Real estate investor Joy Tomchin never imagined her name on a movie marquee. But a phone call from a stranger changed that. David France, a journalist and author, had found Tomchin through mutual friends; would she consider producing his film? “I said, ‘Who is this guy? He’s just asking for money,’” she told the Forward….
“Tears of Gaza,” a Norwegian documentary about the Gaza Strip under assault during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead of December 2008 and January 2009, is presented in Arabic with English subtitles. It may be characterized as “truthful propaganda.” There’s no reason to doubt most of what you see, but the film makes no apology for showing…
Those of you who are up on your 1960s counter-culture know that the Yippies were formed, for the most part, by a group of Jewish troublemakers from Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Some of those mischievous Yidden are no longer with us: Abbie Hoffman committed suicide in 1989, Jerry Rubin got hit by a car in…
Linda Goldstein Knowlton is in New York City promoting her new documentary, “Somewhere Between,” and Skyping with her daughter, Ruby, who is in California, when a telephone call interrupts. She asks the caller to hang on; sending Ruby off to school is clearly more important than promoting her film — especially since Ruby was, in…
“It Is No Dream” is a biographical documentary about the life of Theodor Herzl. The good news is it isn’t a nightmare, either. Filmmaker Richard Trank does a better-than-decent job telling the story of the father of Zionism. He integrates contemporary footage of places where Herzl lived and visited with archival footage in an interesting…
The 2013 bicentennial of Giuseppe Verdi’s birth is fast approaching. The great Italian opera composer first won fame with “Nabucco” (1842), based at several removes on the biblical book of Jeremiah. The stateless Italians of the day saw themselves in the opera’s enslaved Israelites, and the chorus “Va, pensiero” (drawn from Psalm 137) threaded itself…
“Up Heartbreak Hill,” the POV documentary that premieres July 26 on PBS, is centered on two teenagers, Thomas Martinez and Tamara Hardy, who run like the wind. Not hurricane fast, but swiftly enough to place among the top finishers in state cross country and track meets; swiftly enough to attract the attention of college coaches….
In his documentary, “U.N. Me,” opening in cities around the U.S. today, first-time filmmaker Ami Horowitz takes shots at the United Nations and most of them land squarely on target. Horowitz charges that U.N. brass knew about the potential for genocide in Rwanda — and could have prevented it; that U.N. peacekeeping troops opened fire…
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