Brandeis faculty featured in National Center for Jewish Film's 2017 festival

Film screenings and panel talks are being held across the Boston area as part of the National Center for Jewish Film’s 2017 festival, including discussions featuring Brandeis faculty and events sponsored by university departments.

Brandeis Professors Antony Polonsky, Thomas Doherty, Ilan Troen and Shula Reinharz will be featured speakers at the festival, which runs from May 4 to May 21 and includes many local and regional premieres.

The following screenings will feature discussions with Brandeis faculty:

• “Ben-Gurion, Epilogue,” Thursday, May 4, at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. It is 1968, the Founding Father of Israel is 82 and five years out of office. Secluded in his desert home at Sde Boker in the Negev, Ben-Gurion sat for the recently discovered interview that forms the spine of this documentary. This is the New England premiere of the film and it will be followed by a discussion with Director Yariv Mozer and Ilan Troen, the Karl, Harry and Helen Stoll Professor of Israel Studies and the founding director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University.
• “Fanny’s Journey” (Le voyage de Fanny), Thursday, May 11, at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This award-winning film tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who leads a band of orphans through Nazi-occupied Europe to the Swiss border in 1943. Screening will be followed by a discussion with Shula Reinharz, Jacob S. Potofsky Professor of Sociology, Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and Director of the Women's Studies Research Center.
• “Paradise” (Рай), Wednesday, May 10 at 6:30 p.m. at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This film offers an unflinching look at the Holocaust from multiple perspectives, including unflinching look on the Holocaust, including a Russian women living in Paris and working for the resistance, a French police chief and Nazi collaborator and a young SS officer. Ensuing discussion with Professor Emeritus of Holocaust Studies Antony Polonsky.
• “To Be or Not to Be,” Tuesday, May 16, 7:00 p.m. at Coolidge Corner Theatre, Brookline. Jack Benny and Carole Lombard star in this black humor masterpiece that is celebrating its 75th anniversary. A Q and A with Professor of American Studies Tom Doherty will follow the screening.

The following Brandeis institutes, departments and centers are co-sponsoring and co-presenting events: The Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness, Center for German and European Studies, Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, Brandeis Alumni and Friends, Brandeis National Committee, Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, and the American Studies Program.

Sharon Pucker Rivo, adjunct associate professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the National Center for Jewish Film and will also speak at most festival events. For more information, including a full schedule of events, visit the festival's website.