Jewish Film Festival Vienna
The Jewish Film Festival Vienna is a year in Vienna held forming Film Festival , dedicated to the current Jewish filmmaking. The festival, which has existed since 1991, ran until 2006 under the name of the Jewish Film Week Vienna . In 2005 the festival reached 4,800 visitors.
history
Jewish Film Week Vienna 1991–2006
1991-1997
On the initiative of Kurt Rosenkranz , the founder of the Jewish Institute for Adult Education in Vienna, the first Jewish Film Week in Vienna was organized in 1991. It took place from October 5 to 10, 1991 in the Filmhaus Stöbergasse. 16 productions, including six Austrian premieres, were shown. A year later, the next event took place at the same location, at which 18 documentaries and fiction films were presented under the motto “From Moscow to Paris - Jews in European Post-War Film”. Due to the lively public interest, the 1993 film week was held in the centrally located opera cinema. The program was dedicated to depicting the fate of Jewish women. The selection of films provided as comprehensive an overview as possible, from “typically female” characters - for example the “ Yiddish Mame” - to emancipated and independent women.
The 1994 Jewish Film Week had the motto: "Jewish humor in film". In addition to Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be , the remake of the same name by and with Mel Brooks , but also Yiddish gems from the United States of the 1930s and 1940s, were shown. During the Jewish Film Week 1995, productions on the subjects of migration and moral courage were shown under the title “Long is the way” . Marek Halter , the director of Tzedek / Die Gerechten , a documentary about those who saved the lives of persecuted Jews during World War II, was present at the opening. This Jewish Film Week 1996 was devoted to the topic of “Judaism and Politics”. Despite subsidy cuts on the part of the federal government, a program was put together with a focus on Israeli and Palestinian productions. In 1997 the Jewish Film Week took place in the opera cinema for the last time. In five days, 24 films, 23 of which were Austrian cinema premieres, were shown. The week began with Francesco Rosi's La Tregua / The Truce , the description of the long return home of the Italian writer Primo Levi from the concentration camp .
1998-2001
The focus of the 1998 Jewish Film Week was the 50th anniversary of the founding of the state of Israel . With Israeli and Palestinian productions from different eras, the development of cinema in Israel / Palestine, but also socially explosive problems were documented. Newer productions on the subject of Judaism were shown in a panorama.
The 1999 film week was dedicated to the motto “Jewish fates in films from Eastern and Central Europe”. The venue was the Imperial Cinema. In cooperation with the Filmarchiv Austria, the Polish Institute Vienna and the Collegium Hungaricum, Hungarian and Polish productions with Jewish themes were presented. The federal government also made budget cuts in 2000. In a kind of revue “The Best of 10 Years Jewish Film Week” the highlights of the previous events were presented, but also new international productions and premieres were shown. For the first time, the venue was the votive cinema.
The eleventh Jewish Film Week was organized for the second time in 2001 in cooperation with the film shop . Thanks to the financial donation from the City of Vienna, funding from the federal government, the various federal states and city administrations, and the commitment of cinema operators, there were event locations all over Austria.
The Austrian film journalist Stefan Grissemann presented three “forgotten” classics of Yiddish cinema, the musical The Singing Blacksmith / Jankl der Schmid (1938) and The Light Ahead / Di Kljatsche , and Fischke der Krumer (1939). The films were directed by Edgar G. Ulmer (1904–1972) , who was born in Vienna and worked for Max Reinhardt . Carola Hurnaus, a daughter of the director living in Vienna, was present at the presentation.
2004-2006
After a two-year break for budgetary reasons, the 2004 Jewish Film Week took place in the Votivkino and the De France Kino. One of the guests was Israeli director Benny Brunner , who presented his documentaries It Is No Dream, Al-Nakba: The Palestinian Catastrophe 1948 and The Wall. In It Is No Dream , a group of Israeli intellectuals asks what has become of Theodor Herzl's vision. Al-Nakba deals with a tragic side of the founding of the state of Israel, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians. The Wall shows how much the life of Palestinian families is influenced by the Israeli wall . John Bunzl initiated the screening of Arna's Children . This film portrays Arna Mer-Chamis , a Jew who cared for Palestinian children in Jenin. Using the life stories of these young people, the film also addresses the question of why people become suicide bombers .
