Angelica
Q&A Discussion: Friday, November 20 at 12:00 PM
Dan Peer
Dan Peer is the director, screenwriter and researcher of the documentary film Angelica. He is also the great grandson of Angelica, the subject of the film. A prominent media personality in Israel, he studied communications and has worked as a content editor, screenwriter, and director of various television programs in Israel, including the reality show Survivor. He has also worked as a journalist for Yediot Ahronot, one of Israel’s largest newspapers. He left his job working on the show Survivor in order to pursue the story of Angelica for his film. Note: The film is produced by the renowned Israeli actor and filmmaker Shlomi Elkabetz.
The Art of Waiting
Q&A Discussion: Sunday, November 22, 2:00 PM
Erez Tadmor
Erez Tadmor is an Israeli writer and director who graduated from the Camera Obscura School of the Arts in Tel Aviv. His debut short film, Moosh, in 2001 won more than forty international film festival awards. His short film Strangers, with Guy Nattiv, a 7-minute drama for 20th Century Fox Searchlight released in 2003 won numerous awards including the 2004 online short competition at Sundance Film Festival. It was the basis for the narrative film, Strangers, released in 2007. Tadmor’s second narrative feature film A Matter of Size, codirected with Sharon Maymon and released in 2009, earned critical acclaim. His 2014 film Magic Men was shown in the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival that year. His most recent film The Art of Waiting won four Israeli Academy Award nominations including Best Director, and has earned praise for its focus on infertility, a subject that was once taboo in Israeli society.
Asia
Q&A Discussion: Wednesday, November 18, 1:00 PM
Ruthy Pribar
Ruthy Pribar, (invited) an award-winning Israeli filmmaker, graduated from the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem in 2012. As a student, she won a scholarship from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation for her promise as a director. Her short student films Last Calls and The Caregiver were screened at many international film festivals, garnering numerous awards. She has participated in Rotterdam’s CineMart, and is an alumna of the Cannes Film Festival Residency Program. In addition to her work as a film director, she also works as an editor on both fiction and documentary films. Asia is her debut feature film, premiering online at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival and winning multiple awards, including Best Actress for Shira Haas and the Nora Ephron Prize for Pribar herself. Asia was also nominated for thirteen Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Leading and Supporting Actress.
Dr. Natasha Zaretsky
Dr. Natasha Zaretsky, a cultural anthropologist, teaches at New York University and is also a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers-Newark. Her research centers on human rights, genocide, the politics of memory in the Americas, the Jewish diaspora, and Latin American Studies. Her latest work focuses on memory and belonging among Soviet Jews in New York, and the future of Holocaust memory at a time of rising nationalism in Europe. She coedited Landscapes of Memory and Impunity, with Annette Levine, which examines the impact of the AMIA terrorist attack on Argentina’s Jewish community in 1994. Her most recent book, Acts of Repair: Justice, Truth, and the Politics of Memory in Argentina, explores memory and survival in the aftermath of genocide and political violence in Argentina. She is also currently completing a documentary film, 1000 Mondays, about the aftermath of the AMIA bombing in Argentina.
Aulcie
Q&A Discussion: Sunday, November 8 at 5:30 PM
Dani Menkin
Dani Menkin is an Israeli-American writer, director, and producer, who has been making films since 2005. A two-time Israeli Academy Award winner, his narrative and documentary films include Picture of His Life, On the Map, Dolphin Boy, 39 Pounds of Love, and Is That You? He is an internationally renowned speaker and film juror at festivals around the world, as well as a professor of film at universities in Israel and the United States. He is the cofounder of Hey Jude Productions, a Los Angeles-based film production company dedicated to telling positive, entertaining, and inspiring stories that better the world. Menkin is known for exploring the courage of the human spirit and presenting the heroes of his films in their larger contexts and in terms of their impact on the world.
