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Baklava and The Meaning of Life
USA, 1999, 23 minutes, color
Directed by Jamil Simon
DVD VHS
Where does one find the meaning of life? Perhaps it lies in the kitchen of sculptor Helene Simon, where she shows us how to make her world famous Baklava. More
USA, 2003, 40 minutes, color
Directed by Beth Toni Kruvant
DVD VHS
This documentary provides personal insight and understanding into the difficult situation faced by the Jews of Argentina during the recent economic and political crisis. More
Israel, 1989, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Yitzhak Halutzi
16mm DVD
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, 1991, 26 minutes, color
French, Arabic, and Hebrew with Englsh subtitles
Producer: Izza Genini
16mm VHS
The matrux is a unique form of Moroccan-Jewish music, fusing Hebrew and Arabic texts. The music and lyrics are derived from Andalusian traditions of music and poetry, reflecting the centuries-old link between Jewish and Muslim societies. More
Canada, 1996, color, 60 minutes
Directed by Simcha Jacobovici and Roger Pyke
DVD
Shot on location in Spain, Portugal, Israel, Canada and the United States, this documentary traces the descendants of Spanish Jews who were forced to either flee or convert to Catholicism after Queen Isabella's edict of 1492. More
USA, 1989, 30 minutes, color
Directed by Patricia Giniger Snyder
DVD
This video documents Jewish daily life in Girona, a city in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia, from its "Golden Age" in the middle ages through the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492 and up to the present day. More
USA, 1984, 20 minutes, color
Directed by Mary Halawani
16mm DVD VHS
Halawani profiles her grandmother, Rosette Hakim, the daughter of a prominent Egyptian-Jewish family who fled her homeland in 1959 when Egyptian anti-Zionist sentiments increased and when hundreds of Jews, suspected of pro-Communist activities, were interned in detention camps. More
UK, 1987, 96 minutes, color
Directed by Jim Goddard
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
USA, 1995, 55 minutes, color
English, Italian, French & Ladino w/ English subtitles
Directed by Gregori Viens
DVD
This film visits the Los Angeles community of “Rhodeslis”—Jews who lived on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes from 1492 to World War II—who have passed down their traditions, food, songs, rituals, and their medieval Ladino Spanish dialect to their American-born descendants. More
Restored by NCJF
Spain, 1929, 13 minutes, B&W, silent
Produced by Ernesto Giménez Caballero
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
The documentary provides a rare glimpse of Sephardic communities in Salonika, Constantinople, Yugoslavia, and Romania as well as former centers of Jewish life in Spain. More
Mexico, 1995, 93 minutes, color
Spanish with English subtitles (also available in Spanish and French versions)
Directed by Daniel Goldberg
35mm 16mm DVD
In exploring the history of Jewish immigration to Mexico, this film presents fragments of memories and oral histories together with vivid depiction of Jews in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. More
USA, 2007, 50 minutes, color
Directed by Vivienne Roumani-Denn
Narrated by Isabella Rossellini
DVD
The story of the final days of a centuries-old North African Sephardic Jewish community through the lives of the Roumani family, residents of Benghazi, Libya, for hundreds of years. More
Argentina, 2004, 72 minutes, color
Spanish & Yiddish w/ English subtitles
Directed by Vivián Imar & Marcelo Trotta
DVD
Our narrator was 10 when she stepped off the boat in Moisesville, the first Jewish settlement in Argentina. Her account spans 80 year. More
USA, 1972, 23 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Directed by Jamil Simon
16mm DVD VHS
80 year-old Louise Zilkha reminisces about her traditional Jewish upbringing in Baghdad, Iraq, the often turbulent coexistence of Iraqi Jews and Moslems, and the persecution that led her family on a journey from Iraq to Beirut, to Cairo, and finally, to New York. 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
France, 1994, 50 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Directed by Izza Genini
VHS
In south Marrakesh amidst the olive groves lies the village of Oulad Moumen where Habiba and Yossef Edery began their family in the 1920s. More
Belgium, 1995, 60 minutes, color/b&w
Spanish, French, Italian and Greek with English subtitles
Directed by Diane Perelsztejn
16mm DVD VHS
Portrait of the Jews of Rhodes, whose ancestors found refuge there after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. For five centuries, Jews lived in Rhodes until their community was destroyed during World War II. More
France, 1991, 26 minutes, color
French, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Izza Genini
VHS
Listen to and experience the beautiful Moroccan-Jewish songs of Shabbat with Moroccan Rabbi Chaim Louk and his cantors in the Buffault Synagogue in Paris.
USA, 2005, 52 minutes, color
Directed by Issac Artenstein
DVD VHS
Throughout the early-20th century, thousands of Jews sailed to America; some arrived in Mexico, and a small group made their way north to Tijuana. Tijuana Jews is a personal exploration of this unique community, which blended Jewish and Mexican cultures and customs. More
Israel, 1996, 86 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Doron Tsabori & Rino Zror
VHS
Soccer mania hits 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, exacerbating conflicts between rich and poor. More
USA, 1989, 28 minutes, color/b&w
Spanish with English subtitles (Spanish language version also available)
Directed by Mark Freeman; Narrated by Eli Wallach
DVD VHS
At the end of the 19th century, some East European Jews fleeing persecution and pogroms emigrated to Argentina. There, many became ranchers and farmers, adapting a life on the pampas alongside the tough Argentine cowboys, the gauchos. More
For Public Performance Rental Only
Israel, 1973, 115 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by 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
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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