INTRODUCTION:

The 8^th annual Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival takes place January 17 through February 1, 2009, at the Adelson School Performing Arts Center, Cinemark Theaters in South Point Hotel and Casino and at the Historic 5th Street School in downtown Las Vegas.

The festival is produced by the Desert Space Foundation and the Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada and is funded in part through grants from the Jewish Federation Las Vegas / United Jewish Community, Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment of the Arts. Other sponsors include Innova Technologies, Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of Las Vegas and Cinemark Theaters.

The Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival utilizes the art of film to provide cultural enrichment, promote community collaboration, engage the unaffiliated, and offer educational education outreach to the Jewish and non-Jewish community by enhancing awareness and appreciation of Jewish identity, history and culture.

Everyone is welcome!

Making Trouble, explores the lives of legendary Jewish women entertainers who broke barriers and shook the status quo to make us laugh. The film, spanning more than a century of theatre, film, and television history, features Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Gilda Radner, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, and playwright Wendy Wasserstein while examining their profound influence on Jewish culture and American humor.
 

Praying With Lior introduces Lior Liebling, a young man with Down Syndrome who has spent his entire life praying with utter abandon. Is he a "spiritual genius" as many around him say or simply the vessel that contains everyone's unfulfilled wishes and expectations? As Lior approaches his Bar Mitzvah, different characters provide a window into life spent "Praying With Lior."
 

Sunday, January 18, 2009 @ 4:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Alejandro Springall
Mexico, 2006, 102 Minutes
English Subtitles
Presented by Temple Beth Sholom
Underwritten by Betsi and David Steinberg
Moderated by Rabbi Goodman
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 804-1333

An Ashkenazi family in Mexico City celebrates shivah for its patriarch, who had a gentile mistress many years younger than him. His surviving family is dysfunctional, almost beyond belief. The ritual for the deceased has brought together family, friends and former lovers who express side-splitting stories, conflicts and rivalries that are revealed over the seven-day shivah mourning period.

Sunday, January 18, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Jason Hutt
USA, 2008, 82 Minutes
Presented by Chabad of Southern Nevada
Moderated by Rabbi Harlig
Special Guests: Dmitriy Salita and Bob Arum
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 259-0770

Dmitriy Salita is making history as a top professional boxer who is also a rigorously observant Jew. Orthodox Stance is a portrait of seemingly incompatible cultures and characters working together to support Dmitriy's devotion to both Judaism and professional boxing. The film provides an insider’s view of the boxing world while telling a universal story of a young man's search for his destiny.

Au Revoir Les Enfants

Monday, January 19, 2009 @ 1:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Louis Malle
France, 1987, 103 Minutes
English Subtitles
Presented by Adelson Educational Campus
Underwritten by Toni and Victor Chaltiel
Moderated by Victor Chaltiel and Anthony Allison
Free and open to the public. Limited seating.

During the German occupation of France, two boys become friends in a Catholic boarding school. 12-year-old Julien forms a bond with a new student, Jean, who is being hidden from the Nazis by courageous friars who defy the German’s anti-Semitic policies and secretly enroll Jewish children into the school. This classic film is a tale of friendship and loss, of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening.  

Blessed is the Match

Monday, January 19, 2009 @ 4:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Director: Roberta Grossman
2006 USA, 74 min.
Directed by Jason Hutt
USA, 2008, 86 Minutes
Presented by Temple Sinai
Moderated by Wila Kohn
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 254-5110

Blessed Is The Match is the first documentary feature about Hannah Senesh, the World War II-era poet and diarist who became a paratrooper, resistance fighter, and modern-day Joan of Arc. Having successfully escaped from Nazi occupied Hungary to Palestine in 1944, Hannah voluntarily joined a mission to return to her native country to help Hungary’s Jews and rescue her mother.  

