New York Jewish Film Festival 2003

We are delighted to welcome you to the Twelfth Annual New York Jewish Film Festival – a collaboration between The Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. The need to explore and celebrate the Jewish experience is more pressing than ever, and this year’s selections — by filmmakers from Australia to South Africa, Israel to Texas — reflect a pervasive drive to define and understand issues of modern Jewish identity. Some of our favorite filmmakers have returned with new works, like Elida Schogt, the award-winning director of Zyklon Portrait and The Walnut Tree, whose short documentary Silent Song completes a deeply personal trilogy of family history and Holocaust memory. Exciting new voices in world cinema make their mark as well, among them Israeli directors Lina and Slava Chaplin, whose A Trumpet in the Wadi takes the story of a recent Russian immigrant and an Arab woman from Haifa to create a heartwrenching portrait of the complex impact of politics on love in modern Israel. French romances and forgotten gems of bittersweet Yiddish melodrama, humorous family epics and documentary investigations into the history of Canadian Fascism — taken as a whole, this year’s lineup underscores the magnificent diversity of the the global Jewish community as expressed through film. Please join us for eleven extraordinary days of possibility and discovery at the 2003 New York Jewish Film Festival.

This festival was organized by a committee consisting of Rachel Chanoff, Chair, Film Festival Selection Committee; J. Hoberman, Senior Film Critic, The Village Voice; Richard Peña, Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; Mohini Sara Shapero, Film Festival Coordinator; and Aviva Weintraub, Director of Media and Public Programs, The Jewish Museum.