The New York Jewish Film Festival (NYJFF) is an annual festival in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

that features a wide array of international films exploring themes related to the Jewish experience. The

Jewish Museum A Jewish museum is a museum which focuses upon Jews and may refer seek to explore and share the Jewish experience in a given area. List of Jewish museums Notable Jewish museums include: *Albania ** Solomon Museum, Berat *Australia ** Jewish Muse ...

and The

Film Society of Lincoln Center Film at Lincoln Center, previously known as the Film Society of Lincoln Center until 2019,Aridi, Sara (April 28, 2019).. ''The New York Times''. nytimes.com. Retrieved April 29, 2019. is a film society based in New York City, United States. Fo ...

work in partnership to present the NYJFF every January. Since its creation in 1992, the festival has more than doubled in size and scope. Screenings are typically followed by discussions with directors, actors and film experts. Audience participation is encouraged. The festival celebrates the Jewish experience and explores

Jewish identity Jewish identity is the objective or subjective state of Identity (social science), perceiving oneself as a Jew and as relating to being Jews, Jewish. Under a broader definition, Jewish identity does not depend on whether a person is regarded as ...

. The NYJFF seeks to broaden perceptions of the Jewish experience from a multitude of perspectives and nationalities. It presents an opportunity to discover new and challenging films that are often otherwise hard to find.

Festival highlights

Key works and noteworthy presentations of the past few years have included: *The N.Y.C. premiere of '' Koch'' (2013 Festival), directed by Neil Barsky *The N.Y. premiere of ''Hannah Arendt'' (2013 Festival), directed by Margarethe von Trotta *The N.Y.C. premiere of ''AKA Doc Pomus'' (2013 Festival), directed by Will Hechter and Peter Miller * The World premiere of ''

Strangers No More ''Strangers No More'' is a 2010 short documentary film about a school in Tel Aviv, Israel, where children from 48 countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. The parents of these children are among over 300,000 transnational migrant ...

'' (2011 Festival), a short film directed by

Karen Goodman Karen Goodman is an American film and television director and producer, best known for her work on various documentaries. She has been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary (Short Subject) category four times for '' The Childre ...

and

Kirk Simon Kirk Simon (July 25, 1954 – April 14, 2018) was an American filmmaker, best known for his work on various documentaries. Career Simon received a nomination for an Academy Award four times, winning once. Simon produced three films nominated ...

, and nominated for an Academy Award * The N.Y. premiere of ''Mahler on the Couch'' (2011 Festival), directed by father-son duo

Percy Adlon Paul Rudolf Parsifal "Percy" Adlon (; born 1 June 1935) is a German director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his film ''Bagdad Cafe''. He is associated with the New German Cinema movement (ca. 1965–1985), and has been noted f ...

and Felix Adlon * The N.Y. premiere of ''The Matchmaker'' (2011 Festival), directed by

Avi Nesher Avi Nesher ( Hebrew: אבי נשר; born 13 December 1952) is an Israeli film producer, film director, screenwriter and actor. Biography Avi Nesher was born and raised in Ramat Gan, Israel. The child of a Romanian-born diplomat, and a mother w ...

* The U.S. premiere of ''Saviors in the Night'' (2010 Festival), directed by Ludi Boeken * The N.Y. premiere of ''

Ajami ''Ajam'' ( ar, عجم, ʿajam) is an Arabic word meaning mute, which today refers to someone whose mother tongue is not Arabic. During the Arab conquest of Persia, the term became a racial pejorative. In many languages, including Persian, Tur ...

'' (2010 Festival), directed by Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani, which was subsequently nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film * The U.S. premiere of ''My Mexican Shiva'' (2007 Festival), by Mexican filmmaker

Alejandro Springall Alejandro Springall is a Mexican film director and producer. Springall studied filmmaking at the London Film School. He returned to Mexico City in 1991 and started working with Mexican film producer Bertha Navarro, from whom he learned mo ...

* The screening of ''Nowhere in Africa'' (2003 Festival), directed by

Caroline Link Caroline Link (born 2 June 1964) is a German film director and screenwriter. Life and work Caroline Link is the daughter of Jürgen and Ilse Link. From 1986 to 1990 she studied at the University of Television and Film Munich (HFF), and then wo ...

, which won an Academy Award in 2002 for Best Foreign Language Film Additional noteworthy films have included: *

Michael Haneke Michael Haneke (; born 23 March 1942) is an Austrian film director and screenwriter. His work often examines social issues and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society. Haneke has made films in French, G ...

's '' The Castle'' (1998 Festival) *

Alain Resnais Alain Resnais (; 3 June 19221 March 2014) was a French film director and screenwriter whose career extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included ...

's ''

Stavisky ''Stavisky...'' is a 1974 French biographical drama film based on the life of the financier and embezzler Alexandre Stavisky and the circumstances leading to his mysterious death in 1934. This gave rise to a political scandal known as the Stavis ...

'' (1993 Festival) *

Jeroen Krabbé Jeroen Aart Krabbé (; born 5 December 1944) is a Dutch actor and film director with a successful career in both Dutch and English-language films. He is best known to international audiences for his leading roles in the Paul Verhoeven films ''So ...

