Winner Best Film Brooklyn Int'l Film Festival and Winner of best film in Washington Jewish Film Festival
Arranged centers on the friendship between an Orthodox Jewish woman and a Muslim woman who meet as first-year teachers at a public school in Brooklyn. Over the course of the year they learn they share much in common - not least of which is that they are both going through the process of arranged marriages.
Rochel and Nasira both live at home and share their frustrations about the matchmaking efforts by their parents. Rochel and Nasira willingly participate in the matchmaking process, but each struggles to make her preference heard.
The proud women of Arranged delightfully combine loyalty to tradition with a contemporary friendship based on more shared values than differences.
– A wheelchair-bound paraplegic struggles to find a way upstairs when the elevator in his apartment building breaks down. This is a thought provoking film, which poses an ethical challenge. (Student Film)
Feature Film:
Arranged at 8:55pm
Wherever You Are Director: Rob Margolies
Drama, USA, 2008, 95 min
*New Jersey Premiere*
Starring: Joe Morton, Jane Adams, Josh Pais, Dreama Walker, Jacob Kogan, and Robbie Sublett
A day that starts like any other turns out to be one family’s painful, day-long journey of self-realization. Wherever You Are chronicles the hapless Bernstein family: Ira, Nancy, Michael, Meghan and Spencer, as they try to catch up to the life they are living. Aided by family therapist Dr. Livingston, they open their eyes and embrace the flaws they spent the past twenty years burying. It is a story about what you find when you pull back the curtain on an ordinary life. The power of the movie is derived from the fact that the Bernsteins, in all likelihood, are your neighbors. It forces the viewer to confront the sometimes uncomfortable truth that we are all imperfect in our own ways.
– A charming film about two bakers who compete in a cake competition. The film begins in black and white and is transformed to color when one of the bakers hits the camera with a bucket of food coloring. (Student Film)
– A Hoboken / Manhattan Love Story - The Tale of a Manhattan Guy who must decide if it's worth staying in his relationship, even if it means traveling to New Jersey.
Feature Film:
Wherever You Are at 10:06pm
The Jews of Lebanon Director: Yves Turquier
Drama, France/Lichtenstein, 2006, 77 min French and Arabic w/ English subtitles
In the 1960’s, there were nearly 8,000 Jews in Lebanon; today there are less than 60. Through the stories of the community members, now scattered all over the world, this film recounts their times of happiness, and then their exile to many countries – among them the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Israel, France, Italy, Cyprus and Switzerland.
Yves Turquier is a French director of films and documentaries, a journalist and head of a cinema school. Born in Lebanon, he moved to Paris at 23. This film is a tribute to his community, and a document to keep alive the memory of this lost tribe.
– Two strangers, touched in very different ways by the September 11th tragedy, are drawn together through extraordinary circumstances. Brooklyn-born Frank Rice is harboring a secret. Marie Quintero of Long Island is desperate for answers. In the aftermath of September 11, they will meet and begin a journey of remembrance, self-discovery and quiet heroism. A journey of revelations.
– What's REALLY going on on the average blind date? Paul and Jane have the usual blind-date fears and fantasies. Can the couple see beyond their checkered pasts and fantasy futures enough to actually make a connection?
Jack is having a really bad day. His best salesgirl Sue is leaving the company. He's got 2 million dollars worth of merchandise sitting in a container, and he can't bring the goods in. On top of everything else, he has to visit his son’s teachers on ‘Open School Night’, which coincidentally falls on the evening of the BIG game between the Giants & the Packers.
Jack must decide what is more important – finding a new salesgirl for his business, or helping his son succeed in school. Faced with the likelihood of missing the ‘biggest game ever’, Jack goes to ‘Open School Night’ to see how his son Isaac is doing in school. Along the way he meets up with parents, teachers, school monitors, and a very special teacher, who has shown his son the meaning of learning. Things can go absolutely crazy when one visits the parents and the teachers on ‘Open School Night’.
– Expendable takes the all too familiar spy-adventure story and turns it up on its end. It places Rudy, the main character in a ‘Temp’ job working for A.R.A.C.H.N.I.D. an ‘Evil’ Organization whose ultimate purpose is to guard the evil leader Igor Tarantula MD, of which Rudy can’t seem to do quite right. In a classic James Bond – style action adventure, we get a taste of what real life feels like to an everyday killer. Expendable answers the question of who would give their lives for a super-villain bent on taking over the world.
– Pizza may seem to be just food to many, but it is way more to a do-it-yourself, detail-obsessed, rigorous artist, who is lost in the universe he has created for himself. Anthony Mangieri has been making pizza for 21 years. “Do a few things, but do them right” is his motto, hence the name “Pure and Simple”.
