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The Band’s Visit
Dir. Eran Korilin; 90 minutes; English, Hebrew, Arabic This award winning charming Israeli comedy is the tale of an Egyptian police band stranded overnight in a quiet Israeli settlement after taking the wrong bus. It features lovely performances from Sasson Gabai as the band's impeccably behaved conductor and actress Ronit Elkabetz as an Israeli bar owner who puts him up for the night. A beautifully controlled piece, it marks the impressive debut of director and screenwriter Eran Kolirin, who handles…
Find out more »Creativity against the odds: Art and Internment during World War Two
To mark the 80th anniversary of the British government’s controversial decision to ‘collar the lot’, this illustrated lecture will examine the art produced in the British internment camps, mostly but not only on the Isle of Man. It will do so in the broader context of art produced in other internment situations, from the Japanese-American camps in the USA to the Nazi POW and concentration camps. Just what is it that makes human beings feel the urge to create in such…
Find out more »Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles – CANCELLED DUE TO LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS
Dir. Max Lewkowicz; 2019; 97 min; English Director Max Lewkowicz’s richly detailed documentary celebrates the illustrious Broadway show Fiddler on the Roof, the evergreen shtetl-set musical first staged in 1964 with choreography and direction by Jerome Robbins and starring Zero Mostel as Teyve, the milkman. Contributions from a range of interviewees – including people attached to the original production, such as producer Hal Prince and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and famous fans of the show, including Fran Lebowitz and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel…
Find out more »Finding 100 Faces: capturing Jewish diversity
In early 2018, composer and film maker Benjamin Till, who had only recently discovered he was Jewish, decided to make the film 100 Faces to find out more about the community he’d been a member of for 43 years without realising. His mission was to find one UK-based Jewish person born every year from 1918 to 2017 and it became an odyssey of discovery which took him all over the world. His final 100 people include Jewish people from all…
Find out more »Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire
In 1982 nearing the end of a remarkable life, consultant David Henryk Ropschitz put pen to paper to share his own story of 1940s wartime survival. His highly personal novel is about life in the Italian internment camp, Ferramonti, where thousands of Jews and other ‘undesirables’ were imprisoned. In his novel Dr Ropschitz looks back with tenderness and humour at these traumatic years and takes the reader on a journey from wartime Calabria to the Abruzzi, from barbed wire to…
Find out more »Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual?
Stanley Kubrick is generally acknowledged as one of the world's great directors. Yet few critics or scholars have considered how he emerged from a unique and vibrant cultural milieu: the New York Jewish intelligentsia. In this talk, Nathan Abrams re-examines the director's work in context of his ethnic and cultural origins. Focusing on several of Kubrick's key themes - including masculinity, ethical responsibility, and the nature of evil - it demonstrates how his films were in conversation with contemporary New…
Find out more »The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland
In the 1940s a third of Baghdad’s population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had fled. Of those remaining, most escaped in the 1970s or were killed. Today, fewer than half a dozen remain. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited. It is illuminated by the words and portraits of her family, along with an afterword with a brief history of Baghdadi…
Find out more »Klezmer Music: History and Contemporary Practice Around the World
Klezmer – the instrumental music of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews – has survived assimilation, suppression and eradication and is now a recognisable ‘world music’ commodity, as well as an object of serious musicological study. But what relationship does today’s klezmer bear to its 19th and early 20th century roots, and what happens to traditional music when its community context changes or disappears? In this talk Phil will give an overview of klezmer’s journey, exploring where the music came from, and where it…
Find out more »Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
Max Lewkowicz’s richly detailed documentary celebrates the illustrious Broadway show Fiddler on the Roof, the evergreen shtetl-set musical first staged in 1964 with choreography and direction by Jerome Robbins and starring Zero Mostel as Teyve, the milkman. Contributions from a range of interviewees – including people attached to the original production, such as producer Hal Prince and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, and famous fans of the show, including Fran Lebowitz and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda – help to structure the history lesson…
Find out more »Willesden Jewish Cemetery
Willesden Cemetery, which opened in 1873, is one of London’s most prestigious Jewish cemeteries. It is run by the United Synagogue who were fortunate to be awarded a £1.7m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to open Willesden Jewish Cemetery as a place of heritage for the public. The United Synagogue website describes the Cemetery as "a place of great tranquillity, the cemetery charts the development of London’s Jewish community over nearly 150 years, with graves and memorials rich in social history…
Find out more »If you have an event relating to Jewish culture or relevant to DAVAR members that you would like us to publicise, please email us at info@davarbristol.co.uk.