sandra meyer - News - The Coastal Star2024-03-28T22:42:23Zhttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/sandra+meyerPay it Forward: Jewish film fest expands with new featureshttps://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/pay-it-forward-jewish-film-fest-expands-with-new-features2013-01-02T16:00:00.000Z2013-01-02T16:00:00.000ZDeborah Hartz-Seeleyhttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/DeborahHartzSeeley<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}7960420081,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960420081,original{{/staticFileLink}}" width="538" class="align-center" alt="7960420081?profile=original" /></a></p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><em>Bernie and Sandra Meyer of Highland Beach are co-chairs of the Jewish Film Festival. <b>File photo/The Coastal Star</b></em></p>
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<p>Now in its 23rd year, the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival boasts an impressive lineup with 39 films, documentaries and shorts that will be shown Jan. 17-27 throughout Palm Beach County. The festival is directed by Larry Ferber, a veteran television producer and three-time Emmy nominee.</p>
<p>Festival highlights include <i>A.K.A. Doc Pomus,</i> about the incredible life of a Brooklyn Jewish boy who composed many of the finest rock ’n’ roll and pop hits of the 1950s and ’60s; <i>400 Miles to Freedom</i>, a film that captures the heroic journey of a 2,500-year-old Jewish community that escaped persecution in the Ethiopian mountains after practicing Judaism became illegal; <i>Numbered</i>, which documents the emotional journeys of Holocaust survivors and the numbers they were assigned; and <i>Melting Away</i>, a film about a transgendered youth who reunites with his parents after being disowned.</p>
<p>But Sandra Meyer — the Highland Beach woman who serves as festival co-chair with her husband, Bernie — is most looking forward to showing <i>The Flat</i>, a true-life detective story that uncovers much more than the tangled roots of its maker’s family tree.</p>
<p>“It was riveting,” she said. “One never knows what they are going to find when breaking up the apartment of deceased family members. This family had lots of skeletons in their closet!”</p>
<p>Bernie Meyer, a sports enthusiast, is touting <i>Max Schmeling</i>, a film about the world’s heavyweight German boxer whom the Nazis tried to turn into an Aryan Superman.</p>
<p>New to the festival this year is the Promising Young Filmmaker Series, three short films created by students, to be featured at Cobb Downtown theaters and the Regal Delray. Matthew Baquero and Kelly Berger, local students at the Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach, produced a film titled <i>Marie Goldstein: Perspective of a Survivor</i>.</p>
<p>Also new this year is that four films will be presented in conjunction with Partnership 2gether, which connects Jewish communities outside Israel with ones located there. The partnership, created in 1995, is a program of the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County between the communities of the Tzahar region (Tzfat, Rosh Pina and Hatzor Haglilit) and the Greater Palm Beaches. Leading Israeli professors and journalists will be introducing films from the Cinematheque Theater in Rosh Pina. The partnership offers film festival attendees an intimate and unique view of Israeli life.</p>
<p>For opening night on Jan. 17, the festival will screen the Florida premiere of <i>Hava Nagila: The Movie</i>, at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts at 7 p.m. Special guest, 2012 Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman, will speak after the film. Raisman made a powerful statement when she dedicated her championship-winning floor routine to the music of <i>Hava Nagila</i> in memory of the Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.</p>
<p>This year also marks the first time the festival has selected a special honoree. Rick Stone, a leading Jewish community philanthropist and Palm Beach resident, will be the first distinguished with this honor for his remarkable achievements in the community.</p>
<p>General admission to opening night is $15. Screenings will be held at several venues, including Regal Delray 18 and Movies of Delray in Delray Beach; the Ross JCC in Boynton Beach; the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, the Norton Museum of Art and Tradition of the Palm Beaches, in West Palm Beach; and Cobb Downtown at the Gardens 16 and Temple Judea in Palm Beach Gardens.</p>
<p>For tickets, festival passes or a complete schedule of films, visit <a href="http://www.pbjff.org">www.pbjff.org</a>, call David Yalen at 736-7531 or email DavidY@jcconline.com. </p>
<p><i>— Staff report</i></p>
<p><i> </i></p></div>Coastal Stars: Highland Beach couple helps make world ‘a better place’https://thecoastalstar.com/profiles/blogs/coastal-stars-highland-beach2010-12-01T23:30:00.000Z2010-12-01T23:30:00.000ZScott Simmonshttps://thecoastalstar.com/members/ScottSimmons<div><p style="text-align:left;"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}7960313052,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="7960313052?profile=original" /></p>