The Jewish Film Week 2005 took place in the Votive Cinema, De France Cinema and Urania Cinema and was attended by 4,800 people. Jewish topics, Jewish stories, filmmakers with a Jewish background were part of the program. This included Amos Gitai's feature film Free Zone , with which the festival opened. The Austrian premiere of Al-Jenna Alān / Paradise Now by the Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad also took place during the film week. This film touches on the question of the motives of suicide bombers.
The fourteenth Jewish Film Week took place in 2006 in cooperation with the French Embassy Vienna, the Filmarchiv Austria and the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna in the Votivkino, De France Kino, Urania Kino and Metro Kino. In memory of the 100th anniversary of the rehabilitation of Alfred Dreyfus , documentaries, silent and feature films about the officer and his fate were shown, for example L'Affaire Dreyfus ( Georges Méliès , F 1899) and L'Affaire Dreyfus / Die Dreyfus affair ( Yves Boisset , F / D 1995). In an homage to Romy Schneider, three feature films in which the actress played Jewish women were presented: Le Train / Just a touch of happiness ( Pierre Granier-Deferre , F / I 1973), La Banquière / The banker's wife ( Francis Girod , F 1980) and La Passante du Sans-Souci / The Walker of Sans-Souci ( Jacques Rouffio , FRG / F 1981/82).
As in previous years, new international feature films were presented. The feature film Bloom (Sean Walsh, IRL 2003) shows the footsteps of Leopold Bloom by James Joyce. Het Woeden der Gehele Wereld / The Fury of the Entire World (Guido Pieters, NL 2006) is a story about music and beauty, narrowness and stubbornness, about growing up and the post-war period, desperate life lies and cowardly betrayal. The documentary film Der Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess (Rolf Bickel and Dietrich Wagner, D 2005) describes the trial against former leaders of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which lasted from 1963 to 1965. The Israeli television presenter Chaim Yavin traveled through the West Bank with a video camera and interviewed Jewish settlers, peace activists, Palestinians and representatives of NGOs such as “Physicians for Human Rights”. His cinematic diary became a documentary called Erez Ha-Mitnachalim / The Land of the Settlers . Director Chaim Yavin was present as a guest.
Jewish Film Festival Vienna 2007
In 2007 the name was changed to Jewish Film Festival Vienna. In cooperation with the Filmarchiv Austria, a film show was dedicated to the subject of Golem and another series to the film adaptations of The Jazz Singer (1927), the first sound film.
Claude Berri has been invited as a guest . Three of his films, Le vieil homme et l'enfant / The Old Man and the Boy ; USA title: The Two of Us (1967), Mazel tov ou le mariage / Marry Me! Marry Me! (1969) and Le cinema de Papa (1970) have strong biographical traits. The guests for the Films for Peace series were the Palestinian director Hanna Elias and the Arab-Israeli actor Mohammed Bakri (Mohammed Bakri was unable to come). In his feature film Mousem Al Zaytoun / The Olive Harvest (Palestine 2003), Hanna Elias worked with a largely Israeli crew. Ernst Lubitsch was devoted to a series of films on early productions that were made in Germany. In this silent film - accompanied live by the silent film pianist Gerhard Gruber - Ernst Lubitsch plays a role type he has created: the cheeky Jewish apprentice who asserts himself with chutzpah. After the documentary Ernst Lubitsch in Berlin - From Schönhauser Allee to Hollywood (Robert Fischer, D 2006), a conversation took place.
In memory of the director and humanist Fred Zinnemann was The Seventh Cross The Seventh Cross / (USA 1944), The Search (Austrian title: seekers heart ; USA / CH 1948) and Julia shown (USA 1976). Hungry Hearts (E. Mason Hopper, USA 1922; silent film with English subtitles) depicts the life of the Levin family, who emigrated from Eastern Europe and lives in New York's Lower East Side. In the documentary Ha-Masa schel Vaan / The Journey of Vaan Nguyen (IL 2005), director Duki Dror accompanies the young Vaan Nguyen and her father on a journey. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, the father fled his homeland as one of the many boat people. He found asylum in Israel, where he started a family.
The Films for 14+ program was aimed particularly at young people. In the feature film Marock , the Moroccan director Laïla Marrakchi tells of a love story in Casablanca at the end of the 1990s. Films in memory of Leon Askin, Lucie Aubrac, Jean-Pierre 'Cassel, Wolfgang Gasser, Ulrich Mühe, George Tabori and Leon Zelman were also shown.
