PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE Film Guide 2014-2015 PE film society guide rev6.indd 1 9/12/14 7:59 AM 2 PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE Park East Synagogue Film Society has recently launched a new project to compliment our current programs that serve to enrich and deepen the community’s contact with Jewish heritage and culture. With the Park East Film Society, we hope to bring the community together around thought- provoking Jewish and Israeli films and to promote discussion and an interest in film as an art form. Our goal at Park East Synagogue has always been reaching out and building bridges with our larger community. We do that through prayer, education, Torah classes, and now we hope this new venture into cinema will add an additional dimension to these efforts. We extend our sincere gratitude to Regina Gil, Executive Director of the Gold Coast Film Festival, who has been our consultant and has helped us to make this project a reality. Join us for our upcoming screenings! KOCH A documentary on Ed Koch, the Mayor of New York City from 1978 to 1989. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2014 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2012 Runtime: 100 min First-time filmmaker and former Wall Street Journal reporter Neil Barsky’s 2012 documentary film Koch explores the origins, career, and legacy of Edward Irving “Ed” Koch, who served as Mayor of New York City for three consecutive terms from 1978 to 1989. With candid interviews and rare archival footage, the film offers a close look at a man known for being intensely private in spite of his dynamic public persona, and chronicles the tumultuous events which marked his time in office – a fiercely competitive 1977 election, the 1980 transit strike, the burgeoning AIDS epidemic, landmark housing renewal initiatives, and an irreparable municipal corruption scandal. Poignant and often humorous, Koch is a portrait not only of one of New York’s most iconic political figures, but of New York City itself at a time of radical upheaval and transformation. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org PE film society guide rev6.indd 2 9/12/14 7:59 AM FILM SOCIETY WORLD PREMIER 3 A VOICE AMONG THE SILENT The Legacy of James G. McDonald. SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2014 6:00 PM $20 per person. Pre-screening reception. 2014 Runtime: 53 min The Legacy of James G. McDonald is the first documentary to shine light on James McDonald’s remarkable efforts to warn the world of Adolf Hitler’s plan for the Jews. The incredible story of McDonald’s foresight was almost lost to history until his meticulously kept diaries were discovered in 2003.The son of Catholic immigrants, James McDonald was one of the first Americans to meet face- to-face with Hitler in 1933. Shocked by Hitler’s threats, McDonald, as League of Nation High Commissioner for Refugees, worked tirelessly to find safe havens for refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. McDonald repeatedly warned world leaders including President Franklin Roosevelt and future Pope Pius XII, of the looming tragedy he foresaw. President Truman appointed McDonald the first U.S. Ambassador to Israel. McDonald’s role was pivotal in aiding the new state and shaping American-Israeli friendship.McDonald spoke up when others were silent. McDonald’s bravery is a model for human decency and courage that is as relevant today as it was 80 years ago. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org PE film society guide rev6.indd 3 9/12/14 7:59 AM 4 PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE THE PRIME MINISTERS WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2014 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2013 Runtime: 114 min Based on the best- selling book by Ambassador Yehuda Avner, The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers takes the audience inside the offices of Israel’s Prime Ministers through the eyes of an insider, Yehuda Avner, who served as a chief aide, English language note-taker and speechwriter to Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin, and Shimon Peres. The first of two parts, The Prime Ministers: The Pioneers focuses on Ambassador Avner’s years working with Prime Ministers Levi Eshkol and Golda Meir and then US Ambassador Yitzhak Rabin, and reveals new details about the Six-Day War, the development of Israel’s close strategic relationship with the United States, the fight against terrorism, the Yom Kippur War and its aftermath. In the spring of 2014, the second film based on Ambassador Avner’s book, The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers, will be released, examining Ambassador Avner’s experiences with Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin and Shimon Peres as well as his service as Israel’s Ambassador to England. The early efforts at negotiating agreements with Egypt, the raid on Entebbe, Anwar Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem, the Camp David Accords, the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear facility, the war in Lebanon, the Oslo Accords and the ongoing struggle to make peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors and the Palestinians are some of the topics covered as The Prime Ministers: Soldiers and Peacemakers builds to its dramatic and emotional conclusion. Weaving a rich tapestry of history and personal testimonies, The Prime Ministers brings some of the most important events of the 20th and 21st centuries to life. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org SHADOW IN BAGHDAD WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2014 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2014 Runtime: 70 min Shadow in Baghdad opens with Menuhin, a freelance journalist for Arabic- language news outlets, crossing from Israel into Jordan in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to vote in Iraq’s 2010 presidential elections. Though Menuhin begins the day optimistic about her ability to participate in the elections as an Iraqi, she is held by the Iraqi authorities at the poll station until the Jordanian security services intervene. Upon returning to Israel, Menuhin blogs about her experiences in Jordan and is then contacted by an Iraqi journalist who takes interest in her story and that of her father, Yaakoub Abdul Aziz, who disappeared in Iraq decades earlier. As the connection between the two journalists deepen, they delve further and further into Menuhin’s past, as well as that of the Iraqi-Jewish community, in an attempt to find clues as to what may have happened to her father. As the two struggle to pick up traces of her father, the Iraqi journalist takes to the streets of Baghdad, combing the Al Musbah district where Menuhin once lived with her family. Meanwhile, in Israel, Menuhin also pays visits to former members of the Iraqi-Jewish community of Baghdad, those who knew her father before themselves fleeing for Israel, to try and better understand the circumstances under which her father would have disappeared. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org PE film society guide rev6.indd 4 9/12/14 7:59 AM FILM SOCIETY 5 A PLACE IN HEAVEN WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2015 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2013 Runtime: 117 min A young officer returns to his base after a daring mission. The cook’s assistant, a religious Holocaust survivor, is envious of him. He believes that there is a place in heaven reserved for the brave officer who endangers his life for the sake of his Jewish brethren. The officer, in the spirit of the Zionist ethos, is secular and a non-believer. At the moment, he is so hungry that, for a plate of shaksuka, he is prepared to sign a contract transferring his secured place in heaven to the cook. Some forty years later, the present time of the movie, the tables have turned - the officer, now a retired general, is on his death bed in the hospital. His son who, to his father’s horror, has found religion, is in a race against time. Before his father dies, he has to find that cook’s assistant who, forty years earlier, bought his place in heaven. If and when he finds him, the son has to nullify the contract. If he doesn’t, his father will go to hell RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org BEFORE THE REVOLUTION WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2015 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2013 Runtime: 60 min A documentary thriller describing the last days of the Israeli community in Tehran, on the eve of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The director, whose family was in Tehran at the time, uses rare archive materials to illustrate how thousands of Israelis, who enjoyed unusual affinity with the Shah’s regime, wake up one morning to find their paradise vanished. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org PE film society guide rev6.indd 5 9/12/14 7:59 AM 6 PARK EAST SYNAGOGUE BLUMENTHAL A thrilling cinematic journey to Baghdad in search of a missing father and a lost community. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2015 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2013 Runtime: 86 min A comedy that follows the relatives of Harold Blumenthal, a legendary playwright who made his career parodying his family in his work and died laughing at his own joke. RSVP - www.parkeastsynagogue.org WATCHERS OF THE SKY Four modern stories of remarkable courage while setting out to uncover the forgotten life of Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term ‘genocide’. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2015 7:00 PM $25 members, $30 non-members. Light meal included. 2014 Runtime: 120 min The film depicts the journey of lawyer Raphael Lemkin and how he laid the groundwork that would allow the Nuremberg trials to happen, along with the formation of the International Criminal Court.