Arguing the world

The Boston Jewish Film Festival is alive and well

THE BOSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, Screens November 6 through 16 at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Coolidge Corner.

The US premiere of a Canadian adaptation of Bernard Malamud's 1957 novel The Assistant stands out as the biggest find of this year's ninth annual Boston Jewish Film Festival. But what audiences may come away remembering most is the number of films telling unique, previously overlooked Holocaust stories as well as personal documentaries in this year's wonderful line-up.

The festival kicks off at 5:30 p.m. next Thursday, November 6, at the Museum of Fine Arts with one of the self-referential films -- Avi Mograbi's documentary How I Learned To Overcome My Fear and Love Arik Sharon. Think Roger & Me with less wit but a bigger fish to fry: former Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon. The twist comes when the liberal filmmaker begins to feel affection for the conservative Sharon. But apart from showing that Sharon can be quite charming and funny in public, Mograbi never convinces some of us that the man isn't the scum of the earth. He certainly doesn't prove it to his wife, whose unwavering resistance to her husband's conversion shows just how inexorable one's politics and personal life can be in Israel.

Following at 7:30 p.m is Alexander Rosler's beautiful feature Mendel, which screens along with David Mehlman's short "Odessa Steps," about Russian Jewish immigrants learning to ballroom-dance in San Francisco. Based on Rosler's personal experiences, Mendel is about a family of Holocaust survivors in 1954 trying to adjust to their new lives in Norway. His focus is on inquisitive nine-year-old Mendel (Thomas Jüngling Sorensen), who must adapt to customs like drinking cod-liver oil (in a funny, vomit-filled scene) while also trying to understand his family's excruciating memories (he's too young to remember much about the horrors of Germany). Rosler's triumph is the way he balances your sympathy between Mendel's desire to know and his parents' wish to shield their boy from pain. Both Rosler and Mehlman, a graduate of the Solomon Schechter Jewish Day School in Newton, will be at the screening and a reception afterward.

Canadian director Daniel Petrie's just-finished The Assistant, based on Malamud's novel about a young man who robs a Jewish grocer and then finds himself attached to the man's family, stars Armin Mueller-Stahl and Joan Plowright. It screens November 9 at the Coolidge Corner, and Petrie will be in attendance. Another author, Henry Roth, is the subject of the documentary Call It Sleep (November 16 at the Coolidge). Interviewing the author in the last year of his life, Petra Lataster-Czisch and Peter Lataster try to uncover the reasons behind his decades of writer's block. Lataster-Czisch will attend the screening.

The festival pays particular attention to officially neutral Switzerland's pro-Nazi role in World War II. Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold (November 9 at the MFA) is a news exposé that traces how Swiss banks stored gold Germany looted from its conquests and victims, and how only now, in the face of mounting pressure, the Swiss are beginning to account for their actions -- and perhaps the money. Although a tad sensationalist and simplistic at the beginning, director Stephen Crisman's documentary grows into a thorough investigation that combines the facts with personal stories of loss. Writer/co-producer Gaylen Ross will attend the screening. Ross will also partake in a free panel discussion, "Swiss Neutrality: The Images Speak," at noon November 10 at Northeastern University. Two free screenings will follow: Erich Schmid's He Called Himself Surava, about the anti-Nazi Swiss newspaper Die Nation, and Frédéric Gonseth's A Cabin in the Mountains, about Ukrainian forced labor in Swiss-German factories. The program will conclude with a reception at 6 p.m. At 7, still at Northeastern, Thomas Koerfer will be present to introduce his Embers, a look at Swiss industry's Nazi connections. Armin Mueller-Stahl stars in this one as well. Rounding out the festival's Swiss theme is 1980's The Boat Is Full (November 12 at the Coolidge) in which refugees pose as a family to meet Swiss entry requirements during World War II. Director Markus Imhoof will attend the screening.

Other unique looks at the Holocaust include My Mother's Courage (November 16 at the Coolidge). It's Nasty Girl director Michael Verhoeven's new film about a strange day in the life of a Hungarian Jewish woman (played by Pauline Collins) in 1944. Adapted from George Tabori's play, the film with its initial lighthearted tone seems to belittle real human suffering. Nonetheless, it grows into a gripping and often darkly amusing story of an all too trusting woman trying to cope with her arrest and understand human evil. The intriguing documentary "Love Story" (November 11 at the MFA) tells the story of two women -- Lily Wust, a German housewife honored by the Nazis, and Felice Schragenheim, an underground Jew -- who fall in love. Director Catrine Clay combines historical footage with personal interviews (including Wust) to tell this amazing and ultimately tragic story. It screens along with the shorts "Skin Deep," about an Israeli twentysomething who falls for a man because he has her name tattoo'd on his arm, and "Fairfax Fandango," about a Los Angeles comedienne who has the hots for the Orthodox guy next door.

