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Tom Tugend

Tom Tugend

Israeli astronaut’s story highlights Jewish film fest

The Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival returns to town for the sixth year May 5-12 with a diverse menu of 26 feature movies, documentaries and shorts. “Our films are not just SELECTED, they are chosen,” festival director Hilary Helstein said. Her picks cover such themes as tradition and identity, conflict and issues, history and legacy, and inspiration.

‘My Brother’s Keeper’ keeps soldiers’ story alive

When Israel fought its War of Independence, there were no embedded TV cameramen, and even combat newsreel photographers were practically nonexistent. The newly created state had more important matters to worry about. More surprisingly, there have been hardly any movies celebrating the near miraculous victories of 1948-49, and, later, of the Six-Day War in 1967.

AJU women to honor filmmaker Mazursky

Filmmaker Paul Mazursky will be honored with the Burning Bush Award by the University Women of the American Jewish University (AJU) at the group’s author-artist luncheon on May 3. Sharing the stage at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be Marion Goldenfeld, who will receive the Woman of Achievement Award.

Holy land revealed

With the introduction of photography in 1839, pioneer practitioners of the nascent medium flocked to the Holy Land, expecting the glorious biblical scenes imagined by Renaissance painters, but finding instead mainly dusty villages and a largely ramshackle Jerusalem.

‘Schindler’s List’ producer to mark belated Bar Mitzvah at Auschwitz

Branko Lustig, 78, two-time Oscar-winner for “Schindler’s List” and “Gladiator,” will celebrate his bar mitzvah on May 2 at Auschwitz, in front of Barrack 24. He missed his rite of passage as a 13-year-old because at the time he was a prisoner in the very same barrack, having been deported from his Croatian hometown to the death camp when he was 10.

Sidney Lumet, Director, 86

Director Sidney Lumet, who started his career as a child actor in the Yiddish theater and whose films examining social justice in America stand as landmarks of his craft, died April 9 of lymphoma at his New York City home. He was 86.

Concert honors Bat Mitzvah

It’s not every Jewish girl whose parents commission a new work by a renowned classical composer for her bat mitzvah, but then Dora Schoenberg’s lineage made a musical tribute all but mandatory.

Early Holy Land photos surprise viewers in 1800s

With the introduction of photography in 1839, pioneer practitioners of the nascent medium flocked to the Holy Land, expecting the glorious biblical scenes imagined by Renaissance painters, but finding instead mainly dusty villages and a largely ramshackle Jerusalem.

Abraham unlocks nuances of Shylock in ‘Merchant’

F. Murray Abraham’s performance as Shylock, praised by New York critics as the greatest in memory, owes much to the fact that the actor is almost invariably taken as Jewish. That pardonable error, he says, is central to his portrayal of the much-vilified Jewish moneylender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” which opens April 14 on The Broad Stage in Santa Monica.

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