Autonomies
Q&A Discussion: Monday, November 16 at 4:00 PM
Yaacov Yadgar
Dr. Yaacov Yadgar is the Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies at the University of Oxford. He has written extensively on Jewish identity, religion, politics, and secularism, and his current research focuses on religion and politics in Israel. He is the author of numerous books, including most recently, Sovereign Jews: Israel, Zionism, and Judaism, released in 2017, and Israel’s Jewish Identity Crisis: State and Politics in the Middle East, published this year. In 2006, Yadgar was the Schusterman Visiting Israeli Scholar at the Bildner Center.
Breaking Bread
Q&A Discussion: Tuesday, November 17 at 7:00 PM
Einat Admony
James Beard-nominated chef Einat Admony, known as the ultimate balaboosta ("perfect housewife" in Yiddish), is the chef and owner of Balaboosta, the fine dining Middle Eastern restaurant, and Taïm, the beloved casual falafel chain—both in New York City. Born and raised in Tel-Aviv, she served as a cook in the Israeli army before working for a time in European kitchens and ultimately landing in New York City more than fifteen years ago. A pillar of the international Israeli cooking community, her food tells an intricate story of strong immigrant roots as well as living the American Dream. She continues to innovate and inspire with elevated yet comforting homestyle cooking from her childhood. She is a two-time champion of Food Network’s Chopped and Throwdown! with Bobby Flay and has been featured by the New York Times, Bon Appetit, and others. She is the author of two cookbooks: Balaboosta and Shuk. In 2014, she was honored with the Great Immigrants Award from Carnegie Corporation of New York for exemplary contributions to American life.
Beth Elise Hawk
Beth Elise Hawk makes her directorial debut with the award-winning documentary film Breaking Bread. Her prior film projects include serving as executive producer for the MTV television series Eye Candy, based on the book by best-selling author, R. L. Stine, and producing the award-winning feature documentary Fan-Demanium, about fans’ experiences of the world’s biggest sporting event, the World Cup. She also coproduced the feature documentary I'm Rick James, a celebration of the man and his music. Before making the jump to the creative side, Hawk was a Business and Legal Affairs executive at Walt Disney Studios in its feature film department, where she oversaw projects for its Hollywood Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Touchstone labels, including such productions as High Fidelity and Mystery, Alaska.
Honeymood
Q&A Discussion: Friday, November 13, 12:45 PM
Talya Lavie
Award-winning Israeli writer and director Talya Lavie studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and the Sam Spiegel Film and Television School in Jerusalem. One of her student films, the critically-acclaimed short film The Substitute, played at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2006 and became the basis for her first debut feature film Zero Motivation. This Israeli blockbuster, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, won the festival’s Best Narrative Feature Award and the Nora Ephron Prize for a female writer or director who embodies the spirit of the legendary filmmaker. The film also broke Israeli box-office records of the previous two decades and won six Israeli Academy Awards, including two for Lavie herself for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Her latest film Honeymood premiered this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and has its New Jersey Premiere at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival.
Latter Day Jew
Q&A Discussion: Thursday, November 12 at 7:00 PM
H. Alan Scott
H. Alan Scott is a writer and comedian based in Los Angeles. He has appeared on The Jimmy Kimmel Show, Ellen, CNN, Fusion and MTV. He has written for TV Land, VICE, Fusion, OUT Magazine, Newsweek, and Nerdist. As a podcaster, he cohosts Out on the Lanai: A Golden Girls Podcast and You’re Making It Worse on Dan Harmon’s Starburns Industries network. Oprah said his name, and he survived cancer (in that order). He was the featured guest speaker at both screenings of Latter Day Jew at the 2019 Rutgers Jewish Film Festival and we are thrilled to have him back for our encore presentation of this remarkable film.
Mrs. G
Q&A Discussion: Sunday, November 15 at 7:00 PM
Keren Ben-Horin
Keren Ben-Horin is a fashion historian, curator, and author. Keren is the co-creator of the documentary film Mrs. G., adapted in part from her MA thesis on the life and work of Holocaust survivor Lea Gottlieb, founder of the global luxury brand Gottex. The film has been shown in over twenty film festivals around the world including Paris, Moscow, New York, and Toronto. Keren has curated several fashion exhibitions in New York and Israel and co-authored the fashion history survey She’s Got Legs: A History of Hemlines and Fashion (Schiffer, 2014). She is the editor of the book The Sweater: A History (Schiffer, 2016) and contributed an essay to the publication Fashion, Agency, and Empowerment (Bloomsbury, 2018). She is currently enrolled in the PhD program in US History at New York University where she studies the history of the fashion industry in New York.
