Filed under: Events
We had a great event on 11/2 at Joe’s Pub. Girls In Trouble played an awesome set, Irina Reyn did a wonderful reading from her Goldberg Prize winning novel What Happened to Anna K. and Eli Valley vs. The Sway Machinery in the Temple of Self-Hatred premiered to much laughter and great acclaim. Here’s some YouTube of it:
Our Jewish Studies Expansion Program (JSEP) site, Northeastern University, ran “Who Am I, Anyway? A Conversation about Race, Religion, and Adoption,” with filmmaker Nicole Opper, director of the acclaimed documentary “Off and Running,” and Adam Pertman, author of Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America. It was held at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline, Mass on Oct 25. Our JSEP Fellow Claire Sufrin from Northeastern University gave the following report.
“The event was very successful–we had close to 100 people there, and they were actively engaged in with both Nicole and Adam Pertman. It was even hard to the group to stop asking questions in order to show more clips from the film. Afterward, people really lingered to chat and to talk to Nicole, a great sign. The audience was a real mix, including Northeastern students and some faculty, adoptive parents, adoptees, Jewish community members, etc. It seems that our publicity worked well and that the e-mails we sent were forwarded widely. Nicole, as you know, is a real delight and we also very much enjoyed spending time with her after the event.”
The JWA Blog raves here.
Dan Friedman at the Forward’s Bintel Blog hypes our event on Monday at Joe’s Pub:
If you want to see Eli Valley’s own elegant head in motion and his art work explained, he’s playing Joe’s Pub on Monday in a Forward-sponsored event with The Sway Machinery and Girls in Trouble. Also there to accept her prize and read will be Irina Reyn, the newly-announced winner of the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers (for which I was a judge, full disclosure).
Filed under: Events
Twisted Social Satire meets Avant-Semitic Post-Punk
Eli Valley vs the Sway Machinery in the Temple of Self Hatred
AN EVENING OF NEW JEWISH CULTURE AT JOE’S PUB
The Foundation for Jewish Culture and The Forward present “Eli Valley vs the Sway Machinery in the Temple of Self Hatred” with special guests Girls In Trouble previewing their new CD, a reading from the winner of the Goldberg Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers and other guests and surprises. The event will be held on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 7PM at Joe’s Pub.
Eli Valley, maker of mind-bending comics, teams up with Jeremiah Lockwood and The Sway Machinery, makers of mind-bending melodies, for an evening of neurotic superheroes, paranoid turtles, memories, music and mayhem. Valley’s work has brought back a marauding sensibility to The Forward, the landmark Jewish newspaper formed in 1897 as a bulwark of secular Jewish culture in America. The Sway Machinery has reinvented and reinvigorated cantorial melodies for a post-punk age. Together, they play off each other like a rabbi and cantor of a synagogue on the other side of sanity. Watch them mix and mash styles, share personal stories and narrate comics to a live, avant-semitic soundtrack, bringing a kinetic new spin to contemporary Jewish culture.
Girls in Trouble is the songwriting debut of multi-instrumentalist Alicia Jo Rabins, who performs all vocals, guitar parts and string sections for the album. Alicia marries her classical training and folk-punk sensitivity to her penchant for Jewish literature, mysticism and history. The result: pop hooks grounded in experimentation, subtle musicianship and a taste for ruminative lyrics.
Congratulations to our Goldberg Prize winner, Irina Reyn, for her 2008 book, What Happened to Anna K. (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster)!
Irina is the editor of Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take on the Garden State (Touchstone/Simon & Schuster). Her work has appeared in One Story, Post Road, Tin House, Los Angeles Times, Town & Country Travel, The Forward, Nextbook, Ballyhoo Stories, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Moscow Times. Irina was born in Moscow and currently divides her time between Pittsburgh, PA and Brooklyn, NY. She is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh.
Come on out this Thursday, October 22nd for Contemporary Israeli Dance 7 the Reinvention of the Jewish Body, presented by the JCC in Manhattan and the Foundation for Jewish Culture. Read more about Jewish Body Week here.
Filed under: Events
GRANTEE HIGHLIGHTS (taken from our e-news! To receive bi-weekly information about our talented grantees and more, you can sign up on our homepage)
_____________________________________________________________________
October 7th — New York, NY
October 14th — Washington, DC
October 19th — Cleveland, OH
October 20th — Brookline, MA
At Home in Utopia
2004 Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film grantee At Home in Utopia tells the story of the United Workers Cooperative Colony, the “Coops,” a radical utopian community that grew out of the yearnings and ideals of Jewish secular immigrants in the 1920s.
New York, NY
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
King Juan Carlos 1 of Spain Center at NYU
Wednesday, October 7, 6:30pm
Filmmaker Michal Goldman will be in attendance.
Washington, DC
Labor Film Fest
Wednesday, October 14, 7:30pm
Cleveland, OH
Cleveland Jewish Film Festival
Monday, October 19, 7:30pm
Brookline, MA
Brookline Library
Tuesday, October 20, 6:30pm
Filmmaker Michal Goldman and co-producer Ellen Brodsky will be in attendance.
_____________________________________________________________________
October 12th at 6:30 PM — Memphis, TN
Disturbing the Universe
In 2008 Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film grantees Emily and Sarah Kunstler’s Disturbing the Universe, the notorious activist’s daughters explore his journey from middle-class family man, to movement lawyer, to “the most hated lawyer in America,” while striving to come to terms with his legacy.
