Davar Bristol

Perfect Strangers
2022-11-16 20:00 - 22:00 (Europe/London) | 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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Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual?
2021-02-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 York Jewish intellectuals who grappled with the same concerns. At the same time, it explores Kubrick’s fraught relationship with his Jewish identity and his reluctance to be pegged as an ethnic director, manifest in his removal of Jewish references and characters from stories he adapted.
Nathan Abrams is Professor in Film and Director of Impact and Engagement for the College of Arts, Humanities and Business at Bangor University. He co-convenes the British Jewish Contemporary Cultures network. He lectures, writes and broadcasts on UK and American popular culture, history film and intellectual culture. He co-founded Jewish Film and New Media and recent books are Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (with Robert Kolker, Oxford University Press, 2019), Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016).

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Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire
2021-01-14 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 freedom, exploring the themes of faith, humanity and psychoanalysis along the way.
Yolanda Ropschitz-Bentham was born in Derby and grew up in West Yorkshire. After many travels and adventures she moved to Bristol in 1984 and then settled on a smallholding in rural Somerset, raising her family and teaching Psychology for over 25 years. She also wrote some comic pieces, two of her stories featured on BBC Somerset, and worked as a volunteer presenter on local radio. Following retirement in 2016 Yolanda turned to her late father’s manuscript, “Ferramonti.” Researching his autobiographical novel led to regular visits to the Ferrramonti di Tarsia camp museum in Calabria and meetings with former internees from the 1940s and their descendants. This connection, culminating in the publication of “Ferramonti: Salvation behind the barbed wire,” has produced one of the most rewarding periods of her life so far, affording Yolanda cherished opportunities to travel to Italy, Israel and South America. Life stories from former internees are now forming the basis of her next book: “The People of Ferramonti: Then and Now.”
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Finding 100 Faces: capturing Jewish diversity
2020-12-10 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 walks of life. Rabbis and chazans rub shoulders with Dames, Lords, holocaust survivors, kinder-transportees, well-known actors, musicians, writers and presenters and two men who fought at Cable Street. The whole film is set to music. Benjamin wrote an original score which was performed by the Israel Camera Orchestra. Sit back and enjoy the film (approx 6 mins) and then hear about the bumpy and inspirational ride which led there!

Benjamin Till is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and composer and pioneer in the field of the documentary musical. He grew up in Northamptonshire and describes himself as a fanatical Midlander of Welsh and Jewish extraction! He has many works to his credit including Our Gay Wedding: The Musical (Channel 4, BAFTA-nominated, winner, Rose D’Or, Grierson and Prix Italia.) This film is considered one of Channel 4’s most successful ever broadcasts. His most recent film, 100 Faces, which features the UK Jewish Community, won the gold award at the Robinson’s International Short Film Competition. Benjamin sings with, and is Resident Composer for, the Jewish Male voice choir, Mosaic Voices at New West End Synagogue, London. Their most recent recording of Benjamin’s arrangement of Kol Nidrei was played on Radio 3.
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Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles - CANCELLED DUE TO LOCKDOWN RESTRICTIONS
2020-11-25 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
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 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, including one in Japanese and one by some African American high-school kids in Brooklyn
What really makes this documentary are the digressions into, among many other things, the history of the Pale of Settlement, who exactly was Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem (who wrote the stories the show is based on), Marc Chagall, and the show’s ghostly connection to the Holocaust, even though it’s not mentioned in the show itself. Despite its age, this musical engages audiences, both Jewish and non-Jewish, all over the world and has a remarkable ability to seem relevant to every era, including the present day with the rise of the ultra right and anti-semitism.
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Creativity against the odds: Art and Internment during World War Two
2020-11-12 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
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 adverse and inauspicious circumstances? To hear a recording of this talk please click on the following link which will take you to the Insiders/Outsiders youtube channel

Monica Bohm-Duchen is a London-based art historian. Her book Art and the Second World War was published in 2013. She is the initiator and creative director of the nationwide, year-long Insiders/Outsiders Festival (https://insidersoutsidersfestival.org/), which celebrates the huge contribution made to British culture by refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe – many of whom were interned as ‘enemy aliens’ by the British government in 1940.
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The Band's Visit
2020-10-28 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
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 the delicate shades of politics with subtle tones. The Egyptians encounter a few Israeli townspeople, who respond with curiosity about the band, are variously friendly and wary, and provide them with shelter, food, music and companionship during their visit.
“In the morning, the band reassembles and leaves: An interlude involving two “enemies,” Arabs and Israelis, that shows them both as only ordinary people with ordinary hopes, lives and disappointments. It has also shown us two souls with rare beauty.” (Roger Egbert)

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Medicine in Ancient Judaism: Why does G-d attempt to kill Moses in Exodus 4?
2020-10-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Virtual streamed
Directly after the burning bush scene, G-d inexplicably tries to kill Moses (Exodus 4:24-26). Fortunately, Moses’ life is saved by Zipporah’s enigmatic “Bridegroom of Blood” ritual. Commentators both ancient and modern have proposed many solutions by filling in the gaps, proposing reasons such as Moses’ failing courage or procrastination. But what did this episode mean in its original setting? This talk will look at how G-d’s attempt on Moses’ life is better understood in the broader historical context of ancient medicine. In this talk, Dr Askin will draw upon recent research from her current project, Medicine in Ancient Israel and Early Judaism, to explore how and why the Bible’s portrayals of medicine and healing seems so mysterious and distant to us.

