Personally, I think President Trump’s communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s graphic rant to The New Yorker is the only entertainment I’ll need this weekend. Should you be looking for something less lurid and politically disheartening, check out our recommendations below. 1) Watch The much-anticipated Yiddish-language film “Menashe,” which chronicles the struggle of a Hasidic widower to…
Dreams of becoming a movie star are probably few and far between among Hasidim. Many Hasidic communities tend to be distrustful of the secular and going to the movies or watching television is often forbidden or, at least, heavily discouraged. That’s why Menashe Lustig, a Hasidic performer who hails from New Square, New York, is…
Editor’s Note: Joshua Z. Weinstein’s film “Menashe” is now playing at the Angelika Theater in New York. Earlier this year, Simi Horwitz interviewed the film’s cast and director. Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein, 33, who dubs himself a humanist filmmaker, says he never wanted to make a Jewish movie, but rather one that explores the interplay…
BOSTON (JTA) — With more than a decade’s worth of experience in the film industry, mostly in documentaries, director Joshua Weinstein has released his first feature-length narrative film. What’s surprising is that Weinstein, a secular Jew, has made a movie entirely in Yiddish. “Menashe,” about Hasidic Jews in the Borough Park section of Brooklyn, is…
Documentarian Joshua Z. Weinstein, 33, who dubs himself a humanist filmmaker, says he never wanted to make a Jewish movie, but rather one that explores the interplay (maybe the clash) between faith and modernity. It’s almost — but not quite — incidental that his characters are Yiddish-speaking Hasidim, members of the most austere sects living…
Between 1911 and 1950, there were hundreds — the exact number is the matter of some debate — of Yiddish films produced, mostly in Eastern Europe and America. It seems safe to say that over the past few years, there have been more Yiddish-language films than at any time since World War I. I give…
A meditative documentary about Samuel Bickels, a polyglot costume drama about Karl Marx and a star-studded André Aciman adaptation are among the films to watch for at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival, which kicked off on Thursday with the warmly received “Django,” a biopic about the legendary Gypsy Jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. When the…
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