– A charming film about two bakers who compete in a cake competition. The film begins in black and white and is transformed to color when one of the bakers hits the camera with a bucket of food coloring. (Student Film)
– One hundred of your favorite celebrity mug shots morph from one to the next. The minimalist, trance-like soundtrack adds to the hypnotic effect.
Feature Film:
Open School Night at 9:00pm
Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew Director: Barry Avrich
Comedy, Canada, 2008, 78 min
There are very few true legends of comedy that have the ability and insight to take the headlines and topics of the day and shape them into hilarious and original comedy. With an election year around the corner, there is no one better positioned to run the campaign than the irascible, irreplaceable and incomparable Jackie Mason.
This film weaves together segments of Jackie’s final one-man comedy tour de force on Broadway in New York City with brief behind the scenes footage and rare clips from Jackie’s early TV appearances.
In Jackie Mason- The Ultimate Jew, Jackie is primed and ready to take a fresh and outrageous look at the election and a long list of other issues that he naturally has a comment on.
*** Part of the proceeds of this evening will benefit Imagine Academy ***
Imagine Academy is a school dedicated to helping each child with Autism Spectrum Disorder reach their fullest potential socially, emotionally, and academically, thereby improving the quality of their lives and the lives of their families.
The program is tailor-made for each child, and this has been – and will continue to be - one of the cornerstones of their mission.
*The $26.00 ticket price includes Open School Night and Jackie Mason*
– This evening is a benefit for Imagine academy. It will include the two films "Open school Night" and "Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew".
Imagine Academy is a school dedicated to helping each child with Autism Spectrum Disorder reach their fullest potential socially, emotionally, and academically, thereby improving the quality of their lives and the lives of their families.
The program is tailor-made for each child, and this has been – and will continue to be - one of the cornerstones of their mission.
The $26.00 ticket price includes Open School Night and Jackie Mason.
– Jack is having a really bad day. His best salesgirl Sue is leaving the company. He's got 2 million dollars worth of merchandise sitting in a container, and he can't bring the goods in. On top of everything else, he has to visit his son’s teachers on ‘Open School Night’, which coincidentally falls on the evening of the BIG game between the Giants & the Packers.
Jack must decide what is more important – finding a new salesgirl for his business, or helping his son succeed in school. Faced with the likelihood of missing the ‘biggest game ever’, Jack goes to ‘Open School Night’ to see how his son Isaac is doing in school. Along the way he meets up with parents, teachers, school monitors, and a very special teacher, who has shown his son the meaning of learning. Things can go absolutely crazy when one visits the parents and the teachers on ‘Open School Night’.
*** Part of the proceeds of this evening will benefit Imagine Academy ***
Imagine Academy is a school dedicated to helping each child with Autism Spectrum Disorder reach their fullest potential socially, emotionally, and academically, thereby improving the quality of their lives and the lives of their families.
The program is tailor-made for each child, and this has been – and will continue to be - one of the cornerstones of their mission.
*The $26.00 ticket price includes Open School Night and Jackie Mason*
– When washed-up comedian Manny Schmeckstein dies, he goes to hell for a lifetime's worth of bad jokes. But the Devil gives Manny a shot at redemption, if he can only get one laugh.
Feature Film:
Jackie Mason: The Ultimate Jew at 9:29pm
The Champagne Spy Director: Nadav Schirman
Documentary, Israel, 2007, 90 min Hebrew w/ English subtitles
Winner of Israeli Academy Award for Best Documentary 2007
In the 1960's Major Ze'ev Gur Arie was an undercover Mossad agent in Egypt who posed as an ex-Nazi German millionaire and horse breeder to sabotage an Egyptian weapons program. The major succumbed to his covert identity, reveling in the high life and even marrying another woman. In Egypt he was accused of espionage and served several years in prison. In this documentary film, Oded, his son (55), breaks 40 years of silence to expose his life of secrecy as the son of a Mossad agent.
The director managed to gain the confidence of Mossad agents and operatives connected to the plot who, for the first time, talk on camera about their work and touch on the emotional and personal price of espionage at the service of the state of Israel. The film shows rare and exclusive material about the double life of Mossad agents.
Co-Sponsored by Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County
– A former soldier of the NATO, during a night in the hospital while taking care of his daughter and his wife in a life-and-death struggle, falls asleep. He remembers when he was a soldier, ten years earlier, during the war in Bosnia...
– An adaptation of Plato’s, ‘Allegory of the Cave’, animated in clay. The makers of this short film have adapted this commentary and have brought it to life by shooting over 4,000 still photographs of John Grigsby's wonderful claymation.
– A wheelchair-bound paraplegic struggles to find a way upstairs when the elevator in his apartment building breaks down. This is a thought provoking film, which poses an ethical challenge. (Student Film)
