Greetings, movie fans! Last week saw the Forward’s culture desk unusually understaffed, and therefore, a melancholic lack of movie news. This week, to make up for the omission, we have two weeks’s worth of movie news to summarize: The good, the bad, the very strange and more. Read on. 1) Alison Klayman spoke about her…
Alison Klayman, a graduate of a Jewish day school with a history degree from Brown, is no stranger to the documentary world: Her film “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry” (2012), which followed the Chinese artist and activist, received a special jury prize that year at Sundance and opened Tel Aviv’s 2012 Docaviv International Documentary Film Festival….
My documentary “Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry,” about a Chinese artist who fights for freedom of expression and clashes with authorities because of it, had its first public screenings in January at the Sundance Film Festival. I was wide-eyed, dazzled and overwhelmed that week, my first film festival experience with my first film: audiences clapping, countless…
After an impressive few years of Israeli films showcased prominently at the Berlin Film Festival, there was a conspicuous dearth of Israeli fare this year. The Berlinale, which ran from February 9 to 19, has a reputation for tackling political issues. This year, it decisively chose to highlight films from hotbed countries, including Egypt, Yemen…
The final winners at the Sundance Film Festival were announced on the evening Sunday January 29 and there were big wins for Israel and Jewish themed films as well as films helmed by Jewish directors. Alison Klayman, who was featured on The Arty Semite blog last week, won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Prize for…
Having grown up in suburban Philadelphia, born to a Yiddish-speaking mother, Alison Klayman is a surprising conduit for China’s most famous dissident artist. In between many jobs, including writing for this newspaper (and interviewing the Chinese about their knowledge of Jews and Judaism before the influx of visitors for the 2010 Olympics, for JTA), she…
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