New York Jewish Film Festival Starts January 12, 2011

Tickets for the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival go on sale on January 2. The festival will run for two weeks, from January 12 to 27, primarily at Lincoln Center

The New York Jewish festival, while not the world's oldest or largest Jewish Film Festival (the San Francisco JFF, now getting ready for its 31st season this summer, claims both of those honors), will have clocked a respectable 20 years this January. This year's festival has an interesting line-up of 36 films (if my count is correct) from around the world, many of them New York, U.S., or world premieres. It sounds quite lively, according to a brochure from the Jewish Museum, the co-presenter of the festival along with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which says:

"New York Jewish Film Festival audiences are passionate, articulate and heavily invested in what they see. The post-screening discussions are charged and the deep engagement of participants is a signature of the event."

Some of the special festival events include:

-- A discussion with rock legend Lou Reed and photographer Ralph Gibson following the New York premiere of Red Shirley, a film directed by Reed about his 100-year-old activist cousin.

-- A live performance by "artistically fearless klezmer hip-hop artist" Socalled and Katie Moore, following a screening of the 2010 documentary The "Socalled" Movie.

-- A live magic show, following a screening of Houdini, a 1953 film telling the famous magician's life story, starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh.

-- A panel discussion following a world-premiere screening of Jewish Soldiers in Blue and Gray, a documentary about Jewish-Americans in the Civil War.

-- A book signing by J. Hoberman, film critic for The Village Voice, following a screening of the 1939 film Tevye, based on the Sholem Aleichem play.

The opening-night film is Mahler on the Couch, the New York premiere of a 2101 Austrian/German film, directed by Percy Adlon (Bagdad Cafe), about the composer's relationship with his wife and his consultations with Sigmund Freud.

The closing-night film is The Matchmaker, also a New York premiere, a 2010 Israeli film about a teenager working for a Holocaust-survivor matchmaker who promises "to get you what you need, not what you want," and works in the back of a movie theater, run by Romanian dwarves. that shows only love stories.

For more information, call 212-875-5601. To see the complete list of films and descriptions, see the Film Society of Lincoln Center website. You can order tickets online at the same site, or at the Walter Reade Theater box office (in Lincoln Center), 165 West 65th Street, upper level, between Broadway and Amsterdam.

Sources:

"New York Jewish Film Festival Turns 20," from the Jewish Museum's Fall 2010 program brochure

New York Jewish Film Festival schedule, Film Festival of Lincoln Center
http://filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/nyjff.html#online

New York Jewish Film Festival schedule (printed brochure)