Anton Chekhov’s 1896 play, The Seagull, has been brought to the screen by Michael Mayer. Thanks to his unerring eye for detail and a fine ensemble cast, he has resurrected this costume drama of unrequited love quite successfully. It opens in Canada on May 11. Unfolding in a country estate near Moscow, The Seagull takes […]
From 1942 to 1944, German occupation forces in France sealed off and systematically looted at least 38,000 “abandoned” apartments in Paris that were owned by Jews who had been forced to flee, or who had been deported to Nazi concentration camps. The pillaged furnishings were then shipped to Eastern Europe or Germany. After the war, […]
A few days ago, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas delivered what he described as a “history lesson” to the Palestinian National Council in Ramallah. Some history lesson! During the course of a long and rambling speech, he made false and grotesque claims. They will surely diminish him in the eyes of peace-loving Israelis and Jews […]
In 1963, when apartheid South Africa was being convulsed by a nation-wide wave of terrorism, the police raided a farm house in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, and arrested several leaders of the African National Congress, including Nelson Mandela. As he and his shackled black and white colleagues were being led away to vans, one of the […]
Should Jews in Germany wear kippas in public? Or should they, as recently advised by the chairman of Germany’s leading Jewish organization, leave them at home, tuck them into their pockets or don less identifiably Jewish head coverings? The issue arose after a 19-year-old Syrian asylum seeker in Berlin attacked a young Israeli man wearing […]
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from May 3-13, is presenting two very different Israeli movies — The Cakemaker and Shelter. Ophir Graizer’s The Cakemaker, set in Jerusalem and Berlin, unfolds in German, Hebrew and English. A love story with a twist, this splendid movie will be screened on May 7 and 9. Oren (Roy […]
When Ferenc (Ferike) Kishont arrived in Israel in 1949, he spoke not a single word of Hebrew. But within a decade, he had changed his name to Ephraim Kishon and had become one of Israel’s most successful writers. Before he passed away, he had written 40 books and was the most translated author in Israeli […]
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from May 3-13 this year, is presenting two movies about the Holocaust. Saving Auschwitz? is a French documentary and The Testament is Israeli. The Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, the ultimate symbol of evil, has been expropriated for various purposes over the decades, as Jonathan Hayoun’s bracing documentary, Saving Auschwitz?, […]
The Toronto Jewish Film Festival, which runs from May 3 to May 13 this year, is presenting three movies from Germany. Bye-Bye Germany is set in 1946 as Holocaust survivors in Frankfurt struggle to renew their lives amid the rubble of the war. The Invisibles follows the lives of four Jews in Berlin who went into hiding between […]
The Jewish contribution to the Bollywood movie industry is explored exhaustively by Danny Ben-Moshe in his intriguing documentary, Shalom Bollywood: The Untold Story of Indian Cinema, which will be screened at the Toronto Jewish Film Festival on May 6 and 9. From the 1920s until the 1960s, several of its leading ladies and one of its […]