Art Spiegelman in a still from the documentary, “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my Muse.” The film is the first of 14 slated for the Berkshire Jewish Film Festival.
PITTSFIELD, Mass.–The Berkshire Jewish Film Festival, one of the longest-running Jewish film festivals in the United States, has announced its 39th season. Fourteen films will be shown on six consecutive Mondays, beginning July 14 and ending on Aug. 18. Films will be shown at the Duffin Theater, Lenox Memorial Middle and High School, 197 East Street, Lenox, Mass.
The festival opens July 14 at 4 p.m. with “Art Spiegelman: Disaster is my Muse,” a documentary that celebrates the work of the cartoonist and creator of Maus. Through interviews and archives, the audience is told how Spiegelman, raised by Holocaust survivors, turned his family trauma into art. At 8 p.m., “Sabbath Queen” shows how life and self-understanding unfold for Amichai Lau-Lavie, an heir to a rabbinic dynasty and a queer activist.
Elie Wiesel in a still from the documentary,“Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire” slated to be shown at
the Berkshire Jewish Film Festival on July 21
At 4 p.m. on July 21, “Soda,” a psychological drama about Holocaust survivors rebuilding their lives in a small Israeli community in the ’50s will be shown. “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire” is set for 8 p.m. “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire” documents the life of author, teacher, human rights activist and Nobel Laureate, Wiesel. The film shows Wiesel’s infamous White House visit in 1985 where he called on President Reagan to cancel a planned visit to a German cemetery in which Nazis were buried.
“Fiddler on the Moon,” a documentary be shown at the Berkshire Jewish Film Festival on July 28, considers how to practice Judaism in space.
On July 28 at 4 p.m., there will be two films. The first is “Fiddler on the Moon.” This documentary short explores the question of how to practice Judaism in space. If a space shuttle takes 90 minutes to orbit the earth, when do you mark Shabbat? This dilemma and others are explored in interviews with astronauts, rabbis and an astrophysicist, Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The second film is “Never Alone.” The drama brings to life the true story of a Finnish businessman and philanthropist who refused to remain idle in the face of growing Gestapo threats to Jews fleeing persecution and seeking refuge in Finland. At 8 p.m., “October 8” will be featured. The film looks at how anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism exploded after October 7, particularly on U.S. college campuses..
Two films are set on Aug. 4, for the 4 p.m. showing. The first is “The Soldier on Smithdown Road.” In 1947, anti-Semitic riots broke out across the UK after two British soldiers were kidnapped and murdered in Mandate Palestine. This short and film captures Louis Scholnick, a Jewish World War II veteran and resident of Liverpool, as he defends his family business in the face of a violent mob that includes friends and neighbors. It will be followed by “Midas Man” is a biopic of Brian Epstein, the inspired music entrepreneur who discovered the Beatles. The film traces his life, beginning as the son of Jewish furniture store owners in Liverpool. “Blond Boy from Casbah” will be shown at 8 p.m. Director Alexandre Arcady takes viewers on a nostalgic journey through his boyhood in French Algeria. In the film, Antoine, as part of a film project, takes his own son back to the Casbah. He revisits the experiences and memories that shaped him before he and his family fled the country after the bloody war for independence.
August 11 at 4 p.m. will feature “Pink Lady,” a story of an ultra-Orthodox couple who are terrorized by a blackmailer’s threat to reveal that the husband is gay. The film shows how the prospect of public shame undoes the life of a loving family, in a community where rituals and rules must be observed. At 8 p.m., “Bad Shabbos” will be shown. This is comedy, bordering on farce, is about an interfaith family’s Shabbat dinner where an accidental death causes things to spiral into chaos. Actor Kyra Sedgwick plays the befuddled Jewish mother.
Final festival films start with “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” at 4 p.m. on Aug. 18. This documentary is about a campaign to desegregate a merry-go-round at a big amusement park near Washington, D.C. in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. Archival photos, interviews and film footage flesh out the story whose centerpiece really is the relationships that were built between Jews, African Americans and labor organizers who strategized and protested day after day through the summer of 1960. At 8 p.m. “Running on Sand,” an award-winning comedy-drama will be shown. In this film, Omari is a refugee from Eritrea who works as a dishwasher in Tel Aviv. He gets tagged as an illegal — and is slated for deportation. After he runs from the authorities, he gets mistaken for a Nigerian soccer star who is arriving in Israel to play on a Maccabi team in Netanya.
Information may be found at https://berkshirejewishfilmfestival.org. Ticket price for all films is $15 and may only be purchased at the theater on the day of the film. Season passes are available for $150 and may be purchased in advance on the Congregation Knesset Israel website. All proceeds are directed to support children at the Knesset Israel Hebrew School in Pittsfield.