Among the new international productions was Lisa Azuelo's feature film Comme t'y es belle! / Gorgeous (UK / LUX / F / B 2006) about four attractive Parisian women who come from the Jewish-oriental milieu. What they also have in common are their extremely complicated family and love stories. Mauvaise foi / Bad Faith (B / F 2006) is the directorial debut of the Moroccan-French actor Roschdy Zem, who also plays the leading role in the film. The short film The 10th Man (Sam Leifer, UK 2006) amusingly depicts the difficulties an aging Jewish community in London has in getting enough men to attend the service. Director Shlomo Hazan introduces the ultra-Orthodox Jewish filmmaker Yehuda Grovais in his documentary Chared Lesirto / Film Fanatic (IL 2006).
On the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the "Raffle du Vel'd'Hiv" raid in Paris, the first cooperation between the Jewish Film Festival and the Filmarchiv Austria took place on July 17, 2007. The film La Mémoire des Enfants by Hannes Gellner and Thomas Draschan was presented in cooperation with the psychosocial association ESRA in Vienna's Metro Kino, followed by a panel discussion.
Criticism of the film festival
Criticism of the film Paradise Now , which was shown in 2005, was expressed by the Secretary General of the Federal Association of Jewish Religious Communities in Austria and Secretary General for Jewish Affairs of the Jewish Community of Vienna, Raimund Fastenbauer. He called Paradise Now a "propaganda film glorifying suicide bombers." He accused the organizers of the film festival of promoting "intentionally or naively the concerns of the opponents of Israel and Judaism". The Viennese political group Café Critique wrote in a flyer on the occasion of the premiere that the film does not portray the victims, but only shows the perpetrators and thus tries to get the viewer to agree to the suicide bombers.
In 2017, the practice of the film festival was criticized again after the documentary A Life for the Revolution by Doris Kittler, who is also the curator of the film festival, was accused of deliberately ignoring the anti-Semitism of the chairman of the British Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn , by deliberately ignoring the protagonist of the film, Chanie Rosenberg , presented to the audience as a Zionist who, despite her Zionism, manages to take sides with Jeremy Corbyn. The fact that Rosenberg himself once declared that he was now an anti-Zionist would have been concealed in the film, but also in the subsequent discussion with the director. Instead of anti-Semitism to address adequately the documentary would be "primarily propaganda material for Jeremy Corbyn and the anti-Semitic Turn the British Labor Party under whose leadership." Marlene Gallner that their criticism of the film and the film festival on the online portal mena-watch issued , explained after the first screening of the film: "It is surprising that a film about the Labor Party is being shown at a Jewish film festival that omits its virulent anti-Semitism and glorifies an anti-Semite as an idol." One day after the publication of the criticism Gallner responded Director of the Jewish Film Festival Vienna, Frédéric-Gérard Kaczek, and threatened the publication platform mena-watch with a lawsuit. The film festival's press officer, Adrian Jonas Haim, tried, however, to put pressure on the author in various ways and to prevent the article from being published. The editors mena-watch commented on the incident as follows: "The fact that he [the festival director] tries to silence this [criticism] does not, however, testify to the sovereignty and trust in his judgment or that of his curators and program managers." A public one There was no reaction from the film festival.
program
A separate program focus is set annually. In addition to the main focus, the festival is also dedicated to Jewish filmmaking in Austria or by Austrians. An integral part of the program are film reviews with the directors of the films or other people familiar with the program content.
Web link
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b IKG criticizes Jewish Film Week - oesterreich.ORF.at. Retrieved October 10, 2017 .
- ↑ Café Critique: Paradise No! Murder of Jews for 7 euros. Retrieved October 10, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Jewish Film Festival Vienna 2017. Retrieved on October 31, 2017 .
- ^ Jewish Film Festival Vienna 2017. Accessed October 31, 2017 .
- ↑ a b c d Jeremy Corbyn: An anti-Semite as an idol at the Jewish Film Festival Vienna. Retrieved October 31, 2017 .
- ↑ Chanie Rosenberg interview: By my 100th birthday I want to see socialism . In: Socialist Worker (Britain) . ( socialistworker.co.uk [accessed October 31, 2017]).
- ^ A b c Jewish Film Festival Vienna: Where to react to criticism with threats of legal action. Retrieved October 31, 2017 .