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Altalena
Israel, 1994, 53 min, color/b&w
English & Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ilana Tsur
DVD VHS
In 1948, the ship Altalena arrived in Israel carrying 930 World War II refugees and ammunition amassed by the irgun in direct violation of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's new military chain-of-command. Ben Gurion gave an order to shell the ship, forcing Jews to fire on Jews and almost sparking a civil war. More
Israel, 2004, 47 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Adi Japhet Fuchs
DVD VHS
Imagination, memories, and fiction combine in this film about the life and world of renowned Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld. The film joins the author on his daily pilgrimages to the Jerusalem café, Anna Ticho House. More
Israel, 2001, 48 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Directors: Moish Goldberg & Yonatan Gurfinkel
DVD VHS
This is a story of a town square—the Kings of Israel Square, known as Rabin Square. When a controversial plan to convert the square into a parking lot is discovered, the relevance and importance of the square are heightened. More
Israel, 1999, 50 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ayelet Bargur
DVD VHS
Based on the personal experience of the director, this award-winning feature film focuses on one family waiting to hear news of a son who may be involved in a terrorist incident. More
Israel, 2000, 50 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ayelet Bargur
DVD VHS
Four young men, all commanders in the same Israeli Defense Force Golan Heights paratrooper unit, were killed over a 22-month period from 1995 to 1997. Their families, realizing they all suffer a common fate, agree to meet and share their stories. More
Palestine, 1935, 50 min, b&w
Music Only
Director: Helmar Lerski
35mm VHS
This landmark documentary celebrates the pioneering labors of early Jewish settlers in Palestine, recording the technological and agricultural accomplishments of the pioneers and the idea of a socialist Jewish state.
Israel, 2001, 87 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director/Writer: Michal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD VHS
Played by filmmaker Michal Bat-Adam, Aya is a woman who, since early childhood, has been driven by her father’s ambition to see her become successful. Now she is shooting a film and fragments of dreams and fantasy alternate with reality... More
Israel, 2000, 54 min, color/b&w
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Writer/Director: Ruth Walk; Producer: Yael Perlov
DVD VHS
A moving portrait of Israel Becker, a founder of the first professional Yiddish theatrical company in post-war Germany and writer and star of the 1946 autobiographic feature film Long is the Road (restored by NCJF), the first feature to portray the Holocaust from a Jewish point of view. More
France, 1999, 55 min, color/b&w
Hebrew & French w/ English subtitles
Director: Alex Szalat
16mm VHS
Born near Kiev in 1882, Yakov Ben Dov came to Jerusalem from the Ukraine in 1907 with little more than a still camera to his name. He became one of the most accomplished photographers and filmmakers of his time. More
Israel, 1993, 37 min, color
Hebrew w/ English Subtitle
Director: Arnon Goldfinger
DVD VHS
Benny Zinger presents slide shows at weddings until one day, while preparing a show for a couple, he falls in love with the bride. More
Israel, 1993, 93 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Aner Preminger
35mm DVD VHS
Based on a novel by Lilly Perry Amitai, this award-winning film takes a bittersweet look at the life of a young Israeli woman. Trying to distance herself from her Holocaust survivor parents and ex-boyfriend, pianist Micki Stav moves out of her parents' house in search of her own identity. More
Israel, 1991, 85 min, color/b&w
German, English, Swedish & Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Directors: Naomi Ben Natan & Leora Kamenetzy
16mm DVD VHS
A penetrating look at the lives of three Jewish women writers: Cordelia Edvardson, Angelika Schrobsdorff, and Inge Deutschkron. All three grew up in pre-war Berlin until Nazi racial laws shattered their lives, and eventually all three made their way to Israel. More
Israel, 1989, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Yitzhak Halutzi
16mm VHS
Based on a true story, Braids tells the tale of So'ad, 14 year old Jewish girl imprisoned by the Iraqi government in 1947 for her participation in the Zionist movement. More
France, 1998, 90 min, color
Hebrew w/ English Subtitles
Director: Tzipi Trope
35mm VHS
In this the first Israeli feature film to deal with the subject of battered women. Nava, a social worker, shares the painful secret of her suffering with Jania, another woman victimized by her husband and the two form a healing bond. More
USA, 1934, 66 min, b&w Documentary
English and Yiddish language versions available
Director: A.J. Bloome for Palestine-American Film Co.
