Davar Bristol

Shipman and King Cinemas: a celebration of Jewish enterprise and family
2023-11-08 19:30 - 21:00 (Europe/London) | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
In this illustrated talk, Jenny King tells the remarkable story of her grandfather Sam King and his journey from an impoverished Jewish immigrant family to a cinema and property mogul. Together with his friend Alf Shipman, they fulfilled their dream of building a chain of magnificent Art Deco cinemas, starting in the First World War with a tiny cinema in the back of a Sussex pub. Through their foresight and dedication to the world of entertainment, Shipman and King Cinemas grew to be one of Britain’s finest independent cinema circuits, bringing entertainment to thousands of people through two World Wars, the Great Depression, and the challenge of television. Alongside the success of Shipman and King is a human story of business triumph, family bonds and personal sadness.
Cinema King: A Granddaughter’s memoir, is available through www.thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk and all profits will go to the Hailsham Old Pavilion Society charity that maintains Shipman and King’s first cinema which opened in 1921.
Jennifer King is a business psychologist who co-founded a management consultancy where she specialised in working with the medical profession. She is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. She now works as a Leadership Coach. She lives in Bristol with her husband David Pendleton. They have two daughters and four grandchildren. ‘Cinema King’ is her first memoir.
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Three Minutes: A Lengthening
2023-10-25 20:00 - 21:30 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Netherlands/UK 2022, 69 mins, English, Polish, German, Yiddish; Director Bianca Stigter, narrated by Helen Bonham Carter
Three Minutes: A Lengthening presents a home movie shot by David Kurtz in 1938 in a Jewish town in Poland and tries to postpone its ending. As long as we are watching, history is not over yet. The three minutes of footage, mostly in colour, are the only moving images left of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk before the Holocaust. The existing three minutes are examined to unravel the stories hidden in the celluloid. The footage is imaginatively edited to create a film that lasts over an hour. Different voices enhance the images. Glenn Kurtz, grandson of David Kurtz, provides his knowledge of the footage. Maurice Chandler, who appears in the film as a boy, shares his memories.
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Once upon a time in Egypt - Memories of a bygone era
2023-10-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
In this conversation with Lisa Lipman, Viviane will discuss her childhood in Egypt and her memories of growing up in a Jewish community which at the time numbered 80,000 . They all left or were expelled between 1948 and 1967. The 1930s to early 1950s are considered Egypt’s golden era, when Cairo was known as the Pearl of the Nile. Viviane will evoke a world which no longer exists and will talk about a Sephardi community with its unique customs and traditions. She will also discuss her experience as a refugee, bringing with it both trauma and a loss of identity.
Viviane Bowell was born and raised in Cairo in a Sephardi community. Her maternal grandparents came from Aleppo in Syria and her paternal ancestors had been expelled from Spain in 1492 before settling in the Ottoman Empire. Expelled from Egypt in 1956, Viviane’s family arrived in England as penniless refugees and were placed in a disused hostel in the West of England before moving to London. There she attended a French school and later went to university as a mature student and obtained a law degree. Viviane moved to Bristol nearly 20 years ago and currently volunteers for two charities supporting refugees and asylum seekers. Since publishing her memoirs and recipe book soon after Covid, she continues to promote the little-known story of Egyptian Jews and Jews from Arab lands.
Lisa Lipman has been directing and telling stories on popular programmes and documentaries for the BBC and other channels over the last 30 years. She is very much looking forward to delving into Viviane’s own family saga.
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Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret
2023-09-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
USA 2023, 106 mins, English, Director Kelly Fremon Craig, featuring Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson
This coming-of-age comedy drama film, written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, is based on the 1970 novel of the same name by Judy Blume. Eleven year old Margaret Simon moves with her family from New York City to a New Jersey suburb. Upset about moving away from her friends and from Sylvia, her beloved paternal grandmother, Margaret begins to communicate with God about her concerns, anxieties and hopes. Life is not easy, as well as starting a new school and having to make new friends, she doesn’t know if she wants to be Jewish like her father or Christian like her mother.
