By Joel Magalnick, Editor, JTNews As the Seattle Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 18th year, it has a new home under the auspices of the Stroum Jewish Community Center and a greater focus on the arts. Plus, for some reason this year, a fascination with all things French. We’ve gotContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff , Associate Editor, JTNews If Jewish sons have mommy issues, then Jewish dads have daughter issues. This phenomenon crosses time zones and national boundaries, as proven by the Seattle Jewish Film Festival’s opening night flick, “The Day I Saw Your Heart.” The festival has strong representationContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick , Editor, JTNews What do you do when your family hates you for what you are? If you’re lucky, you get out. That’s what happens to Assaf at the start of “Melting Away,” a teenage boy who disappears after his father, upon finding women’s clothes hidden inContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff , Associate Editor, JTNews “A Bottle in the Gaza Sea” (Une Bouteille à la Mer) has been billed by some critics as a Palestinian-Israeli Romeo and Juliet. Indeed, our young protagonists — Tal Levine (Agathe Bonitzer), a French teenager who has made aliyah with her family,Continue Reading
By Michael Fox , Special to JTNews Animated movies, even more than live-action films, invite us to lose ourselves in a wholly invented world. French-Jewish filmmaker Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux’s deliciously delirious feature, “The Rabbi’s Cat,” is set in a real time and place — Algeria in the 1930s,Continue Reading
By Michael Fox, Special to JTNews If anyone still thinks comic books — or graphic novels — are strictly child’s play, a few minutes with Parisian cartoonist Joann Sfar will erase that misconception. San Francisco filmmaker Sam Ball’s evocative and marvelous documentary, “Joann Sfar Draws From Memory,” introduces us toContinue Reading
By Michael Fox, Special to JTNews An important challenge for 21st-century documentary filmmakers is connecting the distant history of the Holocaust to today, and making it relevant for younger audiences. More often than not, it’s the children and grandchildren of survivors, rescuers, and perpetrators who supply the necessary link betweenContinue Reading
By Joel Magalnick , Editor, JTNews If the first 17 years of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival were its childhood, its 18th “chai” year is the time for it to spread its wings. “We sort of feel a little bit like a teenager going off to college,” said festival directorContinue Reading
By Gigi Yellen-Kohn , JTNews Correspondent What’s so Jewish about the fiddle? Okay, the violin. You do know that even classical players of this little box are known to call it a fiddle, right? Of course, the title of the Broadway show about the one on a roof has beenContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn , JTNews Correspondent Two world-acclaimed dance companies will link Chicago to Israel to Seattle for one night this February. On Saturday, February 9 at the Paramount Theater, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, the American contemporary dance company celebrating its 35th year, will perform two works by the IsraeliContinue Reading
By Diana Brement , JTNews Columnist In the year since her book, “We are Here: Memories of the Lithuanian Holocaust” (University of Nebraska), came out, Ellen Cassedy has traveled around the country to speak about the summer she spent studying Yiddish in Lithuania and what she learned about how LithuaniansContinue Reading
By Salvatore Caputo , other Sababa plays contemporary Jewish music, but it would be a mistake to think that the band’s music only touches young people, says Scott Leader, who co-founded the musical trio with Robbi Sherwin and Steve Brodsky. “We had this gig in Naples, Fla.,” he says, “andContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn , JTNews Correspondent Up alongside the process of major scientific research and discovery is the necessity of human communication. Within that context comes miscommunication. This scenario is the subject of “Photograph 51,” opening February 1 at Seattle Repertory Theatre on the Seattle Center Campus. Written by AnnaContinue Reading
By Erin Pike, Special to JTNews “Undo,” a play about a Jewish couple’s divorce ceremony, premieres at Annex Theatre Jan. 18. Annex company member Erin Pike interviews playwright Holly Arsenault and actors Mark Waldstein and Samantha Leeds. JTNews: How would you summarize “Undo”? Holly Arsenault: “Undo” takes place in aContinue Reading
By Charlene Kahn, JTNews Correspondent Foster Hirsch loves movies with passion and enthusiasm. A professor of film, commentator, interviewer, historian, author and critic, Hirsch is at heart a lover of movies who translated that passion into a 40-year teaching career in the film department at Brooklyn College. He also givesContinue Reading
By Emily K. Alhadeff, Associate Editor, JTNews The first floor of Lauren Grossman’s Central District home is gutted and full of lab glass, molds, materials, and grotesque curiosities (sewn-up body parts, a headless rendering of Christ affixed to pipes, a gum-pink whale pocked with false teeth) produced over the courseContinue Reading
By Dikla Tuchman, JTNews Correspondent For those of us far enough removed from the generations of Jews and Germans who lived through the extraordinary horrors of the 1930s—1940s, it is nearly impossible for us to wrap our brains around Holocaust denial. It is difficult to imagine that the tragedy andContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist The 1960s and its shifting societal attitudes are a common thread in four new novels of Jewish interest. Closest to home is Issaquah author Jane Isenberg’s newest mystery-cum-historical novel, The Bones and the Book (Oconee, paper and on-demand, $14.95). Isenberg, who we just profiled asContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews ColumnistContinue Reading
By Diana Brement, JTNews Columnist More Fiction The Midwife of Venice by Roberta Rich (Gallery, paper, $15). America of the 1960s (see “Learning Jewish History,” page 18) was definitely a better place for Jews than Europe of the 1560s. In this novel, a young Jewish midwife leaves the Venice ghettoContinue Reading
