film and discussion
Eine Frau – In-Person Event
In Eine Frau (Germany, 2021), filmmaker Jeanine Meerapfel follows the traces of a woman and her life from France to Germany to exile in Argentina, reconstructing the various stages of exile and uncertainty like an archaeologist. Memories and passages from letters merge into the touching narrative of several broken biographies. At the same time, the director reflects on the fragmentary nature of memory. “What is remembered, what is forgotten? And why?”
Eine Frau had its world premiere at the 36th Mar del Plata International Film Festival in Argentina. In 2022, it was shown at numerous film festivals in Europe – including the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival and DOK.fest Munich. It opened the Jewish Film Festival Berlin | Brandenburg (JFBB) and won the prize for intercultural dialogue there.
Meerapfel will join us for a discussion of the film and a light reception after the screening.
About the Filmmaker
Jeanine Meerapfel is a filmmaker, screenwriter and producer. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she attended the city's school of journalism before going on to work as an editor and freelance journalist. From 1964 to 1968, she studied at the Film Institute, Hochschule für Gestaltung, Ulm, Germany, where she was taught by Alexander Kluge and Edgar Reitz. Meerapfel shot her first motion picture, Malou, in 1980. This was followed by award-winning documentary and feature films such as In the Country of my Parents (1981), Amigomío (1995), and many others.
Meerapfel worked as a Professor at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Film Department, from 1990 to 2008. In 2012, her feature film The German Friend, an Argentine-German co-production, was released in cinemas. Together with Floros Floridis, she produced the audiovisual essay Confusion / Diffusion in 2015. In 2019, she also produced together with Floros Floridis the audiovisual essay Moving Sand / Topos. In March 2020, Meerapfel was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class for her success as a filmmaker and author as well as her commitment to human rights, freedom of speech and equality and diversity of cultures. In Autumn 2020, she initiated the European Alliance of Academies, an alliance of 60 art academies and institutions that stands up for the freedom of art. The German Federal Association of Film Directors (BVR) has appointed her as honorary president in February 2021. Meerapfel has been a member of the Film and Media Arts Section of the Akademie der Künste since 1998. She was the Deputy Director of this Section from 2012 to 2015. In May 2015 she was elected President of the Akademie der Künste, followed by the re-election in May 2018 and November 2021.
Prizes and awards (a selection): 1981: International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Award in Cannes for Malou; 1985: German Film Critics' Award (Deutscher Kritikerpreis) for Melek Leaves; 1989: German Film Award and Argentine Oscar nomination for La Amiga; 2000: Female Artists' Award of the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (Künstlerinnenpreis des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen); 2001: special award at the Argentine festival Mar del Plata for Anna's Summer; 2012: Prize of Honour at the International Film Festival Innsbruck.
More information about Meerapfel and her work can be found on her website.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner Members, Students, Seniors; register at lbi.org/events/eine-frau/
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film and discussion
film
Heimat is a Space in Time – In-Person Event
Note: the film is 218 minutes and will be shown without intermission. Join us at 5:30 PM for a brief reception. The screening will begin promptly at 6:00 PM.
In Heimat Is a Space in Time (Germany, 2019), German filmmaker Thomas Heise shares the stories of three generations of his family, in their own words.
Heise sets the tone early, reading an anti-war essay written in 1912 by his grandfather Wilhelm, when he was a schoolboy. The director uses the same matter-of-fact, uninflected tone throughout the film – as he reads letters and notes from relatives who lived through the horrors of the First World War, Nazi Germany, and then life in Communist East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Heimat is a Space in Time defies easy description. Heise offers no context, no talking heads, no analysis. Yet this unadorned approach, coupled with the potent imagery accompanying the words, is one of the documentary’s greatest strengths. One particularly memorable sequence involves Heise’s grandparents, a “mixed” Jewish-Gentile couple living in Vienna during the Nazi era. Their letters capture the increasing measures taken against Jews: banned from buses, losing access to coal ration cards, and lastly being forced to a concentration camp in Poland. All the while, as Heise reads, lists with the names of Jews slated for deportation scroll by on the screen for nearly half an hour.
