From Delis to Wagner In Jewish Film Fest
The third annual Southampton Jewish Film Festival offers an opportunity to explore a wide span of Jewish history and culture, with films ranging from a documentary about American delicatessens to a narrative feature that eerily foreshadows the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris.
As in previous years, this year’s program is a partnership between the Southampton Cultural Center and the Chabad Southampton Jewish Center. For the first time, it is casting a wider net with five screenings at Guild Hall in East Hampton, including tonight’s festival opener, “The People vs. Fritz Bauer,” which will be screened at 7:30. The other eight programs will take place at the Southampton Arts Center, formerly the Parrish Art Museum, on Job’s Lane.
In addition to 13 films, the festival has added theater to the mix. A staged reading of “The Resettlement of Isaac,” a play by Robert Karmon, will be held at the cultural center on Pond Lane on Aug. 21. The play is based on the true story of Isaac Gochman, a 17-year-old from Rovno, Poland, who in one night survived a Nazi massacre of his family along with 20,000 other Jews. Mr. Karmon will take questions after the screening.
One of the two narrative features in the festival, “The People vs. Fritz Bauer” is based on the true story of Bauer, a German Jewish attorney who emigrated to Denmark in 1935. He returned to Germany in 1949 and resumed his legal career, and in 1956 was appointed state attorney general in Frankfurt.
In 1957, Bauer received information that Adolf Eichmann, a pivotal figure of the Holocaust, was living in Argentina. Not trusting German intelligence, Bauer went instead to the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service, as a result of which Eichmann was captured and tried in Israel in 1960.
Directed by Lars Kraume and starring Burghart Klaussner as Bauer, the film won six Lolas (the German Oscars), including best picture and best director.
The festival will return to Southampton on July 11 with the more lighthearted “Deli Man,” a documentary focused on Ziggy Gruber, whose Houston delicatessen, Kenny and Ziggy’s, is considered one of the best in the country. His story is augmented by the histories of iconic delis such as Katz’s, the 2nd Avenue Deli, and Nate ’n’ Al’s.
Guest speakers and filmmakers will attend seven of the screenings. “Arab Movie” is a documentary that explores how and why during the 1970s watching the Arab movie of the week on Israel’s only television channel became a national pastime. Carole Basri, an attorney and filmmaker born to Iraqi Jewish parents, will speak after the July 17 screening at Guild Hall.
“No Place on Earth” combines documentary with dramatic re-creation to tell the story of Chris Nicola, an American cave explorer who discovered a cave in Ukraine where a group of Jewish families survived the Holocaust by living underground in total darkness for more than a year. Mr. Nicola will attend the Aug. 3 screening at Guild Hall.
“Starting Over Again” is the story of Egypt’s Jews, who flourished after World War II during what was a golden age of tolerance and prosperity there. All of that changed after the Egyptian revolution of 1952. Lucette Lagnado of The Wall Street Journal, a Cairo-born Jew whose family had to leave Egypt as refugees, will offer her perspective on the film on Aug. 8 at the cultural center.
Other films include “Wagner’s Jews,” a documentary about the anti-Semitic composer some of whose closest associates were Jews who became devoted to him; “Bagels Over Berlin,” which features interviews with Jewish airmen who fought in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II; “Made in France,” a narrative feature focused on a small group of Paris-based terrorists, and “Germans and Jews,” a documentary about Germany’s transformation from silence about the Holocaust to facing it directly.
Complete information about the festival and tickets are available at scc-arts.org. Tickets are $15, $7.50 for children under 12.