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Minyan
2023-04-19 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Based on a David Bezmozgis short story, Minyan is an absorbing coming-of-age tale set in 1980s Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. The son of Russian immigrants, 17 year old David struggles under the weight of religious tradition, familial expectations and his own sexual identity. In order to secure a room for his grandfather in an old age home, David agrees to attend services, ensuring there will always be a minyan. This decision coincides with his first affair with a gay bartender. With the help of the elderly couple living next to his grandfather, David learns to integrate the disparate parts of his life.
UK 2022, 118 mins, English
Director Eric Steel featuring Samuel H. Levine, Ron Rivkin
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Finding my way through the woods: migration, family and food
2023-03-22 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
What can food and family history teach us about issues of migration, gender and family? From the recipes and stories of one Sephardi family in Greece and Turkey in the late 19th and early 20th century, as well as a cooking demo and tasting, Michal takes us on a culinary family history involving messages about contemporary culinary cultures and society.
Dr Michal Nahman is an anthropologist who has written about Israeli society, reproduction and medicine, and is now turning her attention to some of the most pressing issues of our time: the food system, antisemitism, and intra-Jewish inequality.
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Charlotte
2023-03-08 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Based on an expansive collection of a thousand autobiographical paintings found after the war – considered by some to be the first graphic novel – this stunningly beautiful, animated film sheds light on the life and work of Berlin-born artist Charlotte Salomon. Restricted and haunted by antisemitic laws, the immensely gifted Salomon was forced to leave her beloved home country for southern France, where she continued to paint, using her art as a way of coping with her traumatic past and troubled family. Aged 26 and pregnant, she was murdered in Auschwitz, leaving her paintings, a remarkable record of mid-20th century life, to be found after the war. Salomon’s life was tragically cut short, but Charlotte – featuring the voice of Keira Knightley who leads a starry British cast – excels in capturing the sheer genius of her art and its lasting, powerful legacy.
Canada/Belgium/France 2021, 92 mins, English
Director Eric Warin, Tahir Rana featuring Keira Knightly, Jim Broadbent, Helen McCrory
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The Jews of Africa
2023-02-22 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Many suspect that the 21st century will be Africa’s century, but for many of us the African continent remains a fairly unknown place. Least known amongst its many unknown features is the emergence of new Jewish communities to join the long-standing ones that have been there for nearly two centuries. Clive Lawton will explore some of these communities, how they came into existence and the conundrums they throw up for the established Jewish community, not least, but not only, in Israel.
Clive Lawton was made an OBE in 2016 for services to education and the Jewish community. He is CEO of the Commonwealth Jewish Council which draws together and represents about 40 communities around the globe. He was co-founder of Limmud, is currently scholar-in-residence at JW3, the large Jewish Community Centre in London, an NHS tribunal Chair, a magistrate on the Wiltshire Bench, and runs his own international education consultancy. Clive lectures and has published several books in the fields of religion, moral and ethical matters, literature, politics, and history.
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Armageddon Time
2023-02-08 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
1980, Queens New York City. Aspiring artist Jewish-American Paul, the youngest son of the Graff family, is on the cusp of adolescence. Struggling to fit in at school, he finds solace in his close relationship with his beloved grandfather (the wonderful Anthony Hopkins) and his budding friendship with Johnny, a sensitive and defiant African-American boy. As he tries to find his way in the world, America, too, is going through a profound change with Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory and the rise of a new economic era. Featuring a stellar cast, James Gray’s new film is his most personal to date – an unashamedly nostalgic, if unsentimental, love letter to his childhood.
‘Repeta delivers an outstanding debut performance as Paul, balancing youthful exuberance and silliness with a real emotional depth’ (Little White Lies)
USA 2022, 115 mins, English
Director James Gray, featuring Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, Banks Repeta

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Jews and Jazz: a melting pot of identities
2023-01-25 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
What has Charlie Parker’s classic bebop tune ‘Anthropology’ got to do with George Gershwin? What was the role of Jewish composers in establishing the great American Song Book and how did this establish mainstream jazz standards? How does the Freygish scale found in klezmer music relate to the Phyrgian dominant mode used in minor 2-5-1 Jazz chords?
