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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
Born
In Buenos Aires
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
Braids
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
Camera
Obscura La
Camara Oscura
Argentina,
2008, 86 minutes, color/B&W
Spanish & Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed By María Victoria Menis
35mm DVD
A
lyrical, inventive new film from award-winning, film festival favorite director
María Victoria Menis. At the end of the 19th century, Gertrudis grows
into her role as the ugly duckling in a colony of Argentinean Jews until
she meets a nomadic photographer whose uncompromising vision allows her
to see herself for the first time. More
Expulsion
and Memory: Descendants of The Hidden Jews
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
Father's
Footsteps Comme
Ton Pére
France/Israel,
2007, 95 minutes, color
French & Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Marco Carmel
DVD
In
the early 1970s, the Maimons, a rambunctious but tight knit Tunisian-Israeli
family, settle in Paris seeking adventure and fortune. Israeli-French filmmaker
Marco Carmel draws on events from his own childhood in this unusual coming
of age story. Starring French celebrity actor/humorist Gad Elmaleh. More
Fiestaremos!
Judy
Frankel and the Sephardic Music Tradition
USA,
2008, 30 minutes, color
English with songs in Ladino
Directed
by Kathleen Regan
DVD
Judy Frankel was one of the leading collectors and practitioners of
Sephardic folk music. Fiestaremos! includes interviews with Frankel,
musical excerpts and performances in an intimate look at Frankel and Sephardic
music and songs. More
Girona:
The Mother of Israel, The Jews of Catalonia
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
I
Miss the Sun
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
Island
of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles
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
Jews of the
Spanish Homeland
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
A
Kiss To This Land
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
The
Last Jews of Libya
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
The Last Marranos Les
derniers Marranes
France, 1991, 64 minutes, color
Portuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Frédéric Brenner and Stan Neumann
DVD
Despite
being forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497 many of the Jews of Portugal
continued to practice Judaism in secret. Today, residents of the village
of Belmonte practice an amalgam of Christian and Jewish rituals. More
Legado
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
Nana:
Un Portrait
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
Next
Year in... Argentina El
Año que Viene en... Argentina
Israel, 2005, 62 minutes, Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky
DVD
Argentinean-born Israeli filmmakers Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky
met in Buenos Aires before both men immigrated to Israel. 30 years later,
they take up the question of Jewish-Argentine history, identity and attitudes
toward Israel. More
Pillar
of Salt
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
Rhodes
Forever
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
Tijuana
Jews
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
Underdogs:
A War Movie
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
The
Yidishe Gauchos
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
Back to Top
For Public Performance Rental Only
The
House on Chelouche Street
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
I
Love You, Rosa
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
Kazablan
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
