The Rabbi Marc Jagolinzer Jewish Experience Series
ARTS & CULTURE: SHAPING THE FUTURE, REFLECTING THE PAST
Part of the Annual Roving Eye International Film Festival
The Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival has partnered with Roger Williams University (RWU), to present its Fall-edition of the annual Roving Eye International Film Festival.
The popular and acclaimed festival celebrating global cinema and artists, announces its Fall 2018 sidebar program on the Jewish Experience through short films, documentary, media and guest speakers. The event takes place November 6, 7 & 11th.
This year’s series explores representations of the Jewish experience in Israel, across the globe and the Holocaust through 10 recent films.
The series includes a talk by the Rev. Nancy Hamlin Soukup, University Multifaith Chaplain, RWU.
All programming will take place on the Bristol, RI, campus of Roger Williams University at the Mary Teftt White Cultural Center and the Global Heritage Hall, Room 01.
"Through film and scholarship, this series tells the stories of the Jewish experience globally—stories of joy, sorrow, faith, a rich culture, diasporas, fear and ultimately, hope,” said the Rev. Nancy Hamlin Soukup, RWU University Multifaith Chaplain co-organizer of the event with Flickers.
All programming is free of charge and open to the public.
The Fall Jewish Experience sidebar of the Roving Eye Festival are presented in partnership with Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Helene and Bertram Bernhardt Foundation, the RWU School of Humanities, Arts and Education, Dean Cynthia Scheinberg, RWU Department of Communication, Graphic Design and Web Development, Dr. Roxanne O’Connell, Department Chair, RWU Hillel, and the Spiritual Life Office.
HOW WE SEE OURSELVES…
Documentary and Narrative Film Screenings with Director's Discussion
THE MUSEUM OF LOST THINGS
Directed by: Gregory Cioffi | 22 min. USA, 2017 Synopsis
The Museum of Lost Things concerns a writer in his late 40s who, while sitting in an all-night diner, tells to an affable waitress the story of his stumbling upon a strange museum on an obscure street in downtown Manhattan. His story takes us through the labyrinths of the museum, where, with the help of a nonchalant museum guard, he encounters exhibition rooms seemingly dedicated to him alone, each one representing a piece of the man’s lost past. Some rooms are filled with objects, such as his lost umbrellas or his lost books, and still others contain aspects of his life that he hardly remembers. In this absurdist mystery, the museum visitor discovers rooms of lost hope, of lost patience, of lost illusions, and is always surprised by what he finds. But will he find what he’s looking for? Will he recapture his past? Or is the museum only a fantasy, one of the writer’s own inventions?
A SOLDIER'S DREAM: THE MILT FELDMAN STORY
Directed by: Eduardo Montes-Bradley | 50 min. Belgium, Germany, USA, 2018 Synopsis
Born in 1924 to hard working immigrants from Russia, His parents had a candy story in Brooklyn and he vividly remembers the social transformations that followed the Great Depression, a time in which the quite Jewish neighborhood where he grew up, bared witness to the Nazi youth parading swastikas alongside the Stars and Stripes. By 1937, the echoes of Fascism in Europe were an open invitation for thousands to gather at Madison Square Garden where thousands of Hitler sympathizers cheered the speech of rightwing Nationalists.
The fall of 1944 will find Milt amongst the troops of the 106th Infantry Division, on board the HMS Queen Elizabeth on his way to Europe. He was ready to do his part of the American deal, just as his father Jack and done before him in some of the major battles of World War I. Milt’s was going to be an easy ride, after all most of France and Belgium had already been liberated and it was a matter of time before the Third Reich would collapse.
However, on the morning of December 16th Hitler launched a massive offense in the Western Front in what came to be known as The Battle of the Bulge. Private Milton Feldman was capture a few days, then marched and shipped by train on a boxcar to Stalag IV-B, a POW camp deep into German territory.
Now, the elderly gentleman, the veteran of The Bulge, approaching 94, becomes the subject of “Milt Feldman: A Soldier’s Dream”, a documentary by Eduardo Montes-Bradley.
