Film
The Latest
-
The Schmooze Friday Film: Make a Choice, Any Choice
Image courtesy of Dragoman Films “Je T’aime, I Love You Terminal,” screening this month at the Detroit Jewish Film Festival, is a cautionary tale about the dangers of indecision — that when we’re faced with two options, choosing neither is often worse than choosing the wrong one. To a lesser extent, the film is about…
-
The Schmooze Q&A: Susan Seidelman on Adversity and Success
When Susan Seidelman released her first film, “Smithereens,” in 1982, she was still among the first female Hollywood directors. The film was a success, and was selected for competition at Cannes. She followed that with “Desperately Seeking Susan,” which featured a very young Madonna, some films that failed to gain traction (“Cookie,” “She Devil”) and…
-
The Schmooze Friday Film: Simone Weil’s Mission of Empathy
Born to agnostic Jewish parents, Simone Weil was a French philosopher, a social and political activist, pacifist, prolific writer and Christian mystic. Today, she is barely remembered. Now, a new documentary has brought Weil back to the attention of American audiences. In “An Encounter with Simone Weil,” New York filmmaker Julia Haslett is moved to…
-
The Schmooze Friday Film: Captain of a Sinking Country
Watching the documentary “The Island President” is like watching a political thriller — only its story is not fictional and the cast is not made up of movie stars. Most important, the stakes are very real. In fact, they are so high that the existence of an entire country hangs in the balance. The underdog…
-
Books Welcome to the Dybbuk Revival
The Dibbuk Box By Jason Haxton Truman State University Press, 192 pages, $19.95 Yiddish revival? That’s so 2011. This year is all about the Dybbuk revival. That is, insofar as a disembodied spirit can be revived, and monetized. So far the Dybbuk revival includes a book (“The Dibbuk Box”) and a movie set for summer…
-
The Schmooze Journalists Apologize to Claims Conference
Crossposted from Haaretz An Israeli couple, both renowned journalists, issued an apology Monday, over a film they directed, to the Jewish organization responsible for negotiating with Germany on restitution for Holocaust survivors. The film, “Moral Reparations — The Struggle Continues,” charges that the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany — better known as the…
-
The Schmooze All in the Dysfunctional Family
Image courtesy of Monterey Media Too often, the foibles of Jewish family life are portrayed in negative, even mean-spirited ways. Happily, “Reuniting the Rubins,” a warm and heimish film, provides a humorous and occasionally moving antidote to that negativity. The first full-length feature from religiously observant British writer-director Yoav Factor, “Rubins” suggests that familial love…
-
The Schmooze Friday Film: Mosque That Saved Jews
While making “Free Men” (“Les hommes libres”), a subtle examination of an Algerian émigré living in Paris at the outset of the Nazi Occupation, it must have been tempting to pump up the emotional volume. Had the movie been made by Hollywood, Younes, a young man selling goods on the black market, would have been…
Most Popular
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture I come from a long line of Jewish Bundists. Now, Molly Crabapple is part of our family.
-
Opinion American Jews have a Hasan Piker problem. Solving it is going to hurt
-
Fast Forward 200+ Bnei Menashe immigrate to Israel from India, the first to make the journey in years
-
Yiddish װאָס קען מען זיך אָפּלערנען פֿון מאָלי קראַבעפּלס בוך װעגן „בונד“?What can we learn from Molly Crabapple’s book about the Bund?
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט