A.J. Goldmann
By A.J. Goldmann
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Film & TV Israeli Films Star in an Otherwise Disappointing Berlin Festival
Despite the record-breaking admissions (over 330,000 tickets sold) for nearly 400 films from 76 different countries, the Berlin Film Festival, which ended Sunday, celebrated its dullest year in a decade. As expected, the Golden Bear went to the timely documentary “Fuocoammare” (“Fire at Sea”) by Gianfranco Rosi. Italy’s second win in four years, “Fuocoammare” would…
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Film & TV At Berlin Festival, Documentaries Inspire and Infuriate
In nearly a decade of covering Europe’s largest and busiest film fest, one of the aspects I have come to prize most about the Berlinale is the pride of place it bestows to documentaries. Even with this year’s lukewarm line-up, non-fiction films have made the biggest impact, notably the Italian competition entry “Fuocoammare” (“Fire at…
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Culture When You’re a Gay Israeli, You Can Go Home Again
The 66th Berlin International Film Festival, or simply Berlinale as it is known here, unspooled with the international premiere of the Coen Brothers’ “Hail, Caesar!” a star-studded sendup of 1950s Hollywood, which is screening out of competition. After “True Grit” (which opened the Berlinale in 2011) and “Inside Llewyn Davis” (which took the Grand Prix…
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News ‘Mein Kampf’ No Longer Banned in Germany — Now What?
Nazi salutes, swastikas and other Third Reich symbols have long been outlawed in Germany. But as of midnight on New Year’s Eve, “Mein Kampf,” Hitler’s infamous autobiographical tome, was off the list of suppressed Nazi icons. As a result, “Mein Kampf” will again hit bookstores in Germany, 70 years after its author’s death at the…
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Culture ‘Son of Saul’ Captures Intense Brutality of Auschwitz
The most iconic face of this year’s Cannes Film Festival did not belong to Emma Stone or to Cate Blanchett, — to mention two celebrities who walked the red carpet — nor to Ingrid Bergman, whose silver image graced the festival’s banners and posters; it was the sunken, haunted face of Geza Röhrig the 48-year-old…
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News As Berlin Opens Arms to Refugees, Why Are German Jews Silent?
Bolstered by Angela Merkel’s promise that Germany would take in up to 800,000 refugees this year, thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and others fleeing civil war and the violence of the Islamic State group are arriving in this country daily. On the morning of Thursday, September 10, alone, a train with 540 refugees arrived in Berlin…
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Music The Wagner Opera That’s OK for Jews To Love
In 1981, Zubin Mehta sent shockwaves through Israel by leading the country’s premiere orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, in a concert encore by Richard Wagner. It was the first time since the establishment of the State that the notoriously anti-Semitic composer’s work had been heard live in Israel. Despite the fighting and shouting in the auditorium,…
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Culture Converting to Verdi
The village of Oberammergau might be the least Jewish place on earth. Nestling at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps, the town is synonymous with the Passion play that residents have been putting on since 1637, a theatrical and religious spectacle that for much of history transmitted anti-Jewish prejudice, inciting pogroms and other violent acts…
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