Cinemark's Century Suncoast 16, Suncoast Hotel & Casino, News 88.9 KNPR and Classical 89.7 KCNV, Temple Beth Sholom, Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada, Congregation Ner Tamid, Jewish Family Service Agency, MIS Hebrew Academy of Las Vegas, Bet Knesset Bamidbar Sun City, Governors' Council on Holocaust Education and Tropicana Business Center. This project is funded in part through a grant from the United Jewish Community / Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, and through a grant received from the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

INDIVIDUAL SPONSORS:

LAS VEGAS CELEBRATION OF JEWISH FILM PROGRAM:
(All Films are Nevada premiers)

Based on a book by Susie Morgenstern, First Time I was Twenty centers on Sixteen-year old Hannah who lives in the 1960’s Parisian Suburbs. Although she is very intelligent, she isn't very popular with boys. When she is accepted in the high-school jazz-band (her dream come true), she thinks things will get better. However, gender barriers and prejudice seem to be hard to overcome in this all-male environment. Based on a novel by Susie Morgenstern, an American expatriate, this first film by writer/director Lorraine Levy is the upbeat story of an underdog establishing her place in a hostile environment.

(Winner of the Audience Award at the UK Jewish Film Festival 2005)

Strange Fruit masterfully combines history, biography, and jazz music. The film traces the genesis of the now –famous, haunting lyrics sung by jazz giant Billie Holiday. Originally written as a poem it becomes even more poignant knowing that the writer Abel Merepol was a Jewish schoolteacher who also adopted the two sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg after their 1953 execution. The boys, now middle-aged, help relate the tale, illuminating the fevered world of art and politics in which they grew up. The history of the words, the song, jazz and the sad stain of black lynching in the American South makes it a must see for everyone.

"Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop."

(Winner of the Best Documentary at the Boston Jewish Film Festival 2002)
 

In a Sudanese refugee camp sheltering Ethiopians displaced by civil war and famine in 1984, the Israeli secret service has begun Operation Moses, airlifting thousands of Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews, to Israel. Ethiopia is in chaos and times are precarious for its small but ancient Jewish community. A Jewish woman offers to take an Ethiopian Christian boy with her, after her son dies. The Christian mother, knowing that she likely will never see her son again, admonishes him to “go, live and become.” After the Jewish woman dies shortly after arriving in Israel, the boy, now known as “Shlomo,” is alone in a strange land. He realizes that he must conceal his identity as a Christian and make a transformation into Israeli society. Radu Mihaileanu, the renowned creator of Train of Life, addresses in Live and Become the profound issues of survival and preservation of identity, as well as the redemptive power of love.

(Winner of the Audience Award at the Berlin Film Festival 2006)

Underwritten by Heidi and David Straus

Part love story, part road trip movie, 39 Pounds of Love is the poignant and inspiring story of Ami Ankilewitz, an extraordinary Israeli man who redefines the word "survivor." Diagnosed with a dangerous and severe form of muscular dystrophy, doctors predicted he wouldn't live past six years of age. Now 34-years-old, weighing a shocking 39 pounds, and paralyzed except for one finger, Ami defies his extreme physical limitations to carry on a life of vitality in Tel Aviv working from his wheelchair as a computer animator. Ami travels to the United States, where he was born, for a cross-country road trip with friends to confront the doctor who predicted his early demise and to fulfill his lifelong dream of riding a Harley Davidson. Unflinching and inspirational as Ami himself, 39 Pounds of Love is a portrait of sheer determination like nothing seen onscreen before.

(Winner of Best Documentary Film at the 2005 Israeli Ophir Awards)


Syrian Bride

Sunday, January 14, 2007 @ 4:00 PM
ISRAEL, 2004, 96 minutes
Hebrew and Arabic with English Subtitles
Directed by Eran Riklis
Presented by Congregation Ner Tamid
Tickets: $10.00 Call 733-6292
Brown Paper Tickets: $11.24
Call 1-800-838-3006 or Order Tickets Online

The Syrian Bride is one of Israel’s best quality features in recent years. Young bride Mona knows that once she crosses the border between Israel and Syria to marry Tallel, a Syrian soap star, she will never be able to return to her home and her family in Majdal Shams, a Druz village in the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. But when she gets to the border and looks set to begin a new life, some surprises await her. Family tensions, political divisions and an array of cultures are interwoven as the wedding day reaches its peak. This is a powerful drama about the personal complication created by the Israeli–Syrian border. Through moments of tenderness, love and humour, we see how human emotions can cross political boundaries.

