ERJCC Calendar

 
 9th Annual Houston
Jewish Film Festival
March 6 - 17 
Funded in part by the ERJCC Patrons of the Arts 
    
The Annual Houston Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center
and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) brings to the community current
documentary and feature films with meaningful Jewish or Israeli content.

FILMS 

TICKETS 

CALENDAR 

COMMITTEE 

Wed, Mar 6
7:30 PM • ERJCC
  
Sat, Mar 16
6:00 PM • MFAH
 
Directed by
Thierry Binisti
 France, Israel, 2011
99 min.
French, Hebrew,
Arabic with English
subtitles
Drama

Tal is a 17-year-old French woman who has settled in Jerusalem with her family. She writes a letter expressing her refusal to accept that only hatred can reign between Israelis and Palestinians. She slips the letter into a bottle, and her brother throws it into the sea near Gaza, where he is carrying out his military service. A few weeks later, Tal receives an e-mail response from a mysterious “Gazaman,” a young Palestinian named Naïm. And thus begins a turbulent but tender long-distance friendship between two young people that are separated by a history they are trying both to understand and change. Hiam Abbass (Lemon Tree) and Mahmoud Shalaby (Free Men; The Other Son) star in this internet-age Romeo-and-Juliet drama set in a troubled region. Based on the award-winning novel by Valerie Zenatti. Suitable for ages 15 and above. 
  
“A gripping, unsentimental drama with a lot of action and a pacifist message of hope and reconciliation. A Bottle in the Gaza Sea is must-viewing.’’ – Montreal Gazette

 
Sponsored by June and Leonard Goldberg
 

BESA: THE PROMISE

Thur, Mar 7
5:00 PM • ERJCC
  
$5 @ 5:00
All 5:00 PM movies 
are only $5!
  
Directed by
Rachel Goslins  
USA, 2012
86 min
English with subtitles
Documentary
 

“Besa,” a code of honor, requires that all Albanians, most of whom are Muslim, protect refugees. Rexhap Hoxho is the son of an Albanian Muslim who protected a Jewish family during the Holocaust and retained their Hebrew books after the family’s departure, as it was too dangerous for a Jewish family to travel with prayer books. Until the fall of communism in 1991, Hoxho had no way of searching for the family, but yet, he felt that “besa” demanded he find and return the books to their rightful owners. His journey eventually leads him and his son to Jerusalem, documented by Jewish-American photographer Norman Gershman.
   

Thurs, Mar 7
7:30 PM • ERJCC
 
Directed by
Daniel Burman
Argentina, 2012
107 min
Spanish, French
with English subtitles
Drama
  

In this witty, romantic comedy, Uriel, a Jewish divorced father of two and a professional gambler, is in the habit of finessing his way through life. He decides to get a vasectomy and enter into a new life of freedom and romance. On the very day he decides to have the operation, his ex-girlfriend Gloria shows up, having returned to Buenos Aires after years of living in France. Uriel learns that a poker face may not be the most effective way to pursue romance. 

Fri, Mar 8
1:00 PM • ERJCC
  
Wed, Mar 13
7:30 PM • ERJCC
 
Directed by
Joël Santoni
France, 2008
104 min
French with
English subtitles
Drama
   

Based on events in 1940 Bordeaux, this film tells the story of Portuguese Consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes, who defied Dictator Antonio Salazar’s directive to forbid the entry of “undesirables,” particularly Jews, into Portugal. Against Salazar’s orders, Sousa Mendes issues approximately 30,000 Portuguese visas allowing people to escape to Portugal. This film is a portrait in courage, relaying the story of a man who chose to live by his convictions despite danger and hardship. After his death, Sousa Mendes was declared to be among the righteous of nations and posthumously promoted to the rank of Ambassador.
  
Sousa Mendes Visa Recipient Sarah Tanne Tillis in
attendance at the March 13 screening.
Underwritten by The Maurice Amado Foundation
 

Sat, Mar 9
7:00 PM • MFAH
  
Directed by
Jonathan Schwartz
USA, 2012
89 min
English
Film essay
World premiere

Post-film discussion with Jon Schwartz and Newton Schwartz Sr.
 
A Houston story with universal appeal, this film essay is a character study of the filmmaker’s father, as well as a chronicle of a Houston Jewish family spanning the 20th century. Interviews with the outspoken Seymour (1919-2008) frame a family history richly illustrated by photographs, letters and historical materials. The story is rounded out by poignant recollections of Seymour’s marriage and unlikely role as a community activist late in his life. Twenty-five years after his first film, the acclaimed documentary This Is Our Home: It Is Not For Sale about Houston’s Riverside neighbor, Jon Schwartz delivers a riveting family portrait.
 
The audience is invited to a reception in the Museum galleries following the program.
 