Dr Lindsey A. Askin is Lecturer in Jewish Studies, University of Bristol. She is the author of Scribal Culture in Ben Sira (Brill, 2018), which is based on her doctoral thesis (University of Cambridge, 2012-16). Her research interests include mental illness and medicine in the Bible and ancient Judaism, scribal culture and literacy, Ben Sira, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Book of Jubilees.
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JoJo Rabbit
2020-09-30 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
Dir. Taika Waititi,
Starring Taika Waititi, Roman Griffin Davis, Scarlett Johansson, Rebel Wilson ; 2019, 123 mins, English
Since the days of Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, film-makers have adopted naive or comedic perspectives to pierce and deflate the hideous bubble of Nazi ideology. Now, in this Golden Globe-nominated adaptation of Christine Leunens’s book Caging Skies, New Zealand writer-director-performer Taika Waititi plays a camp, slapstick version of Hitler, who exists in the mind of a German boy, Jojo. Roman Griffin Davis plays the 10-year-old growing up under the Third Reich, whose jolly dreams of becoming an Aryan war hero are thwarted by his innate sensitivity and squeamishness. Beneath the fanaticism, Jojo is a frightened boy whose sister has died and whose father has disappeared in battle. But his mother, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson), has a secret: she’s a covert anti-fascist who is hiding a Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie), in the attic. When Jojo stumbles upon Elsa, he is initially horrified, believing her to be a monster. But gradually the pair strike up a love-hate relationship that infuriates imaginary Adolf and causes Jojo to start to rethink his allegiances. Through Elsa, Waititi articulates some fundamental and insidious tenets of antisemitism that are being touted even now. She is the real conduit for empathy in the audience, regardless of whether you’re Jewish or not
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Finding 100 Faces: capturing Jewish diversity
2020-04-02 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Green Bowling Club, Redland Green Road, Redland, BS6 7HE
THIS MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED BECAUSE OF COVID-19

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 a journey which took him all over the world. His final 100 people include Jewish people from all walks of life. Rabbis and chazans rub shoulders with Holocaust survivors, kinder-transportees, well-known actors, musicians and writers, and two men who fought at Cable Street. The film is set to an original score performed by the Israel Camera Orchestra. Sit back and enjoy the film (around 6 mins), and then hear about the bumpy and inspirational ride which led there.

Benjamin Till is an award-winning filmmaker and composer. He grew up in Northamptonshire and describes himself as a fanatical Midlander of Welsh and Jewish extraction. He has many works to his credit including Our Gay Wedding: The Musical, a Bafta-nominated film is considered one of Channel 4’s most successful broadcasts. His most recent film, 100 Faces, won the gold award at the Robinson’s International Short Film Competition. Benjamin sings with, and is Resident Composer for, the Jewish male voice choir Mosaic Voices at New West End Synagogue, London.

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Wondrous Oblivion
2020-03-25 20:00 - 22:00 | Scott Cinema, Bristol, Northumbria Drive, Henleaze, Bristol, Avon, BS9 4HN, United Kingdom
THIS FILM HAS BEEN CANCELLED BECAUSE OF COVID-19

UK 2003, 106 mins, English
Director Paul Morrison
In this comedy drama, David Wiseman is mad about cricket but faces two problems: he’s Jewish and he’s absolutely hopeless at playing the game. When a Jamaican family move next door, the father Dennis schools him in the delicate arts of bat and ball. David’s parents come out of their shells thanks to Dennis, while David learns about growing up and becoming assertive both on and off the pitch.
‘The movie presents a pretty convincing account of its time and is well acted. Like Paul Morrison’s earlier movie, Solomon and Gaenor, Wondrous Oblivion is somewhat contrived and occasionally sentimental. But it’s warm, kindly, and has a heart the size of the Oval.’ (Philip French, Observer review)
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Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual?
2020-03-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Redland Green Bowling Club, Redland Green Road, Redland, BS6 7HE
PLEASE NOTE THIS TALK HAS NOW BEEN CANCELLED TO AVOID RISK OF COVID-19 (CORONA VIRUS) INFECTION
Stanley Kubrick is widely 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. Nathan Abrams reexamines the director’s work in context of his ethnic and cultural origins and focuses on several of Kubrick’s key themes-masculinity, ethical responsibility, and the nature of evil.-At the same time, he will explore Kubrick’s fraught relationship with his Jewish identity and his reluctance to be pegged as an ethnic director.
Nathan Abrams is Professor in Film at Bangor University. He co-convenes the British Jewish Contemporary Cultures network. He lectures, writes and broadcasts widely on UK and American popular culture, history film and intellectual culture. He co-founded Jewish Film and New Media and recent books are Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film (with Robert Kolker, Oxford University Press, 2019), Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (Rutgers University Press, 2018), Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture (Northwestern University Press, 2016).
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