(Winner of numerous international awards, from Best Film at the Montreal Film Festival to Public Choice Award in Locarno)
 

Isn’t This a Time

Sunday, January 14, 2007 @ 7:00 PM
USA, 2004, 90 minutes
English Language
Directed by Jim Brown
Presented by Bet Knesset Bamidbar – Sun City
Tickets: $10.00 Call 341-6885
Brown Paper Tickets: $11.24
Call 1-800-838-3006 or Order Tickets Online

This film is a tribute to the late Harold Leventhal, the revered promoter of folk music, whose career spanned more than 50 years. The mention of Harold’s name brings to mind, Theodore Bikel, the Guthries (Woody and Arlo), Dylan, Seeger and countless others. Leventhal received a Grammy Award and also produced several films. One of them, Bound for Glory, received two Academy Awards® for music and cinematography. In 2003, he was honored with a Carnegie Hall Concert that included an all-star line up and became the basis of this film. With performances by Pete Seeger, the Weavers, Peter, Paul and Mary, Theodore Bikel, Leon Bibb and many more— your feet will not stay still!
 

Little Heroes

Monday, January 15, 2007 @ 1:00 PM
ISRAEL, 2006, 76 minutes
Hebrew with English Subtitles
Directed by Itay Lev
Presented by Milton I. Schwartz Hebrew Academy
Suitable for Ages 7 and above
Free Admission Call 255-4500


A group of four children take an adventurous journey throughout the scenic Israeli wilderness. A boy who is trying to cope with his father's death, a Russian girl with telepathic abilities, her mentally-challenged brother, and a boy who is an outsider in the close knit society of a kibbutz embark on a courageous expedition to rescue the lives of two injured teenagers in the Negev, the arid desert in the south of Israel. During the course of numerous trials and tribulations, the four social outsiders try to bond together, bridge the gaps between them and learn to face their fears. Gradually and unexpectedly, they form a heroic team: a warrior, a magician, a good-hearted giant and a thief. But will they do so in time to save the injured people? This is one of the first films for children made in Israel, and it provides a glimpse of the Israeli reality, while emphasizing the common denominators of children worldwide. It also shows that even children can be heroes and can actually make a difference.

Underwritten by Toni and Victor Chaltiel

Olga

Monday, January 15, 2007 @ 4:00 PM BRAZIL, 2004, 141 minutes
Portuguese with English Subtitles
Directed by Jayme Montjardim
Presented by Jewish Family Services Agency
Tickets: $10.00 Call 228-4744
Brown Paper Tickets: $11.24
Call 1-800-838-3006 or Order Tickets Online

The film adaptation of Fernando Morais’ best-seller of the same title chronicles the true life story of the German revolutionary Olga Benario Prestes from her youth in Munich to her romance with Communist leader Luís Carlos Prestes in Brazil and finally to her forced return to Hitler’s Nazi regime. Olga was born in a Jewish family in Munich, Germany, in 1908, and joined the Communist Youth Organization at the age of 15. In 1934, she was entrusted with guaranteeing the safe return of Prestes to Brazil. While posing as husband and wife, the pair fell in love. After the failure of the communist revolution the next year, Olga and Prestes were arrested and separated from each other.As an act of personal vengeance against Prestes, dictator Vargas had Olga, seven months pregnant, deported to Nazi Germany. On arrival she was taken to a Gestapo women’s prison. On November 27, 1936, exactly one year after the failed revolution, Anita Leocadia was born. In 1938, Olag was deported to a Nazi concentration camp and killed in 1942. One of the most popular films of 2004 in Brazil, it was the country’s official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar this year.

(Winner of three Brazilian Film Academy Awards, and Brazil's 2004 Oscar submission for Best Foreign Picture)

Underwritten by Gail and Mort Labovitz, The Snipper Family, Norma Friedman, D'Vorre and Hal Ober, Priscilla and Abe Hodes, Jack and Marcy Simon, Vicki and Murray Waks, Sheldon and Tillie Miller, Esther and Dave Soifer, Mr. and Mrs. Stewart Newman, Irene and Bernard Silver, Jean and Ben Lesser, Lynne and Al Fiel, Eleanor and Roland Weinstein, Stan Glotzer, Lilo and Alexander Kuechel, Donna and Rick Hollander, Jackie and Shel Kolner, Jacqueline Pachtman and Anonymous

Out of Faith

Sunday, January 28, 2007 @ 2:00 PM
Summerlin Library Theatre
USA, 2004, 82 minutes
Directed by Lisa Leeman
Presented by Governors’ Council on Holocaust Education with
Jewish Community Center of Southern Nevada
Free Admission. Call 794-0090

Out of Faith follows three generations of a family torn apart by conflicts over interfaith marriage. The family’s matriarch, Leah Welbel, and her husband Eliezer, both survived nearly three years in Auschwitz; however, in their minds, their grandchildren marrying non-Jews represents a posthumous victory for Hitler. What begins as a standard profile of a Holocaust survivor with an inspiring zest for life, becomes something far more complex when Leah reveals she has not spoken to her grandson in six years because he intermarried. Her granddaughter is also marrying a Christian—and tension pervades the whole Welbel family over what Leah will do. The documentary illustrates the painful conflicts that occur in one family’s differing approaches to intermarriage over three generations. The film eschews labeling people as good guys or bad guys in the conflict, but allows their often raw and contradictory actions to speak for themselves. As the birth of Leah’s first great-grandchild to her estranged grandson approaches and her own health declines, powerful emotions prevail.
 

For more information please contact: