Ma’alot-Tarshiha is a quiet Jewish-Arab city in the Galilee within walking distance of Israel’s border with Lebanon. But 37 years ago, it was the scene of a horrific attack by Palestinian terrorists who took more than 100 students hostage in a school building, killing 22 and gravely wounding 68.
Israeli director Alma Har’el took top honors at the Tribeca Film Festival in the documentary category. “Bombay Beach,” her feature-length film, follows three down-and-out residents of a ghost town on the Salton Sea, a surrealistic landscape in Southern California filled with losers and dreamers.
Kirk Douglas will be honored at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this summer. Douglas, 94, is expected to attend the July 23 festival to receive the Freedom of Expression award at a special 50th anniversary showing of “Spartacus.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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