Film Society of Lincoln Center Announces 2015 Jewish Film Festival

By: Dec. 04, 2014
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The Jewish Museum and the Film Society of LINCOLN Center will present the 24th annual New York Jewish Film Festival at the Film Society's Walter Reade Theater and Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, January 14-29, 2015. The festival's 47 features and shorts from 11 countries-21 screening in their world, U.S., or New York premieres-provide a diverse global perspective on the Jewish experience.

The festival includes a number of "beyond the screen" programs, including a presentation of the work of artist Keren Cytter followed by a discussion with Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum; continuous screenings of trailers from films noirs; an EXHIBITION of posters for antiwar movies; a midnight showing of the 1980s break-dancing hit, Breakin'; Talking Movies, panel discussions about Zionism and antiwar films; a master class on filmmaking with Susan Korda; and a special screening of the late Mike Nichols's 1996 comedy, The Birdcage. A 25th-anniversary screening of Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning will be accompanied by two other films selected by the director.

The festival opens on Wednesday, January 14 with the U.S. premiere of Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser's The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer. The Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer was a charming enchanter both on the page and in his romantic life. This surprising and unflinching documentary explores, through poignant interviews and exclusive archival footage, the Unknown history of one of his most vital sources of creative inspiration: his translators. Dozens of women throughout Singer's life worked with him to open the doors to his singular Yiddish prose for the rest of the world to enjoy, and his relationships with many of them blurred the lines between the professional and the intimate.

Closing Night on January 29 will feature the U.S. premiere of Maxime Giroux's Felix and Meira. In the Mile End neighborhood of Montréal, hipsters and Hasidim coexist amicably but independently. When Meira, an Orthodox Jewish wife and mother with an undercurrent of rebelliousness, meets Felix, a middle-aged atheist adrift without family ties, a slow-blooming affair takes shape that will present Meira with a difficult fork in the road.

Three films in the festival touch on Israel, past and present. Israel's 2014 Foreign Language Oscar submission and a New York City premiere, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is adapted from A TRUE STORY of an Orthodox woman who has spent five years in a legal stalemate fighting for a divorce that, according to religious law, requires her husband's consent. Ronit Elkabetz (who co-directed with her brother Shlomi Elkabetz) delivers an unforgettable performance in the lead role. The Zionist Idea, receiving its world premiere, is a feature-length exploration of one of the most influential, controversial, and urgently relevant political ideologies of the modern era. Directed by Joseph Dorman (Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness) and Oren Rudavsky (A Life Apart: Hasidism in America), the film examines the meaning, history and future of Zionism at this crucial time. A panel discussion will take place in conjunction with the film on January 25. Roberta Grossman's Above and Beyond, produced by Nancy Spielberg, presents the story of a group of Jewish American fighter pilots who returned to the battlefield during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. This documentary combines interviews with stunning footage taken from their planes.

Five films focus on various aspects of the Holocaust and its repercussions. Let's Go!, directed by Michael Verhoeven (The Nasty Girl) and a U.S. premiere, artfully presents a biting commentary on post-World War II German society in an adaptation of Laura Waco's autobiographical novel. Overcome with grief at her father's funeral in 1968, Laura looks back with fresh eyes at her parents' decision to settle in Germany after surviving the Holocaust. In Forbidden Films, receiving its New York premiere, Felix Moeller brings viewers into a vaulted, explosive-resistant compound where 40 incendiary Nazi propaganda films are kept, banned from public viewing; and interviews renowned film historians and filmmakers who debate the importance of these "Nazi movies of the poison cabinet" asking: Are they worth keeping? Do we need to show them? How do we approach this dark legacy? Acclaimed director Amos Gitai's Tsili, receiving its U.S. premiere, adapts Aharon Appelfeld's novel about a young Jewish woman hiding in the forests south of Czernowicz, her world and family having been ripped away, and her subsequent wandering and search for meaning following the war. Dieter Reifarth's The Tugendhat House, also a U.S. premiere, examines the history of one of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's earliest prototypes of modernist architecture in Europe. Built for a Jewish family by the name of Tugendhat in 1930, it was abandoned during the Nazi occupation, only to resurface in the ensuing decades as a therapy center, a ballet school, and a school for children with scoliosis. In Natan, investigative documentarians David Cairns and Paul Duane reveal the forgotten life of Bernard Natan, a Romanian Jew who fought for France in World War I and became the head of the innovative and influential Pathé studios, only to die forgotten during the Holocaust and almost ERASED from the history of French film.

