The National Center for Jewish Film and Brandeis University in association with The Consulate General of Israel to New England will present "Jewishfilm.2003: From Vienna to Naharayim" from March 27 to April 6, 2003 . This year’s 6th annual spring film fest will present 10 Boston area premieres from 9 countries.

Opening with Austria’s entry to the Academy awards, Gebirtig, which is set in Vienna, the festival covers a wide range of Jewish experiences in the diaspora, before closing with a new Italian film celebrating the heroic Giorgio Perlasca, who saved over 5000 Hungarian Jews.

Highlights of the festival include Armin Muehler Stahl’s stunning performance in Bronstein’s Children; the award-winning Czech documentary Power of Good; a newly restored Yiddish film A Vilna Legend; preceded by a live performance of Yiddish music; and a special program of films about Argentina to benefit the Argentinean Jewish Relief Campaign.

In celebration of Israel Independence Day (a month early due to the academic calendar) the festival will present the New England Premiere of Rutenberg – a sweeping biographical saga of Pinchas Rutenberg – the driving force behind the creation of electrical power in Naharayim (Two Rivers) on Saturday April 5th. Several filmmakers plan to attend, including Lukas Stepanik, co-director of Gebirtig; Andrzej Krakowski, filmmaker of Farewell to My Country, and the Canadian director of Undying Love, Helene Klodawsky.

The festival will showcase the work of two local filmmakers: John Friedman’s Stealing the Fire, a hair-raising investigative expose about the Iraqi nuclear weapons, documents the direct link between German Nazi technology and Saddam Hussein’s weapons. Leib Cohen’s amusing short Advice and Dissent, made at The Film Shack in Roxbury, features Rebecca Pidgeon, Eli Wallach and John Pankow. Both filmmakers will attend their screenings.

Undying Love, a delightful documentary about love and renewal after liberation from the concentration camps, incorporates extensive footage from the archives of The National Center for Jewish Film, which contains the largest collection of Jewish films in the diaspora.

All screenings will take place in the Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque in the Sachar International Center located on the Brandeis campus in Waltham, MA.

Tickets are $8, Seniors $6, groups of 20 or more $5, festival passes $60, senior festival passes $50 Brandeis University faculty, staff and students free with ID.

PURCHASE TICKETS ONLINE with PAY PAL

Press screenings week of March 3 - upon request. Photographs and videocassettes are available, For more information, please call NCJF at 781-899-7044 or 781-736-8600

The National Center for Jewish Film is a non-profit archive and resource center established in 1976 to preserve and restore the cinematographic records of the Jewish experience. As the world leader in the preservation of Yiddish language cinema, NCJF has restored 32 such films to date, including Tevye, The Dybbuk, The Light Ahead, Overture to Glory, and The Singing Blacksmith.







Press contacts: Sharon Pucker Rivo; 781 736 8600; jewishfilm@brandeis.edu
John Quackenbush 781 736 8600; jewishfilm@brandeis.edu
Linda Rakoff -617 332 2165;lrakoff@aol.com
JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL, Jewish Film Festival, Film Festival Jewish, Festival
of Jewish Films