Until two of them passed away of complications from AIDS in 1994, the art collective known as General Idea produced an enormous body of intellectually engaging, provocative, and savagely witty work, much of which explored notions of identity and social control. On July 30, the trio will get its first comprehensive retrospective at the Art…
Courtesy of Snitow-Kaufman Productions “Between Two Worlds” doesn’t unfold like a traditional documentary. Instead, Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow’s earnest exploration of Jewish identity uses loosely connected sequences to illuminate tensions between post-Holocaust protectionism and post-Diaspora leftism. For a people who still occupy an uncertain footing in the world, does dissent equal betrayal? Who is…
More a filmed performance piece than a conventional movie, Amit Epstein’s “The Stockholm Syndrome Trilogy” — which had its North American premiere last month at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival — mashes up interpretive dance, ‘80s pop, Marlene Dietrich, and same-sex lust into a sometimes-successful fantasia on Jewish victimhood. The titular condition, of course, manifests…
He was a Portland Jew who dropped out of high school to find fame and fortune in New York. And while he never became a household name, his alter egos — Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Pepé Le Pew, and Barney Rubble, among hundreds of others — became part of pop culture lore. Now,…
Courtesy of the Toronto Jewish Film Festival Talk about baring all for your art. German-Jewish director Dani Levy does Woody Allen one better in “Life Is Too Long,” which made its North American premiere at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival in May. A dyspeptic “Stardust Memories,” “Life Is Too Long” both exposes Levy’s fragile psyche…
What’s left to tell about the Bernie Madoff scandal? Plenty, if you’re Harry Markopoulos, the famed whistleblower whose repeated cries of “fraud” were ignored by everyone from the SEC to the Wall Street Journal. Markopoulos gets his day in “Chasing Madoff,” partly based on his book “No One Would Listen” (and originally titled “The Foxhounds”)….
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…
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…
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