It may surprise some that the infamous Hollywood blacklist, the subject of Trumbo, was almost single-handedly broken by the director of Exodus, the blockbuster movie about the birth pangs of a new nation, Israel. Trumbo, which premiered at this week’s Toronto International Film Festival, revolves around Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter whose high-flying career was shattered by the […]
Category: Arts
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Rabin: The Last Day
Amos Gitai’s chilling docudrama, Rabin: The Last Day, which will be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16 and 18, is ostensibly about Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination on November 4, 1995. But on a deeper level, it’s about the politically charged, divisive and poisonous atmosphere that emboldened his assassin, Yigal Amir, to kill […]
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The People Versus Fritz Bauer
Lars Kraume’s German-language movie, The People Versus Fritz Bauer, bores into Germany’s dark past with unflinching intensity, exposing the raw wounds of its preeminent role in the Holocaust. Scheduled to be screened at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival on September 15 and 18, it takes place in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when West […]
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Israeli Movies From Toronto’s Film Festival
Nitzan Gilady’s debut feature film, Wedding Doll, is astonishingly self-assured and profoundly poignant. Due to be screened at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 16, 18 and 20, it’s the work of a budding talent in Israeli cinema. Hagit (Moran Rosenblatt), a mildly retarded woman of 24, is at the core of the movie. […]
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Remember — Egoyan’s First Jewish-Themed Film
Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan ventures into new territory — the Holocaust — in his latest film, Remember, which had its Canadian premiere at the 40th Toronto International Film Festival on September 12. It’s apparently inspired by real-life events. After World War II, a handful of Jewish Holocaust survivors hunted down and murdered their Nazi tormentors […]
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Photographer Extraordinaire
Pedro E. Guerrero (1917-2012) saw an image and knew how to photograph it. Frank Lloyd Wright, the illustrious architect, recognized this talent and availed himself of Guerrero’s expertise until his death in 1959. No other American photographer was as closely associated with Wright as Guerrero. But Guerrero was not merely a one-trick pony. He also worked with the […]
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The Man Who Shot Hollywood
He amassed the greatest known personal collection of Hollywood celebrity prints and negatives. From the 193os to the 1950s, Russian Jewish immigrant Jack (Yasha) Pashkovsky photographed movie stars like Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Peter Lorre, Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Merle Oberon and Gloria Swanson. And he stored these photographs under his bed. Pashkovsky, who died […]
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Walt Disney — A Celebrity At 30
At the age of 30, Walt Disney (1901-1966) was an international celebrity, hailed as a brilliant cartoonist by his peers. Walt Disney on the ascent Disney’s rise from obscurity to fame is chronicled in a two-part PBS television biopic, American Experience: Walt Disney, which will be broadcast on September 14 at 9 p.m. Sarah Colt’s […]
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Guantanamo’s Child
Terrorist or child soldier? That’s the question Patrick Reed and Michelle Shepard implicitly pose with respect to Omar Khadr in their 80-minute documentary, Guantanamo’s Child, which will have its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival later this month. Khadr, the first juvenile ever tried for war crimes, is an Arab Canadian of Egyptian […]
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Joseph Goebbels: Nazi Radical
Joseph Goebbels, the minister of enlightenment and propaganda during the 12-year Nazi era, was probably Adolf Hitler’s most loyal deputy. Completely dedicated to him and his vision of a fascist, antisemitic order in Germany, Goebbels looked upon Hitler as his idol. According to Goebbel’s latest biographer, Peter Longerich, a professor of modern German history at the […]