Cinema Sabaya
October 30: In-Person Q&A
Daniel Susz
Daniel Susz is the Director of Film & TV in North America at the Israel Office of Cultural Affairs (IOCA), Consulate General of Israel in New York. He promotes Israeli content by fostering new opportunities for Israeli creatives and industry professionals. He is cofounder and codirector of Scripted Israel Los Angeles 2022, an unprecedented summit bringing top Israeli producers and writers to Los Angeles for networking and educational engagements. In his position at the IOCA, he has supported theatrical releases and award season campaigns for films such as Nadav Lapid’s Ahed’s Knee, and Shira Haas’s Asia. He was a producer of the documentary King Bibi and has also written, directed, and produced various short films premiering at festivals such as Docaviv Film Festival and Haifa International Film Festival.
Recorded
Michal Aviad
Visiting Israeli Filmmaker at the Bildner Center, Michal Aviad explores ethnicity, class, gender, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from women’s perspectives. Her recent films include Working Woman, which won an Ophir Award, and Dimona Twist, which won Best Documentary Film at the Jerusalem Film Festival and was screened at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival in 2017. A professor at Tel Aviv University's Steve Tisch School of Cinema and Television, Aviad was recently awarded the prestigious Landau Award for Arts and Sciences, which cited her as "one of the most important directors in the history of Israeli cinema."
Orit Fouks Rotem
Israeli filmmaker Orit Fouks Rotem is the director of Cinema Sabaya--her debut feature film. Sweeping the Israeli Oscars this year with awards for Best Film and Best Director, among others, it will be Israel’s entry for Best International Feature Film at this year’s Academy Awards. A graduate of Jerusalem’s Sam Spiegel School of Film and Television, Rotem has taught filmmaking to groups of women in Acres and Givat Haviva, an experience that inspired the film Cinema Sabaya. She has also written and directed two short fiction films: You Remain Silent and Veil, which were screened at international festivals.
Dead Sea Guardians
November 6: In-Person Q&A
Ido Glass
Israeli filmmaker Ido Glass is director (with Yoav Kleinman) of Dead Sea Guardians. A graduate of the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem, he specializes in documentaries that deal with social, human, and historical issues affecting Israeli society. His films have been screened in festivals and on television in Israel and around the world, and they include Open Ward, Shifting Sands, Elkana Code, and Warrior of Love.
HALLELUJAH: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song
November 1: In-Person Q&A
Marcia Pally
Marcia Pally is the author of From This Broken Hill I Sing to You: God, Sex, and Politics in the Work of Leonard Cohen (2021), among numerous other books. She teaches at New York University and Fordham University, and she also held the Mercator Guest Professorship in the theology department at Humboldt University-Berlin. Her research interests are culture, religion, and politics as well as the intersection of culture and language.
How Saba Kept Singing
November 6: In-Person Q&A and Performance
Avi Wisnia
Avi Wisnia is the grandson of David “Saba” Wisnia, whose experience during the Holocaust is the subject of the film How Saba Kept Singing. An award-winning singer-songwriter, Avi Wisnia finds inspiration in 1950s west-coast jazz, acoustic American folk, Brazilian bossa nova, and contemporary piano pop. He tours in support of his newest studio album, Catching Leaves, performing in prestigious venues around the world–from the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In addition to being a performing songwriter, he has given a TED Talk, performed with The Moth storytellers, and organizes the Philly Songwriters Circle.
Love and Mazel Tov
October 30: In-Person Q&A
Markus Krah
Markus Krah, an American-trained, Germany-based historian, is executive director of the Leo Baeck Institute. An expert on the contemporary Jewish institutional landscape in Germany, he is the author of American Jewry and the Re-Invention of the East European Jewish Past (2019), as well as numerous scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals. He served as editor of PaRDeS, the journal of the Association for Jewish Studies in Germany. He has lectured at the University of Postsdam and been a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt University and the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Before beginning his academic career, Krah worked for more than a decade as a journalist, including as the chief correspondent of the German-language service in Reuters’ Berlin Bureau.
March 1968
November 3: In-Peron Q&A
Krzysztof Lang
Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Lang is the director of the feature film March 1968. He has directed numerous feature films, including Weaker Sex (2015) and Lullaby Killer (2017). He has also directed more than thirty documentaries and more than ten television programs. He is a member of the faculty of Film and Television at Silesian University.
More Than I Deserve
Recorded
Pini Tavger
Israeli filmmaker and actor Pini Tavger is the director of the award-winning feature film More Than I Deserve. He is also known for the films Water (2012) and Weitzman Street no. 10 (2006) among numerous other films that he has either directed or acted in.
The Therapy
Recorded
Zvi Landsman
A Jerusalem-based filmmaker, Zvi Landsman is the director of The Therapy, which received a Sundance Institute Documentary Fund grant and the Jury Award at the DocAviv International Film Festival. A graduate of the Sam Spiegel School of Film and Television, he was the cinematographer of the Oscar shortlisted film The Mute’s House; director of Your Warmth, a short film that participated in more than thirty LGBTQ festivals worldwide; and cinematographer of the award-winning documentary The Museum, which was screened at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival in 2019.
Where Life Begins
November 1: In-Person Q&A
Ayala Fader
Ayala Fader is the author of Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (2020), a finalist for the Jewish Studies Celebrate 350 Award of the National Jewish Book Council. A professor of anthropology at Fordham University, her research explores contemporary North American Jewish identities and languages, examining key issues at the intersection of religion, Jewish Studies, gender, and linguistic anthropology. Her book Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (2009) won both a National Jewish Book Award and a New York City Book Award from the New York Society Library.
Xueta Island
Recorded
Dani Rotstein
A content producer, entrepreneur, and storyteller, New Jersey native Dani Rotstein spent years traveling the world producing advertisements for large commercial firms. When he moved to the Spanish island of Majorca in 2014 to produce TV commercials, he didn’t expect there to be much Jewish life there. His surprising discoveries led to his work on the documentary film Xueta Island: A Hidden History, for which he is not only a director, but also a subject. He became involved with the local Jewish community, founding Limud Majorca as well as Jewish Majorca--a company that offers educational tours of Jewish heritage sites around the island.