Directed by Alison Chernick • Documentary • With Itzhak Perlman, Toby Perlman, Billy Joel, Alan Alda • 2017 • 83 minutes
From Schubert to Strauss, Bach to Brahms, Mozart to…Billy Joel, Itzhak Perlman’s violin playing transcends mere performance to evoke the celebrations and struggles of real life; “praying with the violin,” says renowned Tel Aviv violinmaker Amnon Weinstein. Alison Chernick’s enchanting documentary looks beyond the sublime musician, to see the polio survivor whose parents emigrated from Poland to Israel, the young man who struggled to be taken seriously as a music student when schools saw only his disability. As charming and entrancing as the famous violinist himself, ITZHAK is a portrait of musical virtuosity seamlessly enclosed in warmth, humor, and above all, love.
Up Next in Jewish Stories
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In Search of Memory
Directed by Petra Seeger • Documentary • With Eric Kandel • 2008 • 95 minutes
'Memory is everything. Without it we are nothing,' says neuroscientist Eric Kandel, winner of the Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking research on the physiology of the brain's storage of memories. As he explains, memory...
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Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait...
Directed by Gerald Fox • Documentary • With Robert Frank, June Leaf • 2019 • 86 minutes
Completed in 2004, Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank was the first ever feature-length documentary about the legendary Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker. Originally deemed too pers...
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Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Directed by Ronit Elkabetz & Shlomi Elkabetz • Drama • With Ronit Elkabetz, Menashe Noy • 2015 • 115 minutes
An Israeli woman (Ronit Elkabetz) seeking to finalize a divorce (gett) from her estranged husband finds herself effectively put on trial by her country’s religious marriage laws, in t...