My Name is Sara
Q&A Discussion: Sunday, November 22 at 7:00 PM
Stephen D. Smith
Dr. Stephen D. Smith, the Andrew J. and Erna Finci Viterbi Endowed Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education, holds the UNESCO Chair on Genocide Education. He is also Adjunct Professor of Religion at the University of Southern California. Dr. Smith is committed to making the testimony of survivors of the Holocaust and of other crimes against humanity a compelling voice for education and action. His leadership at the Institute is focused on finding strategies to optimize the effectiveness of the testimonies for education, research, and advocacy purposes. The Shoah Foundation produced the film My Name is Sara.
Nowhere in Africa
When HItler Stole Pink Rabbit
Q&A Discussion: Sunday, November 15 at Noon
Caroline Link
Filmmaker Caroline Link made history in 2001, when she became only the second woman in film history to win an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film for Nowhere in Africa. First shown in 2003 at the Rutgers Jewish Film Festival, this remarkable film, based on the novel by Stefanie Zweig, is featured again this year as a returning festival favorite. One of Germany’s most successful directors and story tellers, Link studied at the Munich Academy of Film and Television. Her first feature film in 1996, Beyond Silence, about the daughter of a deaf couple who falls in love with music, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Family, childhood, and coming of age are central themes throughout Link’s work, and carry through in her recent film adaptation of Judith Kerr’s classic novel, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, which deals with the refugee experience during the Nazi era. The film has become a German box-office hit and has received numerous awards and nominations including Best Youth Film at the Bavarian Film Awards and Best Children’s Film at the German Film Critics Association Awards.
The Rabbi Goes West
Q&A Discussion: Monday, November 16 at 7:00 PM
Amy Geller
Award-winning filmmaker Amy Geller has dedicated more than a decade and a half to producing films. Her work has been broadcast and screened in the United Sates and at prestigious film festivals around the world. Her productions include the PBS mini-series The War That Made America in 2005 and For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism in 2009. Her feature-length directorial debut The Guys Next Door, codirected by Allie Humenuk, was released in 2016 and has been winning jury prizes and audience awards at film festivals across the country. It was also broadcast on PBS's The World Channel in 2018. She has served as the artistic director of the Boston Jewish Film Festival, for which she received a Chai in the Hub Award for Jewish Leaders under 45, and she currently teaches film production courses at Boston University. The Rabbi Goes West, codirected with her husband Gerald Peary, was released in 2019.
Gerald Peary
Gerald Peary is the writer and director of two acclaimed feature documentaries, For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism in 2009, and Archie’s Betty, in 2015. Both played at film festivals, museums, and universities, and were televised on Public Television station WGBH-Boston. He was a veteran film critic for the Boston Phoenix and acted in the 2013 feature film, Computer Chess, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Currently, he writes reviews for the website The Arts Fuse and is the programmer of the Boston University Cinematheque.
Shared Legacies: The African American-Jewish Civil Rights Alliance
Q&A Discussion: Thursday, November 19, 7:00 PM
Dr. Shari Rogers
Dr. Shari Rogers, the director and producer of Shared Legacies, is a clinical psychologist. She is also the president and founder of Spill the Honey Foundation, a Michigan-based nonprofit committed to promoting human dignity as well as advancing public knowledge of the Holocaust and the civil rights movement through educational and artistic programs, sponsored initiatives, and strategic partnerships. Its film Shared Legacies shows the importance of the shared history and strength that flow from the Black-Jewish alliance and how the historic connections between these two communities can serve as a foundation for teaching tolerance of cultural differences, focusing public attention on present-day injustice, and encouraging young people to become global citizens. Rogers’ prior film projects include co-producing the PBS documentary, “Eli: Inspiring Future Generations,” which examines the extraordinary life of Eliezer Ayalon, a Holocaust survivor who became a Yad Vashem tour guide.
