Introduction

Over 12,000 people attended the Boston Jewish Film Festival. In 2003 a total of 1994 people attended BJFF's Boston-Haifa Film Connection screenings, or 16.55 percent of the total Festival audience of 12,047.

The year 2003 saw another successful Boston-Haifa Film Connection collaboration The Boston Jewish Film Festival (November 6-16, 2003) and the Haifa International Film Festival (October 11-18, 2003), supported by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies' Boston-Haifa Connection. Through a selection of films, guest artists, and discussions, each festival once again explored Jewish identity and relationships; promoted mutual understanding between sister cities Boston and Haifa; and celebrated pluralism. In addition, the programs supported the introduction, promotion, and marketing of Israeli cinema in Boston; encouraged a dialogue between Israeli and foreign filmmakers, both in Haifa and Boston; and looked closely at the changing facets and expressions of Jewish identity in cinema.

The Boston Jewish Film Festival

The 2003 Boston Jewish Film Festival (BJFF) offered a diverse and illuminating selection of Israeli Boston-Haifa Film Connection films. The feature film James' Journey to Jerusalem and the documentary Sewing for Bread brought to light and life Israeli economic and social problems, problems Israel shares with many industrialized nations, such as reliance on illegal immigrants, the difficulty of competing in a global market, the plight of working class women, and the economic disparities between different parts of the country.

Sewing for Bread won an award for Best Documentary at the 2003 Haifa International Film Festival. The marvelous cast of James' Journey to Jerusalem included the popular and highly regarded film and theater actor Salim Daw, a Haifa resident. The CJP's Young Leadership Division again held a dinner at Temple Kehillath Israel before the Saturday night screening of the film at the Coolidge Corner Theatre with BJFF Artistic Director Kaj Wilson speaking about the Boston-Haifa Film Connection.

Netiva introduced U.S. Jews to the unforgettable Netiva Ben-Yehuda, one of the founders of the state of Israeli, and in the process uncovered conflicting attitudes of different generations of Israelis towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moments offered three-minute films by seventeen artists with seventeen different perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Three of those directors - Amos Gitai, Edan Alterman, and Gur Bentwich - are friends of BJFF and the Boston-Haifa Film Connection having attended BJFF under the Connection's aegis.

In the documentary Forget Baghdad - Jews and Arabs: The Iraqi Connection, four Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel discussed their conflicted identities and experiences as Mizrachi Jews. The documentary featured best-selling author and Haifa resident Sami Michael, whose book A Trumpet in the Wadi (the basis for the film of the same name shown in 2002 as part of the Boston-Haifa Film Connection) had just been translated into English.

A Boston-Haifa Film Connection panel, Under Pressure: Israeli Women Today, used films screening in the Festival, including Netiva and Sewing for Bread, as a basis for discussing the unique challenges facing Israeli women today. Discussants included Miri Kobovy, Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Director, Modern Hebrew Studies, Harvard University, and Israeli artist Tami Marks. Miri and Tami discussed their personal experiences and told stories of women who are leaders or advocates and whose lives or expressed viewpoints stood out as embodiments of some of these issues.

A Fiddler on the Roof Sing-A-Long, complete with Masters of Ceremonies, an actual fiddler on the roof of the Coolidge Corner Theatre, sing-along props, a costume contest, and refreshments, gave the whole family a chance to sing along with Tevye and his family. And sing they did! The event, one of the highlights of the Festival, was a tribute to star Chaim Topol, whom HIFF honored in 2000. Artistic Director Kaj Wilson and BJFF Board Chair Shoshana Pakciarz met Topol at the 2002 HIFF where he was given an honorary lifetime membership.

Haifa International Film Festival

The Haifa International Film Festival (HIFF), featuring 150 films and 250 screenings, went on in spite of the Maxim restaurant bombing that took place shortly before the Festival. Around 100,000 people turned out for HIFF screenings, outdoor musical events, and outdoor markets, with approximately 50,000 people attending the screenings alone.

This HIFF Boston-Haifa Film Connection program showcased the Cinema of Identity, a cinema that explores the multifaceted reality of the Jewish experience past and present, and the common themes of oppression, resistance, and exile.

With the Holocaust continuing to be the defining experience for the modern Jewish identity, the HIFF cinematic tour began with the opening film, Costa Gavras' Amen, in which a Nazi scientist and a Jesuit priest try to do the right thing. Other films included the late Charles Guggenheim's documentary Berga in which American soldiers pay a high price for being Jewish. A German woman fights for her Jewish husband in Rosenstrasse. In Rose's Song a Jewish Hungarian opera singer gives shelter to those less fortunate than himself, and a shelter of a different kind is found in Shanghai Ghetto.

Four new films offered audiences the opportunity to meet four strong and impressive women, whose life stories reflect all the trials and tribulations of the 20th centuries. The Soul Keeper and the documentary My Name is Sabina Spielrein tell the fascinating story of Sabina Spielrein, Carl Jung's first patient who became a psychoanalyst herself. Two women, who witnessed the Communist revolution in both Rumania and Hungary in the 1950s, are the subjects of the documentary films M?tter and Reconstruction.

The Israeli experience was represented in God Seekers, the search of one filmmaker for identity in the Israeli fine arts, and in Hanna K., Costa Gavras' exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian tragedy.

Whether the films are the works of mature, respected, award-winning directors like Costa Gavras, Margarethe von Trotta, or Charles Guggenheim, or the debut films of new filmmakers like Miklos Gimes, Dana Janklowicz-Mann, and Irene Lusztig, these works all carry a sense of Jewish history and experience as well as a message of humanity.

BJFF's Kaj Wilson and her husband attended the 2003 Haifa International Film Festival. There Kaj met the Mayor of Haifa, Yona Yahav, and his wife Rifka, both film fans. Kaj had the opportunity to spend quality time with several Israeli Jewish and Israeli Arab filmmakers and actors, all Haifa residents, some of whose films will be screened at the 2004 BJFF.

HIFF Artistic Director Pnina Blayer spoke to Boston CJP delegates in Haifa about the Boston-Haifa Film Connection.

Shvat 5764 - February 2004