Westchester Jewish Film Festival Returns to the Burns This Week
It is an event as welcome to many Westchester residents as the start of spring.
The annual Westchester Jewish Film Festival will begin this week at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. This year’s festival, which will be held from March 19 through Apr. 10, has been expanded to feature 40 programs. The festival is programmed by Steve Apkon, Brian Ackerman and Karen Sloe Goodman.
Goodman said the large local Jewish community is one reason for the event’s popularity.
“There are 250,000 Jews living in Westchester,” she said. “It has a targeted audience.”
But Goodman said enthusiasm for the annual series runs deeper than the Jewish community, with audiences growing significantly for the series over the last decade.
“The films are getting better and better,” she said. “There are more and more to choose from.”
Goodman said the programmers work for about nine months to organize the annual event, which includes attending film festivals and making the difficult selections.
The types of films and subject matter included in this year’s series are varied. The common thread is each entry must be related to Jewish life, Goodman said.
The series also has a different feel than some of the Burns’ other film series, modeling itself more like the large film festivals in New York and Toronto, she said.
The opening night feature, “For a Woman,” by acclaimed director Diane Kurys, known for “Peppermint Soda” and “Entre Nous,” is based on the director’s family and is about a young writer’s search to learn about her parents’ secret past during World War II. The film will also be shown on March 22 and Apr. 3. A reception will be held at the theater following it’s screening.
“Holy Ground: Woody Guthrie’s Yiddish Connection,” scheduled for Apr. 9, will be a multimedia presentation hosted by Guthrie’s daughter, Nora.
On a lighter note, “When Jews Were Funny” is about the history of Jewish humor, which will be presented on March 28 and 30. Following the March 30 screening, Emmy Award-winning actress and comedian Julie Gold will participate in a question-and-answer session.
The festival will present films about Jewish celebrities, including comedian and director David Steinberg (“Quality Balls: The David Steinberg Story” on March 20, followed by a Q&A with the comedian, and also on March 22 and 25); Marty Glickman, one of two Jewish sprinters blocked from competing in the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Germany who went on to a legendary sports broadcasting career; (“Glickman” on March 23, followed by a reception with former NBA commissioner David Stern); and Marvin Hamlisch (featured in “Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did for Love” on April 7, followed by a Q&A, which includes a panel with Hamlisch’s widow, Terre). The composer won a Pulitzer Prize, three Academy Awards, four Emmy Awards, four Grammy Awards and a Tony Award.
There will be several historical documentaries in the series, such as “Simon Schama–Story of the Jews” on Apr. 1 featuring three episodes of the BBC series and a question-and-answer session with Schama, a British historian and author; “Jews & Money,” about the anti-Semitic kidnapping of a young Jewish man in France in 2006; and “The Sturgeon Queens,” about the four generations that built Russ & Daughters, the Lower East Side lox and herring institution. “The Sturgeon Queens,” will be the closing night event on Apr. 10 and will include “A Taste of Jewish New York” reception with the film’s director Julie Cohen.
The Jacob Burns Film Center is located at 364 Manville Rd. in Pleasantville. For more information, call 914-747-5555 or visit www.burnsfilmcenter.org..