<p><br /><br />By Scott Simmons<br /> <br />Walk away from a meeting with Sandra and Bernard Meyer, and you remember the laughter.<br />But behind the laughter is a formidable advocacy for the arts.<br />“If I could clone them, and if other arts organizations could clone them, the world would be a much better place,” says Karen Davis, artistic director of the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, which runs through Dec. 12.<br />The Meyers’ passion comes from a real love of the arts, and film.<br />“We have first-run films that we otherwise might not see in our area,” says Sandra Meyer from the couple’s expansive Highland Beach penthouse.<br />But Davis says the Meyers are a part of a larger picture.<br />“Sandy and Bernie are responsible for the expansion of the festival into South County,” she says of the Meyers’ dozen years or so of involvement in the film festival. <br />“They’re knowledgeable about films,” Davis says. “It’s relatively easy to write a check. “But it’s not so easy to be emotionally supportive of something like the film festival.”<br />The Meyers, who are on the film festival’s executive board, were born in Chicago. <br />Sandra Meyer was a teacher and Bernard Meyer, who is CEO of Duray Fluorescent Manufacturing Co., jokes that he has had “one job for 50 years.” Lighting manufactured by his company has been used in such films as Pulp Fiction and Natural Born Killers. He is very proud that his son is part of the third generation in the company, with 25 years of involvement.<br />“Only 12 percent of family-owned companies last to a third generation,” Bernard Meyer says with a laugh. “That’s how I can enjoy the good life in Florida.”<br />Typically, says Davis, a wife is interested in the arts and her husband follows along. But with the Meyers, the passion is equal.<br />“What surprises so many people is that Bernie and I are a team when it comes to supporting the arts,” writes Sandra Meyer. “It is not just the woman who is ‘into’ it.”<br />And it’s not just the parents, either. The Meyers’ son and daughter are interested in the arts — their son is a docent for architectural tours of Chicago.<br />And the three grandchildren?<br />“Our granddaughter pretends to serve pop-art drinks,” says Sandra Meyer of the glass sculptures that adorn the bar of their Highland Beach home. “But all her friends are poor tippers,” Bernard Meyer adds. <br />The Meyers still have an apartment in the Windy City. And like their home in Highland Beach, it is packed with art, specifically glass sculptures. <br />Bernard Meyer helps lead private tours of the apartment through the International Expositions of Sculpture Objects & Functional Art, or SOFA. And the couple will lend works to the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for an exhibition in 2012 to mark the 50th anniversary of glass art. <br />It’s the newness of glass art that makes it all the more interesting for the Meyers.<br />“What could be more 21st century?” asks Sandra Meyer.<br />“You form all these relationships because all the glass artists are still alive,” says Bernard Meyer. “You form friendships with them.”<br />The Meyers have been collecting for 10 years now, and Bernard Meyer concedes, “it has become an addiction.”<br />When they designed their Highland Beach home, the Meyers made sure to include niches and coves into which they could place art — even the bathrooms contain glass sculptures. And they like the way the works evolve as the sunlight changes throughout the day.<br />That’s one of the best parts of living in South Florida, “where it’s 85 degrees in January,” Bernard Meyer says, and stress-free.<br />For Sandra Meyer, “the architecture in Florida is fascinating. I go on as many tours as I can. When you’re in Boca, you know you’re in Boca. It’s the same with Palm Beach — two distinct flavors.” She says she also loves Miami Beach and its Art Deco architecture.<br />Sandra Meyer says the couple loves South Florida, but “we would like to see more culture down here.”<br />It’s not quite the same as the Windy City.<br />“There are 20 theaters within 5 miles of our apartment in Chicago,” Bernard Meyer says. “You might see John Malkovich standing outside smoking a cigarette.”<br />While you may not see Malkovich enjoying a smoke outside a theater, there are more opportunities to see art down here, courtesy of the Meyers. They have been involved with the Boca Raton Museum of Art, and have led private tours of their collection.<br />And there is the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival.<br />This year, the Meyers are sponsoring Saviors in the Night, based on the memoir of a German Holocaust survivor (it screens at 7:20 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Regal Delray 18). And you can bet the Meyers probably will be there.<br />“The Meyers are at almost every one of the Delray Beach films, says festival artistic director Davis. “They are passionate about films.”<br />Sandra Meyer is thrilled that the festival is gaining international acclaim.<br />“Our festival is so well-known that important film distributors seek us out, such as Disney/Miramax with The Debt, starring Helen Mirren, to assist them in launching new films,” she writes.<br />The film festival’s Davis is grateful for that enthusiasm.<br />“They have strong ideas, but don’t second-guess. They are the perfect sponsors,” she says. “They give money, talk up the film festival, are so supportive and don’t micromanage and are so incredibly generous.”<br />And the laughter doesn’t hurt, either.<br />“They’re just always so upbeat. And positive. And they’re so warm,” Davis says. “Sandy and Bernie are the best of that.” <br /><br />The Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival runs through Dec. 12. In southern Palm Beach County, screenings are at the Regal Delray 18, 1660 S. Federal Highway, Delray Beach, and at the Movies of Delray, 7421 W. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach. Tickets are $10 (evenings) and $8 (matinees). For schedules, log on to <a href="http://www.pbjff.org">www.pbjff.org</a>. <br /><br /></p></div>