Clearly influenced by his own previous work (much of it banned in the former East Germany, where he lived until the fall of the Berlin Wall), Heimat is the culmination of Heise’s career. It is an understated epic that brilliantly marries the written word, image, and sound design. The unspoken message is that the past, even as those who remember it slip away, remains with us.
About the Filmmaker
Thomas Heise was born in East Berlin. He worked as a directors' assistant at DEFA, the East German state film production enterprise, and studied at the Konrad Wolf Academy for Film and Television before dropping out to produce his own documentary projects, none of which were screened in the GDR before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today, his over 20 documentary features and shorts include his award-winning Halle-Neustadt trilogy: Jammed: Let's Get Moving (92), New Town: The State of Things (00), and Children. As Time Flies (07). Heimat is a Space in Time (19) is his latest film.
Ticket Info: $10 general; $5 LBI/CJH/Partner Members, Students, Seniors; register at lbi.org/events/heimat-is-a-space-in-time/
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film
film and discussion
The Hidden Jews of Ethiopia
Nafkot – Yearning, a new film by Dr. Malka Shabtay
The Hidden Jews of Ethiopia, a new book by Dr. Marla Brettschneider
Panelists
Dr. Malka Shabtay is an applied anthropologist who has worked for decades with the Ethiopian Jewish community in Israel and more recently in Ethiopia. Author of many books, she has taught in numerous academic institutes including the Ruppin Academic Center and the Institute for Immigration and Social Integration. Shabtay combines research, consultancy, and training for organizations applying cultural and cross-cultural perspectives in their work. Nafkot (Yearning 2022) is her second ethnographic film.
Mr. Belayneh Tazebku Worku is one of the leaders of the Ethiopian North Shewa Bete-Israel community and serves as the manager of the synagogue, Brit Olam, in Addis Ababa. Working in the community for twenty-five years, Tazebku Worku has focused on raising awareness and community organizing both locally and nationally toward full civil and human rights of the Bete Israel people and community. Tazebku Worku also works to meet concrete current needs of the community such as the creation of a Jewish cemetery and a Bete Israel community settlement in Debre Berhan, in the Amhara region.
Dr. Marla Brettschneider, Professor holds a joint appointment in Politics & Feminist Studies at the University of New Hampshire. She is a groundbreaking scholar of Jewish diversity politics and political theory, also using diversity as a frame to address antisemitism in the US and globally. Lecturing widely and author of numerous award-winning books, her works include: Jewish Feminism and Intersectionality; The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives; The Hidden Jews of Ethiopia; The Jewish Phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa, & The Narrow Bridge: Jewish Views on Multiculturalism with a forward by Cornel West.
Ticket Info: $15; register at eventbrite.com
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film and discussion
film screening
The Levys of Monticello - In-person Event
Join us for a screening of The Levys of Monticello followed by a discussion with filmmaker, Steven Pressman and historian, Hasia Diner.
When Thomas Jefferson died in 1826, he left behind a mountain of personal debt, which forced his heirs to sell his beloved Monticello home and all of its possessions. The Levys of Monticello is a documentary film that tells the little-known story of the Levy family, which owned and carefully preserved Monticello for nearly a century – far longer than Jefferson or his descendants. The remarkable story of the Levy family also intersects with the rise of antisemitism that runs throughout the course of American history.
Ticket Info: $10; register at ajhs.org/events/film-screening-the-levys-of-monticello/ for a Zoom link
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film screening
film screening
Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion - In-person Event
Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion, the award-winning film, considers the resonance of Psalm 137 (By the Waters of Babylon) through the music of two ghettoized peoples – Italian Jews of Mantua during the period of the Counter-Reformation, and African Americans before, during, and after the Harlem Renaissance.