16mm VHS
A rare, early documentary on Palestine, featuring the last appearance of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. More
Israel, 1996, 50 min, b&w
English
Director: Yaakov Gross
DVD
This historic document of Palestine during the tumultuous 1920s includes footage from three rare films by Ya'akov Ben Dov, the father of Hebrew cinema, preserved in a joint project by the National Center for Jewish Film and the Israel Film Archive. More
Russia, 1992, 27 min, b&w
Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Arkadiy Yakhnis
35mm DVD
This award-winning documentary chronicles a 90-year old man’s emigration to Israel from his native shtetl in Bessabaria. This beautifully photographed film poetically captures the end of a rich Jewish heritage in Russia. More
Israel, 2006, 130 min, color
English Narration, Hebrew & Arabic w/ English subtitles
Director:Eli Cohen
DVD
It's not the longest, nor the most lethal, but it's certainly the most debated fence in the world today. The barrier being built between Israel and Palestine: will it create better neighbors or a wound that won't heal? More
Israel, 2000, 60 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Esther Dar; Producer: Noemi Ben Natan Schory
DVD VHS
Four women—Selma Dejani, a Palestinian Moslem; Wadad Shihade, a Palestinian Christian; Olga Belkind, a Jew from a prominent Zionist family; and Sharona Aharon, a Jew from Tel Aviv—roommates at an Anglican boarding school in Jerusalem in 1939, meet 50 years later for a reunion. More
Israel, 1992, 34 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ayelet Menahemi
VHS
This satire addresses one of the most difficult and serious issues facing Israeli women today. When a policewoman suddenly recognizes her husband who has been AWOL for years, she takes hostages, threatening to kill them if she is not issued a divorce immediately.
Restored by NCJF
Germany, 1936, 48 min, b&w
Silent w/ German & English intertitles
Produced by the German Zionist Union
DVD VHS
Made in 1936 in an effort to inspire German Jews under Nazi rule to make aliyah to Palestine, this documentary about the earliest period of Zionist history is a singular celluloid artifact. More
Israel, 1987, 82 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Amos Guttman
35mm VHS
Adapted from Yoram Kaniuk's best-selling novel, this heart-rending love story unfolds during the siege of Jerusalem in 1948. A young and beautiful volunteer nurse is drawn to the enigmatic Himmo, a mortally wounded and mutilated soldier who cannot speak or move. More
Israel, 1995, 34 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Assaf Bernstein
DVD VHS
This fiction film spoofs tours of the "holy" sites of Israel. Join Jonah and his unwitting group of tourists on an insane two-day tour of Tel Aviv. More
Israel, 2001, 59 min, color
English
DVD VHS
Inspired by the visit of Pope John Paul II to Israel in the year 2000, this film assesses and reflects on the changes that have occurred in the often difficult and turbulent relationship that has existed for centuries between Jews and Christians. More
USA, 1996, 75 min, color VHS
Director: Lynn Feinerman
VHS
Profiling Israelis and Palestinians who have devoted their lives to achieving non-violence and coexistence in the Middle East, this film presents a perspective not seen in television news. More
UK, 1987, 96 minutes, color
Directed by Jim Goddard
16mm DVD VHS
This riveting film tells the incredible but true story of Elie Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew and top Israeli intelligence recruit whose obsession with his mission as a double agent drove him to his death. More
Israel, 2000, 55 min, color
Hebrew w/ English Subtitles
Directors: Izzy Abrahami & Erga Netz
DVD VHS
Can you grasp the complexities, the tribulation, and the dreams of Israel by its music? This film features 20 singers, bands, and choruses, from rock to blues, folk, and rap. More
Palestine, 1935, 57 min, b&w
English & Hebrew Rare Footage
Director: Juda Leman for Fox Movietone Film of the Urim Palestine Film Company
DVD VHS
This is one of Palestine's earliest sound films and part of a larger campaign to encourage settlement and investment in "the Jewish homeland." The film emphasizes secular accomplishments and portrays Zionist settlers with considerable cinematographic and editorial skill.
