Lights, Camera, Action!

Congregation B’nai Israel’s annual Nagle Family Jewish Film Festival offers a series of inspiring films with hosts who introduce each film and lead a discussion afterward.

The films take place on Wednesdays at 7:00 pm in the VIP Cocktail Lounge with popcorn and dessert accompanying each film. There is no cost for CBI members and a $10 donation per film for guests. The Film Festival is generously sponsored by the Nagle Family.

This year we have an exciting lineup of Films! Registration will take place at the door for each film. We encourage you to come early as there is limited seating!

If you would like to learn more about our Film Festival, please contact our Programming Coordinator, Minda Shaiman.

 

November 14, 2018

Theodore Bikel: In The Shoes of Sholom Aleichem (2014)

Run Time: 90 min

Sholom Aleichem and Theodore Bikel–are woven together in this enchanting new documentary. The two men have much in common: wit, wisdom and talent, all shot through with deep humanity and Yiddishkeit. Theodore Bikel, the unstoppable performer whose career spans more than 150 screen roles (including an Oscar-nominated turn in The Defiant Ones) and countless stage and musical productions, is also the foremost interpreter of Sholom Aleichem’s work. Now 90, Bikel has played Tevye the Milkman on stage more than 2,000 times, and he has animated Aleichem’s work through his creation of two celebrated musical plays about the great Russian author. The new film Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholom Aleichem combines Bikel’s charismatic storytelling and masterful performances with a broader exploration of Aleichem’s remarkable life and work. A pioneer of modern Jewish literature who championed and luxuriated in the Yiddish language, Sholom Aleichem created dozens of indelible characters. His Tevye the Milkman, Motl the Cantor’s Son, and Menachem Mendl–“shtetl Jews” for whom humor and pathos were two sides of the same Yiddish coin–remain invaluable windows into pre-war Eastern European Jewish life, real and imagined.

 

December 12, 2018

Hannah’s Holy Communion (2012) 

Run Time: 13min

A spirited 7-year-old, growing up in Dublin in the 1970’s, can’t wait to make her Holy Communion. The only problem is – she’s the wrong religion.

 

December 12, 2018

Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas (2017)

Run Time: 52 min

Depicts a journey — a tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream.  They were a generation of songwriters who understood the times they were writing for and who would go on to transform themselves and pop culture at the same time.  They found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world and, for at least one day a year, made us believe in it.

 

January 16, 2019

Harmonia (2016)

Run Time: 98 min

A modern adaptation of the mythological triangle between the childless Abraham and Sarah and young Hagar. Sarah is the harpist of the Jerusalem Philharmonic; Abraham is its almighty conductor. When Hagar, a young horn player from East Jerusalem joins the Western Side Orchestra, she bonds with Sarah and a unique friendship evolves between the two women. Hagar, feeling Sarah’s pain from not having children, offers to have a baby for her from Abraham, shaking the thin balance in the family.

 

February 13, 2019

The Sturgeons Queens: Russ and Daughters (2014)

Run Time: 52 min

Four generations of the Russ and Daughters family discuss their experiences as immigrants and their life behind the counter in their successful fish business.

 

February 13, 2019

Bagels In The Blood (2016)

Run Time: 5 min

The third-generation owner of Fairmount Bagel discusses the history of the business.

 

February 13, 2019

A Reuben by Any Other Name (2010)

Run Time: 5 min

Takes a hilarious look at the differences between Orthodox and Reform Judaism in terms of the Reuben sandwich.

 

March 13, 2019

BOMBSHELL:The Hedy Lamar Story (2017)

Run Time: 88 min

Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr fled an oppressive marriage to create a name for herself as one of Hollywood’s top leading ladies in the 1940s. Behind the glamour and sex appeal, though, was a talented and inquisitive inventor who created a radio system that is now considered the basis of Bluetooth technology.

 

April 10, 2019

Bye Bye Germany (2017)

Run Time: 103 min

A Holocaust survivor who is trying make it to America is deprived of his savings and overtaken by his shady past.