Three films examine Jews and the world of entertainment. The Outrageous Sophie Tucker, directed by William Gazecki and receiving its New York premiere, looks at the life of the so-called "Queen of Vaudeville," theater, radio, and television icon Sophie Tucker. Born in Russia into a poor Jewish family in 1887, her campaign to capture Hollywood's heart is a marvelous rags-to-riches story. In How to Break Into Yiddish Vaudeville, a world premiere short, animator Jack Feldstein uses his trademark style of "neonizing" (manipulating video into a kaleidoscopic color palette that resembles classic American neon signs) to whimsically document the cutthroat world of New York City burlesque theater. Hilla Medalia's The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films, a New York premiere, revisits the lives and careers of Israeli cousins Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus, who took over the failing Cannon Films studio and forged a new business model by producing films with shlocky scripts, ranging from action thrillers like Death Wish II to musicals such as Breakin', and even collaborations with auteur filmmakers like Andrei Konchalovsky and Jean-Luc Godard. The film features interviews with Chuck Norris, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and other B-movie talent, as well as Golan and Globus. The festival will present a Saturday midnight screening of Breakin' on January 17.

The festival also includes three features receiving New York premieres. In Yossi Aviram's The Dune, a 65-year-old Parisian police officer, weary of his long career, meets a mysterious and spiritually motivated younger man, triggering a bizarre sequence of events that shapes both of their futures. The cast includes noted French actor Mathieu Amalric (The Grand Budapest Hotel). In Susan Korda's slice-of-life drama Salomea's Nose, the title character remembers THE DAY her beloved brothers disfigured her and themselves for life with one clumsy act. At just under 23 minutes, the film, featuring Barbara Sukowa (Hannah Arendt) as the voice of Salomea, offers a delightfully ambiguous thesis about fate and family dynamics. In Hugo Gelin's Like Brothers, a successful entrepreneur in his forties, a cynical screenwriter in his thirties, and a young man on the cusp of adulthood are brought together by the untimely death of the woman they all love. Reeling with grief after her funeral, they embark on a spontaneous trip together to a summer cabin in Corsica-a trip she originally planned for all of them-which becomes a journey of both tribute and discovery.

Two additional features will be screened. Director Daniel Burman's wistful comedy The Mystery of Happiness is part buddy movie, part detective story, and part romance. Life-long business partners Santiago and Eugenio understand each other without words, care for each other, and need each other. When Eugenio vanishes without a clue, Santiago and Eugenio's wife Laura join forces to solve the mystery of his disappearance. Alexey Fedorchenko's colorful Angels of Revolution, receiving its U.S. premiere, tells the story of five cosmopolitan artists, led by a famed Communist revolutionary, searching for answers during a clash of cultures now known as the Great Samoyedic War in 1930s Siberia.

Three documentaries round out the main slate. Guy Natanel and Annie Sulzberger's The King of Nerac, receiving its world premiere, is a thoughtful portrait of David Breuer Weil, a modern day Gauguin who gave up a career as one of the world's leading art dealers to embark on a life of creativity and contemplation as an artist known for his vast, apocalyptic canvases and his colossal, dynamic sculptures that dominate public spaces around the world from London to Jerusalem. Yossi Aviram's documentary The Polgar Variant (U.S. premiere) follows the travels of the Polgár sisters, groomed by their father Lázló to become chess champions. From their childhood in 1970s Communist Budapest to today, the family's tale continues to make shock waves in the press. Erik Greenberg Anjou's Deli Man, a New York premiere, is a portrait of the effusive and charming Ziggy Gruber, a Texan and third-generation delicatessen man who currently operates one of the country's most acclaimed delis, Kenny and Ziggy's in Houston. The documentary sheds light on the larger story of Jews in America-immigration, upward mobility, and food-and features interviews with Larry King, Jerry Stiller, and foodies sharing memories of pastrami.


SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS

ARTIST FOCUS: KEREN CYTTER
The New York Jewish Film Festival will present an Artist Focus on Israeli artist Keren Cytter. Cytter uses visual media in strikingly original ways to build powerful and affecting narratives out of skewed scenes of EVERYDAY life. Her films, video installations, and drawings represent social realities through experimental modes of storytelling characterized by a nonlinear, cyclical logic and multiple layers of images: conversation, monologue, and narration systematically composed to undermine linguistic conventions and traditional interpretation schemata. Recalling amateur home movies and video diaries, these montages of impressions, memories, and imaginings are poetic and self-referential in composition, thought provoking, and inescapably engrossing. This special program will include four works by Cytter and a discussion moderated by Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, the Jewish Museum, and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival.

