Bernie and Sandra Meyer of Highland Beach are co-chairs of the Jewish Film Festival. File photo/The Coastal Star
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.
Festival highlights include A.K.A. Doc Pomus, 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; 400 Miles to Freedom, 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; Numbered, which documents the emotional journeys of Holocaust survivors and the numbers they were assigned; and Melting Away, a film about a transgendered youth who reunites with his parents after being disowned.
But Sandra Meyer — the Highland Beach woman who serves as festival co-chair with her husband, Bernie — is most looking forward to showing The Flat, a true-life detective story that uncovers much more than the tangled roots of its maker’s family tree.
“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!”
Bernie Meyer, a sports enthusiast, is touting Max Schmeling, a film about the world’s heavyweight German boxer whom the Nazis tried to turn into an Aryan Superman.
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 Marie Goldstein: Perspective of a Survivor.
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.
For opening night on Jan. 17, the festival will screen the Florida premiere of Hava Nagila: The Movie, 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 Hava Nagila in memory of the Israeli athletes slain at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.
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.
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.
For tickets, festival passes or a complete schedule of films, visit www.pbjff.org, call David Yalen at 736-7531 or email DavidY@jcconline.com.
— Staff report
Comments