Sponsored by Temple Beth El of Williamsburg, Virginia
This year marks our 23rd anniversary and we will strive to use the power of film to entertain, educate and connect our audiences to issues related to Jewish life in the U.S., Israel, and around the world.
All films will be shown at the Williamsburg Regional Library, 515 Scotland Street, Williamsburg, VA, on Sunday at 2 PM on the following dates:
SCHÄCHTEN – A RETRIBUTION
Sunday, November 5th at 2 PM
This film is a post-war thriller. A twenty-something Austrian Jewish businessman survived the war as a child by living alone in the snowy forests after his grandparents, mother and sister perished in the Holocaust. In the 1960’s, he meets Simon Wiesenthal and learns that Austria has rehabilitated Nazi leaders, who now live freely under assumed names, while government bureaucrats cover up old sins. After a commandant of Mauthausen is found not guilty despite harrowing eye-witness testimony, the businessman resolves to take the law into his own hands. As the net closes in on the commandant, we are treated to an exquisitely woven psychological drama set in the stunningly beautiful snow-covered Austrian countryside. Inevitably, the moral question arises of whether vengeance can ever be justified, no matter what.
REMEMBER THIS
Sunday, November 12th at 2 PM
In a virtuoso solo performance, Academy Award-nominee David Strathairn portrays Jan Karski in this genre-defying true story of a reluctant World War II hero and Holocaust witness. After surviving the devastation of the Blitzkrieg, Karski swears allegiance to the Polish Underground and risks his life to carry the first eyewitness reports of war-torn Poland to the Western world. In 1942, Karski volunteered to walk through the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi extermination camp before traveling to London to report to the Allied Nations on the conditions of occupied Poland and, specifically, the Holocaust. He personally delivered his eyewitness account—and urgent appeal for intervention on behalf of the Jewish people—to British Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, and, later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. His report was ignored. Strathairn captures the complexity and legacy of this self-described “insignificant, little man” whose timely story of moral courage and individual responsibility can still shake the conscience of the world.
Exodus 91
Sunday, January 28th at 2 PM
Israeli diplomat Asher Naim, a North African Jew, is sent to Ethiopia in 1991 to negotiate the escape of 15,000 Ethiopian Jews in a time of famine and civil war. Issues of politics, racism, cultural identity, immigration issues, and hardships that continue to the present, as well as Naim’s crises of faith, are explored.
The Narrow Bridge
Sunday, March 3rd at 2 PM
Director Esther Takac has worked as a trauma psychologist with bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families for nine years in a Jerusalem hospital. In “The Narrow Bridge,” she profiles four individuals from Israeli and Palestinian families who have lost a child or parent in the prolonged conflict. Despite considerable political and social resistance, and in the face of unspeakable loss, the four work to transform their grief into reconciliation, summoning untold courage to build bridges of friendship that might one day lead to peace.
Valiant Hearts
Sunday, March 24th at 2 PM
A true story of exceptional bravery and survival against all odds follows the odyssey of six Jewish children in August 1942 who are forced to take refuge where no one will ever think to look for them: amidst the Louvre Museum artworks hidden in the Château de Chambord.
There will be no charge to see any of the films.
Light desserts and beverages will be provided afterwards.
The Virginia Peninsula Jewish Film Festival depends on the generosity of our patrons to cover our expenses.
Please join us now to ensure that the Virginia Peninsula Jewish Film Festival can continue with its mission to make this year’s festival a reality. Thank you in advance for your generosity and support.
We greatly appreciate your support and the loyalty of our audiences. Please help us continue to bring this wealth of Jewish culture to Williamsburg by completing the enclosed form and returning it with your donation by Monday, October 23.
Donations can also be made on-line at tbewilliamsburg.org/donate/ on the Donation Form Page, select Film Festival as the Reason for Donation.
The Virginia Peninsula Jewish Film Festival Committee
Neil Portnoff, chair, Diana Freedman, Helene Goldsman,
Lois Manes, David Rottman, Glenn Solomon, Robert Winsor, Lois Ullman
