Jewish Israeli Film Festival
Various
Unrated
Now Showing at: Mayerson Jewish Community Center
Review by: Larry Thomas

If you’re looking for something different in movies this week, you should consider one or more of the screenings of the 2010 Cincinnati Jewish and Israeli Film Festival. This new collection of films that have not previously been seen in our town opened last night, and runs today thru Thursday at the Mayerson Jewish Community Center on Ridge Road at Cross County Highway.

What might you expect to see in this year’s lineup? Here’s a brief preview:

Four Seasons Lodge is a documentary that profiles a community of Holocaust survivors who gather each year in the Catskills to celebrate their survival. Of course, serious topics are confronted, but there’s an abundance of life and humor within these people. Four Seasons Lodge shows today at 2 pm.

Noodle is the kind of family film that Hollywood wouldn’t even consider. A Chinese emigrant, working for an Israeli woman, disappears and leaves behind a little kid who knows no Hebrew and has no other family. He’s nicknamed “Noodle” after his unique noodle-sucking technique. Noodle screens tonight a 7.

Love and Dance finds a young man caught in the cultural conflict between his Russian-born mother and Israeli father. He enrolls in a dance class and almost immediately falls in love with…you guessed it…a Russian girl. Can the Tango or the Cha-Cha bring together these two worlds? Find out Monday at 7 pm.

The true story of Marga Spiegel unfolds in Saviors in the Night. Farmers, who saved them from certain doom, hid her, her husband and daughter, in Western Germany during the last two years of World War II. Saviors in the Night shows Tuesday night at 7.

In Bitter Sweet, a group of Israeli friends are gathered for a social evening, when a clairvoyant unexpectedly predicts the number of children each will have. Each of these successful individuals is faced with reassessing their entire future. It’s an emotionally stimulating question for all. Bitter Sweet is on screen at 7 pm Wednesday.

There are also some extra showings. Four Seasons Lodge repeats on Thursday at 7 at the Mayerson Center. Saviors in the Night shows at Xavier University, also on Thursday at 7. And Bitter Sweet will have a 7 o’clock screening tomorrow night at UC’s Main Street Cinema on Campus.

To make the Mayerson Center more cinema-centric, the room will be equipped with theatre style risers for better viewing, and popcorn and drinks will be available at each showing.

You can buy a festival pass, or get individual tickets at the door. Seating is limited to two hundred fifty patrons. This is the perfect opportunity for you to seek out something different in film entertainment.