Filmmaker Rob Lemkin’s most famous relative is the late Raphael Lemkin, a Polish attorney who spent his life crusading against mass murder and who invented the term “genocide” to describe what the Nazis had done to the Jews, including 40 members of his family.
Jewish talent won some and lost some at the Golden Globe Award ceremonies Sunday evening in Beverly Hills, auguring a mixed outlook for the upcoming Oscar nominations. The best news is that Israeli-born Natalie Portman waltzed off as best actress in the drama category for her impressive turn as a tortured ballerina in “The Black Swan.” “The Social Network,” the gripping, if somewhat skewed, story of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, won for best drama picture, but its star, Jesse Eisenberg, lost out to best actor winner Colin Firth, portraying England’s stuttering George VI in “The King’s Speech.”
Filmmaker Rob Lemkin’s most famous relative is the late Raphael Lemkin, a Polish attorney who spent his life crusading against mass murder and who invented the term “genocide” to describe what the Nazis had done to the Jews, including 40 members of his family. Rob Lemkin never knew Raphael Lemkin, a distant cousin who died before Rob was born. But the elder Lemkin’s legacy has motivated much of the filmmaker’s work, notably his documentary “Enemies of the People,” an exposé on the Cambodian genocide that claimed two-million lives during the Pol Pot regime of the 1970s. Co-authored with Teth Sambath, the groundbreaking film – which culminates with a confession by Pol Pot’s second-in-command, Nuon Chea – is short-listed for the Academy Award and has received a Writers Guild Award nomination.
“When I had an idea for a movie, I never thought about making a ‘contribution’ to the cinema or of being a revolutionary,” Paul Mazursky said, sitting in his small, poster-filled office in Beverly Hills.
Among its 193 movies from 68 countries, the Palm Springs International Film Festival has included a varied menu of special Jewish interest during its Jan. 6-17 run.
In the half century that this reporter has been writing about Hollywood, the Oscars and domestic and foreign films, not a year has gone by without prominent movies and documentaries focusing on the Holocaust, the Nazi era or World War II.
“I hate lying,” Jon Lovitz, the comedian, actor and comedy club owner, said without a touch of humor in his voice. “I just can’t stand it. I don’t see the advantage of it. It makes me physically ill.” It’s the reason, he said, that he has become something of a specialist in portraying characters who are truth-challenged, or, in his words, “sleazy.” He was Tommy Flanagan, president of Pathological Liars Anonymous, on “Saturday Night Live”; the guy on “Seinfeld” who fibs about having cancer, then dies in a car crash; a loudmouth baseball scout who steals scenes from Tom Hanks in “A League of Their Own”; the voice of an obnoxious movie reviewer in the animated series “The Critic”; and the father, in the film “Rat Race,” who tells his family they are on a minivan “vacation” when he is actually trying to win $2 million in a cross-country dash.
“I hate lying,” Jon Lovitz, the comedian, actor and comedy club owner said without a touch of humor in his voice. “I just can’t stand it. I don’t see the advantage of it. It makes me physically ill.”
In 1967, following Israel’s stunning victory in the Six-Day War, the Polish communist government joined other Soviet bloc countries in launching an “anti-Zionist” (read anti-Semitic) campaign, which, by the end of the following year, drove out most of the country’s remaining Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
When Natalie Portman cracked open the script for \”Black Swan,\” the saga of an ambitious ballerina\’s mind-blowing nervous breakdown, she instantly understood where her character was coming from.
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