Boston Jewish Film Festival Boston (and suburbs), MA bjff.org (617) 244-9899
Pioneer Valley Jewish Film and Arts Festival Agawam, Amherst, Chicopee, Longmeadow, Northampton, Springfield, South Hadley, West Springfield MA pvjff.org (413) 439-1984
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival West Orange, Morristown, Parsippany, Caldwell, NJ njjff.org (973) 530-3473
Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival North Brunswick, NJ jewishstudies.rutgers.edu (732) 940-8343
“In just a few days a year for the past six, the festival’s organizers have shown us perspectives on heritage, from antiquity to modern times, incorporating and relating to cultures outside of their religion for a better, universal understanding of humanity.”
“Guests can expect to be entertained, inspired and educated by this diverse line-up of films. From the comedic to the dramatic, this year’s slate, also designed by co-chair Julie Hoffman, aims to provide a fun, engaging outing for the entire family.
“Jan. 23 will see the Baton Rouge premiere of the Lebanon-set military drama Beaufort. The film follows a young soldier as his unit is on the verge of withdrawing from a foreign country.
“ ‘This is the first time we have shown an anti-war movie that also supports Israel at the same time,’ co-chair Ara Rubyan says.”
LPB – Louisiana: The State We’re In Louisiana Public Broadcasting, January 2012
“Bringing drama, comedy and history from a Jewish perspective, the popular Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival returns to Manship Theatre this month for a run of screenings beginning Jan. 19.”
“For Baton Rougeans who decry our lack of options for independent cinema in the city, this annual festival continues to be one of the best opportunities to see art house films in the area. The Jewish Film Festival has always been adept at rendering a response from its audiences and also initiating a dialogue on a range of social issues.”
“The Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival returns to the Manship Theatre in its third year with a strong lineup of award-winning independent and foreign films local audiences cannot see anywhere else on the big screen.”
Also in the news in 2009:
Festival returns for third year The Advocate
“…The Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival opened for its third consecutive year with a larger film line-up and a larger crowd. Theuniqueness this event brings to Baton Rouge is immeasurable. It provides a rare opportunity to be both entertained byexceptional, independent film making and educated on a culture teeming with rich history.
The festival thrives on the support of the public. From civic groups and donors who provide money, to the viewers who provide their opinions on comment cards, the festival continues to be a community building event that bridges gaps and enriches our understanding.”
“…the festival features a mix of documentaries and dramas celebrating the triumphs of art and music as well as spotlighting the hardships of the Jewish experience in the 20th and 21st centuries…”
“Our community is rich with culture and we are excited that the Jewish Film Festival showcases experiences and heritage captured on film.” ~Chris Stelly, Director, Film and Television, LED Office of Entertainment Industry Development.
“This festival is not just for Jewish people. These films represent universal themes and are a chance for us to share our experiences with the Baton Rouge community.”
“Film is a wonderful way of opening people’s eyes to a great many experiences. We see that having a Jewish film festival is an opportunity to expose people to a culture that perhaps they don’t know a great deal about.”
Ari’s first credit came as the Associate Producer of the runaway hit documentary, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg. The documentary was one of the top ten all-time grossing theatrical documentaries.
Following that film came the award winning feature documentary, Paper Clips, distributed by Miramax Films. The film won several Audience and Best Documentary Awards including the Best Documentary at the 2003 Palm Springs International Film Festival.
Ari was also Co-Producer of Everything Must Go, starring Will Ferrell and Rebecca Hall, distributed by Lionsgate Films in 2011. He was also Co-Executive Producer of The Ides of March (5 2012 Golden Globes Nominations) directed by and starring George Clooney.
Jonathan Gruber
Jonathan has been directing award-winning documentary films, commercials, and videos for more than 20 years. He loves creating evocative images and telling nuanced stories, whether for a 30-second advertisement or a two-hour feature. Projects that Jonathan directed and produced have screened at festivals and in theaters nationwide and around the world, and have aired on PBS, The History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Networks, and more.
Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray, another film that he directed, wrote, and produced, screened at the 2012 Baton Rouge Jewish Film Festival and is currently airing on PBS stations nationally.