Strangers

Thursday, January 22, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Cinemark Theaters, South Point Hotel and Casino
Directed by Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv
Israel, 2007, 85 Minutes
English Subtitles
Presented by Congregation Ner Tamid
Moderated by Rabbi Akselrad
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 733-6292

An Israeli man and a Palestinian woman meet serendipitously during the World Cup finals in Germany, drawing them out of the stark reality of their individual lives and into a passionate affair. The film explores the boundaries of nationality, culture, and the heart. It touches the profound wounds created by years of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and shows a young generation seeking reconciliation.  

Nina's Journey

Saturday, January 24, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Lena Einhorn
Sweden/Poland, 2005, 125 Minutes
English Subtitles
Presented by Nevada Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust
Moderated by Ben Lesser
Free and open to the public. Limited seating.

Nina’s Journey is the remarkable true story of Nina Einhorn and her family’s survival during the German invasion of Poland. Imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto with her family, Nina miraculously escapes to the Aryan side where she must present herself as a Gentile. The film was named the best film and best screenplay winner at Sweden’s equivalent to the Oscars.  

Refusenik

Sunday, January 25, 2009 @ 12:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Laura Bialis
USA, 2007, 117 Minutes
Presented by Jewish Family Service Agency
Moderated by Wila Kohn
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 794-0090

Refusenik is the first retrospective documentary to chronicle the thirty-year movement to free Soviet Jews. It shows how a small grassroots effort bold enough to take on a Cold War superpower blossomed into an international human rights campaign that enabled Jewish community activists to change the world. The film is a tapestry of first-person accounts of heroism, sacrifice, and ultimately, liberation.  

Sixty Six

Sunday, January 25, 2009 @ 3:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Paul Weiland
UK, 2006, 94 Minutes
Presented by Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada
Moderated by Beth C. Rosenberg
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 794-0090

A North London lad finds his eagerly anticipated Bar Mitzvah threatened by World Cup fever. Awkward, unpopular, and desperate to be the center of attention, young Bernie Reuben invests all his hopes and dreams in staging his Bar Mitzvah, but plans begin to unravel when he learns that his big day coincides with England’s playing in the final game of the 1966 World Cup.  

Noodle

Sunday, January 25, 2009 @ 6:00 PM
Adelson School Performing Arts Center
Directed by Ayelet Menahemi
Israel, 2007, 101 Minutes
English Subtitles
Presented by Anti-Defamation League
Moderated by Ellis Landau
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 862-8600

Miri's life has been crumbling around her for years. She wants nothing more than to be left alone, but things change when her Chinese housekeeper asks Miri to watch her son for an hour and never comes back. Miri tries to reunite the boy she dubs "Noodle" with his mother, and in the process, learns about the importance of family and emotional healing.  

Arranged

Thursday, January 29, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Cinemark Theaters, South Point Hotel and Casino
Directed by Diane Crespo and Stefan C. Schaefer
USA, 2007, 90 Minutes
Presented by Midbar Kodesh Temple
Underwritten by Carlos Banchik & Adriana Gonorazky w/ Innova Technologies
Moderated by Rabbi Tecktiel and Anthony Allison
Free and open to the public. Limited seating.

Arranged centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of a year the two women learn they share much in common, including the fact that they are both being subjected to the process of arranged marriages imposed by family and faith.  

Lonely Man Of Faith

Saturday, January 31, 2009 @ 7:00 PM
Historic 5th Street School, Downtown Las Vegas
Directed by Ethan Isenberg
USA, 2006, 99 Minutes
Presented by Congregation Shaarei Tefilla
Moderated by Rabbi Wasser
Tickets: $10.00 - Call 384-3565

Lonely Man Of Faith celebrates the life and legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Descending from a rabbinical dynasty dating back some 200 years, he became the most influential leader of the American Jewish community in the Twentieth Century. Over the course of his more than four decades at Yeshiva University, he ordained 2,000 rabbis – more than any other figure in Jewish history.
 

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