Academy Award Movie Night

 

 

 

RODEF SHALOM SISTERHOOD MOVIE NIGHT SERIES OPENS WITH AN ACADEMY AWARD WINNING FILM
“West Bank Story “ the 2006 Academy Award winner for best short live action film will be shown Sunday, October 21^st at 7:30 pm.

“Anti Semites-They’re Everywhere! “ is the theme of this year’s Rodef Shalom Sisterhood Movie Night series. The committee selected several interesting and heartwarming films for the series that portray antipathy for the Jews from the usual suspects . They will be shown on three Sunday nights: October 21^st, January 13, 2008, and April 13, 2008.
The first Movie Night on Sunday October 21st at 7:30 pm in Levy Hall, a large comfortable theater space ideal for showing films, will feature two films. The first movie,

“West Bank Story”,

 

is a 22-minute film that won an academy award in 2006 for the best short live action film. It also won 25 other prestigious awards and played in film festivals around the US, Israel and Europe. Made by American filmmaker Ari Sandel for a film seminar at the University of Southern California, it is a musical comedy that uses the West Side Story theme and music to spoof the rivalry between Arab and Israeli falafel stands on Israel’s West Bank. Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan praised the film and wrote that “West Bank Story …( was) expertly made and impressive down to the finger snapping of the rival gangs.”

The second film is a full length (106 minutes) film festival favorite,

” Monsieur Batignole”.

 

Filmed in France in 2002 with very high quality English subtitles, it is a true story of a Jewish child who becomes separated from his parents during a Nazi round up of French Jews. He returns to his apartment to find it occupied by the downstairs gentile neighbors. The story is a tension-filled drama told with charm and humor as Monsieur Batignole, a French butcher who has very little love for his Jewish neighbors, becomes heroic as he hides the Jewish child and then helps him to escape from France. Monsieur Batignole was the very popular festival opener at last spring’s Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival. Movie Night at Rodef Shalom is open to the community and there is no charge. Light refreshments will follow after both films have been shown. For more information contact Rodef Shalom Congregation at 412-621-6566.

Marla Perlman