| SW Michigan Jewish Film Festival |
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| Film prices
: Adult individual tickets - $10 Students (13 and over) - $7 Children (12 and under) - $5 Festival pass (all 4 films) - $30 Group tickets - $8 (20% discount - purchase of 10 or more tickets for a single movie) |
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| Come and Explore the Diversity of the Jewish Experience through Film. On Sunday, April 19, 2009 |
| 10:30 AM Max Minsky and Me |
| The SW MI Jewish Film Festival will be presenting four unique cinematic experiences. |
| 4:30 PM Noodle |
| 7:30 PM The Counterfeiters |
| Nelly is a highly intelligent and no-nonsense girl. Her only friends are her books and she idolises the prince of Luxembourg who shares her passion for the outer space. At the news that her school basketball team is going to compete in Luxembourg, she drops her books and jumps on the basketball training ground. 16-year-old Max Minsky is ready to make a deal with her: she does his homework, he teaches her how to play basketball.
The trouble is she is turning 13 and she is Jewish: she has to prepare for her Bat Mitzvah. Will she follow her heart or mind? Will she find her prince? Country of Origin: Germany, 2007 , director Language: German w/ English subtitles Running Time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Director: Anna Justice Cast: Zoe Moore , Emil Reinke , Adriana Altaras , Jan Josef Liefers , Monica Bleibtreu |
| At thirty-seven, Miri is a twice-widowed, El Al flight attendant. Her well-regulated existence is suddenly turned upside down by an abandoned Chinese boy whose migrant-worker mother has been summarily deported from Israel. The film is a touching comic-drama in which two human beings -- as different from each other as Tel Aviv is from Beijing -- accompany each other on a remarkable journey, one that takes them both back to a meaningful life. Country of Origin: Israel Language: Hebrew with English subtitles Running Time: 1 hour, 35 minutes Director: Ayelet Menahemi Writers: Assaf Amir, Yoav Roeh; Ayelet Menahemi, Shemi Zarhin Cast: Mili Avital, Anat Waxman, Baoqi Chen |
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| The Counterfeiters (German: Die F�lscher) is a 2006 Austrian-German film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by the Nazis during the Second World War to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England currency. The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film is based on a memoir written by Adolf Burger, a Jewish Slovak typographer who was imprisoned in 1942 for forging baptismal certificates to save Jews from deportation, and later interned at Sachsenhausen to work on Operation Bernhard. Country of Origin: Austria / Germany Language: German w/ English subtitles Running Time: 1 hour, 39 minutes Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky Writers: Stefan Ruzowitzky & Adolf Burger Cast: Karl Markovics, August Diehl, Devid Striesow, Martin Brambach, Dolores Chaplin |
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SW Michigan Jewish Film Festival Ticket Order Form Name ______________________________________________________________ Address __________________________ City, St, Zip _______________________ E-Mail _____________________________________________________________ Ticket Orders received before April 1, 2009 will be mailed. All those received after will be held at the door. Ticket Max Minsky The Types and Me TBA Noodle Counterfeiters Totals Adult - $10 each ______ ______ ______ _____ _______ @ $10 Students $7 each ______ ______ ______ _____ _______ @ $7 Children (12 and under) ______ ______ ______ _____ _______ @ $5 $5 each Festival pass (all 4 films) ______ ______ ______ _____ _______ @ $30 $30 each Group tickets (10 + per movie) ______ ______ ______ _____ _______ @ $8 $8 each Grand Total (includes Festival Pases, individual tickets and tax-deductable contribution) $_____________ Make Checks Payable to: Jewish Federation of SW Michigan Mail to: Jewish Federation of Kalamazoo & Southwest Michigan PO Box 20205 Kalamazoo, MI 49019 Event co-sponsored by the congregations of Congregation of Moses, Temple B'nai Israel and Temple Beth El Funded in part by The Ravitz Foundation for Small Jewish Communties Initiative through the Detroit Jewish Federation. |
| 1:30 PM The Hope & Circumcise Me |
| The Hope -- It looks like any rock concert:
flashing lights, the rock star in
jeans bounding around the stage
and an enthusiastic crowd of
teens swaying and singing along
to the music. But what are they
singing? Is that�Hebrew?
Jewish rock is a growing new musical movement is the subject of the documentary film The Hope. This entertaining and uplifting documentary on Jewish rock music offers a sampling of the music through concert footage, plus interviews with both fans and musicians. Language: English Running Time: 45 minutes Director: Ann Coppel |
| "Circumcise Me" discusses one man's experience in getting circumcised, not once, not twice, but three times. (Wince.)
The man is Jewish stand-up comic Yisrael Campbell, who was raised Catholic and circumcised at birth. He converted to Judaism three times as an adult � to Reform, then Conservative, then Orthodox. Protesting that he'd already endured the procedure as an infant, a rabbi told him that it's the difference between a "medical procedure" and a "religious covenant." All right, Campbell shrugs, standing on a bright stage in the documentary, gripping a microphone. "I'll do three circumcisions. But I want you to know that three circumcisions is not a religious covenant. It's a fetish." Ba-da-boom. |
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The film's full title is "Circumcise Me: The Comedy of Yisrael Campbell." It's a small movie that exudes an enormous spirit of faith, understanding and fellowship, wrapped in wisdom and wisecracks. Campbell, who was born Chris Campbell in the suburbs of Philadelphia in 1963, strikes a jovial and clear-eyed figure. He strives for religious grace and yearns, like so many, for better days in a strife-riven Israel he has called home for years. Relating this story, Campbell is dressed in full Orthodox Jewish raiments. "Is it warm in here, or am I the only one dressed for Poland in the 1700s?" he asks the audience. As a teenager in America, Campbell became addicted to drugs and alcohol. Catholicism wasn't fulfilling his dire spiritual needs, so he began to explore. Long story short � Campbell's telling is far more entertaining than what we can fit here � he found Judaism. He also found confusion, cultural shock, a wife, a divorce, another wife, twin baby daughters and the risks of living in a geographical powder keg. He reveals as much about life, religion and comedy as he does about himself. "I don't know what else to do (but) to turn my own discomfort, my own pain, into laughter. A joke is how I cope," Campbell says. "I used to think that it was a less than exemplary way to cope. I'm not sure that's the case any more. I think it's a valid way to deal with pain and loss." Language: English Running Time: 48 minutes Director: David Blumenfeld & Matthew Kalman |