Courtesy of Yonathan & Masha Films Yonathan and Masha Zur’s recent documentary “Amos Oz: The Nature of Dreams,” screening May 17 at the New York Israel Film Festival, expertly circles around the question: What is the place of politics in literature, and vice versa? For Oz, the two cannot be disentangled. “To write what they…
Crossposted from Haaretz One of the interviewees in the film “Doma” sits in her house next to a window overlooking the sea. Only parts of her are reflected in the window pane. In quiet, almost whispered tones, the woman offers a heartbreaking tale of the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her uncle…
Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in ‘Lenny’ (1974). Courtesy Toronto Jewish Film Festival Nearly 50 years after his landmark Carnegie Hall performance, and 44 years since his drug-related death, Lenny Bruce still has the power to shock. And as long he’s onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from Elan Gale’s Looking for Lenny, a new…
Crossposted from Haaretz In 1979, Channel One broadcast “Memories of the Eichmann Trial,” a documentary directed for the Israeli television station by David Perlov. The movie, shot on 16mm film, was aired only once and for the 32 years since has remained unseen in the channel’s archives. The director, who passed away in 2003, did…
Crossposted from Haaretz The film “Bombay Beach” by Israeli director Alma Har’el took first prize on Thursday at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival in the category of documentary feature film. The prize comes with a monetary award of $25,000. The jury, which included actress Whoopi Goldberg, actor Michael Cera and documentary filmmaker Amir Bar-Lev, among…
In 2000, filmmaker Alan Zweig gained modest success on the festival circuit with “Vinyl,” a documentary probing the quirks and eccentricities of compulsive record collectors. (“Compulsive” referring not to some guy with a few hundred LPs, but to some guy who rents a U-Haul locker on the edge of town to serve as a supplementary…
It sounds like a high-concept Hollywood pitch: Feisty 86-year-old Holocaust survivor meets tough inner-city high-school kids. In fact, a documentary about the indefatigable Fanya Gottesfeld Heller — and her conversations with students at Brooklyn’s “alternative” Pacific High School — airs on PBS affiliates throughout April. Richard Gere narrates “Teenage Witness: The Fanya Heller Story,” partly…
“The Calling,” a four-hour documentary that aired on PBS in December and screens this month in San Francisco and at Knesseth Israel Congregation in Birmingham, Al., profiles seven young Americans who have chosen to become leaders of their faiths. While the film’s intentions are good and it has interesting moments, seven lives are too many…
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