Jewish composers, musicians, producers and club owners played a major role in the establishment of the American Jazz scene. One possible reason for this is that Jews used jazz to construct three identities: to become more American, to emphasize their minority status, and to become more Jewish. Today a wealth of Israeli musicians is influencing the modern Jazz scene with their own Sephardic and Mizrachi musical flavours. This talk will provide plenty of musical examples and does not require any knowledge of jazz but a willingness to listen with open-minded ears.
Yoav Ben-Shlomo is a lover of music, including classical, jazz and klezmer as well as helping run DAVAR on the side. He is neither a professional musician, still mastering jazz flute and saxophone, or a Jazz historian, but he loves to share his knowledge and passion of music.
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Jewish Women's Comics: Bodies and Bibles
2022-12-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Charlotte Salomon, Aline Kominsky Crumb, Sharon Rudahl, and Miriam Libicki, just some of the names of the maverick Jewish women who have transformed the world of autobiographical graphic narratives. They have challenged the traditional rubrics of comics making, and found authentic drawing styles and voices on their pages. In this talk I will introduce the artists and artworks that have inspired me as I produced The Book of Sarah, my autobiographical graphic novel distilled from thousands of diary drawings begun in my parents’ garden shed back in 1996. My book is structured like an alternative bible as I chart my movement away from the religious lifestyle I followed as a teenager and find a feminist Jewish identity. Tracing my experiences of family, motherhood and mental health, I also critique the patriarchal cannon of art history and bring forth the sidelined, silenced women of great master paintings. This talk contains adult material, and trigger topics including: miscarriages, mental health and maternity.
Sarah Lightman is an artist and writer and Faculty at The Royal Drawing School, London. She attended the Slade School of Art for her BA and MFA, University of Glasgow for her PhD and was an Honorary Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London (2018-2021). She edited the award-winning Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews (McFarland 2014), published The Book of Sarah (Myriad Editions and Penn State UP 2019) and co-edited Jewish Women in Comics: Bodies and Borders (Syracuse UP 2022).
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Perfect Strangers
2022-11-16 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Click here for film trailer
Seven lifelong friends – three couples and a newly divorced man – meet for dinner on the night of a rare lunar eclipse. In order to spice things up, they decide to play a game: every text message received is read out loud, and every incoming call answered on speaker. As the night progresses, secrets and lies – about infidelities, money problems, and mental wellbeing – are being exposed, leaving the once close-knit group completely shattered. Based on the Italian international hit film of the same name, Israeli actor Lior Ashkenazi’s deliciously toxic debut feature as director asks how well we really know those closest to us, and whether honesty is indeed the best policy.
Warning: Film contains strong language and sexual references.
Israel 2021, 95 mins, Hebrew (English subtitles)
Director Lior Ashkenazi, featuring Avi Grainik, Moran Atias, Rotem Abuhav
DAVAR is delighted to be showing Perfect Strangers in conjunction with UK Jewish Film Festival 2022 https://ukjewishfilm.org/

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The dilemmas of diversity: How do we show what a Jew looks like?
2022-11-10 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Earlier this year, Keith Kahn-Harris published a book called What does a Jew look like?, a collaboration with the photographer Rob Stothard. The book tries to challenge the use of stock photos of strictly orthodox Jews in the British media, by presenting portraits that capture the diversity of British Jews. But demonstrating diversity carries its own dilemmas. In this talk Keith Kahn-Harris will explore the challenges in explaining Jewish diversity to the wider world.
Keith Kahn-Harris is a writer and sociologist. He is a senior lecturer at Leo Baeck College and a Fellow of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. What does a Jew look like? is his eighth book.
