After visits to the Everyman Theatre in London and the Aurora Picture Show in Houston, TX, the Heeb Film Fesival debuts in New York City on November 22-23. Treading the line between the holy and the profane, the universal and the particular, the earnest and the irreverent, the two-day fest culminates with the awarding of highly-coveted Palme D’schnorr for the best in show. You can purchase advanced tickets here or call 212-601-1000.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22:
7:30 p.m. Silver Jew (52 min) David Berman, reclusive frontman of the Silver Jews, went fifteen years without playing a single live show. Then, his newfound interest in Judaism changed his perception of the world, and in 2006, he took his band on a tour of Israel. Michael Tully was there for the journey, and captured the entire event on camera. The result is a unique, unexpectedly thoughtful travelogue. (Q & A with director Michael Tully to follow the screening)
9:30 p.m. Love Comes Lately (86 min) At turns delightful, solemn and strange, Jan Schütte’s adaptation of three short stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer follows aging romantic author Max Kohn as he drifts through relationships, Kafkaesque fever dreams and expressionistic nostalgia trips. Renowned Austrian actor Otto Tausig carries the show as Kohn, creating a lovable shlemiel with more than a few stories of his own to tell.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23:
SPANISH LANGUAGE DOUBLE BILL!
1:00 p.m. El Brindis (To Life) (100 min) A young photographer travels from her home in Mexico to visit her ailing father in Chile, where he is preparing for a late-in-life bar mitzvah. His gentile daughter finds herself in the middle of curious traditions and an alienating community, until the kindly local rabbi finds a way to her heart. Shai Agosin’s gentle dramedy takes a razor to preconceived notions of faith and forgiveness, resulting in a funny, poignant look at interfaith family dynamics.
My Mexican Shiva (98 min) This hilarious exploration of a dysfunctional Mexican-Jewish family gathered to pay their last respects to the reviled patriarch in his home takes several chaotic, surreal and darkly comic twists over the course of one disastrous week. Two invisible angels presiding over the affair grow increasingly befuddled by the constant squabbling. Fortunately, there are enough characters so that any viewer can find a point of sympathy: Whether you choose to root for the Orthodox son with a drug-dealing problem or his well-intentioned secular father, the movie never becomes less than enthralling. Directed by Alejandro Springall, a longtime colleague of Guillermo del Toro.
5:30 p.m. My Mother’s Garden
NEW YORK CITY PREMIERE! (70 min) Cynthia Lester and her siblings encounter a daunting challenge when they try to help their mother, Eugenia, cope with hoarding disorder. The condition, largely ignored by the modern medical community, leads the woman to fill her California home with trash she finds on the street. A Polish immigrant raised by an Auschwitz survivor, Eugenia’s neuroses are at once poetic and terrifying. When Cynthia decides to take her mom out of her shell on a trip to New York, the story takes an unlikely turn toward renewal. (Q & A with Producer Elisabeth Harris to follow the screening) Uber Alice (10 min)A blind date goes off without a hitch until the Holocaust comes up and ruins everything — or does it?
THE GENTILE GAZE: JEWISH SHORT FILMS WITH OUTSIDER PERSPECTIVES (7:30 p.m.)
At the Suicide of the Last Jew in the World in the Last Cinema in the World (4 min) David Cronenberg’s provocatively cryptic entry in the 60th Cannes Film Festival’s Chancun Con Cinema series makes a fascinating statement about the ubiquitous global threat of anti-semitism.
Derek & Simon: The Pity Card (12 min) Interfaith dates usually shouldn’t involve discussion about genocide,but some people simply have no class. In this hilarious vignette directed by Bob Odenkirk, a young Jew learns the hard way that certain dating tricks are a little too ambitious.
Goyta (16 min) A Polish immigrant has a tough time connecting with the Hasidic family who hires her to clean their Brooklyn home, but sudden chaotic events on late Friday afternoon force indelible tensions to emerge. Joanna Jurewicz’s moody drama is a quietly gripping parable on the tribulations of communication.
Playing with Other Tigers (10 min) Zachary Lennon-Simon’s bittersweet look at his childhood friendship with a local Arab-American tracks the changing climate for such supposedly innocuous relationships in the wake of 9/11.
The Holocaust Tourist (10 min) A wry animated documentary about how Holocaust tourism distorts history. A whistle-stop tour from Auschwitz hot-dogs to Krakow’s kitsch Judaica. How is dark tourism changing history?
The Unkosher Truth (35 min) Chana Zalis’s father is a rabbi, a chaplain and a general in the United States army. Her boyfriend is a German gentile. As the couple discuss the possibility of getting married, Zalis continually tries to gather the courage to confront her father about her secular life. Fraught with tension, The Unkosher Truth is documentary filmmaking at its finest — and an probing rumination on modern inter-generational turmoil.
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