Imagine what hell it must be to make a movie, write a book, or put together any piece of work about the Holocaust. Full immersion in the facts of mass genocide for months or years on end is psychological torture, whatever accolades or payment one may receive for it. Reflecting on the making of “Schindler’s…
NEW YORK (JTA) — Out of all his celebrated films, Steven Spielberg is most proud of “Schindler’s List,” the 1993 Oscar winner about a German businessman who saved over 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust. The filmmaker made the claim at a Tribeca Film Festival event on Thursday marking the film’s 25th anniversary that brought him…
Do you remember when Ridley Scott directed a film about Exodus, featuring Christian Bale as Moses? I didn’t until about five minutes ago, when “Exodus: Gods and Kings” (2014) came up in a Google search. I am dumbstruck as to why I went to go see it in theaters, but I have a feverish memory…
Like you, many of us at the Forward will be spending much of this weekend focused on Passover. As you prepare for the holiday, make time for some of the Forward’s most powerful articles about it: Founding editor Ab Cahan’s newly translated essay of his first Passover in America, Itzik Gottesman’s account of Eastern European…
Steven Spielberg has said that he got into filmmaking mainly to defuse anti-semitism; to earn the respect and admiration that he couldn’t get as an isolated child. His quintessential success, “E.T.” (1982), is the story of his own childhood reconstructed, where the sensitive and cerebral daydreamer is vindicated by an otherworldly power. Anyone who says…
This week’s movie news is flush with some of our favorite movie Jews. From Shia LeBeouf — Steven Spielberg’s estranged muse — to Darren Aronofsky, whose film “Mother!” has been received with a smattering of boos, we’ve culled the best film stories from Culture and the Shmooze. Read on if you so choose! 1) Jewish…
Our society tends to focus so much on the downsides of being a child star (stunted adolescence, lack of an education, high rates of drug addiction and mental illness) that we forget about all the perks! Like, money, for example, or getting a college recommendation letter from the most famous director in the world. In…
(JTA) — Director Steven Spielberg and producer Jeffrey Katzenberg have pledged $500,000 each to the student-organized March For Our Lives to end gun violence. The nationwide protest scheduled for March 24 is the brainchild of the Never Again movement organized by the student survivors of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida,…
