New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival: 25th Anniversary Edition

Details: Parent Category: Film Festivals; Category: Previews; Published on Tuesday, 02 May 2023 13:49; Written by Brad Balfour

Now in its 25th year, the New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is running May 7 to 11 at the Center For Jewish History (15 West 16th Street, NY, NY). The festival centers around Jews descended from the Iberian Peninsula, and their history of culture and diasporism. The festival has a slate of features, documentaries, and shorts from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, and more.

The festival opens with the 1988 documentary From Toledo to Jerusalem, in which Israeli singer and actor Yehoram Gaon retraces the footsteps of Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal after the Expulsion of 1492, and the journey Sephardic Jews have gone on across Europe since then, with each site of the journey is accompanied by music from Gaon. On Monday, May 8 is the world premiere of The Guards of Memory, directed by Said Belli. A documentary set in the Moroccan city of Fez, it looks at the dwindling Jewish population in the city which has persisted for over 2000 years, but faces great hardships.

The comedy Matchmaking, directed by Erez Tadmore, in which a Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva student sets out to woo a Sephardic girl. Offspring, directed by Shirly Sasson-Ezer and Dana Keidar, is a dark comedy about a 32 years old careerist who is struggling to get pregnant amidst massive social pressure. She is dragged to a circumcision ceremony by her superstitious Bukharan grandmother, who has her own grotesque ideas about how to remedy the situation. Live and Become, directed by Radu Mihaileanu, is the story of an Ethiopian boy who is airlifted from a Sudanese refugee camp to Israel in 1984 during Operation Moses. Queen of the Deuce, directed by Valerie Kontakos, is a documentary on Queer icon and 42nd Street sleaze entrepreneur Chelly Wilson, who escaped the Holocaust to become a New York icon.

The Opening Night Ceremony on Monday, May 8th, with the festival’s Pomegranate Award for achievements in the arts will be going out to:

Hélène Cixous, the Algerian-born, French writer and novelist, who will be the first woman to receive the “Pomegranate Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature.”
Yasmin Levy, the world’s most popular contemporary Ladino singer-songwriter, will receive the “Pomegranate Award for Music.” Opening Night will feature a special performance by Levy.
Shlomi Elkabetz, the Israeli-born Moroccan screenwriter/director/producer/actor, will receive the “Pomegranate Award for Filmmaking.” Elkabetz, a member of the Jury of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, will be part of the festival’s tribute series to his sister, Ronit Elkabetz, A”H.
Ghiora Aharoni, the Israeli-born Yemenite artist and designer, will receive the first “Pomegranate Award for Art, Design, and Architecture.” "Selected works for The Pomegranate Award", an exclusive, limited installation by Aharoni will be presented in the Centre for Jewish History's Great Hall on Opening Night

To learn more, go to: https://nysjff.eventive.org/welcome

New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival: 25th Anniversary Edition
May 7 - 11, 2023

Streamed online and live at
Center For Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011