Location: Mary Teft White Cultural Center, RWU Library
Roger Williams University, One Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Cost: Free Admission
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 7th:
MEMORIES NEVER DIE Documentary and Narrative Film Screenings with Director's Discussion
STAMM
Directed by: Jacob Grodnik | 10 min. USA, 2017 Synopsis
In the hours preparing for America's first offensive in WWI, a young American soldier leaves his forward post momentarily. Upon returning, he finds his fellow marine missing and is met with German gunfire. He narrowly escapes, only to trip into a foxhole with a German solider. They struggle for their lives. The American sees that the German wears a Star of David around his neck. His last chance at survival is to prove to the German that he himself is also Jewish, in the hopes that one loyalty will outweigh the other. The two young men, in broken English and halfcomprehended German connect; describing their homelands, trying to communicate what it's like to be a Jew in America and Germany.
'Stamm' is German for tribe. The film aims to illustrate that we are all of the same tribe, regardless
of the arbitrary boundaries of country; there is only one tribe, 'the human tribe.' Over 100,00 Jews fought for Germany in World War I, and this is the story of one, whose loyalties are challenged and tested.
A THOUSAND KISSES
Directed by: Richard Goldgewicht | 17 min. USA. Germany, 2018 (animation) Synopsis
Inspired by the actual correspondence recovered by the couple’s grandsons 80 years later in Sao Paulo, A Thousand Kisses presents a peculiar love story tainted by the harsh historical context of its time, with a light appeal of irony and real-life poetry.
ALONE IN KLEZMER
Directed by: Kenneth O’Brien-LLontop | 11 min. USA, 2018 Synopsis
A book with a marked sheet is what Gretel finds in an old bookstore in Miami. The intimate memory of a past of misery in another country is mixed with the history of the Nobel Prize for Literature Isaac Bashevis Singer in a film that is an essay on exile, literature, and those daily gestures that are shown as beautiful revelations.
FOOTSTEPS OF MY FATHER
Directed by: Paul Allman | 38 min. Belgium, Germany, USA, 2018 Synopsis
The true story of an act of extraordinary courage by Master Sargeant Roddie Edmonds, a devout Christian from Tennessee who risked his own life to save the lives of 200 Jewish G.I.s when they were prisoners of the Germans in WWII.
This act of bravery would have been forgotten and lost to history, had it not been for the rediscovery of Edmonds’ private journals, by his son, and a chance encounter with one of the surviving POWs.
Chris Edmonds set out to locate the survivors, and discover the truth about his dad during his time as a P.O.W.
Roddie's story is a testament to how a simple commitment to fairness and equality can make a huge difference in the world.
Narrated by Ted Koppel.
Location: Global Heritage Hall, Room 01
Roger Williams University, One Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI
Time: 6:00 p.m.
Cost: Free Admission
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 11th:
THE STORIES WE TELL. THE STORIES WE SHARE
Documentary and Narrative Film Screenings with Director's Discussion
2:00 p.m
THE VISITOR
Directed by: Justin Olstein | 10 min. Australia, 2018 Synopsis
In present-day Melbourne, just after midnight, Naomi is awakened by a frantic young woman on the run. Naomi grapples with a situation that defies reality and, as the night unfolds, she must decide how far she can go to protect her visitor from rapidly encroaching danger.
VALENTINO AND THE PRODIGY
Directed by: Matt Anderson | 20 min. USA, 2018 Synopsis
A washed-up pianist is hired to train a young piano prodigy who is suffering from stage fright after the death of his father.
AHARON'S CHILDHOOD
Directed by: Arnaud Sauli | 66 min. Israel, France, 2018 Synopsis
Aharon’s Childhood (76’) main character is the late great Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld. The film explores in depth Appelfeld’s writing process in his study and his relationship to a childhood under the shadow of tragedy. Appelfeld talks freely on love, women, Jewishness, Israël and his experience of being an eternal refugee with his French translator Valerie Zenatti. She came to his home to receive his last manuscript, and beyond that his artistic testament. The film has a poetic approach to his literary work travelling in time and space, from carpathian ills to Jerusalem, from 1941 to the present in a Jerusalem café.
Aharon Appelfeld is a survivor, he was until 2018 one of the last writer who survived the Holocaust. His writing elicits breath from a life doomed to death. Born in Ukraine in 1932, he escaped as a child and survived in a forest. Since, cultivating a deep sense of being alive, he is trying to retrieve the voices and faces of the ones who didn’t survive.
Aharon’s Childhood is a love story. Love is embodied in language, in writing, in a relationship eyeing a past and present world. She seizes his words, transmits them in French as an accomplishment of « being simultaneously writer and reader. » He looks at her, wandering what heritage would remain of him in this world.
