Vancouver International Jewish Film Festival

Thu 22 Mar to Sun 1 Apr. 6184 Ash Street, Vancouver, V5Z 3G9. Ian Merkel, Director of Development, 604.266.0245, film@vjff.org. Vancouver International Jewish Film Festival - [vjff][events]

Welcome to our Festival . This year, we are pleased to bring to Vancouver fifty films from ten countries of the best new and classic films of Jewish interest; films that engage, inform, entertain, warm the heart, bring a tear and a few that are just for laughs. From sublime to the hilarious, the devout to the irreverent, these are Jewish stories for all time.

Festival Program Highlights

The Best of New Israeli Cinema features premieres of two Sundance award winners, Dror Shaul’s dramatic feature, Sweet Mud, a poignant story of Kibbutz life in the early seventies and Shimon Dotan’s stunning documentary, Hot House. Other Israeli premieres include, Director Leon Prudovsky’s, Dark Night, and Israel’s “Crash” entry into Oscars, Eyal Halfon’s What a Wonderful Place. Encounter Point, Avni & Bacha’s documentary that gives a window into the peace movement led by the families of victims of the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Uri Pastor’s, The King of Beggars,is Israel’s first swashbuckler action film, a beautifully shot, this 16th Century period story based on the Fishke the Lame. Janem Janem, Haim Bouzaglo’s romantic and touching film about the search to find meaning in life.

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Stardust: Building the Hollywood Dream, explores the Jewish contribution to the Hollywood dream machine. Hollywoodism’s follows the lives and legacy of five Russian Jewish immigrants that founded the Hollywood studio system. Watch for The Woman With Hungry Eyes, before May West, Marilyn Monroe or Madonna, there was our poster girl, Theda Bara. The film reveals how Jewish good girl Theodosa Goodman became the world’s first movie star and sex symbol. The John Garfield Story and Body and Soul is a our tribute to the great Jewish tough guy actor and director, John Garfield. His daughter Julie Garfield will attend. Stuart Stern’s screen writer of Rebel Without a Cause, The Ugly American, Flags of Our Fathers, life and work is celebrated in Going Through Splat. Stuart Stern is on hand to talk about the film.

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Literature on Film is a series that reveals the life and times of some of the most influential writers of the 2oth Century. Primo Levi, Leonard Cohen, Kafka and Tony Kushner. Ira Nadel will moderate a panel to discuss the films; One Slave, One Gun: From Auchwitz to Turin with Levi Primo, I Am Your Man, Who’s Kafka and Wrestling with Angels.

Kaplan and Klein: Two from the Heart

An Special evening with two award winning Vancouver documentary film makers Marianne Kaplan and Bonnie Sherr Klein who both share their very personal family stories of the challenges and triumphs of living with disabilities in The Boy Inside and Shameless: The Art of Disability.

Just for Laughs

When comedian Annabelle Gurwitch was fired from a play by Woody Allen (who who told her she sounded “retarded”) she turned to comedian friends to relate their own firing stories and made, Fired. Trauma remembered becomes hilarious anecdotes from Tim Allen, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Fred Willard, Illana Douglas. Michael Rainin brings us two delightful comedies, Waiting for Woody Allen and Stand Up. When some wacky LA guys start their own Hip Hop, Rap band, we get Chutspah, This Is? This Mocumentary features George Seigel as Dr. Dreck. Back by popular demand, A Wonderous Oblivian a warm hearted film for the whole family.

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New Perspectives on the Holocaust

The Rape of Europa, a feature documentary based on the Award-winning book by Lynn H. Nicholas. The film reveals the systematic theft by the Third Reich and miraculous recovery of Europe's art treasures during the WWII. Out of Faith, a documentary of an Auschwitz survivor who laments that her grandson marries outside the faith. The film raises universal questions about how to honor the past while living in today's multicultural society. Dancing Lessons tells the story a beautiful Jewish dancer, who during the Second World War led a dangerous double life as Paris cabaret performer and member of the French Resistance. Fury at the End of the World, It is 1940 and Holland is under Nazi occupation. Three Jewish families seek to flee Rotterdam by boat for safety in England. This.is the long-awaited screen adaptation of the Maarten 't Hart novel of the same name.

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Film’s Not to be Missed

Steel Toes, David Strathairn as Danny Dunckelman bring to life a powerful Canadian story of a skinhead accused of a racially based murder and the Liberal Jewish lawyer assigned to defend him. Just an Ordinary Jew, Downfall, Director, Oliver Hirschbiegel’s stunning new film begs the question, can life ever be “ordinary” for a Jew in Germany? The Longing, The Forgotten Jews of South America, is Gabriella Bohm’s story of a small group of South Americans, who’s ancesters were forced to convert during the Spanish Inquisition. Isolated in Catholic countries, they battle to become recognized as Jews. Yippee, Directed by award-winning American filmmaker Paul Mazursky (Next Stop Greenwich Village, An Unmarried Woman, Yippee chronicles the director’s whirlwind journey to Uman, a small Ukrainian town that is the site of a unique, annual gathering of Jewish men. Family Law, Argentina’s Oscar submission, Daniel Burman’s quiet reflection on fathers and sons.

Theda Bara The Women with Hungry Eyes