's '' Left Luggage'' (1999 Festival), featuring

Maximilian Schell Maximilian Schell (8 December 1930 – 1 February 2014) was an Austrian-born Swiss actor, who also wrote, directed and produced some of his own films. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1961 American film ''Judgment at Nuremberg'', h ...

and

Isabella Rossellini Isabella Fiorella Elettra Giovanna Rossellini (born 18 June 1952) is an Italian-American actress, author, philanthropist, and model. The daughter of the Swedish actress Ingrid Bergman and the Italian film director Roberto Rossellini, she is noted ...

*Andrea Frazzi and Antonio Frazzi's ''The Sky is Falling'' (Il Cielo Cade) (2001 Festival), featuring Isabella Rossellini and Jeroen Krabbé *Pierre Grimblat's ''Lisa'' (2001 Festival), featuring Jeanne Moreau and Marion Cotillard

History

The birth of the NYJFF was linked to the fall of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (german: Berliner Mauer, ) was a guarded concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and East Germany (GDR). Construction of the Berlin Wall was commenced by the government ...

and the break-up of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. On the heels of liberation, a torrent of cinematic work—new films by young directors as well as long-suppressed older works—flooded into the West. Recognizing an extraordinary opportunity to bring untold stories to New York audiences for the first time, the New York Jewish Film Festival was launched in January, 1992 in a continuing partnership between The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The festival includes feature-length and short films, documentaries, and animated and experimental films.

Special presentations

The Festival has also featured sidebar presentations such as premieres of restored archival prints and screenings of rarely viewed films. The 2013 Festival hosted filmmaker brothers Josh and Benny Safdie, for an evening of conversation and presentation of five of their short films, followed by their 2009 film ''Daddy Longlegs''. The festival also featured a sidebar presentation organized by the film critic and author

J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at ''The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

, which included clips from what he considers compelling Jewish horror movies, along with a screening of Edgar G. Ulmer's 1934 classic ''The Black Cat''. The 2011 Festival presented three restored films: ''

Lies My Father Told Me ''Lies My Father Told Me'' is a 1975 Canadian drama film made in Montreal, Quebec. It was directed by Ján Kadár and stars Jeffrey Lynas as an orthodox Jewish boy growing up in 1920s Montreal. The film received the Golden Globe Award for Best Fo ...

'' (dir.

Ján Kadár Ján Kadár (1 April 1918 – 1 June 1979) was a Kingdom of Hungary, Hungarian-born Slovak film writer and director of History of the Jews in Hungary, Jewish heritage. As a filmmaker, he worked in Czechoslovakia, the United States, and Canada. ...

), a 1975 film about a boy living in a Montreal Jewish community in the 1920s; the 1956 film ''

Singing in the Dark ''Singing in the Dark'' is a 1956 black-and-white motion picture about a Holocaust survivor suffering from total amnesia who comes to the United States. It stars Yiddish language film actor Moishe Oysher in his only English-language film perform ...

'' (dir.

Max Nosseck Max Nosseck (19 September 1902 – 29 September 1972) was a German film director, actor and screenwriter. Biography Nosseck was born in Nakel, then in Prussia, but now in Poland. Nosseck established himself as a director in the German Film Industr ...

), one of the first American feature films to dramatize the Holocaust, starring

Moishe Oysher Moishe Oysher () (March 8, 1906 – November 27, 1958) was an American cantor, recording artist, and film and Yiddish theatre actor.Zalmen Zylbercweig, ''Leksikon fun Yidishn teater'', Book 3, 2407. During the 1940s and 1950s he was one of the to ...

as a concentration camp survivor; and the 1930 ''

Tevye Tevye the Dairyman, also translated as Tevye the Milkman ( yi, טבֿיה דער מילכיקער, ''Tevye der milkhiker'' ) is the fictional narrator and protagonist of a series of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and various adaptations of th ...

'' (dir.

Maurice Schwartz Maurice Schwartz, born Avram Moishe Schwartz (June 18, 1890 – May 10, 1960),Henry Lynn Henry Lynn (July 21, 1895 – August 25, 1984) was a film director, screenwriter, and producer, who concentrated on Yiddish life and culture in the United States, early twentieth century, (1932–1939), the era of Yiddish film in America. Lynn ...

's classic 1935 Yiddish melodrama, ''Bar Mitzvah'', which features vaudeville jokes, songs, and dancing, and stars actor

Boris Thomashefsky Boris Thomashefsky (russian: Борис Пинхасович Томашевский, sometimes written Thomashevsky, Thomaschevsky, etc.; yi, באָריס טאָמאשעבסקי) (1868–1939), born Boruch-Aharon Thomashefsky, was a Ukrainian-b ...

in his only film performance.

References

External links

* {{Jewish film festivals 1992 establishments in New York City Film festivals in New York City Jewish film festivals in the United States Jews and Judaism in New York City Film festivals established in 1992

Festival highlights

History

Special presentations

See also

References

External links