FREE SHORTS
Four new short films will be shown to the public for free. German Shepherd is an animated work that poses difficult questions about our capacity to forgive unimaginable acts of evil in relation to one man's vision of Germany (and Germans). In Longing, a young wife confronts her husband's ABSENCE and the deterioration in the intimacy between them, with suspicions arising about his true identity. Some Vacation is a comic tale of what goes wrong when Dad decides to take THE FAMILY along on his business road trips and calls them vacations. In The Visit, a young woman visits a friend in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, where disagreements about how to spend their time together soon escalate into a larger conflict.

FROM THE VAULTS
Three archival films will screen at this year's festival. D.W. Griffith's A Child of the Ghetto (1910) receives the New York premiere of a new restoration. World-renowned banjo player Alison Brown will provide a live accompaniment to this classic, a documentary-like short tale of a woman's innocent crime in New York's bustling Lower East Side and her subsequent escape to the country and romance with a young farmer. Experimental filmmaker Bill Morrison's Back to the Soil consists of 1,000 feet of 16mm film shot by Morrison's grandfather in 1927 and newly edited by Morrison, documenting an era when the Soviet government offered over 2.5 million acres of FARMLAND in the Ukraine, Belarus, and Crimea to former merchants whose work had been outlawed under Communist rule. Ernst Lubitsch's Three Women, also receiving the New York premiere of a new restoration, is a saucy melodrama starring May McAvoy (The Jazz Singer) as an 18-year-old in a dizzying, whirlwind triangle between her estranged socialite mother and a weasel-like suitor who, after getting a whiff of May's trust fund, stays true to his cad nature by wooing the young dame. The rollicking score will be provided through live piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin.

GUEST SELECTS: JENNIE LIVINGSTON
The New York Jewish Film Festival presents a "Guest Selects" series, each year showcasing a director who has shaped the course of film history. The series begins with a special screening of Jennie Livingston's Paris Is Burning on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of its release. Livingston has also selected two accompanying films that relate to Jewish culture: Alan J. Paluka's Academy Award-winning Sophie's Choice, starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline; and Stanley Kubrick's provocative black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, starring Peter Sellers and George C. Scott. Livingston's iconic documentary Paris Is Burning offers a dazzling, dynamic, and intimate portrait of 1980s Harlem drag balls, where rival fashion "houses" competed for trophies and cash prizes in categories like "face," "femme queen realness" and "voguing." Winner of a Sundance Grand Jury Prize, Paris Is Burning celebrates how African-American, Latino, gay, and transgender New Yorkers, for whom racism, poverty, and homophobia were daily struggles, created a world of sustenance and joy.

MIDNIGHT MOVIE
The festival will present a special Saturday midnight showing of Joel Silberg's Breakin', which helped to bring break dancing to the forefront of mainstream American pop culture. Dated but very entertaining, the 1984 film tells the tale of a struggling jazz dancer who, with the help of street-dancing friends, becomes the new sensation of the crowds, despite disapproval from her dance instructor and the bitter rivalry from another crew. A variety of hybrid breakthrough performances, plus a fantastic soundtrack that included Ollie and Jerry's "There's No Stopping Us" and Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody," made Breakin' a major success for Cannon Films.

REVIVAL: THE BIRDCAGE
This 1996 adaptation of the iconic French farce La Cage aux Folles, directed by the late Mike Nichols, brings a Jewish twist to the 1978 French-Italian film and the original 1973 stage play. Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star as a flamboyant South Beach couple whose straight son brings his fiancée and her ultraconservative gentile parents to dinner. Williams and Lane transform into a happy straight couple for the occasion, with Lane in drag and their Jewish identity hidden. The cast also includes Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, and Hank Azaria.

NEW YORK NOIR (1945 - 1948)
New York was a frequent setting for films embracing the cinematic style that came to be defined as film noir. Starting with Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street, a twisted tale of Nazi espionage, directors interwove documentary techniques into the storytelling, wanting to "film where it actually happened." These films portrayed the city as a postwar Gotham with endless crime and intrigue. Other films to be screened include Robert Siodmak's Cry of the City, about former childhood friends who confront each other as cop and cop-killer; and Jules Dassin's The Naked City, depicting a police investigation of the murder of a young model in her Upper West Side apartment.