Israel, 2001, 52 min, color Documentary
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director/Producer: Shosh Shlam
VHS
After the Holocaust, survivors who had nowhere else to go or were emotionally shattered by their experiences ended up in a mental hospital in Israel. This moving documentary follows estranged daughters as they visit mothers they have not seen in decades. More
USA, 2000, 53 min, color Documentary
English & Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Lilach Dekel
DVD VHS
Director Dekel’s grandmother, along with other young idealists from Eastern Europe, immigrated to Palestine in the 1920s resolved to build the kibbutz movement. Now in their 80s and 90s, these pioneer women offer candid evaluations of the their youthful challenges and sacrifices. More
Israel, 1998, 90 min, color Feature Film
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Michal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD VHS
The beautiful Michal Zuaratz stars as a young female photographer infatuated with a stranger whose image she accidentally captures on film. More
Israel, 2000, 90 min, color Documentary
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: David Fisher
35mm VHS
Bittersweet, honest, and touchingly funny, this multi-award-winning film chronicles Fisher’s attempt to solve a family mystery—uniting his troubled family in the process. More
Israel, 1996, 51 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Yael Kipper Zarezhky
VHS
A 1996 terrorist bombing in Tel Aviv left 27-year-old Maytal Lederman critically injured and took the life of her brother Asaf. This documentary follows Maytal over a period of eight months in an Israeli rehabilitation hospital, as she struggles to cope with her loss and rebuild her life. More
USA, 2003, 36 min, color
Director: Dan Akiba
DVD VHS
After his brother’s radical conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Akiba found it increasingly difficult to remember the brother he once knew. In an effort to better understand his brother’s new life, Akiba documented his family’s trip to Israel in 2001 to attend his brother’s wedding. More
Israel, 2003, 75 min, color Documentary
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Directors: David Ofek, Ron Rotem & Elinor Kowarsky
DVD VHS
In June 2002, a bus on its way from Tel Aviv to Tiberius, was bombed and 17 people were killed. Of the dead, 16 were identified. Number 17 wasn’t. The filmmakers document the search to identity the man no one identified as missing. More
Israel, 1995, 98 min, color/b&w
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Aner Preminger
VHS
This film takes us on two journeys: the first to Vienna, where Preminger's father lived as a child under Nazi occupation; the second, to Palestine where he became a member of the first Knesset, joined the Palestine Communist Party, and established the Hebrew Communist Party. More
Israel, 1976, 57 min, color
Director: Herb Krosney
16mm DVD VHS
Orthodox Jews, Jewish atheists, Russian immigrants, and kibbutzniks discuss their views on “who is a Jew.” Interviewees include Abba Eban, Rabbi Goren, Yigal Alon, and David Ben-Gurion. More
Israel, 1980, 58 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Chaim Shiran
16mm DVD
Based on the autobiographical novel by sociologist Albert Memmi, this feature film about an expressive and intelligent 13-year old boy captures the cultural richness and social complexity of a Jewish boy's life in Tunisia, North Africa. More
Israel, 1996, 47 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ran Kotzer
DVD VHS
An intimate and personal documentary film in which an Israeli man shares his story of being gay and HIV positive. More
Israel, 1998, 56 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Dina Zvi-Riklis
DVD VHS
In this feature film, Yael and Shlomit, two secular, free-spirited women, share a flat in Tel Aviv. Their high rent forces them to take in a third roommate, Malka, an enigmatic ultra-orthodox woman with a secret. More
Israel, 1998, 52 min, color
Hebrew & Arabic w/ English subtitles
Director/Scriptwriter: Ilan Yagoda
VHS
The Jewish settlers of Kibbutz Megido and the Arab villagers of Lajun appear like two entirely different groups separated one from the other. Yagoda, who served in Megido during his military service, returns to meet the refugees of the past, Jews and Arabs tied to the same plot of land. More