Reception Follows at 3:45 p.m.
4:15 p.m. EVA
Directed by: Ted Green & Mika Brown | 118 min. Germany, Israel, Poland, Romania, USA, United Kingdom, 2018 Synopsis
As a 10-year-old 'Mengele Twin,' Eva Kor suffered the worst of the Holocaust: being experimented on by the Auschwitz 'Angel of Death.' At 50, she launched the biggest international manhunt in history. Now 84, she urgently circles the globe in failing health to promote the controversial lesson her journey has taught: healing through forgiveness. “Eva” tells the full, unvarnished story of this historic figure for the first time. Narrated by Hollywood icon Ed Asner, it features spectacular new footage from Auschwitz, from the Transylvanian hamlet from which Eva’s family was carted off to slaughter, and on a boat off Israel where she first tasted freedom. Interviews include Holocaust experts, celebrities she's moved (Elliott Gould, Wolf Blitzer, Ray Allen), fellow survivors she's enraged, and myriad young people whose lives she’s changed - - in many cases saved. Eva Kor has emerged as a worldwide spokeswoman for peace — a recent Buzzfeed video has 187 million views — and 'Eva' will be her legacy. Narrated by Ed Asner.
The film’s co-director, Ted Green, will be available for a Q&A following the screening.
Following the screening:
Join us for a conversation with the family of the late Rabbi Marc Jagolinzer after whom our November programming is dedicated. Hosted by the Rev. Nancy J. Soukup, RWU Multifaith Minister.
A Reception Sponsored by RWU Spiritual Life Office will take place during the intermission.
Location: Global Heritage Hall, Room GHH 01
Roger Williams University, One Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI
Time: 2:00 and 4:30 p.m.
Cost: Free Admission
ABOUT ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY:
Roger Williams University located in Bristol, R.I. is a leading independent, coeducational university with programs in the liberal arts and the professions, where students become community- and globally-minded citizens. With 42 academic majors, an array of co-curricular activities and study abroad opportunities on six continents, RWU is an opencommunity dedicated to the success of students, commitment to a set of corevalues and providing a world-class education above all else. In the last decade, the University has achieved unprecedented successes including recognition as one of the best colleges in the nation by Forbes, a College of Distinction by Student Horizons, Inc. and as both a best college in the Northeast and one of the nation’s greenest universities by The Princeton Review. For more information, go to: www.rwu.edu.
ABOUT FLICKERS' RHODE ISLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL:
The Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival (RIIFF), has secured its place in the global community as the portal for the best in international independent cinema, earning the respect of domestic and foreign filmmakers, filmgoers and trend watchers. This confluence of art and commerce brought together world-class celebrities, award-winning filmmakers, new talent and audience members in record numbers last year. Ranked as one of the top 10 Festivals in the United States, RIIFF is a qualifying festival for both the Live Action, Animation and Documentary Short Film Academy Awards through its affiliation with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) and the Canadian Screen Awards.. There are only 10 film festivals worldwide that share this distinction and RIIFF is the only festival in New England. The Festival takes place every August.
For more information about the Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival, running August 6-11, 2019 at The Providence Performing Arts Center (PPAC) and The Vets (formerly Veterans Memorial Auditorium), please visit our website at www.RIFilmFest.org or call 401.861.4445.
RWU PARKING INFORMATION:From Providence: Take Routes 136 South or 114 S passing campus on the left. Take a left at the traffic light just before the Mount Hope Bridge, onto Old Ferry Road. Take the first right into the parking lot.
From Newport: Take 114N over the Mount Hope Bridge and take the first right off the bridge onto Old Ferry Road. Take the first right into the parking lot.
Guests should enter through the main entrance at the fountain. they will be able to obtain a guest parking pass. Lot 24a will be blocked off for guests of the festival. Proceed through the main entrance through to the lot 24a on left. This event will take place in the Global Heritage Hall.
The Fall Jewish Experience sidebar of the Roving Eye Festival are presented in partnership with Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, the Helene and Bertram Bernhardt Foundation, the RWU School of Humanities, Arts and Education, Dean Cynthia Scheinberg, RWU Department of Communication, Graphic Design and Web Development, Dr. Roxanne O’Connell, Department Chair, RWU Hillel, and the Spiritual Life Office.