A 29-minute voyage through four centuries, Babylon confronts vital questions about minority musicians and their foundational roles in the music we enjoy today. Who was celebrated? Who was erased? Who was invited to the party and who was left out in the cold? Whose genius was attributed to someone else? Who contributed the most while remaining on the sidelines of history? And most importantly, why does it keep happening?
Ezra Knight narrates a script that interweaves works by Italian-Jewish composer Salomone Rossi (1570 – 1630) and contemporary American Brandon Waddles (1988 –). Additional Rossi works include performances by the Bacchus Consort, Voices of Music, and soprano Jessica Gould in collaboration with lutenist Lucas Harris. Also featuring the groundbreaking Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, other musical selections include historical recordings by Ma Rainey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Big Mama Thornton, The Fisk Jubilee Singers, as well as two luminaries in contemporary West African music – Kevin Nathaniel Hylton and Yacouba Sissoko.
Since its December 2020 premiere, Babylon has garnered over 90 laurels from film festivals across the globe in multiple categories.
Join YIVO and the American Society for Jewish Music for a screening of this film followed by a Q&A with director Jessica Gould.
About the Speaker
Jessica Gould is a director, writer, and soprano who continues to enjoy a formidable reception for her maiden film project, Babylon: Ghetto, Renaissance, and Modern Oblivion, on the international film festival circuit. Having become a filmmaker by virtue of the pandemic out of a need to continue presenting classical and early music through the prism of history in the absence of live performance, Ms. Gould’s ever expanding laurels include 90 awards and counting from festivals across the globe. As the Founder and Artistic Director of Salon/Sanctuary Concerts, based in New York City, her original projects have received grants from numerous foundations and institutions, generous support which has enabled the series to blossom into one of the more significant presenters of historical performance in New York City and beyond.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Babylon-Screening
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film screening
film screening
Four Winters - In-person
"All I owned was my camera, leopard coat, rifle and a grenade in case I’m captured...the pillow was the rifle, the walls were the trees and the sky was the roof,” says Faye Schulman, one of over 25,000 Jewish Partisans, who organized and fought back against the better-trained and better-equipped Nazis and their collaborators from deep within the forests of WWII’s Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Belarus. Against extraordinary odds, these men and women, many barely in their teens, escaped Nazi slaughter – transforming from young innocents raised in closely knit families to courageous resistance fighters. They banded together in partisan brigades; engaging in treacherous acts of sabotage, blowing up trains, burning electric stations, and attacking armed enemy headquarters.
Through first-person interviews, Four Wintersuncovers secrets held for lifetimes, revealing a narrative of heroism, loss, enduring hope, grit, courage and deep humanity. Join YIVO for a screening of this award-winning documentary followed by a Q&A with the Filmmaker Julia Mintz: Director/Writer/Producer of Four Winters.
Four Winters was awarded a grant from Steven Spielberg’s Jewish Story Partners fund; received the “Human Rights Award” at Hamptons Doc Fest; and was named “Best Documentary” at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival; and the “”Audience Award” at Australia's International Jewish Film Festival.
About the Speaker
Julia Mintz is a writer, producer and director whose work focuses on narratives of bravery and resistance against unimaginable odds. She has been on the producing team for films that have been shortlisted for the Academy Awards, have premiered at Cannes, Sundance and TriBeCa, and won Emmy, Peabody and festival awards. Her films can be seen on HBO, PBS, American Masters, NETFLIX and Amazon. Recent projects include Mr. SOUL! which premiered at TriBeCa and was short-listed for an Academy Award®. She co-produced Joe Papp in Five Acts and post-produced Get Me Roger Stone, produced California State of Mind, and post-produced Soundtrack for a Revolution Nanking, Love Free or Die: Story of Bishop Gene Robinson. Additional projects include Muscle Shoals, Bing Crosby Rediscovered; Life and Times of Frida Kahlo, and Cyndi Lauper: Still So Unusual. Julia has also produced programming for Discovery, NASA, National Geographic, NHK and SONY.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Four-Winters
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