_____________________________________________________________________
October 16th
Museum of Biblical Art, New York, NY
“Tobi Kahn: Sacred Spaces for the 21st Century”
“Tobi Kahn: Sacred Spaces for the 21st Century” is an exhibition of 30 recent paintings, sculptures and objects by the noted New York artist and 2004 Jewish Culture’s Cultural Achievement Award in the Visual Arts recipient.
Kahn will speak at MOBIA on October 22nd. The show will run through January 24th, 2010. It will also travel nationally after its New York opening.
October 18th — Bayside, NY
Blessed is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
2007 Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film grantee Roberta Grossman’s Blessed is the Match is a harrowing account of the only outside rescue mission for Jews during the Holocaust, as well as a moving mother-daughter tale.
_____________________________________________________________________
2008 Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film grantee Lacey Schwartz’s Outside the Box: Being Black and Jewish focuses on a woman with a family secret who explores what it means to be Black and Jewish in America, and how to reconcile those two separate identities.
The rooftop fundraiser in Union Square will include screening of new scenes, live performances, appetizers and drinks. Visit the film’s website to RSVP and buy tickets.
GRANTEE HIGHLIGHTS (taken from our e-news! To receive bi-weekly information about our talented grantees and more, you can sign up on our homepage)
__________________________________________________________________
September 24th at 6:00 PM — New York, NY
Off and Running
Nicole Opper, Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film grantee from 2007, will present the last New York screening until Spring 2010 of her award-winning documentary, Off and Running. It will appear as part of the Urbanworld Film Festival at the AMC theater on 34th Street in New York City.
__________________________________________________________________
October 2nd — New York, NY
As Seen Through These Eyes
Hilary Helstein’s award-winning documentary As Seen Through These Eyes begins a three-week run at Cinema Village in New York City. Executive Producer Jerry Offsay is a long-time board member of Foundation for Jewish Culture.
__________________________________________________________________
October 4th at 7:00 pm — Chicago, IL
G dash D
Victory Gardens Biograph Theater presents a staged reading of 2008 New Jewish Theater grantee Laura Jacqmin’s new play, G dash D. When secular Jews Simon and Yael have their first child, they decide to go all out: joining a temple, learning Hebrew, even believing in G-d. But they quickly figure out that they have very different ideas about how big a role religion should play in their lives. Can a person just decide to believe in something? When a couple splits down the middle about their beliefs, how can they be made whole again?
Hybrid distribution is the state-of-the-art model more and more filmmakers are using to succeed. It enables them to have unprecedented access to audiences, to maintain overall control of their distribution, and to receive a significantly larger share of revenues.
- Peter Broderick, “Declaration of Independence: The Ten Principles of Hybrid Distribution”
As the last of our submissions for the Lynne and Jules Fund for Jewish Documentary Film arrive, we were intrigued to read Peter Broderick’s indieWIRE article on an alternative form of film distribution better suited to filmmaking’s current situation.
The Foundation for Jewish Culture and the JCC in Manhattan present
Beyond Gaga: Contemporary Israeli Dance
and the Reinvention of the Jewish Body
OCTOBER 22, 2009 at 8PM
part of NEXTBOOK’s JEWISH BODY WEEK
You can read the full programming at Tablet.
Filed under: News
Its been a busy year for filmmakers! The Foundation’s Lynn and Jules Kroll Fund for Jewish Documentary Film received over 200 applications! Good luck to all who applied, we are looking forward to reviewing all the applications and finding a few great films to fund!
Filed under: Events
Tonight is the big opening for the Reinventing Ritual exhibit at the Jewish Museum in NYC. From the JM website:
Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life surveys the explosion of new Jewish rituals, art, and objects that has occurred since the mid-1990s. This period is defined by the urge to discover beauty and meaning in first premises–the roots and ruptures–when ritual could be radical. This attitude of innovation is shared by a wide range of artists inclusive of generation, nationality, and religion. Contemporary artists and designers focus on Judaism as a lived experience by transforming the physical acts of ritual into new forms.
Outstanding works of industrial design, metalwork, ceramics, video, drawing, comics, sculpture, installation, and textiles from Europe, Israel, and North America reveal the diversity within Judaism. The exhibition will present works in thematic groups and environments that suggest the spaces and situations in which ritual is performed.
It looks to be a fantastic exhibit – don’t miss it!
Filed under: News
Bob Goldfarb has written an insightful article over at ejewishphilanthropy.com on efforts towards networking building in the Jewish arts and culture sector. He writes:
Working together for a common purpose seems like a natural way of doing more with less duplication. With those ends in mind, organizations in the Jewish arts and culture sector have recently tried to form professional networks through two separate initiatives. Both experiences suggest that any systemic solution ultimately has to reckon with local realities.
And goes on to analyze the situation quite thoughtfully. Read the rest here.
New Jewish Theatre Grantee, Laura Jacqmin, will have a reading of her play on Sunday, October 4 at 7:00 p.m. at the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago. If you are going to be in Chicago and want to check it out, call Victory Gardens at 773-549-5788 or check online at www.victorygardens.org.
Filed under: News
Alec Baldwin has written an essay on the Huffington Post about the film Disturbing the Universe. He says:
This is a wonderful film and Emily and Sarah Kunstler have done a remarkable job in presenting their famous father in an honest, critical light. Kunstler’s activities and predilections had a profound effect on his family, including an earlier marriage. Yet, Kunstler’s life is a near perfect perspective from which to view the 1960’s, 70’s and 80’s. The film is great history.
Be sure to check out Emily and Sarah’s film when it shows up in a theater near you!