Israel, 1998, 51 min, color
Director/Producer: Paula Weiman-Kelman
DVD VHS
In this intimate documentary portrait, Alice Shalvi shares her thoughts and memories of her public and private life, from her childhood in Essen to her present-day success as a leading Israeli scholar, feminist, and peace activist. More
Israel, 2002, 90 min, color
English & Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Eli Cohen
35mm DVD VHS
Cohen takes an elliptical approach in telling the story of Pinchas Rutenberg, a visionary, complex, and larger-than-life figure, who, amongst other things, brought electricity to Jewish Palestine in the early 20th century by building a hydroelectric power station in Nahararyim. More
Israel, 1995, 14 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Udi Ben-Arie
16mm DVD
An Israeli reserve soldier on watch at a remote post along the Israeli-Jordanian border finds a Jordanian soldier who is bored to death just like him. More
Israel, 1997, 35 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD VHS
An elderly man's anxiety in the face of loneliness and death fades and unresolved familial conflicts disappear for a few moments of grace when his son bathes him in the shower for the last time.
Israel, 30 min, color
Dutch, English & Hebrew w/ English Subtitles
Directors: Izzy Abrahami & Erga Netz
DVD
Mrs. Hans Snoek, a 90-year old Dutch dancer, famous in The Netherlands as the founder of several dance companies, discusses a little-known episode from her past; during World War II she hid Jews in her Amsterdam home. More
USA/Hungary, 2005, 45 min, color/b&w
English, Hungarian & Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Nicole Opper
DVD VHS
Hoping to rescue victims of the Holocaust, 23-year old Hannah Senesh left the Palestine kibbutz she had helped to build and parachuted into her native Hungary. Instead, she was imprisoned and killed. More
Israel, 1991, 26 min, color/b&w
Hebrew & Yiddish w/ English subtitles
Director: Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD VHS
While saying goodbye to his son and grandchildren who are leaving Israel, Yackov remembers when, as a child, he also said goodbye to his family in Poland in 1937, not realizing that he would never see them again. More
USA, 1978, 60 min, color
Director: Herbert Dorfman
16mm DVD VHS
Join jazz saxophone virtuoso Stan Getz on his 1977 three-week tour of Israel. Getz jams with local musicians, including a Kurdish drummer, an Arab quartet, a Hassidic wedding band, and a Yemenite dance troupe, adapting his unique style to the various ethnic sounds of Israel. More
Canada, 2001, 90 min, color/b&w
Director: Simcha Jacobovici
16mm VHS
In 1941, the Struma, a boat carrying nearly 800 Romanian-Jewish refugees bound for Palestine, found themselves stranded when the boat’s engine failed in Istanbul, where it waited while Turkey, under pressure from the British deliberated the passengers' fate. More
Israel, 1995, 50 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Ori Inbar
VHS
A penetrating documentary about the Golan Heights in which the director follows five men during their one-month reserve duty along the border and documents their evaluation of the possible withdrawl from the Golan Heights.
Israel, 1990, 87 min, color
Director: Ruth Beckermann
VHS
In this documentary road movie, Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann records the diverse views and activities of Israelis and Arabs as she travels along the route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. More
Israel, 1996, 40 min, color/b&w
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Zolton Terner
DVD VHS
From 1941 through 1944, 300,000 Jews were killed at the hands of Rumanian officials in Transnistria, an area of southern Ukraine bordering Rumania that has become know as the "Forgotten Cemetery." More
Israel, 1996, 86 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Directors: Doron Tsabori & Rino Zror
VHS
Soccer mania hits Beit She'an, a small working-class Israeli town near the Jordanian border, when the local team prepares for their last crucial game of the season, against the rich, national champions from Haifa... More
USA, 27 min, b&w
Director: Lazar Dunner
VHS
This documentary biography of Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, incorporates documentary film footage, sketches, and still photographs.
