The movie \”Divan (The Couch)\” chronicles an ex-Chasidic woman\’s journey to Hungary to retrieve a family heirloom, her great-grandfather\’s couch, which in the process becomes a journey of self-discovery.
\”Sunshine\” was created and written (with playwright Israel Horovitz) by Hungarian Jewish director István Szabó, well-known for melding historical and personal themes (\”Mephisto,\” \”Colonel Redl\”), who drew in part on his family history in making the film.
\”People think I\’m being facetious when I say I once toyed with a life of crime,\” filmmaker Woody Allen recently told 1,400 students, professors and alumni during a standing-room-only screening of his new comedy, \”Small Time Crooks,\” at UCLA\’s Wadsworth Theater.
In late September 1934, Hank Greenberg, the great Detroit Tigers slugger, chose not to play a crucial game against the Yankees so that he could observe Yom Kippur.
In late September 1934, Hank Greenberg, the great Detroit Tigers slugger, chose not to play a crucial game against the Yankees so that he could observe Yom Kippur.
Cult filmmaker Sarah Jacobson can one-up any L.A. Jewish reader who felt like an outcast in high school.
When Roberto Benigni won the grand prize at Cannes for his Holocaust tragicomedy, \”Life is Beautiful,\” he rushed to the stage and kissed the feet of juror Martin Scorsese.
\”I tell you, there was never a trip like this before. The motives are terribly sad, but we are going to have a lot of fun. This is another dimension of history.\” With these words, Arnost Lustig and Jan Wiener, both Jewish survivors of the Shoah, embark on a trip to the Europe of their childhoods, documented in the film \”Fighter.\” Premiering at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, \”Fighter\” is a unique exploration of both the Holocaust and the Communist era of Eastern Europe.
During a pivotal moment in Elan Frank\’s award-winning documentary, \”Blue and White in Red Square,\” a Russian-Israeli looks about his old Moscow neighborhood with an expression of dismay. Eugene had excitedly made the trip home with fellow musicians in the Young Israeli Philharmonic, many of them émigrés returning for the first time to post-Communist Russia. But as the violinist gazed at his decrepit old apartment building, surrounded by garbage and graffiti, his exuberance turned to bitter disappointment. \”I feel like a stranger here,\” he said.
A bubbie standing in front of the colorful mural on the Workman\’s Circle building in West Los Angeles. Shopkeepers on Fairfax Avenue. The Tel Aviv skyline lit by a thousand cars on a freeway at night. These are just a few of the images on display at the Finegood Art Gallery as part of a an exhibit of 100 photos taken by teenagers in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv.\n\n
