Israel’s Short Film Oscar Submission
In her latest review, Film Editor Dina Gold discusses White Eye, a new Israeli short film about racism and prejudice.
The Making of Midnight Cowboy with Journalist Glenn Frankel and Film Historian Rebecca Prime
In an era when a new wave of movies pushed the boundaries of mainstream filmmaking, Midnight Cowboy stands out as the riskiest, most unconventional, and most successful of them all. Glenn Frankel’s new book, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic, explores the making of the only X-rated film to win a Best Picture Oscar and offers a window onto the creative ferment and social unrest that gripped New York and America in the 1960s: the rise of gay liberation, the treatment of sexual themes in popular culture, and the role of Jewish artists such as director John Schlesinger and star Dustin Hoffman. Glenn, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, in conversation with film historian and scholar Rebecca Prime, managing editor of Film Quarterly.
Cynthia Ozick: In Defense of Imagination
Every few years, a YouTube clip makes its way around the literary corners of the internet: A young Cynthia Ozick stands up at a 1971 panel on feminism featuring Norman Mailer.
Book Review | Sifting Through Memory with Cynthia Ozick
Antiquities is peak Cynthia Ozick. This novel is a tiny peephole into the purpose of living in a world that outlasts us.
Tango Shalom | The Dancing Rabbi of Crown Heights
Tango Shalom
Released February 11, 2021
1 hour 55 minutes
Directed by Gabriel Bologna
Convivencia Forever Films
Comedy, Family, Dance: English
Hasidic rabbi Moshe Yehuda is a father of five whose...
Adapting Jewish Literature: Yentl and A Tale of Love and Darkness with Fania Oz-Salzberger, Ruby Namdar and Rokhl Kafrissen
Fania Oz-Salzberger, Ruby Namdar and Rokhl Kafrissen join in conversation about what it means to adapt Jewish literature for the big screen.
While many Jewish filmmakers choose to write their own material and draft their own stories, others turn to interpretation. This program compares two films that share biographical features, Yentl and A Tale of Love and Darkness. Though released decades apart, both were directed by acclaimed actresses making their directorial debuts, Barbara Streisand and Natalie Portman respectively. These women notably adapted literary works written by men and their star power was critical to getting these films made.
Historian Fania Oz-Salzberger shares personal insights about her father, acclaimed Israeli writer Amos Oz, and his autobiographical novel A Tale of Love and Darkness and author and educator Ruby Namdar considers the film and the legacy of the memoir. Critic and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen explores Yentl, based on a play and short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
This program is a collaboration between Moment Magazine and REWIND: The Shenson Retrospective Film Series, a project of Stanford’s Taube Center for Jewish Studies. Both movies can be watched on Amazon Prime.
Book Review | The Dark Origins of Polish Revisionism
In February, in a case that made international headlines and provoked widespread condemnation, a court in Warsaw ordered two Polish historians of the Shoah to apologize to an elderly woman from the village of Malinowo for having “inexactly portrayed” her uncle Edward Malinowski, the village’s wartime headman.
Book Review | A Family in Pen and Ink
In the rise and fall of Hitler’s Germany, villains, victims and heroes figure profusely and are easily recognized.
‘The Vigil’: Dark Night of the Soul
Keith Thomas’s new horror movie The Vigil centers around a night of shmirah, the act of guarding a dead body from the moment of death...
Queen Esther Goes to Hollywood
The pivotal moment is when Esther decides to come unbidden before the king.
She asks the eunuch Hegai for a chariot, but he refuses her and...
The Marvelous Mr. Lee
Stan Lee is credited as the creator of Marvel Comics and the ever-expanding MCU. But the story of his life and work is more complex.