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Shiva Baby
2022-10-26 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Click here for film trailer
Based on Seligman’s short story of the same name, Shiva Baby follows college student Danielle as she is faced with a series of awkward encounters at a day-long shiva, a Jewish gathering during a time of mourning. Amongst overbearing relatives, she is rattled by the appearance of an ex-girlfriend and of her secret sugar daddy, who unexpectedly arrives with his wife and baby.
‘Seligman has given us an impressively grown-up and commendably well-acted comedy full of brilliant twists and turns and populated with some hilariously erratic and neurosis-driven characters.’ (Linda Marric, Jewish Chronicle).
USA/Canada 2020, 78 mins, English
Director Emma Seligman, featuring Rachel Sennott, Fred Melamed, Polly Draper
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Jews and the Law in Medieval England
2022-10-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
England’s first known Jewish inhabitants came from Normandy soon after the Norman Conquest and by the end of the twelfth century the community in England had been granted a right of residence and a right of free movement plus a substantial degree of autonomy in intra-communal disputes by king Henry II and his sons Richard and John. From the late twelfth century onwards there survives a substantial volume of royal legislation relating to the community. Its main focus was on controlling the money-lending activity of individual Jews both in the interests of the Crown and individual Christian debtors until a statute of 1275 prohibited any future lending at interest. Other legislation echoed contemporary ecclesiastical legislation limiting social contact between Christians and Jews. The end of the medieval community came with the Expulsion of 1290 after which only a handful of Jews remained in England, those who had converted to Christianity, many of them living in the House of Converts in Chancery Lane in London.
Paul Brand is an Emeritus Fellow of All Souls College in Oxford where he was a Senior Research Fellow from 1999 to 2014. He is a medieval legal historian and the author of The Origins of the English Legal Profession and The Making of the Common Law both published in 1992 and Kings, Barons and Justices: The Making and Enforcement of Legislation in Thirteenth-Century England in 2003. He is editor of four volumes of The Earliest English Law Reports for the Selden Society and volume VI of Plea Rolls of the Exchequer of the Jews. He lives in retirement in rural south Warwickshire.
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Final Account
2022-09-28 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Click here for film trailer
Over a decade in the making, the film raises questions about authority, conformity, complicity and perpetration, national identity, and responsibility, as men and women ranging from former SS members to civilians in never-before-seen interviews reckon with – in very different ways – their memories, perceptions and personal appraisals of their own roles in the Nazi war crimes.
‘Holland was diagnosed with cancer while working on this project and he died shortly after its completion. He leaves behind a simple, unadorned study of everyday evil, one which balances eye-witness accounts with archive footage and wintry location shots of mountains, forests and leaf-blown railway tracks. Explicitly, his film shows how a hundred shades of grey combine to make a darkness. Implicitly, it warns that it could well happen again.’ (Xan Brooks, Guardian).
UK/USA 2020, 90 mins, German (English subtitles)
Director Luke Holland
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The state of Yiddish in the 21st Century
2022-04-14 19:30 - 20:30 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Izzy Posen • London
Following the extermination of Europe’s Yiddish speaking Jewry in the holocaust and the assimilation of the remaining Yiddish speaking American Jews, many have considered Yiddish a dying language. But in fact, an estimated half a million native speakers of Yiddish currently live in Israel, North America, Europe and Australia and this is a young demographic with a high birth-rate and high language-retention rates. These are the Chassidic Jews, both romanticised and othered in equal measure by the wider Jewish community due to their highly insular lifestyle. Yiddish is not dead. Far from it. A highly productive and prodigious cultural Yiddish scene is flourishing in these communities, with all genres of literature, lyrical music and theatrical production. Yiddish is also the language of daily business, community affairs and home-running. In this talk we will sample some of this rich yet little-known culture, to experience a taste of Yiddish in the 21st century.
Izzy Posen grew up in the Chassidic community of Stamford Hill, London, where he received a classical Jewish education in the esteemed yeshivas of Europe. He then went on to study physics and philosophy at the University of Bristol and graduated with a master’s degree in 2021. Izzy has been researching and lecturing about the Chassidic community and the Yiddish language for many years, as well as talking and writing about his experiences within the community and beyond. Izzy is also a professional English-Yiddish translator.
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Radio Days
2022-03-30 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Director Woody Allen, featuring Diane Keaton, Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels
Radio Days is an American comedy-drama film written and directed by Woody Allen, who also narrates. The film looks back on an American family’s life during the Golden Age of Radio using both music and memories to tell the story. It stars an ensemble cast.
The film’s soundtrack, which features songs from the 1930s and 40s, plays an integral part in the plot. It was released on cassette and compact disc in 1987 and includes tracks by Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

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A Land of Milk and Mufletta: what Israeli food says about Israeli culture
2022-03-10 19:30 - 20:30 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Joel Harber • Jerusalem
Israeli chefs have recently conquered the culinary world, but what about all those foods they left behind at home? What do these dishes say about Israel itself? From falafel to petitim, meurav Yerushalmi to mufleta, Joel will reveal the culture behind the distinctive foods that make Israel so deliciously… Israeli.
Joel Haber researches, writes about and lectures on the topic of Jewish food history, with a focus on understanding Jewish culture and history via its foods. His writing appears on his blog (www.tasteofjew.com) along with articles in such publications as The Nosher, Tradition and The Jewish Journal. He has spoken widely to hundreds of attendees, in both online and in-person venues in multiple countries. Joel is currently writing a book that examines Shabbat stews from around the world, using them as a way of tracing the routes of Jewish migrations throughout history. Additionally, Joel has worked as a licensed tour guide in Israel for nearly a decade. His most popular single tour is a culinary tasting and history tour in Jerusalem’s famous outdoor market, Shuk Machane Yehuda. Joel was born and raised in New Jersey, lived for many years in both New York City and Los Angeles, and immigrated to Israel in March 2009. He is proud to live in the special city of Jerusalem.
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Yentl
2022-02-23 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Yentl is an American romantic musical drama film directed, co-written, co-produced, and starring American entertainer Barbra Streisand. It is based on Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s short story ‘Yentl the Yeshiva Boy’. The film incorporates humour and music to tell the story of an Ashkenazi Jewish girl in Poland who decides to dress and live like a boy so that she can receive an education in Talmudic Law after her father dies. The film’s musical score and songs were composed by Michel Legrand. The film received the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score and the Golden Globe Awards for Best Motion Picture—Musical or Comedy and Best Director for Streisand, making her the first woman to have won Best Director at the Golden Globes.
‘The best thing about Yentl is its earnestness. It may resemble a vanity production from afar but even at its kitschiest it seems to be heartfelt’ (Janet Maslin, NY Times)
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Ernest Bloch: more than a Jewish composer
2022-02-10 19:30 - 20:30 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
Yoav Ben-Shlomo • Bristol
Ernest Bloch, though not a religious Jew, is probably the most famous Jewish composer of the twentieth century. Born in Geneva in 1880, he studied in Brussels, Frankfurt, Munich and Paris before creating his “Jewish cycle” and ended his life in the USA. However, he also composed other important musical works including chamber music and symphonic works that were more impressionistic, influenced by Debussy and other 20th century composers. Whilst, much of his music has strong Jewish themes, he always viewed his works as universalistic with a message that “…transports us into another world and makes us think, feel, love differently.” This talk will play excerpts from many of his varied works to illustrate the power of this message.
Yoav Ben-Shlomo is a lover of music, including classical, jazz and klezmer. He has collected classical pieces inspired by Jewish themes over the years and enjoys sharing his love of music with others. Yoav is an academic at the University of Bristol and Chair of DAVAR.
