Jewish Film Festival Offers the Comic With the Tragic

The first ever International Jewish Film Festival opens tonight on a note of comedy and tragedy. It continues through the next two weeks with a mixture of feature and documentary films, tributes to Hollywood celebrities and screenings of memorable films from the past related to the Jewish experience.

It is, in other words, a festival that wants to go in a lot of directions at once--which is just how its founder, Phil Blazer, wanted it.

Blazer, the publisher of the Jewish News in Los Angeles and a familiar presence on local radio and cable television, notes that certain festival screenings combine short documentaries and features, “so people can see both the true-to-life and more fictional aspects of the Jewish experience that are being presented on film.”

In all, more than 40 feature films and documentaries from the U.S. and abroad will be shown during the International Jewish Film Festival, which runs through Nov. 18, including rare theatrical screenings of a number of older films depicting Jewish themes.

“I feel strongly that the most creative Jewish film festival in the world should be held here in Los Angeles, the world’s entertainment capital,” says Blazer, who hopes that the festival will become an annual event.

Tonight’s opening features the Los Angeles premiere of “Train of Life,” the French-language film that won the Audience Award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Written and directed by Radu Mihaileanu, the Holocaust-themed “Train of Life” uses comedy to tell the story of one small Eastern European shtetl’s (village) courageous--and outrageous--attempt to escape the ravages of the Nazis. (The film opens Friday in selected theaters around Southern California.)

Mihaileanu, an exile from communist Romania whose father was born in a shtetl and served time in a work camp during World War II, says he made the film “for two generations: that of my father and that of my children, to honor the memories and pass on the stories to our kids.”

But the filmmaker sought his own way of telling an oft-told tale. Like last year’s Oscar-winning “Life Is Beautiful”--whose star, Roberto Benigni, was initially offered the role of Shlomo the Fool in “Train”--the director wanted to tell a story of the Holocaust that wasn’t only tragic.

“I began to feel that we can no longer keep telling the story solely in the context of tears and horror,” Mihaileanu explains. “Amidst so much movie violence and horror, you run the risk of it becoming banal. I wanted to tell the tragedy through bittersweet comedy, the most Jewish language there is.”

On Wednesday, the festival will honor actor Gregory Peck with a gala tribute and screening of “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” the Academy Award-winning 1947 film in which Peck stars as a journalist who pretends to be Jewish and is confronted by anti-Semitism.

“When the film came out,” Blazer says, “the McCarthy era was just around the corner. It would have been easy for him [Peck] to say he didn’t want to get involved in the film. But he took it on and helped create a film classic.”

Peck will be given a special Festival Award, Blazer notes, “not only for his masterful work in this film, but also for his continual efforts off screen in support of so many humanitarian causes.” The evening will be hosted by director Arthur Hiller, the festival’s chairman.

Screening with “Gentlemen’s Agreement” is the world premiere of “Children of the Night,” a documentary short dedicated to the 1.6 million children who were lost in the Holocaust. Produced by Arthur Cohn, the film was written and narrated by Marion Wiesel, wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.

The festival’s regular programming begins Thursday at the Music Hall Theater in Beverly Hills, with a tribute to director Joan Micklin Silver and screenings of her films “A Fish in the Bathtub” and “Hester Street.” Another tribute evening next Tuesday will honor filmmaker Steven Spielberg with screenings of “The Last Days,” the Academy Award-winning documentary executive produced by Spielberg, and his landmark Holocaust drama, “Schindler’s List.”

Among the rare theatrical screenings of older films depicting Jewish themes will be “The Great Dictator,” Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 satire about Hitler; “Cast a Giant Shadow,” a 1966 drama about the birth of Israel, starring Kirk Douglas; and “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the 1959 adaptation of the classic memoir of the young girl who hid with her family from the Nazis in Amsterdam. Daytime student screenings of several of the films have been scheduled at festival locations.

Blazer is equally passionate about the all-day conference Thursday at the Peninsula Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, where established and young filmmakers will meet to discuss the exploration of Jewish themes in their work. Among those scheduled to attend are producers Cohn and Branko Lustig, and directors Hiller, Silver, Jeremy Kagan and Mihaileanu. “If we can touch one young filmmaker who will one day venture out and continue this upsurge in Jewish-themed films, then this first conference and film festival will have accomplished their goal,” he says.

* The 1999 International Jewish Film Festival, today through Nov. 18. Screenings will be held at Laemmle’s Music Hall Theatre, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, and Laemmle’s Town Center 5, 17200 Ventura Blvd., Encino. Information: (818) 786-4000.