The Other Son
Director: Lorraine Levy
It takes ambition to switch from helming comedies to exploring the Israeli-Palestinian relations, as the third feature effort from writer/director Lorraine Levy demonstrates. Following 2004’s The First Time I Turned Twenty and 2008’s My Friends My Loves with an intimate and moving family drama, her latest feature teems with narrative, emotional and aesthetic determination. Lorraine provided Sarah Ward with her thoughts on The Other Son.
Q: How did the project evolve, and what drew you to the storyline ?
A: This project was initially proposed to me by Virginie Lacombe, my producer, who had started working on it with two authors, Nathalie Saugeon and Noam Fitoussi, before approaching me. I was straight away seduced by this project, which contained a lot of themes that are important for me: the search for identity, inter-personal relationships, filiation. Having said that, I hesitated initially because I noticed a lot of traps forming and I was not sure that I would be able to avoid them. For a start, to tell a story embedded in a conflict that I am not directly involved in. Indeed, even if I am a citizen of the world, even if everything that happens in Israel touches me viscerally as a Jew, I am neither Israeli nor Palestinian. In the end, the desire was stronger than the fear and I went for it. I wanted to propose a story that would be a sort of an out-stretched hand, like a proposal for possible peace. At the very least, a proposal to accept the Other. [more]
In The Shadow
Director: David Ondricek
David Ondříček graduated from the school of documentary filmmaking at Prague’s FAMU. After making several documentaries he debuted in 1996 with The Whisper. The film became the second most attended in the Czech Republic in 1996, it was nominated for a Tiger Award at the Rotterdam IFF in 1997 and won the Promotional Award at the Festival of Young European Film in Cottbus. In 2000, David Ondříček presented his second feature film, Loners, which brought him great success at home and abroad. Loners received nine nominations in the Czech Lions, of which it won two. It also won three prizes at the Mannheim Heidelberg IFF in 2000 and in the same year received the viewers’ award at the Thessaloniki IFF and Warsaw IFF and three prizes at the film festival in Plzeň. One Hand Can’t Clap, his third feature film, premiered in 2003 and was nominated in three categories of the Czech Lions. It was awarded a Silver Medal at the Houston International Festival in the Independent Feature Film category. In 2006 David Ondříček then came out with Grandhotel, which was selected for the Panorama section at the Berlinale. Grandhotel was nominated for seven Czech Lions and went home with two.
Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy
Director: Michael Kantor
Michael Kantor’s 25 years’ experience in historical documentary filmmaking includes the six-part Emmy nominated series, Make ‘Em Laugh: The Funny Business Of America (hosted by Billy Crystal and narrated by Amy Sedaris), Give Me The Banjo (narrated by Steve Martin), The Thomashefskys: Music And Memories Of A Life In The Yiddish Theater, and Quincy Jones: In The Pocket for the American Masters series. He has also created profiles of Arthur Miller and David Mamet for Thirteen’s series Egg: The Arts Show, and co-directed Cornerstone: An Interstate Adventure for HBO.
Kantor’s other credits include work on The West, a film by Stephen Ives (Executive Producer Ken Burns), Lindbergh, Coney Island, The Donner Party, Margaret Sanger, Out Of The Past, The Impressionists, and Ric Burns’ New York: A Documentary History series. Mr. Kantor wrote Lullabye Of Broadway: Opening Night On 42nd Street, which was produced by Metropolitan Entertainment in association with Ghost Light Films. With Laurence Maslon, Mr. Kantor is the co-author of the companion books to Make ‘Em Laugh And Broadway: The American Musical, and has published numerous essays and articles.
Six Million And One
Director: David Fisher
Q: Six Million and One is the third movie in your family trilogy. Can you tell us briefly about the other two, and how this third part is linked to the others?
A: They all began after my parents passed away. In the first of the films, Love Inventory […] I recruited my siblings to look for our missing sister as a tribute to my Mom, a mission I rebelled against fulfilling while she was still alive. The other two were made almost at the same time and both talk about fatherhood.
Q: Can you tell us about the moment you discovered your late father’s memoir?
A: It was when we came to my father’s home to clean it up after he passed away. It was in his drawer nearby his bed. It was as if he had written until his last day, which indeed he did. I was amazed, even shocked and of course very curious to find who he really was and what he thought.
Q: Did you know immediately that you wanted to act upon the information the memoir contained, and produce a documentary about your journey?
Actually not. It took me 8 years to understand that I wanted to and that I had to create a film. I started by deconstructing my father’s memoir to chapters and stories and situations. [more]
Cast A Giant Shadow
Director: Melville Shavelson
Melville Shavelson (1917 – 2007) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. He came to Hollywood in 1938 as one of comedian Bob Hope’s joke writers, a job he held for the next five years. He is responsible for the screenplays of such Hope films as The Princess and the Pirate (1944), Where There’s Life (1947), The Great Lover (1949), and Sorrowful Jones (1949), which also starred Lucille Ball.
Shavelson was nominated twice for Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay—first for 1955’s The Seven Little Foys, starring Hope in a rare dramatic role, and then for 1958’s Houseboat. He shared both nominations with Jack Rose. He also directed both films.