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Everything is Illuminated
2022-01-26 20:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
USA 2005, 104 mins, English, Russian, Ukrainian
Director Liev Schreiber, featuring Elijah Wood, Eugene Hütz
This American biographical comedy was adapted from Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel of the same name. Jonathan Safran Foer, a young American Jew, goes on a quest to find the woman, Augustine, who saved his grandfather, Safran Foer, during the Holocaust in a small Ukrainian town called Trachimbrod that was wiped off the map when the Nazis liquidated Eastern European shtetls. His guides are a cranky, seemingly antisemitic grandfather, his wound-up dog named Sammy Davis, Jr., Jr., and his enthusiastic grandson, Alex, who constantly chatters with a unique command of English and a passion for American pop culture that keeps the arduous journey lighter.
‘Liev Schreiber’s Everything is Illuminated begins in goofiness and ends in silence and memory. How it gets from one to the other is the subject of the film, a journey undertaken by three men and a dog into the secrets of the past.’ (Robert Ebert)
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The Ghetto: Travelling through history
2021-12-09 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
“Ghetto” is an extraordinarily complex word which is both a noun and an adjective. It has layers of contrasting meanings accrued over five hundred years and a bewildering array of settings across the globe. It refers to medieval and early modern Jewish history; black experience in the great northern cities of America in the twentieth century; nineteenth-century imaginary ghettos; and our contemporary sense of cities and countries segregated by race and class. What makes “the ghetto” unique is that it is a place full of historical memory. Sometimes memory makes the ghetto “real”; at other times past versions of the ghetto are forgotten. But, from the beginning, ghettos have had a variety of histories and connotations. This talk will show how different ghettos (urban, racial, colonial) travel across time and space.

Bryan Cheyette is Chair in Modern Literature and Culture at the University of Reading, and a Fellow of the English Association. He has authored or edited eleven books, most recently The Ghetto: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford UP, 2020). He loves to travel and has held visiting positions at Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania, and he also holds fellowships at the universities of Leeds, Southampton and Birkbeck College, London. He is a past book’s editor of The Jewish Quarterly and writes for the Jewish Chronicle and the Jewish Renaissance. A self-confessed “revieweroholic”, he reviews fiction for several British newspapers including the Times Literary Supplement and the Times Higher.
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A Call to Spy
2021-11-24 20:00 - 22:10 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
A Call to Spy is an historical drama inspired by the true stories of women recruited into England’s Special Operations Executive (SOE) during World War II. Desperate for new recruits, the SOE, created in 1940 after the fall of France and before the US joined the war, decided to train women as spies as it was believed that women could move more freely than men in occupied territories. Vera Atkins, a Romanian Jewish immigrant in London, was the spymistress in charge of the program. The work was extremely dangerous, with all recruits risking death and many were killed or sent to concentration camps. The film follows the stories of Vera Atkins and two recruits: Virginia Hall, an American with a prosthetic leg and Noor Inayat Khan, a Muslim pacifist born of Indian and Russian parents.
A Call to Spy is an engrossing and often thrilling spy drama and a tribute to this courageous and diverse group of women who showed extraordinary bravely and ingenuity. Sarah Megan Thomas (writer, producer and actor) believes that its themes are timeless. “It’s about standing up as individuals and taking action for what you believe in.”
USA 2019, 124 mins, English
Director Lydia Dean Pilcher featuring Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, Radhika Apte
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The Secret Jews of Majorca Island
2021-11-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
During the Inquisition, the Crypto-Jews or Chuetas publicly professed Catholicism while privately adhering to Judaism. Synagogues were secretly built in private homes. Signs of this “secret” community can still be found today. We will visit the inside of the permanent exhibit in the Jewish Quarter Interpretation Center inaugurated in 2015 as we trace the footsteps of the Jewish Conversos who walked the narrow alleyways of the casco antiguo – or old town. We will learn about the famous failed boat escape of 1688 when 40 Crypto-Jews tried unsuccessfully to flee the Inquisition of the island. We will look for clues and hints that suggest a robust Jewish community that was extinguished over centuries in the fires of the Inquisition. In this new and cutting-edge virtual tour, Dani brings his wealth of Jewish informal education to pull back the curtain on the Spanish island’s secret Crypto-Judio and Converso history.

