Next week brings two favorite cultural festivals back to Palm Beach County — the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, now in its 12th year, and the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, which is in its 26th year.
Each brings its own perspective and interpretation to two different but similar art forms — contemporary poets and their oeuvre and contemporary filmmakers and their vision.
From indelible Holocaust films, to the quotidian life of an ordinary Israeli, to mother-daughter relationships, romance, road trips, documentaries and docudramas, the Jewish Film Festival brings an assortment of genres to local theatres.
“We have an amazing and varied selection of films this year,” says festival director Ellen Wedner. “It’s not what you’d imagine when you think of a Jewish Film Festival.”
“We have international films from the Netherlands, Russia, Germany and France, spiritual films, traditional films and Israeli films,” she says. “We have a selection of diverse films, with something for everyone.”
“We’re all over the place this year,” she adds.
John Goldschmidt’s Dough, starring Jonathan Pryce, about a young Muslim refugee from Darfur who spikes the Friday evening challah with marijuana, opens the festival Wednesday at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach.
“It’s light-hearted and fun, but the film has a wonderful message that we should all take to heart,” Wedner says.
Closing night on Thursday, Feb. 11, is at the Duncan Theatre at Palm Beach State College in Lake Worth with the documentary, Raise the Roof, about two non-Jewish artists who set out to rebuild Gwozdziec, an 18th-century synagogue in Poland that was destroyed by the Nazis.
The two artists, Laura and Rick Brown, are scheduled to be in attendance.
And, the festival hits home with Look at Us Now, Mother, the Palm Beach premiere of Gayle Kirschenbaum’s examination of mother daughter relations, with both the filmmaker and her mother, Mildred, a resident of Boca Raton, in attendance.
For the Jewish Film Festival:
Public tickets are on sale. To order tickets and passes, please call: 877-318-0071 or visit pbjff.org. Venues include Cinemark 14, 1151 Congress Ave., Boynton Beach; Cinemark Palace 20, 3200 Airport Road, Boca Raton; Cobb Theatre, 11701 Lake Victoria Gardens Ave., Palm Beach Gardens, and the Frank Cinebowl, 14775 Lyons Road, Delray Beach.
Meanwhile, in describing this year’s Poetry Festival, which starts Monday and runs through Jan. 23 at Delray Beach’s Old School Square, festival director Susan Williamson references a Walt Whitman poem, “I Dream’d in a Dream.”
I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the
attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;
I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;
Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust
love — it led the rest;
It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of
that city,
And in all their looks and words.
Returning poets include festival favorites Thomas Lux, Carol Frost and Laure-Anne Bosselaar. And attending for the first time is former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass, who conducted a haiku workshop Jan. 7 at the Morkiami Museum and Japanese Gardens along with Miami poet Yaddyra Peralta. The workshop explored the history and structure of Japanese haiku and Hass’s translations.
Other favorite events are back, including afternoon craft workshops, performance poetry with Dominique Christina and Mark Kelly Smith, founder of the poetry slam, and “Bards of a Feather” open readings with poet Blaise Allen at the Green Cay Nature Center.
New this year is a partnership with three organizations offering three fellowships to the festival.
The organizations include Cave Canem, which promotes African-American poetry; CantoMundo, which explores the diverse work of Latin poets; and Kundiman, dedicated to the creation and cultivation of Asian-American literature.
“We’re really excited for the festival this year,” says Williamson. “It’s a special opportunity to experience poetry in a way you never have before with America’s best poets, bar none.
“I’m overwhelmed by the talent we have and the enlivened and empowered people who are participating,” Williamson says.
“Poetry speaks to me,” she adds. “It’s always moving to be a part of the festival.”
The Palm Beach Poetry Festival
Public events at the festival begin with high school poetry contest awards at 5 p.m. Monday at the Crest Theatre. Robert Hass is the subject of a live interview at 4 p.m. Tuesday, and he gives a gala reading at 8 p.m. Wednesday. There are craft talks each day from Jan. 19-22, and a spoken word performance to end the festival at 9 p.m. Saturday. For more information, please visit www.palmbeachpoetryfestival.org or email: news@palmbeachpoetryfestival.org or call 561-868-2063.