Film Schedule:
12 - 2 PM: Trust
A mother’s suicide brings three adult children back home to Los Angeles where they confront each other, their selfish father, and long-avoided truths that have torn the family apart. A closely-observed social satire with excellent writing, a first-rate cast, and many comic elements amid the dysfunction and pathos. Ends on a note of hope.
2 - 4 PM: Four Winters
Deep within the forests of World War II Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine, more than 25,000 Jews fought back against the Nazis and their collaborators. Many of these Jewish partisans had witnessed the murders of their families and friends before escaping into the forest. Often operating from mere holes in the ground and armed with whatever weapons they could build, trade, or steal, Jewish men and women organized and fought against the better-trained and better-equipped German war machine rolling across Eastern Europe. Their tactical missions included blowing up trains, bridges, police stations, and telegraph lines. Whenever possible they carried two grenades, one for their target and one for themselves in case of capture. By 1944, their vigilance had made the forests so dangerous that Nazi soldiers were afraid to enter.
4 - 6 PM: Jews of the Wild West
Over two million Jews fled continuous cycles of anti-Jewish oppression, deadly violence, and forced poverty in Europe to seek out a better life in America. But big-city tenements didn’t offer the respite many were seeking. The wagon trains that moved westward with Jewish families traveled for the same reason as many settlers: opportunity. By 1912, it is estimated that over 100,000 Jews had migrated to the Wild West. These pioneers put down roots, and today they epitomize the important legacy of immigration in America. Sure you’ve heard of Levi Strauss and the Guggenheim family, but do you know about Jesse Shwayder, Simon Bibo, and Josephine Marcus Earp? This documentary tells their stories and others using archival footage, historical photos, diaries and letters, and first-person testimony of descendants.
6 - 8 PM: Rose
Suddenly widowed at age 78, family matriarch Rose—portrayed with great sensitivity by French screen legend Francoise Fabian—emerges from a period of mourning and learns to negotiate her new status, rejecting the advice of her three adult children and a society that thinks widows should turn away from life, act their age, and fade into oblivion. This film is beautifully produced, sensual, and brimming with Sephardic and Ashkenazic flavors.
