Film
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The Schmooze The Pioneering Film Theory of Béla Balázs
The Hungarian poet Béla Balázs (1884–1949), born Herbert Bauer to a German Jewish family in Szeged, is best remembered for his libretto to Béla Bartók’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle and the scenario for Bartók’s ballet The Wooden Prince. Yet he was also a pioneering film theorist, as a compelling new publication from Berghahn Books, “Béla Balázs:…
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The Schmooze How ‘Holy Rollers’ Gets Hasidim Wrong
“Holy Rollers,” a new film based on the true story of a Hasidic ecstasy-smuggling ring in the late 1990s, is not only a bad movie, but also an offensive one. Not because it shows Hasidim doing illegal things (they did them, after all), but because it uses Hasidim as little more than an attention grabbing…
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The Schmooze Adad Hannah: Questioning Photography, Video and Painting
Art lovers eager to rethink the inherent truth in the media of photography and video have until May 30 to catch “Adad Hannah: Masterpieces in Motion” at Connecticut’s Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Born in New York in 1971, Hannah was raised in Israel, London, and Vancouver. Based in Montreal for several years, Hannah has created…
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The Schmooze No More Chulent?
“Where’s the Love?… That’s it — goodbye?” were Isaac Schonfeld’s words after realizing that he may have played his last hand in negotiations with the Millinery Center Synagogue Board. Schonfeld and his anti-institution, “Chulent,” have been on serially monogamous terms with the Synagogue on and off for over four years now. As well as providing…
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The Schmooze Photographer Gerda Taro, Out of the Shadows at Last?
The German Jewish photographer Gerda Taro (born Gerta Pohorylle in Stuttgart, to a family of Polish Jewish origin) has long been overshadowed by her companion, the legendary photographer Robert Capa. However, that may soon change. Taro (1910- 1937) was the first female war photographer, capturing powerful images of the Spanish Civil War, and was sadly…
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The Schmooze Véra Belmont: A Jewish Piaf Who Grew Up to be a Filmmaker
On April 27, at New York’s French Institute/Alliance Française, the noted French Jewish film director and producer Véra Belmont will introduce one of her films as the culmination of a three-week festival in her honor, running from April 6 to 27. At 77, Belmont has just published with Les Éditions Stock in Paris a touching…
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The Schmooze Luise Rainer: Can an Actress’s Yellowface Be Forgiven?
At the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, which runs from April 22 to 25, the German Jewish actress Luise Rainer will embody a still-controversial paradox. Rainer, who turned 100 in January, will introduce a screening of one of her two Oscar-winning roles, as a tragic Chinese farmer’s wife in 1937’s “The Good…
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The Schmooze Nazis, Mendelssohns and Music: The Mendelssohn Mishpocha on Surviving Felix
“Mendelssohn, the Nazis and Me,” a recent DVD release from Kultur International Films, reproduces a 2009 BBC TV film by UK-born writer Sheila Hayman about her eminent ancestor, the composer Felix Mendelssohn. The multi-talented Hayman is author of previous light-hearted novels and documentary scripts about robots, abortions in China, car design and other eclectic subjects….
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