The Season

Bernard Natan was one of the fathers of French cinema whose name has since been forgotten. Merging his own film company to form Pathé-Natan, he experimented with early color, sound and widescreen processes, worked with some of the greatest filmmakers of the era, and produced over 60 feature films. Born in Romania but eventually becoming a French citizen, Natan’s status as Jew and ‘foreigner’ along with a dubious early association with pornography became the fodder for his downfalI.

NATAN made its North American bow at Telluride and makes its regional premier at the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival. The directors will fill in more of the intriguing story of this important figure in film history in a post-film Skype interview.

Writer/director Karin Albou explores the close relationship between two young girls, one Muslim and the other Jewish, living in Nazi occupied Tunisia in 1942. The exploration of their sexuality, impending marriages and shifting loyalties against the backdrop of war weave a textured coming of age story and a unique glimpse into two cultures. Ms. Albou’s prior film, “La Petite Jerusalem”, won best screenplay at Cannes, and LE CHANT DES MARIÉES (“The Wedding Song”) has received accolades at film festivals around the globe.

AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS tells a heartbreaking story of friendship and devastating loss of two boys living in Nazi-occupied France. At a provincial Catholic boarding school, the precocious youths enjoy true camaraderie—until a secret is revealed. Based on events from writer-director Malle’s own childhood, the film is a subtle, precisely observed tale of courage, cowardice, and tragic awakening. Au Revoir won the 1988 Cesar for Best Picture and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It is as poignant and powerful today as it was when it won the Cesar.

Based on a true story, LES HÉRITIERS takes us inside a high school in a tough Paris suburb. Determined to motivate her disaffected students, many of whom are Muslim, Madam Gueguen decides to enter her class into France’s annual contest about World War II and the Shoah. While the class initially resists the idea and sees no connection between their lives and the Shoah, Madame Gueguen creates a bridge and teaches her class about racism and resilience in the process. This César nominated film for best actor is an inspirational one that has garnered numerous four and five star reviews.

MORGENTHAU tells the epic story of one American family whose careers brought them to the forefront of some of the most dramatic events of the last hundred years. The dynamic arcs of their exemplary public service – Henry Morgenthau Senior as United States Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire; Henry Morgenthau Junior as United States Secretary of Treasury under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt; and Robert M. Morgenthau as District Attorney of New York County for over 30 years – reveal new perspectives on the social and political shifts in twentieth century history. From fighting for international action against the genocide of Armenians on the cusp of WWI, through the efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust despite American political obstruction, and on to the struggle to reduce street crime and pioneer the prosecution of white collar corruption in the financial capital of the world, New York City, the trajectory of the three Morgenthau generations epitomizes the American experience and the continual fight for justice.

MOUNTAIN, a Danish Israeli co-production, opens the new year for the Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival on January 24. Making it’s initial debut at the Venice Film Festival and snagging a nomination for Best Film in the Horizons section, Mountain is the story of the sexual awakening of an Orthodox woman who lives with her family in the cemetery on the Mount of Olives. Shot in a muted palette, it features Shani Klein in what has been described as a “breakthrough performance”.

Mountain was written and directed by Yaelle Kayam and the film reflects Ms. Kayam’s interest in geographic and cultural landscapes. The setting of the Mount of Olives figures significantly in Orthodox belief about the age of redemption. Those buried on the Mount of Olives are believed to be the first to be resurrected. Ms. Kayam notes that “the tension between a mountain that is a graveyard and a mountain that symbolizes salvation” inspired the film, in addition to a Talmudic story about a rabbi who loses interest in his wife.

A post-film discussion follows the screening with Doris Francis, Ron Duncan Hart, Gloria Abella Ballen, and Linda La Bove. Plan to stay for an exploration of the themes and questions raised by this enigmatic film.

ARAB LABOR, which has been described as a cross between All in the Family and Curb Your Enthusiasm, is a big but controversial hit in Israel. Created by Sayed Kashua, an Israeli-born Palestinian journalist, Arab Labor is a valiant, consistently hilarious attempt to explore the tensions and contradictions of everyday life through the eyes of an Israeli Muslim Arab.

On one hand Kashua has managed to barge through cultural barriers and bring an Arab point of view – mostly expressed in colloquial Arabic – into the mainstream of Israeli entertainment. On the other, Arab Labor reflects a society still grappling with fundamental issues of identity and belonging in a Jewish state that, Kashua says, still largely relates to its Arab minority as “a fifth column or a demographic problem. “I want to bring likable Arabs into the average Israeli living room,” he said.

The Santa Fe Jewish Film Festival will screen three episodes. It’s a unique opportunity for Santa Feans to look at Israeli life through a very different prism.

AVALON is a story of a Jewish-immigrant family who arrives in Baltimore and encounters a brave new world of freedom, self-betterment, and TV sets — i.e., the American Dream. The stern and loving patriarch Sam Krichinsky (Armin Mueller-Stahl) tell us, ”I came to America in 1914!” His heavily accented voice is breathless, almost childlike, and his mythical arrival at Baltimore Harbor is photographed as though he were entering a giant red-white-and-blue theme park where every day is the Fourth of July. The movie, which is about the passage of the Old World into the New, tells how those who came over from the peasant villages of Eastern Europe found the freedom of America both intoxicating and crazy, and how it was up to the next generation to make the place home.

Set mostly from the mid-’40s through the end of the ’50s, Avalon is a prequel to Director Barry Levinson’s Diner (1982) and Tin Men (1987), and in some ways it’s the most personal of the three. (source: Entertainment Weekly)