COMING ATTRACTIONS: ART OF THE FILM NOIR TRAILER
Many trailers for films noirs during the 1940s and 1950s, featuring rapid cuts, provocative narration, and dramatic scenarios, were practically films in and of themselves. In homage to the genre and its many talents, the festival will present a 30-minute compilation of noir and neo-noir trailers that will run on a continuous loop in the amphitheater of the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center during the festival. Films from such directors as Jules Dassin, Samuel Fuller, Stanley Kubrick, Fritz Lang, Jean-Pierre Melville, Robert Siodmak, and Billy Wilder will be included.

WAR AGAINST WAR: SCREENINGS AND POSTER EXHIBITION
War Against War is a series of antiwar films made mostly during the 1950s and 1960s. The film series is accompanied by a small EXHIBITION of film posters for historically important antiwar films in the Furman Gallery at the Walter Reade Theater. With wars raging in many parts of the world, from Eastern Europe and the Middle East to East Africa and Central Asia, we seem to live in a time of constant war. Antiwar films have, in various ways, been able to capture the horrors of war and the physical and mental destruction war causes within humans, both soldiers and civilians. The films selected focus less on dramatic spectacles of warfare. Rather, they depict the horrors of war through inner turmoil, surreal plots, and the soul-searching of its characters.

Six films will be featured in the series. Gillo Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers, based on occurrences during the Algerian War (1954-62) and focusing on the brutal Battle of Algiers, is regarded as among the most disturbing and yet impactful anti-war films made in the 1960s. Fear and Desire (1953), the first feature film by celebrated director Stanley Kubrick and his least-seen work, follows a group of soldiers that survived a plane crash behind enemy lines wandering around in a forest in an unidentified war, seeming to get more and more surreal as they try to return to their own troops. Kon Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain, the story of a Japanese soldier suffering from tuberculosis at the end of World War II, depicts the struggle of life and death in the highly irrational and dehumanizing experience that is war. Konrad Wolf's I Was Nineteen is based on the director's own service during World War II arriving with Soviet troops to fight in the battle of Berlin at the age of 19. The film's narrative structure, the style of editing and camera movement, the dialogue and the acting are highly progressive for the time and seem closely related to the ideas employed by the directors of the French Nouvelle Vague. Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers is among the most surreal, grotesque, and disturbing antiwar movies ever made. Set in a fictional country and at unspecified time, two simple-minded peasants receive a letter from their king that promises them riches and grants them complete liberty regarding any kind of crime if they join the army to fight in an unnamed war. As the war progresses their actions become more and more inhuman yet they remain poor, lose the war and are, to their surprise, executed for their crimes. The War Game, written and directed by Peter Watkins, was originally to be presented as a television film by the BBC but taken off the schedule as it was deemed too disturbing for TV audiences. Presented to the public in a number of organized screenings and shown abroad, it did not air on the BBC until 20 years later but won the Academy Award for best Documentary Feature in 1967.


This year's New York Jewish Film Festival was selected by Florence Almozini, Senior Programmer, Film Society of LINCOLN Center; Rachel Chanoff, THE OFFICE performing arts + film; Jaron Gandelman, Curatorial Assistant for Media, Jewish Museum and Coordinator, New York Jewish Film Festival; Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, Jewish Museum and Curator for Special Programs, New York Jewish Film Festival; and Aviva Weintraub, Associate Curator, Jewish Museum and Director, New York Jewish Film Festival.

The New York Jewish Film Festival is made possible by the Martin and Doris Payson Fund for Film and Media. Generous support is also provided by Mimi and Barry Alperin, The Liman Foundation, and through public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Most of the New York Jewish Film Festival's screenings will be held at the Film Society of LINCOLN Center's Walter Reade Theater, located at 165 West 65th St. between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway. Coming Attractions: Art of the Film Noir Trailer, the free Shorts screenings, and the Talking Movies panel discussions will take place at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, 144 West 65th Street, between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway.

NYJFF tickets will go on sale Tuesday, December 23. A pre-sale to Film Society and the Jewish Museum members will begin Tuesday, December 16 at noon. Tickets are $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society and Jewish Museum members. Tickets may be purchased online or in person at the Film Society's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and Walter Reade Theater box offices, 144 & 165 West 65th Street. For our free event ticket policy and complete festival information, visit www.NYJFF.org.


