Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival

The Second Annual Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival (of which Miss Julie and I are two of the co-chairs) opens tonight. We've got six great films and we're really excited about the response in the community; last night I heard that several of the shows are already sold out.

Here's one of the radio spots I recorded for the Festival.

Click below to visit the Festival website (I'm the webmaster).

In doing some interviews recently I was asked "Do you have to be Jewish to enjoy the films?"

The answer is, of course, "no." To me, the best films are those that help you understand something about yourself. The best films (regardless of who made them or what their content is) provide some insight and/or give some meaning to your life. Any film that does that is called "inspirational" and I believe all of these films are inspirational in that sense.

• The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction -- and miraculous recovery -- of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and the Second World War.
• The Tribe weaves together archival footage, graphics, animation, Barbie dioramas, and slam poetry to shed light on what it means to be an American Jew in the 21st Century.
• Blues by the Beach started out as a documentary about Mike's Place, an international hangout in Tel Aviv that is a metaphor for the friendly side of Israel -- different from the customary images of terrorism and conflict. But before the film was complete, the story changed into one that presented a completely different metaphor, one about coping with daily life in the wake of violence.
• A Jumpin' Night in the Garden of Eden was the first film to document the klezmer revival, tracing the efforts of two founding groups, Kapelye and Boston's Klezmer Conservatory Band, to recover the lost history of klezmer music.
• Varian's War tells the story of Varian Fry an American who built an elaborate rescue network that managed (during World War II) to save some of the most influential cultural figures of our age, including Marc Chagall, Franz Werful, Alma Werful Mahler and many others.
• Secret Lives: Hidden Children is a documentary about the tens of thousands of Jewish children who were saved from almost certain death by an equally small number of non-Jewish neighbors, friends, or even -- in many cases -- total strangers. This film is being shown exclusively to Baton Rouge public middle-schoolers.

Anyway, that's what Miss Julie and I have been working on lately and we're excited that it's finally here.