Thu 10/14-Sun 10/24
The 15th annual Mandel JCC Cleveland Jewish FilmFest offers nearly three dozen films over a period of ten days. And, to satisfy both those not ready to leave their houses to go to a movie theater yet and those aching to do so, it’s hybrid, with films being screened at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History’s Murch Auditorium, the Cinema Under the Sky Drive-In at the J, and the trusty old Cedar-Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights as well as available as streams.
The films include both feature-length films and shorts, narrative films and documentaries. They kick off with the opening night film Golden Voices at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. That film tells the story of a pair of voice-over artists who were stars of the Soviet film dubbing business, and their effort to make a new life for themselves in Israel after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990.
The other films run a gamut of topics. There are the usual Holocaust-related films of course, including the shortMake Me a Sancutary, about Cleveland’s Green Road Synagogue, who consider their history when it becomes necessary to move on from the building built by Holocaust survivors to a new one.
But they also include such films as Adventure of Saul Bellow, about the feisty 20th-century novelist who spent much of his youth and young adulthood in hardscrabble Chicago; Crime on the Bayou about a Jewish lawyer who helps a young black man unfairly arrested for touching a white youth in a case that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court; On Broadway, detailing the history of a New York theater scene which has always been replete with Jewish voices; and Kiss Me Kosher, a comedy set in Israel, about a young Jewish woman who wants to marry her German, non-Jewish girlfriend.
Capacity at in-person screenings will be limited so you might want to hurry to get tickets. For tickets, both in-person and virtual, go to mandeljcc.org/filmfest.