Torn
Director: Ronit Kertsner
Kertsner is an award-winning documentary filmmaker – director, producer and editor. Born in Jerusalem in 1956, married with two daughters, Ronit lives in Tel Aviv Israel. After her military service she was admitted to the Cinema Department at Tel Aviv University where she embarked on a four-year course of study. Upon completion Ronit began working as a professional editor of documentaries and features for TV and other media.
Ronit has edited dozens of documentary films over the years. For the last 10 years Ronit has directed and produced 4 documentaries: The Secret (Berlin Film Festival 2002, first prize at the International Film Festival in Bordeaux 2003); I, The Aforementioned Infant (Haifa film Festival 2006); Menachem and Fred (Cinema For Peace Award, Berlin 2009); and most recently, Torn (Docaviv International Film Festival).
Hava Nagila (The Movie)
Director: Roberta Grossman
An award-winning filmmaker with a passion for history and social justice, Roberta Grossman has written and produced more than forty hours of documentary television. She was the series producer and co-writer of 500 Nations, the eight-hour CBS mini-series on Native Americans hosted by Kevin Costner. Grossman’s feature documentary, Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action, premiered in February 2005, and has screened and won awards at more than forty festivals worldwide. It aired on public television stations in November 2005.
Other writing and producing credits include In the Footsteps of Jesus, a four-hour special for the History Channel; Hollywood & Power: Women on Top, a special for AMC; The Rich in America: 150 Years of Town and Country Magazine for A&E; The History of Christianity: The First Thousand Years, a four-hour special on A&E; Medal of Honor, a six-part television series produced for U.S. News & World Report; Heroines of the Hebrew Bible and Judas for the A&E series Mysteries of the Bible; and Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh.
Foreign Letters
Director: Ela Thier
Ela Thier’s credits include The Wedding Cow (writer), garnering eighteen international awards, including four Best-Feature and four Audience-Choice awards; Foreign Letters (writer-director); and Puncture (story), a film starring Chris Evans. Ela has written, directed, and produced over a dozen short films, including A Summer Rain, which won four Best-Short awards and screened at more than 150 venues and festivals.
A prolific writer, Ela’s feature scripts have been selected four times by the Independent Film Week (formerly IFP Market). Among numerous recognitions, Ela was awarded a fellowship grant in screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts (2008), and was nominated for the White House Project Emerging Artist Award (2010).
Ela independently teaches screenwriting and film directing in New York City.
Footnote
Director: Joseph Cedar
Cedar was born in New York. When he was 6 his family moved to Israel, and he grew up in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood in Jerusalem. He studied in a Yeshiva High School.
In the Israeli army he served as a paratrooper. After graduating in Philosophy and History of theatre from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem he studied cinema studies in the New York University. When he came back to Israel he started working on the screenplay for his debut film, Time of Favor (2000), for which he moved and lived for 2 years in the Israeli settlement Dolev. The film became a big success and won 6 Ofir Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
His second film was Campfire (2004) who was also a success with 5 Ofir Academy Awards including Best Picture, with 2 of them, Best Director and Best Screenplay, going to Cedar. For Beaufort (2007), his third film, he received the Silver Bear award for Best Director in the Berlin International Film Festival. Beaufort became one of the most critically acclaimed and successful Israeli films of the decade and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, the first such nomination for an Israeli film in 24 years. It also received 4 Ofir Academy Awards and was based on Cedar’s own experiences during his army service on Israel’s border with Lebanon. It was shown at the 2012 Baton Rouge Film Festival.
Cedar is an Orthodox Jew. His films are known to touch delicate issues of Israeli society. Israeli critic Yair Rave wrote:
One of the reasons I like Cedar’s films so much is… his ability to merge the Israeli spirit… with the universal cinematic codes.
His film Footnote premiered In Competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. The film was named as one of the five nominees for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012.
Patrons will receive tickets to film presentations and invitations to the Patron Dinner Party, Saturday, January 18, 2014 at 6 PM at the Manship Theatre.
Patron Sponsorships are available by calling the office of the Jewish Federation of Greater Baton Rouge at 225-379-7393.
