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 … [Read more...]
Jewish Film Festival gets fresh direction, looks for growth
Ellen Wedner, a veteran of the arts scene in Miami for two decades, has moved two counties north to direct the Donald M. Ephraim Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival. Running eleven days from Jan. 16 to 26, the 24-year-old festival will screen 37 films in western Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Hap Erstein spoke with Wedner about her festival philosophy and the changes she is … [Read more...]
Hoffman’s ‘Still Jewish’ offers backstory of a theatrical life
By Dale King At various times in Avi Hoffman’s life, being Jewish has been a blessing and a curse — a ticket to stardom and a one-way ticket to oblivion. It has made him the toast of Broadway, but has also made toast of his career. The actor whose livelihood has taken more up and downs than an unemployment office elevator reviews his life of triumphs and travails in Avi … [Read more...]
Jewish film festival thriving as it turns 21
At a time when film festivals are either shrinking or simply disappearing, the Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival is expanding as it turns 21. The annual celebration of Jewish culture on celluloid from around the world, a program of the Jewish Community Center of the Greater Palm Beaches, unspools beginning this evening, Dec. 1, with 34 films from 12 … [Read more...]
Three worth watching at Jewish film fest
Only a few of the 20th annual Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival’s entries were made available for advance reviews, but here are a few of them worth at least partial attention: * Hello, Goodbye (France, 99 min., Sat., Dec. 5, 7:20 pm, Cobb Dowtown) -- For many Israel is an idealized promised land, but director Graham Guit puckishly examines the details of that promise in his … [Read more...]
Jewish film fest offers 11-day nosh of 35 movies
To paraphrase a line from Fiddler on the Roof: “So if the economy had a bad year, why should the Jewish Film Festival suffer?” Beginning tonight and continuing through Sunday, Dec. 13, here comes the 20th anniversary Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival, slightly smaller due to belt-tightening by the sponsoring Jewish Community Centers of the Palm Beaches, but still artistically … [Read more...]
‘Two Jews’ a deep, comic standout at Florida Stage
Wait, stop me if you’ve heard this one: There are these two old Jewish guys in Kabul, Afghanistan, see, and not only are they the last two surviving members of their much-persecuted religion, but they hate each other’s guts almost as much as they despise the Taliban. Their days are surely numbered, so they have to figure out a way to perpetuate Judaism in their land before … [Read more...]