'Bring people together': Jewish Film Festival screens variety of films

From September 15-24 audiences gathered in the Chelsea Theater for the Jewish Film Festival, which showcased recently released films that capture different aspects of the Jewish experience.

Six films were screened at the festival, ranging from “Seven Blessings,” a comedic Moroccan family drama, to “SHTTL” a black-and-white film set in a Yiddish Ukrainian village directly prior to the 1941 Nazi invasion. 

The festival was put on in collaboration with Jewish For Good, a nonprofit that serves Jewish communities in Orange County, Durham and beyond. Jack Reitz, Jewish For Good’s director of engagement, said that one benefit of having a film festival is that it makes audiences engage and think about the films more than they would if they just watched a singular movie in the theater.

“One thing I love about a film festival, instead of just going to a movie, is that when you go to a movie, you go, you watch it, you leave, maybe you think about it, maybe you don't, maybe you talk about it, maybe you don't,” he said. “With a film festival, people are coming because they want to engage with the subject matter.”

Each of the screenings were followed by a talk-back where audience members discussed the films with speakers who provided context and insight about them. The speakers included UNC professors Emily Katz and Karen Auerbach, as well as the Israeli filmmaker Sam Henselijn.

The festival kicked off on Sunday, Sept. 15 with a showing of “The Catskills,” a documentary about the rise and fall of the Borscht Belt resorts in New York that catered to Jewish vacationers in the mid-20th century. The Catskills hotels also served as a gathering place for both Jewish and non-Jewish comedians and other entertainers and athletes, including Mel Brooks and Wilt Chamberlain.

The first two screenings of “The Catskills” sold out the 90-seat theater, so a third showing was added for Sunday, Sept. 22. During the after-show discussion many audience members spoke nostalgically about their memories of going to the Catskills when they were younger. 

Rich Gersten, a UNC alumni who attended the third screening of “The Catskills,” spoke about going to Borscht Belt hotels as a teenager, and said that he came to the film because the topic resonated with his personal experiences. 

“This was a topic that interested me, so I went to it," he said. "I’m not a religious Jew, but I am Jewish so I have some interest in history and that kind of stuff.”

For the screening of “All About the Levkoviches,” a comedic Hungarian drama about a modern-day father-son relationship, the guest speaker was the film’s producer, Andrea Ausztrics. She live-streamed from Budapest and answered audience questions about the process of making the film, the actors involved, and how the film has been received. She said that the film has been running in theaters in Hungary since February and that the reception has been positive.

Emily Kass, the executive director of the Chelsea Theater, said that the films were selected to present a diverse range of Jewish perspectives and that many of the films speak to broad audiences through fundamental themes, such as familial relationships.

“There were really some universal messages in them," Kass said. "And one of the ideas is to bring people together to show there's not a stereotype.”

Other films screened at the festival included “Savoy,” an Israeli film set during the 1975 Tel Aviv terrorist attacks and hostage situation, and “The Shadow of the Day,” an Italian drama set during the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

“I think that the Jewish experience is a very diverse experience, and it gets simplified or pared down into just one element sometimes, whether that be the holidays, or Israel, or Shabbat or anything like that,” Reitz said. “And the reality is that being Jewish in the world can look so many different ways, and this festival is showing a lot of different types of Jewishness, and that was an intentional decision.” 

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