At the Coolidge that afternoon, Concord filmmaker Barry J. Hershey will be on hand to show his The Empty Mirror, which imagines how Adolf Hitler might have contemplated his actions had he survived after the war. The cast includes Joel Grey as Josef Goebbels. In Those Days in Terezin (also November 11 at the Coolidge), Sibylle Schönemann depicts three women artists who travel to Theresienstadt to rescue a fellow artist and former inmate from obscurity. She will attend the screening. Andrzej Wajda examines Poland's indifference to Jewish suffering during World War II in The Holy Week (November 9 at the MFA).

Filmmakers are also putting themselves up on the screen in original ways. In Me and My Matchmaker (November 10 at the Coolidge), director Mark Wexler tries to interview '90s matchmaker Irene Nathan, who can't resist the temptation to try to find him a wife. It shows along with "Bubbeh Lee and Me," gay director Andy Abraham Wilson's portrait of his relationship with his 87-year-old grandmother. Director Alan Berliner will be at the Coolidge November 16 to show two autobiographical films: in Intimate Stranger, he traces his roots, and in Nobody's Business, he tries to understand his father. Chronicle of a Disappearance (November 13 at the Coolidge) is an autobiographical fiction depicting New York director Elia Suleiman's return to his native Nazareth. In the nine-minute "Amy" (November 12 at the Coolidge), director Susan Rivo attempts to understand her attachment to a stuffed toy. In need of more toys? The basis of the 18-minute short Daphna Lapidot's "Esh-Fire" (November 13 at the Coolidge) is a doll her Brooklyn neighbor, a Holocaust survivor, gave her as a child. It screens with The Jew, Jom Tob Azulay's feature about the Inquisition and 18th-century Portuguese playwright António José da Silva, who was a "converso," or hidden Jew.

Young love (or more accurately young obsession) and angst are the subject of Savi Gabizon's Lovesick on Nana Street (November 8 at the Coolidge). The winner of eight Israeli Academy Awards, this comedy stars Moshe Ivgi (who will attend the screening) as a social misfit living with his mother and stalking the woman he loves. Screening beforehand is another award-winning film -- Sergei Ursulyak's Russian Ragtime, about a young man's life and love in Moscow in the 1970s as he tries to obtain a visa to emigrate to America. Arthur Borman's Shooting Lily (November 15 at the Coolidge) takes a look at young love in this tale of a wedding videographer whose wife leaves him (Borman will attend the screening).

And let's not forget the celebs and the intellectuals. Sarah Jessica Parker and Leonard "Spock" Nimoy (these aren't the intellectuals) switch off narrating A Life Apart (November 9 at the Coolidge), Menachem Daum & Oren Rudavsky's documentary about American Chassidism. The film covers a lot of ground -- the history of Chassidism, how Chassids have kept American culture at bay (and how it's starting to seep in), the rearing of Chassidic children, and outside reactions to this insular community. No mention, though, about how some of these guys can drink just about anyone under the table come Purim. Rudavsky, another Solomon Schechter grad, will attend the screening. Morgan Freeman narrates Mark Jonathan Harris's The Long Way Home (November 10 at the Coolidge), a two-hour documentary about Holocaust survivors' attempts to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

In Arguing the World (November 13 at the Coolidge), director Joseph Dorman traces the lives of four New York Jewish intellectuals -- Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer -- beginning with their days at City College in the '30s. Afterward, a panel including Dorman and New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz will discuss these intellectuals' legacy.

Among this year's quirkier choices are Trailer Shmailers (November 15 at the Coolidge), a compilation of Jewish film trailers; Chants of Sand & Stars (November 11 at the MFA), a look at music that accompanies Jewish liturgy; Punch Me in the Stomach (November 12 at the Coolidge), Canadian comedian Deb Filler's 36-character show adapted for the screen; the 1940 film Overture to Glory (November 9 at the Coolidge), starring the legendary cantor Moishe Oysher; Everlasting Joy, or The Life and Adventures of B. Spinoza As Reported by His Vigilant Neighbors (November 15 at the Coolidge), in which the legendary Dutch philosopher gets transplanted to contemporary Tel Aviv; Moshe Mizrahi's Women (November 11 at the Coolidge), about a childless wife who finds her rabbi husband a second bride; and, for the kids (and, we hope, Bruegger's bakers), "Hot Bagels" (November 9 at the Coolidge), which will tell everything you need to know about how bagels are made. It's part of a children's program that also includes "There's No Such Thing As a Chanukah Bush, Sandy Goldstein" and "Children of Israel: Gesho."

Screenings of the Boston Jewish Film Festival are also scheduled for the Flick in Salem. Call (978) 744-3700.