'Footnote' to be screened, discussed at L.A. event

More than 200 friends, supporters and alumni of Brandeis expected

Photo/Ren Mendelson/Sony Pictures Classics

Lior Ashkenazi, left, as Uriel Shkolnik and Shlomo Bar Aba as Eliezer Shkolnik in 'Footnote,' a tragicomic story of father and son.

More than 200 Brandeis University friends, supporters and alumni in Los Angeles will gather at the powerhouse Creative Artists Agency on Thursday for a special screening of the Academy Award-nominated film “Footnote.”

It will be the second consecutive year that Brandeis has hosted an event at CAA, which is arguably the world’s leading talent agency and represents some of the biggest names in movies, television, music and sports.

“It will be wonderful to return to CAA with so many good friends of Brandeis,” said President Fred Lawrence, who will host the evening with his wife, Professor Kathy Kurtzman Lawrence. “We’re honored to be able to present and discuss such an acclaimed film and to talk about the excitement of Brandeis in that setting.”

“Footnote” is a 2011 tragicomedy, written and directed by Joseph Cedar, featuring a complicated father-son relationship. Eliezer and Uriel Shkolnik are brilliant scholars and academics who teach at the Talmud department of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where the son accrues honors and recognition from his peers, overshadowing his father.

The Israeli film, starring Shlomo Bar Aba and Lior Ashkenazi, won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and nine prizes at the 2011 Ophir Awards. It was nominated for an Academy Award in the category of Best Foreign Language Film.

Cedar will discuss the film and answer questions after the screening in the Ray Kurtzman Theater, which is named after a former CAA head and cousin of Mrs. Lawrence.

Professor Alice Kelikian, head of the Film, Television and Interactive Media Program at Brandeis, said the showing of “Footnote” is of special importance to the Brandeis film studies program.

“Of all the partnerships around the world that the Brandeis film program has been building, none is more important or fitting than that with the thriving cinematic arts in Israel,” said Kelikian. “We are proud to screen ‘Footnote,’ the Israeli nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, and to welcome its brilliant director Joseph Cedar to the Ray Kurtzman Theater at the Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles.

“We owe a great debt of gratitude to Sony Pictures Classics, which is allowing us to showcase this movie long before its U.S. theatrical release,” she said. “The Brandeis collaboration with CAA, which began last year when President Lawrence invited Oscar-winner Errol Morris to premier his documentary “Tabloid,” there, has made it possible for the university to extend the excitement about film on campus to our family in Southern California.”