 

VIEW TRAILER  
  
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THE LAST FLIGHT OF PETR GINZ

Sun, Mar 10
1:00 PM • MFAH
 
Tues, Mar 12  
2:00 PM • MFAH
  
Mar 12 screening free w/Museum admission
 
Directed by
Sandy Dickson and
Churchill Roberts
USA, 2012
66 min
English
Documentary
  

A story of celebration and tragedy, The Last Flight of Petr Ginz is a whimsical and fantastical journey through one boy's imagination. Combining animation, art, and live action, the documentary is a testament to how a boy's creative expression represents the best of what makes us human. By fourteen Petr Ginz had written five novels and penned a diary about the Nazi occupation of Prague. By sixteen he had produced more than 170 drawings and paintings, edited an underground magazine in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, written numerous short stories, and had walked to the gas chamber at Auschwitz. 

Sun, Mar 10
3:00 PM • MFAH
  
Directed by
Daniel Allentuck and
Nina Rosenblum
USA, 2012
74 min
English
Documentary
 

The story of the rise and politically motivated fall of the Photo League, (1936–1951) which for fifteen years served as the center of the documentary movement in American photography at a time when the camera was held to be, in James Agee’s words, “the central instrument of our time.” The Photo League’s membership roster included Sid Grossman, Aaron Siskind, Jerome Liebling, Dan Weiner, Morris Engel, Walter Rosenblum, Weegee, Lisette Model, and W. Eugene Smith. Ordinary Miracles is built around a handpicked selection culled from hundreds of images, fashioned into sequences designed around various subjects of League focus (Harlem, the Lower East Side, children at play, Coney Island, WWII). The rich and evocative soundtrack is a blend of contemporary and vintage music: The Mills Brothers, The Ink Spots, Django Reinhardt, The Andrews Sisters, Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins and Philip Glass.
  

 
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REVIEWS
NY TIMES      
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER  

HITLER’S CHILDREN

Sun, Mar 10
6:00 PM • HMH
 
Directed by
Chanoch Ze’evi
Germany, Israel, 2011
80 min
English, German,
Hebrew with
English subtitles
Documentary
  

Hitler's Children is a unique documentary film about the descendants of some of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime: Himmler, Frank, Goering, Hoess, men and women who inherited a legacy that permanently associates them with one of the greatest crimes in history. Director and producer, Chanoch Ze'evi, himself a third generation descendent of Holocaust survivors, used detailed and intensive research to create this in-depth documentary. His interviews with the descendants are mesmerizing as he explores the effects of the Holocaust from a different view point.

VIEW TRAILER  
 
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NUMBERED

Mon, Mar 11
5:00 PM • ERJCC 
 
$5 @ 5:00
All 5:00 PM movies
are only $5!
 
Directed by
Uriel Sinai and
Dana Doron
Israel, 2012
60 min
Hebrew with
English subtitles
Documentary
  

Auschwitz prisoners were denied their names and tattooed with numbers. In this engrossing film, survivors discuss what the numbers mean to them: a tattoo is a sign of shame, a badge of honor, or something else entirely? “Today, it is a sign of prestige; I have a number. It gives me a kind of superiority,” says one survivor. Another will not wear short sleeves. A daughter has her father’s number tattooed to her ankle as a sign of remembrance and solidarity with her deceased father; a grandson takes his grandfather’s number as a sign of survival and continuity. Am Yisroel Chai.

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THE DAY I SAW YOUR HEART
(Et Soudain Tout Le Monde Me Manque)

Mon, Mar 11
7:30 PM • ERJCC
  
Directed by
Jennifer Devolère
France, 2011
98 min
French with
English subtitles
Drama
  

In this French comedy, Eli, celebrating his 60th birthday, announces that his 42-year-old wife is pregnant. Justine, a daughter from a prior marriage thinks this is a mistake considering Eli’s previous experience as a father. Eli is an unusual father; he keeps in touch with all of Justine’s many former boyfriends and makes outrageous suggestions regarding the pending birth. But what can you expect from a father who promised his daughter a toy store, and when one doesn’t materialize, explains that as “a good Jewish father” he wanted to prepare her for disappointment.  

THE FLAT

Tues, Mar 12
5:00 PM • ERJCC
  
Fri, Mar 15
1:00 PM • ERJCC
 
$5 @ 5:00
All 5:00 PM movies
are only $5!
 
Directed by
Arnon Goldfinger 
Israel, 2011
97 min
Hebrew, German,
English with
English subtitles
Documentary
 

When Israeli director Arnon Goldfinger’s grandmother Gerda Tuchler died at 98, she left behind a flat filled with books, works of art, photographs, and memorabilia. His findings lead him to explore his grandparents’ history, including a long-term friendship with a Nazi officer that survives the war. Zionists traveling with Nazis to Palestine? Unbelievable, and yet, it happened. The relationship was unknown to the family, nor were many other aspects of the Tuchlers’ history until Goldfinger contacted people who knew his grandparents, reviewed archives, and traveled to Germany in an attempt to understand their story.
 