FILM DESCRIPTIONS & SCHEDULE

Opening Night
The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer
Asaf Galay & Shaul Betser, Israel, 2014, 72m
English, Hebrew, and Yiddish with English subtitles
Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer was a charming enchanter both on the page and in his romantic life. This surprising and unflinching documentary explores, through poignant interviews and exclusive archival footage, the Unknown history of one of his most vital sources of creative inspiration: his translators. Dozens of women throughout Singer's life worked with him to open the doors to his singular Yiddish prose for the rest of the world to enjoy, and his relationships with many of them blurred the lines between the professional and the personal. This is their story, and his-as well as a story of the arts of literature, translation, love, and life itself. U.S. Premiere
Wednesday, January 14, 4:00pm & 8:45pm (Q&A with Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser at both screenings)

Closing Night
Felix and Meira
Maxime Giroux, Canada, 2014, 105m
French, English, and Yiddish with English subtitles
In the Mile End neighborhood of Montreal, hipsters and Hasidim coexist amicably but independently. When Meira, an Orthodox wife and mother with an undercurrent of rebelliousness, meets Felix, a middle-aged atheist adrift without family ties, a slow-booming affair takes shape that will present Meira with a difficult fork in the road. Felix and Meira unfolds like a classic forbidden-love novel, stylized by cinematographer Sara Mishara's shadowy, underlit lensing and set on overcast wintery streets. An Oscilloscope Laboratories release. U.S. Premiere
Thursday, January 29, 3:30pm & 9:00pm (Q&A with Maxime Giroux at both screenings)

Above and Beyond
Roberta Grossman, USA, 2014, 86m
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
In 1948, as Europe reassembled itself in the wake of total war, a small group of Jewish-American fighter pilots returned to the battlefield for a new cause. The Israeli War of Independence was underway, and despite tremendous weariness and personal risk, these men smuggled U.S. planes behind the Iron Curtain to train and fight-all while evading a watchful FBI. Above and Beyond combines their interviews with stunning footage from the planes, poetically tracing the journey from hometown to homeland.
Thursday, January 22, 6:00pm (Q&A with Roberta Grossman and producer Nancy Spielberg)

Angels of Revolution
Alexey Fedorchenko, Russia, 2014, 113m
Russian and Khanty with English subtitles
When Stalin built a town in northern USSR on the land of indigenous shamans in the 1930s, he mistakenly generated a landmark collision of cultures now known as the Great Samoyedic War. Russian avant-gardists from the South, attracted to the ideals of Ancient Paganism and eager to reconcile them with a Soviet utopia, trekked up to the banks of the Amnya River to take part in the conflict. This colorful film by Alexey Fedorchenko (First on the Moon, Silent Souls) tells the story of five cosmopolitan friends, led by the famous "Polina the Revolutionary," searching for answers. U.S. Premiere
Tuesday, January 27, 3:30pm & 9:00pm

Deli Man
Erik Greenberg Anjou, USA, 2014, 91m
Shalom, y'all. Deli Man is a portrait of the effusive and charming Ziggy Gruber, a Texan, Yiddish-speaking, third-generation delicatessen man who currently operates one of the country's most acclaimed delis, Kenny and Ziggy's in Houston. The history of THE FAMILY business (and, indeed, the history of the American deli) sheds light on a larger story of Jews in America-immigration, upward mobility, and Western assimilation. But how much of the rich tradition of Jewish life is lost amid all these achievements? A Cohen Media Group release. New York Premiere
Thursday, January 15, 1:00pm & 6:00pm (Q&A with Erik Greenberg Anjou at both screenings)

The Dune
Yossi Aviram, France/Israel, 2013, 90m
French and Hebrew with English subtitles
Ruben (Niels Arestrup) is a 65-year-old Parisian growing weary of a long career in the police force. When he meets a mysterious and spiritually motivated younger man by the name of Hanoch (Lior Ashkenazi), a bizarre sequence of events are set in motion that will shape both of their futures. The Dune is an elegant and understated piece of fiction, equal parts mystery and family drama, meditating on the consequences of choosing a particular path at life's crossroads. New York Premiere
Thursday, January 15, 3:30pm (Q&A with Yossi Aviram)
Sunday, January 18, 3:30pm (Q&A with Yossi Aviram)