Israel, 1999, 73 min, color
Hebrew & Arabic w/ English subtitles
Directors: Noit Geva & Dan Geva
VHS
The personal testimony of 12 people who survived the the 1929 Hebron massacre. Geva's grandmother recorded what she witnessed in a journal entry entitled "What I Saw in Hebron." More
Israel, 1991, 90 min, color
Hebrew, English, French & Russian w/ English subtitles
Director: Eli Cohen
16mm VHS
At the beginning of the 20th century, a language war raged in Palestine among Yiddish, Russian, French, German, English, and Hebrew, a language barely spoken for 2000 years. This feature film tells the dramatic life story of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who championed the cause of modern Hebrew. More
Israel/Germany, 1989, 135 min, color
Yiddish w/ English subtitles
Directed by Henryk M. Broder & Frans van der Meulen
16mm DVD VHS
The state of Yiddish culture in Israel is examined, from Socialist Bundists in Tel Aviv to the Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, and all the people, poets, singers, revolutionaries, journalists, and actors in between for whom Yiddish is a living language in the midst of Hebrew. More
For Public Performance Rental Only
Israel, 1976, 28 min, color/b&w Documentary
Director/Producer/Writer: Mark Dolgoy
16mm
This hardhitting film documents the often-unrecognized suffering of Jews in the Arab lands, historically and at present, and the hardships that have been endured by Jewish refugees fleeing those lands.
Palestine, 1934, 10 min, b&w
Hebrew (w/ English translation sheet)
Produced by Davidoff Newsreel Company
16mm
This newsreel segment depicts the first voyage of a Polish ocean liner to Palestine in 1934, including its departure, voyage, and the urban vistas of Haifa and Tel Aviv, which greeted its arrival.
Israel, 2006, 86 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Written & Directed by Hanan Peled
35mm
It’s Tel Aviv in 1960 and ten year old Hilik knows his goal in life is to make his parents happy. This critically acclaimed coming-of-age story beautifully captures mid-century Israel and the peculiarities of growing up a child of Holocaust survivors. More
Israel, 1996, 90 min, color
Hebrew w/ English Subtitles
Director: Igal Bursztyn
35mm
What would happen if philosopher Baruch Spinoza lived in an apartment house in Hulon? Everlasting Joy confronts the great rationalist philosopher and excommunicated Jew with the vicissitudes of modern Jewish life in Israel. More
UK, 1971, 52 min, b&w/color Documentary
A film report by Alan Hart for the BBC
16mm
A close-up documentary portrait of one of the century's outstanding women and an illustrated account of the dramatic events in which she was a leading protagonist.
USA, 1917, 4 1/2 min, b&w, silent Documentary Short
Produced by Conquest Pictures
16mm
This historic and rare footage of Palestine focuses on the holy Christian and Jewish sites of Jerusalem.
Israel, 1973, 115 min, color Feature Film
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Moshe Mizrahi
16mm
This Academy Award-nominated feature focuses on Sami, a teenager from a newly-arrived, poor Sephardic family living in the slums of Palestine during the turbulent last days of the British Mandate. More
Israel, 1972, 84 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Moshe Mizrachi
16mm
Orthodox law requires Rosa to marry her late husband's only brother, Nissim. But Nissim is only eleven years old. Rosa becomes Nissim's guardian, and over the years the pair's relationship matures from affection to desire. More
Israel, 1973, 95 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Menahem Golan
16mm
This Israeli West Side Story unfolds when Kazablan, a dark-skinned Sephardic Jew, takes time out from hassling the poverty-stricken tenants of the Jaffa ghetto to court the fair-skinned Rachel, an Ashkenazi Jew. More
Israel, 1977, 126 min, color
Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Director: Menahem Golan
16mm
This feature film is a stunning retelling of the famed 4 July 1976 raid by Israeli commandos to rescue 104 passengers from a hijacked plane grounded in Entebbe, Uganda, in Africa.
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
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