Jewish Stories
There are extraordinary and essential films of remembrance and analysis here, on the Shoah and on Middle East politics (and more of our Israel/Palestine films are gathered here) — but also much much more — JEWISH STORIES encompasses visions of diverse cultures and diasporic communities that define much of our intellectual and cultural life today — from Robert Vas’ classic study of London’s East End THE VANISHING STREET, to Ferenc Toroc’s classic fiction feature film 1945, Chantal Akerman’s dry and compelling Tel Aviv diary DOWN THERE, through to Marcel Ophuls’ Oscar-winning film on Klaus Barbie, HOTEL TERMINUS. In other words, this is a sea of essential stories.
-
Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank
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...
-
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 this ...
-
Chantal Akerman's Down There
Directed by Chantal Akerman • Documentary • 2006 • 78 minutes
According to director Chantal Akerman, she never planned to make a film in Israel. She was convinced that neutrality does not exist and that her subjectivity would get in her way. She was sure she would only be able to reflect on 'the...
-
The Vanishing Street (Robert Vas)
Directed by Robert Vas • Documentary • 1962 • 20 minutes
This classic documentary by Robert Vas depicts the way of life in an east London Jewish community on Hessel Street, Whitechapel. Its back-to-back houses and small shops are about to be replaced by high-rise flats. The thriving community is...
-
Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream
Directed by Michael Levine • Documentary • 2016 • 83 minutes
For more than 90 years, the Streit’s matzo factory sat in a low-slung tenement building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. While other matzo companies modernized, Streit’s remained a piece of living history, churning out 40 percent of the...
-
Artists & Love: Gerda Taro and Robert Capa
Directed by Stéphanie Colaux and Delphine Deloget • Documentary • 2019 • 26 minutes
This documentary series tells the story of intimate and tumultuous love stories in the context of art history. Each of the couples in this collection answer the same questions: is love compatible with creation? C...
-
Hotel Terminus: The Life And Times Of Klaus Barbie (Marcel Ophüls)
5 items
Directed by Marcel Ophüls • Documentary • With Klaus Barbie, Claude Lanzmann, Marcel Ophüls • 1988 • 267 minutes
A brilliant and epic Academy Award-winning examination of the Nazi SS officer Klaus Barbie, the infamous "Butcher of Lyon", HOTEL TERMINUS: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF KLAUS BARBIE weaves t...
-
Forgiving Dr. Mengele
Directed by Bob Hercules & Cheri Pugh • Documentary • With Eva Mozes Kor, Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On, Michael Berenbaum, Albert H. Friedlander • 2007 • 82 minutes
Eva Kor and her twin sister were victims of the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who conducted sadistic experiments on human beings at...
-
Between Two Worlds
Directed by Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman • Documentary • 2011 • 70 minutes
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS is a groundbreaking personal exploration of the community and family divisions that are redefining American Jewish identity and politics. The filmmakers' own families are battlegrounds over loyalty to ...
-
Imaginary Feasts
Directed by Anne Georget • Documentary • 2014 • 70 minutes
IMAGINARY FEASTS explores how in Nazi concentration cmaps, Soviet Gulags and Japanese prison camps, starving prisoners shared and recorded favorite meals and recipes. By examing how these objects of survival, the film shows quiet acts of...
-
Kings Point
Directed by Sari Gilman • Documentary • 2014 • 30 minutes
During the 1970s and 80s, thousands of New York’s primarily Jewish senior citizens migrated to Kings Point, a retirement community in Florida. Lured by blue skies, sunshine and the promise of richer social lives, they bought paradise for ...
-
The Last Happy Day
Directed by Lynne Sachs • Documentary • 2015 • 37 minutes
THE LAST HAPPY DAY is an experimental documentary portrait of Sandor Lenard, a Hungarian medical doctor and a distant cousin of filmmaker Lynne Sachs. In 1938 Lenard, a writer with a Jewish background, fled the Nazis to a safe haven in Ro...
