The National Center for Jewish Film announces Jewishfilm.2008

WALTHAM, Mass. – The National Center for Jewish Film and Brandeis University in cooperation with The Consulate General of Israel to New England will present "Jewishfilm.2008 The National Center For Jewish Film’s 11th Annual Film Festival" from March 29 – April 13, 2008. The festival will take place at the Wasserman Cinematheque at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., with one screening each at the Harvard Film Archive and The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston.

Jewishfilm.2008 presents 10 films and two shorts over 13 programs. All films are New England premieres. Films hail from five countries: Israel, Germany, France, Sweden, and USA. Jewishfilm.2008 will host more than a dozen discussants and special guests, including four visiting filmmakers.

Festival Highlights:
And Along Come Tourists, a critically-acclaimed feature film (Cannes Film Festival 2007) about a young German looking for life in the shadow of Auschwitz, will screen at Harvard Film Archive (April 4) and Wasserman Cinematheque at Brandeis (April 6). Director Robert Thalheim will discuss his loosely-autobiographical film at both screenings.

The Champagne Spy, winner of the Israeli “Academy Award” for Best Documentary and the John Schlesinger Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, will screen at The Institute of Contemporary Art (April 5) and Brandeis (April 13). The film chronicles the story of Wolfgang Lotz, a legendary 1960s Israeli Mossad agent who succumbed to the fiction of his undercover identity.

Jewishfilm.2008’s opening and closing night film Noodle – one of the top ten box office hits in Israel and the Jury Grand Prize winner at the Montreal World Film Festival – will be introduced by Nadav Tamir, Consul General of Israel to New England, on March 29.

Mrs. Samuel Segal, a producer of the 1937 Yiddish feature film The Cantor’s Son, will be present for the screening of the newly-restored film, shown in 35mm with new English subtitles. Sharon Pucker Rivo, executive director of The National Center for Jewish Film, will discuss the film’s restoration.

Other visiting filmmakers include Marian Marzyinski, the Boston-area director of Settlement (April 8), and Vivienne Roumani-Denn, director of The Last Jews of Libya (April 13).

For tickets & more information: www.jewishfilm.org or 781-736-8600

Press screenings arranged on request.  Photographs, film screeners & press materials available