THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM www.jewishfilm.org | 781.736.8600 NEW RELEASES 2011 | Public Exhibition & DVD Purchase • The National Center for Jewish Film is the oldest & largest distributor of Jewish-content films • 275+ outstanding contemporary independent & restored classic films MAHLER ON THE COUCH DIRECTED BY PERCY ADLON & FELIX ADLON | AUSTRIA/GERMANY | 2010 | 100 MIN | GERMAN W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES This exuberant imagining of the real-life marriage of Gustav Mahler (Johannes Silberschneider) and his tempestuous wife Alma Schindler Mahler (the luminous Barbara Romaner) is a sensory feast of art, sex and celebrity in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Chafing under her agreement to give up her own musical ambitions, Alma seeks passion in the arms of the young, dashing architect Walter Gropius (Friedrich Mücke), which sends a tormented Mahler to Sigmund Freud (Karl Markovics) for consultation. Moving and funny--the sessions with Freud are sly gems--the film is filled with Mahler's sublime music conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen. "That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction." "Very witty and erotic...Percy Adlon is up to old tricks in this, delightful, artistically vigorous and occasionally loony fantasia about Vienna's cultural elite 100 years ago." –The Hollywood Reporter "Percy Adlon, who delighted audiences with Baghdad Café, is back in rare form with Mahler on the Couch...Adlon's passionate and witty film, which he co-wrote & directed with his son Felix, is a portrait of the fascinating, fevered, and doomed marriage between these two powerful partners. Avoiding stuffy biopic conventions, Mahler on the Couch honors the complexity and humanity of both of its tormented lovers, keeping our sympathies in a constant state of flux." –David Ansen of Newsweek ALSO AVAILABLE: Behind-the-scenes documentary (43 min) on the making of the film’s soundtrack. Salonen conducts the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Adagio, the first movement, of his unfinished 10th symphony, which the directors use in radical ways throughout the film. JEWISH SOLDIERS IN BLUE & GRAY DIRECTED BY JONATHAN GRUBER | USA | 2011 | 86 MIN Brother against brother, Jew against Jew, 10,000 Jewish soldiers fought in the nation's deadliest war, in numbers proportionally higher then other American groups. Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray explores the little known history of the Civil War Jews who fought on both sides of the battlefield--7,000 for the Union and 3,000 for the Confederacy. Allegiances during the War Between the States split the Jewish community as deeply as it did the nation at large. Some prominent Jews, including Jewish slave owners, cited the Torah to justify slavery, while others were leaders in the abolitionist movement or established their synagogues as stops on the Underground Railroad. Jewish Soldiers in Blue & Gray reveals remarkable history, including Ulysses S. Grant's infamous "General Order No. 11" expelling Jews from Kentucky, Tennessee and Mississippi; the rise of Sephardic Jew Judah P. Benjamin to Secretary of State of the Confederacy; the imprisonment of Commemorating the Confederate spy Eugenia Levy Phillips; and the unlikely story of Abraham Lincoln's Jewish doctor who 150th Anniversary of moved through the South as a Union spy. Narrated by Oscar-nominated screenwriter John Milius the Civil War (Apocalypse Now) with Sam Waterson (Law & Order) voicing Abraham Lincoln. • World Premiere - 2011 New York Jewish FF • 25+ bookings since premiere, including Atlanta JFF, Savannah JFF; Washington JFF; San Diego JFF; Dallas JFF; St Louis JFF; LAJFF; Rochester JFF; Palm Beach JFF; Toronto JFF The National Center for Jewish Film | Lown 102, MS 053, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA 02454 781.736.8600 ph | 781.736.2070 fax | www.jewishfilm.org | [email protected] 1 THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM www.jewishfilm.org | 781.736.8600 GRACE PALEY: COLLECTED SHORTS DIRECTED BY LILLY RIVLIN | USA | 2010 | 74 MIN A rich portrait of writer, activist and New York icon Grace Paley (1922-2007). Paley's brilliant, frank and clever stories celebrating the authentic, daily lives of women are classics of American literature. Poet Laureate of Vermont & State Author of New York, Paley spent a lifetime on the front lines of the feminist & anti-war movements. Jewish Week raves, "The highest praise I can bestow is to say that I wish [the film was] an hour or two longer. That is how delicious it is to spend time in the company of [Grace Paley]." "So good is this new work—so immediate, enthralling, moving and funny—that it will probably create a bunch of new Paley fans... Every moment in the film is alive and rich just like Grace... If the movie is a paean to Paley well-goddamn the woman deserves it." –James Van Maanen, TrustMovies ✭BEST DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCE AWARD, Starz Denver Film Festival ✭BEST DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCE AWARD, Woodstock International FF ✭"BEST OF FEST" Palm Springs International Film Festival ✭BEST DOCUMENTARY AUDIENCE AWARD, Washington Jewish Film Festival • World Premiere - San Francisco Jewish Film Festival DAS KIND The Child/E’enfant DIRECTED BY YONATHAN LEVY | FRANCE | 2010 | 93 MIN | FRENCH, ROMANIAN & GERMAN W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES 95-year old Irma Miko, a cultured and accomplished member of Europe's intelligentsia, is a woman with a past. Born in Czernowitz, Romania, in 1914, Irma joined a Revolutionary political group at University at age 16 and was arrested along with 55 of her comrades at age 19. A Jew and a Communist, Irma joined the French Resistance in Paris in 1941 during World War II. Her unimaginably dangerous assignment was to approach occupying German soldiers and persuade them to join the Resistance. Irma is one the few remaining witnesses to life in the former city of Czernowitz, a once vibrant community of 50,000 Jews (one-third of the town's population) that gave birth to countless Jewish writers, poets and scholars. She provides rare reportage of illegal Communist activities in 1930s Bucharest, and offers a direct connection to the Spanish Civil War, in which both her first and second husband fought. With the Stalinist purges, a disillusioned Irma cut all ties to the Communist Party. ✭EUROPE'S BEST INDEPENDENT FILM AWARD, ECU European Film Festival • Selected Screenings - Fipatel, FIPA (Paris, France); Crossing Europe (Linz, Austria); DocUtah International Documentary FF; Cinepecs International FF (Hungary); Sao Paulo International Film Festival; Istanbul Documentary Film Festival; Vienna Jewish Film Festival; Washington Jewish Film Festival; Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival WOMEN UNCHAINED DIRECTED BY BEVERLY SIEGEL | USA | 2011 | 60 MIN | ENGLISH & HEBREW W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES An important new film documenting the "get-o-nomics" extortion schemes levied against "agunot" -- women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce. Narrated by actress Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory) and shot in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and Israel, Women Unchained includes interviews with Susan Weiss, founder of the Center for Women's Justice in Israel; Sharon Shenhav, director of the International Jewish Women's Rights Watch; Rachel Levmore, who tracks down recalcitrant husbands around the world; Rabbi Gedalia Dov Schwartz, chief judge of the Chicago Rabbinical Council & the Beth Din of America; and Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes who works on behalf of Jewish victims of domestic violence. Women Unchained makes a compelling case for why the issue matters and offers strategies for women to protect themselves. • World Premiere - Jerusalem Cinematheque, Special Event National Women's Day 2011 • USA Premiere - Pittsburgh Jewish Film Festival 2011 • Selected Screenings - Rockland County JFF; Palm Beach JFF; Berkshire JFF New Releases 2011 | Page 2 of 8 THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM www.jewishfilm.org | 781.736.8600 ME & THE JEWISH THING Mig og Jøderiet DIRECTED BY ULRIK GUTKIN | DENMARK | 2009 | 43 MIN | DANISH W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES In this witty and thoughtful meditation on the collision of two cultures, Danish Jewish filmmaker Ulrik Gutkin and his Danish non-Jewish girlfriend find themselves on opposites sides in deciding whether to circumcise their new baby boy Felix. What follows is Gutkin's reconsideration what it means to be a Jew in Denmark, a country with a small and deeply assimilated Jewish community. A film about navigating the complexities of family, culture, history and identity. ✭BEST DOCUMENTARY Sao Paulo Jewish Film Festival ✭NOMINATION Danish Dox Award • Selected Screenings - 2011 Stockholm Jewish Film Festival; 2011 Minneapolis Jewish FF; 2011 Roving Eye Film Festival; East Bay Jewish FF; Rhode Island International FF; Boston Jewish FF; UK Jewish FF SCHUND DIRECTED BY YAEL LEIBOVITZ ZAND | ISRAEL | 2010 | 56 MIN | HEBREW & YIDDISH W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES This clever mockumentary "introduces" a renowned Yiddish actor who disappeared under criminal circumstances. Left in his wake are debts, rumors and a mysterious inscription on the door of his home reading "schund." The film's action takes place twenty-five years after the actor's disappearance in an effort to pick up his trail. Along the way, we meet the colorful (real) characters who made up Israel's vibrant Yiddish scene during the country's first decades. This was a period when Yiddish theater thrived even as it drew ire from an Israeli establishment bent on suppressing the threat that Yiddish's popularity posed to the primacy of Hebrew culture. • North American Premiere- 2011 Toronto Jewish FF • World Premiere - DocAviv Tel Aviv Documentary Festival LIQUID OF LIFE Nozel Ha-Hayim DIRECTED BY PINI SCHATZ | ISRAEL | 2008 | 50 MIN | HEBREW W/ ENGLISH SUBTITLES Pini Schatz's funny and original film (subtitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blood") proves there's no reason to be afraid of the liquid that flows in our veins. The film skillfully combines family history and a cross section of unique Israeli characters, including the director of Magen David Adom, several artists, a psychologist, a hypnotist and an historian of ancient Israel.