Forbidden Films
Felix Moeller, German, 2013, 94m
Hebrew, English, German, and French with English subtitles
The Nazi regime produced over 1,200 feature films, mostly political propaganda, a handful of which were crafted specifically to engender anti-Semitism among the masses. Of these hideous artifacts, 40 remain banned from public viewing to this day for their incendiary content. In Forbidden Films, director Felix Moeller brings us into the vaulted, explosive-resistant compound where the reels are kept and then interviews renowned film historians and filmmakers who debate the importance of these "Nazi movies of the poison cabinet": are they worth keeping? Do we need to show them? How do we approach this dark legacy? A Zeitgeist Films release. New York Premiere
Thursday, January 22, 3:15pm (Q&A with Felix Moeller)
Sunday, January 25, 3:30pm (Q&A with Felix Moeller)

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
Ronit & Shlomi Elkabetz, Israel/France/Germany, 2014, 115m
Hebrew and French with English subtitles
Israel's Foreign Language Oscar submission, Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem is a dramatic adaptation of a harrowing true story set in a Mizrahi Orthodox enclave in Israel. The title HEROINE has spent five years in a stalemate fighting for a divorce that, according to religious law, requires her husband's full consent. As he continues to refuse, Viviane fears that her life may never proceed freely, and the courtroom struggles grow increasingly surreal. Ronit Elkabetz (who co-directed with her brother) delivers an unforgettable performance in the lead role. A Music Box Films release. New York City Premiere
Wednesday, January 21, 3:15pm & 9:00pm (Q&A with Ronit and Shlomi Elkabetz at both screenings)

The Go-Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films
Hilla Medalia, Israel/France, 2014, 86m
Hebrew and English with English subtitles
Purveyors of 1980s Hollywood B-movies, Israeli cousins Menachem Golan and Yoram Globus took over a failing Cannon Films studio in 1979 and forged a new business model by producing films with groundbreakingly shlocky scripts. They became known mostly for action-thrillers like Death Wish 2 and Exterminator 2, but the group's output was far more diverse, including collaborations with auteur filmmakers like Andrei Konchalovsky and Jean-Luc Godard. The Go-Go Boys pays tribute to a special time in moviemaking and features a range of interviews with Chuck Norris, Jean Claude Van Damme, and other B-movie talent, as well as the Israeli duo themselves. A Menemsha Films release. New York Premiere
Thursday, January 29, 1:00pm & 6:15pm

The King of Nerac
Guy Natanel & Annie Sulzberger, UK/Denmark, 2013, 76m
David Breuer-Weil's vast, apocalyptic canvases stare unflinchingly at the horrors of 20th-century history, and his colossal, dynamic sculptures dominate public spaces around the world from London to Jerusalem. This pure and meditative film takes advantage of unique access to illuminate a thoughtful portrait of its fascinating, reclusive subject: a modern-day Gauguin who gave up a career as one of the world's leading art dealers to embark on a life of creativity and contemplation. World Premiere
Tuesday, January 20, 9:00pm (Q&A with Guy Natanel, Annie Sulzberger, and producer Paul Goldin)
Wednesday, January 21, 1:00pm (Q&A with Guy Natanel, Annie Sulzberger, and producer Paul Goldin)

Let's Go!
Michael Verhoeven, Germany, 2014, 90m
German with English subtitles
Director Michael Verhoeven, the "nasty boy" of German cinema, artfully presents a biting commentary on postwar German society in this adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Laura Waco. Overcome with grief at her father's funeral in 1968, Laura looks back with fresh eyes at her parents' decision to settle in Germany after surviving the Holocaust-at their incapacity to escape the shadow of the genocide, their denial of their own Judaism, and the deeply conflicted psychology that was the legacy of their plight and others like them. The film is a beautifully wrought, subtly probing investigation of the complex notion of German-Jewish identity. U.S. Premiere
Saturday, January 24, 9:30pm (Q&A with Michael Verhoeven)
Tuesday, January 27, 1:00pm (Q&A with Michael Verhoeven)

Like Brothers
Hugo Gelin, France, 2012, 104m
French with English subtitles
A successful entrepreneur in his forties, a cynical screenwriter in his thirties, and a young man on the cusp of adulthood still living with his parents are brought together by the untimely death of the woman they all love. Reeling with grief after her funeral, they embark on a spontaneous trip together to a summer cabin in Corsica-a trip she originally planned for all of them-that becomes a journey of both tribute and discovery. A bo

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