New York Jewish Film Festival 2010
An extraordinary international film showcase since 1992, this collaboration between the Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center explores and celebrates the Jewish experience through dramas, documentaries, claymation, and short films.
Come in from the cold for some riveting firsts at this year’s New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Jewish Museum and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. Ajami debuts in New York having already won five “Ophirs”—Israeli Film Academy Awards—including Best Picture. In a rare co-direction by a Palestinian and an Israeli, this feature film is set in multi-ethnic Jaffa, where lives become tragically entangled.
Never before has the NYJFF offered claymation, until now, with Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max, which opened the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. The feature-length film centers around Mary Dinkle, a chubby, lonely 8-year-old Australian girl and Max Horovitz, a 44-year-old, Jewish New Yorker with Asperger’s syndrome. Voice talents include Philip Seymour Hoffman, Eric Bana, Toni Colette and Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries.
Leap of Faith is the first long-form documentary to intimately explore religious conversion. Four families are shown letting go of old practices to accept Orthodox Judaism. There’s an impressive range of people—Messianic Jews in Colorado; a recent bat mitzvah whose admission to a Jewish school is challenged; a single mother and U.S. Army reservist; and a Trinidadian nanny in New York.
The many who attended the 2009 New York Jewish Film Festival were among the first audiences to see the following films which went on to theatrical release: Karin Albou’s Wedding Song and Daniel Burman’s Empty Nest. Broadcast releases included Michal Goldman’s At Home in Utopia and Juan Mandelbaum’s Our Disappeared, which aired on PBS’s Independent Lens series.
This year’s New York Jewish Film Festival was selected by Rachel Chanoff, Independent Curator; Andrew Ingall, Assistant Curator, the Jewish Museum; Richard Peña, Program Director, The Film Society of Lincoln Center; Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator and Director of the NYJFF, the Jewish Museum.
Acknowledgements: Ariella J. Ben-Dov, Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival, Olli Chanoff, Lori Cearley, The Office; Foundation for Jewish Culture; Nicola Galliner, Berlin Jewish Film Festival; Annette Insdorf, Columbia University; Judy Ironside, UK Jewish Film Festival; Aviva Kempner; Irena Kovarova, Czech Film Center; Les Rabinowicz, Festival of Jewish Cinema—Australia; Sharon Rivo, Lisa Rivo, Juliet Burch, National Center for Jewish Film; Sara L. Rubin, Boston Jewish Film Festival; Chana C. Schütz, Centrum Judaicum, Berlin; Peter L. Stein, Nancy Fishman, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival; Alla Verlotsky, Seagull Films; Isaac Zablocki, The JCC in Manhattan; Stuart Hands, Toronto Jewish Film Festival; The Film Society of Lincoln Center staff; the Jewish Museum staff; Festival interns: Jaron Gandelman, Rudabeh Shahid; and Festival volunteers: Daniela Bajar, Marlene Josephs, Linda Lipson.
The New York Jewish Film Festival is sponsored, in part, by The Martin and Doris Payson Charitable Foundation. Generous funding was also provided by The Liman Foundation, The Jack and Pearl Resnick Foundation, Mimi and Barry Alperin, and other donors. Additional support has been provided through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Israel Office of Cultural Affairs in the USA and the French Embassy provided travel assistance.
Media Sponsor for the New York Jewish Film Festival:
Still from Protector (Protektor), directed by Marek Najbrt, Czech Republic, 2009
