JEWISH CULTURAL FESTIVAL 2008
Tuscaloosa’s inaugural Jewish Film Festival took place in 2003 through a partnership between Temple Emanu-El and the Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa County. The festival was established with the goals of introducing local audiences to the best of Jewish filmmaking and expanding cultural and social understanding. Now in its sixth year, the festival has grown to include specific areas of Jewish culture such as food, music, and, through The University of Alabama, literature.
Admission
February 23rd at 6pm: Food Festival / Performance by The Vulgar Bulgars / 7:30pm: Screening of Black Book: $10
February 24th at 2pm - The Rape of Europa and talk by art historian Daniel Belasco: $7 / $6 / $5
February 24th at 7pm - California Shmeer and The Bubble: $7 / $6 / $5
February 25th at 7pm - Naturalized and Arranged: $7 / $6 / $5
Festival Pass - All festival events at the Bama Theatre: $30
The University of Alabama Jewish Book Discussion Series - free
For more information on the series, call 348-6390 or visit www.lib.ua.edu/events/JewishLit/
For more information about other events call the Arts Council at 205-758-5195.
Jewish Food Festival with a performance by Klezmer Band The Vulgar Bulgars
Saturday, February 23, 2008 at 6:00pm at the Bama Theatre
From bagels to humus, the Jewish Food Festival will feature a huge selection of sweet and savory traditional cuisine, all identified with a description of their purpose in the Jewish culture and holiday season. The festival will represent both traditional foods and those adapted to the modern Jewish table.
The Vulgar Bulgars is a quartet of young, energetic, Central Virginia musicians who share a passion for performing and a love of soulful Klezmer music. The line-up consists of Ben Grondahl-clarinet, Kassia Arbabi-violin, Ezra Freeman-bass, and Madog Frick-drums and percussion. They perform a mostly instrumental combination of time-honored klezmer classics and recent klezmer-inspired compositions, all with a special “Vulgar Bulgar” twist! Klezmer is a lively, exciting form of Jewish music derived from Eastern European folk and religious music. It was an important influence on the development of jazz as well as on classical composers such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and Leonard Bernstein. Some of today’s Klezmer musicians are, in turn, influenced by genres as diverse as rock, punk, and reggae.
6th Annual Jewish Film Festival
February 23 - 25, 2008 at the Bama Theatre
Saturday, February 23rd at 7:30 p.m.
Black Book (2006)
RATED-R THIS FILM PRESENTS MATURE THEMES
Directed by: Paul Verhoeven / Drama-Thriller / Dutch-English-German-Hebrew / 2 hours 25 min / Starring Carice van Houten, Sebastian Koch, Thom Hoffman, Halina Reijn, Waldemar Kobus, Derek de Lint, and Christian Berkel / Winner of Rembrandt, Nederlands Film Festival, and Venice Film Festival awards / Nominated for BAFTA, European, London Critics Circle awards
In 1944, Rachel is in trouble when her hiding place is bombed by allied troops. She is the only survivor of a group of Jews who were murdered while being smuggled to freedom. She is rescued by a resistance group which asks her to seduce high-ranking SS officer Ludwig Müntze. Soon Rachel is plunged into an undercover world of under-cover espionage in which her survival and that of thousands of Jews depends on her ingenious instinct for survival.
Sunday, February 24th at 2:00 p.m.
The Rape of Europa (2006)
Directed by: Richard Berge and Bonni Cohen / Documentary / English, Narrated by Joan Allen / 2 hours / Winner of RiverRun International Film festival Audience Choice Award
A feature documentary film that takes the audience on an epic journey through seven countries and into the violent whirlwind of ideological fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. Fighting back, heroic young museum officials and art historians from America and across Europe mounted a miraculous campaign to rescue and return the millions of art works displaced by the war. Today, more than sixty years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war. Joan Allen narrates this breathtaking chronicle about the battle over the
very survival of centuries of western culture.
Following the screening on February 24th, an informative discussion on the subject matter of The Rape of Europa will take place in the theatre. The Festival will welcome Daniel Belasco, the Henry J. Leir Assistant Curator of The Jewish Museum in New York. He manages the contemporary Judaica program at the museum and organizes contemporary art exhibitions. He is also an Erwin Panofsky Fellow at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, where he is completing his Ph.D. in the history of art. Belasco was a staff writer at The Jewish Week in New York and has published numerous articles and reviews in Art in America, Art News, and other periodicals. His B.A. is from Amherst College (1997).
Directed by Alan H. Rosenberg & Richard Goldgewicht / Comedy-Documentary/ English / 25 minutes
Directed by: Eytan Fox/ Drama-Romance / Hebrew-Arabic-English / 2 hours / Starring Ohad Knoller, Yousef Sweid, Daniela Wircer, Alon Friedman / Winner of C.I.C.A.E. Prize (Panorama) - 2007 Berlin International Film Festival
Directed by: Julia Kots/ Comedy / English / Color / 8 minutes 
Directed by: Diane Crespo and Stefan C. Schaefer / Comedy-Romance / English / 1 hour 30 minutes / Starring Zoe Lister Jones, Francis Benhamou, John Rothman, Mimi Lieber, Laith Nakli, Doris Belack, Marcia Jean Kurtz