Holocaust filmmaker’s animated doc in Oscar hunt
Sometimes art imitates life, and sometimes art dictates life. When I interviewed Perry Chen and his mom, Dr. Zhu Shen on Wednesday, I felt that art and life inform each other, with one or...
‘Samuel Project’ stars Hal Linden as Holocaust survivor
The Samuel Project, filmed in San Diego and screened at the San Diego International Film Festival, is a gentle post-Holocaust story starring Hal Linden as Samuel, a Holocaust survivor who is reluctant to talk about...
Joyce Forum Short Film Festival’s special joys
The Joyce Forum Short Film Festival is triply new. It will screen on October 6th and 7th at the David and Dorothea Garfield Theatre of the Lawrence Family JCC separately from the San Diego Jewish Film...
Holocaust survivor repays a debt in ‘The Last Suit’
Holocaust survivor Abraham Bursztein (Miguel Angel Sola), the protagonist in the Spanish language, English-subtitled film The Last Suit, has a promise to keep before his children in Argentina move him out of his house and pack...
‘Nana’: A thorough doc. film of a Holocaust survivor
“Nana,” as many of us know from the time as children we were mouthing our first words, means “grandma” and, in this case, “Nana” refers to Maryla Dyamant Michalowski, z”l, a Holocaust survivor who...
Israeli ‘When the Smoke Clears’ examines PTS
Making the rounds of Jewish film festivals is the Israeli documentary When the Smoke Clears, which recreates the battles in which several IDF soldiers were wounded and then follows each of these soldiers on the road...
Pursuit of wealth, fame can devastate families
Generation Wealth explores the American dream, which it defines as the quest for fame and fortune. This interesting and somewhat distressing documentary written and directed by Lauren Greenfield explores some of the obsessions of modern...
‘The City Without Jews’ screens 90+ years later
The 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film festival is in full swing. From July 19 to August 5, Bay Area theatres in San Francisco, Albany, Palo Alto, San Rafael, and Oakland will screen 67 Jewish...
Jewish Community Center screening makes sure we never forget
In a study released in April 2018, more than one-fifth of millennials surveyed said they haven’t heard of the Holocaust or aren’t sure if they’ve heard of it. A full two-thirds couldn’t identify what...
‘American Socialist,’ story of Debs, debuts today – July 4
How often do you catch yourself humming a tune, or singing along with lyrics, when you suddenly experience that moment of clarity as you realize the song’s message? The instant when you learned that...