Dani Rotstein is a film producer, history-teller, and community organizer living in the Balearic Islands of Spain. Originally from New Jersey, Dani moved to Majorca in 2014 where he learned of the taboo history of the Conversos or Chuetas native to the island. Since then, he has made it his life’s passion to continue exploring, uncovering, and sharing this interesting piece of little-known Jewish history. He believes that the revival of modern Jewish life in Spain can be a shining light to the rest of the world.

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Sarah’s Key
2021-10-27 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Adapted from Tatiana de Rosnay’s best-selling novel of the same name, Sarah’s Key is an account of research by a journalist into a shameful incident in French history which intertwines with a story of a young Jewish girl from that time period.

‘In Paris in 1942 the French police round up 10-year-old Sarah (Mélusine Mayance) and her family. To save her little brother, Sarah locks him in a closet and closely guards the key on her awful journey, which starts at the stifling Vélodrome d’Hiver, where Jews were packed in and made to wait for transport to the camps. Sixty or so years later, Julia (Kristin Scott Thomas, excellent as always), an American journalist married to a Frenchman, researches an article about that roundup. Because of the article and an accident of real estate, Julia starts to obsess about Sarah and her fate, even as her own comfortable Parisian life begins to crumble’ (Rachel Saltz, NY Times)
France 2010, 111 mins, French, English
Director Gilles Pacquet-Brenner featuring Kristin Scott Thomas
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Willesden Jewish Cemetery
2021-10-14 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Quaker Meeting House, 126 Hampton Road , Bristol, BS6 6EJ, United Kingdom
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 and genealogical detail”. Tours and since COVID, online presentations, seek to convey this richness to audiences by bringing alive the stories of a sample of those buried in the Cemetery. This will be a first for Deborah presenting to a live audience outside the Cemetery.
Deborah Cohen lives close by the Cemetery and became a volunteer tour guide in 2019. She is a former NHS director, and has not quite stopped working as she chairs a local safeguarding adults board, does some consultancy, and is a Mental Health Act manager. Deborah describes her experience as a tour guide as being on a voyage of discovery, as she learns more and more about the “residents” of the Cemetery, including people who made remarkable contributions to life in the UK and beyond during their lives.
To register for attending either in person or virtually please book via eventbrite
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Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles
2021-09-29 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
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 about how Fiddler became a massive international hit. That account is filled out with footage of recent productions from around the world as well as the 1971 film version, starring Chaim Topol and directed by Norman Jewison. What makes this documentary are the organically introduced digressions into, among many other things, the history of the Pale of Settlement, Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem and Marc Chagall. (modified from Leslie Felperin, Guardian)
USA 2019, 97 mins, English
Director Max Lewkowicz

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Klezmer Music: History and Contemporary Practice Around the World
2021-04-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 now finds itself. He will also discuss his work with his own klezmer-ish band Moishe’s Bagel. Includes musical examples.
Phil Alexander is a British Academy research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where he studies historical Scottish-Jewish musical interactions. His book Sounding Jewish in Berlin: klezmer and the contemporary city will be published with Oxford University Press in early 2021. Phil is also a busy musician, leading the band Moishe’s Bagel and collaborating regularly with folk and jazz musicians around the UK and beyond.
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The Wolf of Baghdad: Memoir of a Lost Homeland
2021-03-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 Jews and background of this work. Says Isaacs: ‘The Finns have a word, kaukokaipuu, which means a feeling of homesickness for a place you’ve never been to. I’ve been living in two places all my life; the England I was born in, and the lost world of my Iraqi-Jewish family’s roots.’
Carol Isaacs is a musician and, as The Surreal McCoy, a well-known cartoonist published in the New Yorker, Private Eye and Sunday Times. The Wolf of Baghdad is also an animated slideshow with its own musical soundtrack, which is often performed by a live band including Isaacs on accordion and keyboards, playing music of Iraqi and Judeo-Arabic origin. Carol has worked with many artists including Sinead O’Connor and the Indigo Girls. She is co-founder of the London Klezmer Quartet and Hamsa.
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