When some of us hear “Gaza,” we picture bombs or rockets or rubble. What if, instead, we pictured an adorable little girl in a pink hat? Or a grandfather playing with his grandchild? Or young men handing out ice cream cones? A new short film by Palestinian filmmaker Hadeel Assali is an ingenious exercise in…
The critic Irving Howe was not thinking of the writer-director Paul Mazursky, who has died at the age of 84, when he wrote of Jewish humor: “Laughter and trembling are so curiously intermingled that it is not easy to determine the relation between the two.” Yet he might as well have been. Born Irwin Mazursky…
Samer Bisharat, star of Oscar-nominated “Omar,” in Project X / YouTube If you’ve ever seen the movie “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” you’ll immediately be reminded of it after watching the newly released short film “Project X.” The basic plot is the same. Except instead of Jim Carrey trying to erase Kate Winslet from…
On Yom Haatzmaut morning, bright and early at 8:30 am, my four-year-old son Asher broke a crystal vase. It was an accident, but it could have been avoided. He could have chosen to play in a different place, and we as parents could have guided him better in his morning shenanigans. Horrified, Asher asked if…
Courtesy Penka Kouneva // From left to right, Jeremy Borum, Penka Kouneva and Nathan Furst working on the Dreamworks feature “Need for Speed” At six, Penka Kouneva was playing piano in her hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria. At 12, she was composing music for children’s theater. At 17, a song of hers won a Japanese competition…
Thirty years ago, boxers Billy “the Kid” McDonnen and Henry “Razor” Sharp split two hard-fought light heavyweight contests. But for reasons soon revealed, there was never a rubber match, despite the personal animosity between the two. Now, three decades years later, a young promoter has convinced them to participate in a “Grudge Match,” which will…
At some point in the evolution of American national thought Martin Luther King Jr. went from being a political firebrand to being a national icon. You have to be pretty far outside the mainstream in 2013 to object to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Likewise the Other Israel Film Festival started out as a way…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. The first words in the trailer for the new Yiddish-language film “The Pin” are “Ikh ken nit khapn dem otem” — “I can’t catch my breath.” The movie, currently playing in New York, takes place primarily in a barn in an unknown location during the Second…
Filmmaker Jessie Kahnweiler, known for her comic spiritual YouTube adventure “Dude, Where’s My Chutzpah?” has a new video out, and viewers don’t know quite what to make of it. It’s called “Meet My Rapist.” The short satirical film is a response to Kahnweiler’s own rape, which occurred almost eight years ago, when she was 20…
Believe it or not, there is something worse than being trapped in a friend’s living room while he unspools a year’s worth of home movies. What is that? Going to a theater and paying to watch home movies. That’s the prospect facing audiences at “Israel: A Home Movie,” an Israeli film by Eliav Lilti that…
A Jewish mother gives her son two ties on the first night of Hanukkah. The following morning, when he comes down for breakfast, he is wearing one of them. The mom says, “What’s the matter — you didn’t like the other one?” — Sheldon Kimmelman in “Old Jews Telling Jokes” Even while guffawing at old…
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