Harvard Film Archive is pleased to be a host site for two programs in this year’s Boston Jewish Film Festival, now in its twelfth year. Ticket prices for these two special events are: $9 general, $8 for students, seniors, BJFF, CCT, MFA, and WGBH members. To order tickets in advance, call Emerson MajesTix at 617-824-8000. Remaining tickets will go on sale at the HFA one hour before show time on the night of each screening. For further information on The Boston Jewish Film Festival call 617-244-9899 or visit www.bjff.org.
November 7 (Tuesday) 9 pm
Directed by Oleg Dorman
Russia 2000, video, color, 75 min.
Russian with English subtitles
Set outside Moscow, in and around a Jewish religious school, or yeshiva, that was once a Communist Party vacation home, this documentary gracefully explores how three young secular Russians found their way to Orthodox Judaism. Danya has followed in the footsteps of his parents, who are famous theater people. Bored by success, he discovers the challenge he craves in Torah studies. Sasha, an officer in the Soviet air force, begins his religious journey by rejecting the Marxist-Leninist world view, which has no place for a divine creator. Igor is a hippie, drawn to Eastern philosophy, New Age religion, and Jack Kerouac. Of the three, his is the most postmodern vision of Judaism. The film offers a captivating glimpse of the dynamics of Jewish identity in post-Soviet society and of the future of Jewish life in post-Communist Eastern Europe.
The program is introduced by Joshua Rubenstein, Northeast Regional Director of Amnesty International USA and author of Tangled Loyalties: The Life and Times of Ilya Ehrenburg.
November 8
(Wednesday) 9 pm
Director Abraham Ravett
in Person
Directed by Abraham
Ravett
US 1989, 16mm, b/w and color, 58 min.
Everything’s for You reflects the filmmaker’s relationship with his deceased father, a man who survived both the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz.
November 8
(Wednesday) 9 pm with "Everything's For You"
Director Abraham Ravett
in Person
Directed by Abraham
Ravett
US 1993, 16mm, b/w, silent, 13 min.
This brief silent film is a tribute: a projected memorial to members of the filmmaker’s family and to all those who died under Nazi occupation.
November 8
(Wednesday) 9 pm with "Everything's For You"
Director Abraham Ravett
in Person
Directed by Abraham
Ravett
US 1999, 16mm, b/w and color, 25 min.
The March presents interviews the filmmaker made with his mother over a thirteen-year period preceding her death, focusing on the forced march she made in 1945, when the Nazis evacuated Auschwitz.
Distinguished experimental filmmaker and Massachusetts resident Abraham Ravett has been making independent films for the past twenty years and teaches filmmaking and photography at Hampshire College. Born in Poland in 1947 to Holocaust survivors, he was raised in Israel and emigrated to the United States in 1955. Using old photographs, family films, archival footage, and animation, the filmmaker struggles to understand those who survived and memorialize those who did not.
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