational happening that is self-funded through sponsorships and ticket sales. The films shown at this festival represent just a small sampling of the hundreds of films available that embrace Jewish culture, history, thought, customs and traditions from around the world. Jewish Film Festivals are held in communities across the country, attracting the interests of Jews and non-Jews. A Jewish film does not always include Jewish actors or directors, but there is a common thread that runs through them about the Jewish experience.

“As the Nashville Jewish Film Festival continues to expand its offerings, it also continues to expand our community’s horizons,” says Senior Rabbi Mark Schiftan of The Temple. “Nashville is a city of constantly increasing diversity, but even as we welcome that diversity, events such as the Nashville Jewish Film Festival are vital, since they help deepen our understanding of one another.”

Representatives serving as organizers of the 2009 Nashville Jewish Film Festival are Co-Directors Laurie Eskind, Jackie Karr, Cindy Moskovitz and Loretta Saff, all of Nashville.

The public is invited to view all film screenings. Tickets are $9 each, and matinee films shown before 6 p.m. are $7. Discounted tickets are available at $6 each for students, seniors 65+ and groups of 10 or more. The All Festival Pass, good for tickets to all films and special events, is $125 each. The $45 Reel Deal Pass, for those 25 years of age or under, is good for tickets to all films.

New to the festival is the ability to purchase tickets online at www.nashvillejewishfilmfestival.org . Tickets also may be purchased at the Belcourt Theatre box office.  Parking is available behind the Belcourt Theatre.

For a complete list of Nashville Jewish Film Festival’s films, show dates and times, please visit www.nashvillejewishfilmfestival.org

For more information, call 615/356-1322 or e-mail nashvillejewishfilmfest@gmail.com .

NOTE: Press Passes are available. Some movies will have the filmmakers available for discussions immediately following the screenings where interviews can also be arranged.