Lunch & A Movie - March 15 @ 1:00 PM
For Adults 60+
$8 Member / $10 Public
RSVP required with 24 hr. notice – Call Esther Bethke for
reservations at 713-595-8186.

Tues, Mar 12
7:30 PM • ERJCC
  
Thurs, Mar 14
5:00 PM • ERJCC
  
$5 @ 5:00
All 5:00 PM movies
are only $5!
  
Directed by
Lorraine Levy
France, 2011
105 min
Hebrew, Arabic,
French with
English subtitles
Drama
 

When Joseph, the 18-year-old son of a high ranking Israeli officer in Tel Aviv, reports for his physical prior to national service, his blood test shockingly indicates he is not his parents' biological son. Further investigation reveals he was accidentally switched at birth with Yassin, a Palestinian raised in Gaza. Follow this dramatic, compelling story of two loving families, whose lives are turned upside-down, forcing them to confront each other and examine their own identities, values, and attitudes.
 
Underwritten by The Maurice Amado Foundation

VIEW TRAILER 
  
READ REVIEW 

REMEMBRANCE
(Die Verlorene Zeit)

Wed, Mar 13
5:00 PM • ERJCC
 
$5 @ 5:00
All 5:00 PM movies
are only $5!
 
Directed by
Anna Justice
Germany, 2011
105 min
German, Polish,
English with
English subtitles
Drama, Thriller
 

In 1944, Anna, a Jewish prisoner in a concentration camp, and Tomasz, her Polish prisoner-of-war lover, manage a harrowing escape from the camp. She takes refuge with Tomasz’s sister-in-law, a Polish partisan, while he goes in search of his brother. In the ensuing chaos at the end of the war, the two are separated, each believing that the other is dead until 30 years later when Hannah, happily married and a mother in New York, believes she has seen Tomasz being interviewed on television about his war experiences and renews her search for him. 

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PRISONERS OF WAR
(Hatufim)

Thurs, Mar 14
8:00 PM • ERJCC
 
7:00 PM Happy Hour Reception
 
$5 for Happy Hour and Screening
 
Created by
Gideon Raff
Israel, Pilot Episode
60 min (2010)
Hebrew with
English subtitles
TV Series, Drama
 

Sat, Mar 16
8:00 PM • MFAH
 
Directed by
Tamar Tal 
Israel, Germany 2011, 58 min
Hebrew, German
with English subtitles
Documentary
 

Sun, Mar 17
1:00 PM • ERJCC
 
Directed by
Ilya Motyleff
USA, 1937
90 min
Yiddish with
English Subtitles
Drama
 

Introduced by Hazzan David Propis

Moishe Oysher (1907-1958), a cantor and singing star whose repertoire ranged from the cantorial to the operatic stars in this restored 1937 Yiddish language film as Shloimele, a young man who leaves his family and Polish shtetl and endures a life of poverty until he is finally discovered washing floors in a nightclub. After he attains stardom, Shloimele is torn between his desire for his shtetl and family and the attractions of the New World. The film is based in part on Moisher Oysher’s life.
 
The film has been provided and restored with new English subtitles by The National Center for Jewish Film, www.jewishfilm.org.   
 

Patron Sponsor
	Ziggy Gruber

VIEW TRAILER  
 
REVIEWS 
THE INDEPENDENT   
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

Sun, March 17
4:00 PM • ERJCC
 
Directed by
Peter Miller and
Will Hechter
Canada, USA,
2012, 99 min
English
Documentary
 

Paralyzed by polio as a child, and confined to crutches and a wheel chair, Doc Pomus, a white Jewish Brooklynite born Jerome Felder, becomes an unlikely blues singer performing in various musical venues in NYC, having obtained his first gig as a result of sheer chutzpah. Subsequently, Doc Pomus traded his singing career for that of a song writer, composing Save the Last Dance for Me, A Teenager in Love, and This Magic Moment. The film includes interviews with his many friends and those songwriters and singers he taught and influenced as dean of the live music scene in NYC from 1960 - 1990. In 1992, he was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 
 

Elli Samuels  Book Signing at 5:45 PM  Cooking with Elli

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Photo Credit:
Jenny Jimenez 
 

Sun, Mar 17
7:30 PM • ERJCC
 
Directed by
Roberta Grossman
USA, 2012
73 min
English
Documentary 
 

Guest Speaker: Filmmaker Roberta Grossman  

Ever wonder about the origins and history of the tune that is played at almost every Bar Mitzvah party and Jewish wedding? Then don’t miss Hava Nagila, the movie. Black, Italian, and Irish Americans all connect to and perform Hava Nagila, a tune recognizable all over the world, having traveled from the Ukraine to YouTube. But then, who would not like a song whose title means “Let us rejoice?”
 
Closing night reception follows screening
  
Patron Sponsors: Bunny and Perry Radoff