Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

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Line 9

About This Film

Little Horribles: An Evening with Amy York Rubin

If George Costanza and Murphy Brown had a baby, it would be named Amy York Rubin, the creator and star of Little Horribles, a darkly comedic web series that follows the poor decisions of a self-indulgent lesbian. With Little Horribles hailed as one of the top ten web series of 2013 by Variety and called “the lesbian answer to Girls” by the Huffington Post, Rubin has emerged as a bold new comedic voice.

Little Horribles: minibar

If George Costanza and Murphy Brown had a baby, it would be named Amy York Rubin, the creator and star of Little Horribles, a darkly comedic web series that follows the poor decisions of a thirtysomething, self-indulgent lesbian in Los Angeles. Little Horribles finds Amy exploring vehicular masturbation, minibar binge eating, Facebook stalking and other awkward yet all-too-true comedic mishaps. Hailed as one of the top ten web series of 2013 by Variety and called “the lesbian answer to Girls” by the Huffington Post, Little Horribles rips apart and laughs in the face of those painfully uncomfortable moments that no one wants to remember, but everyone does.

Little Rose

Jan Kidawa-Blonski’s taut espionage thriller zeroes in on Poland’s repressive political environment in the late 1960s, making sharp dramatic use of totalitarianism’s contamination of private relationships. Little Rose opens as news of the Six Day War arrives with the message that Israel’s gains represent a threat to Poland. In this paranoid atmosphere, a blond bombshell is hired by the secret police to spy on a renowned intellectual suspected of subversive views.

Little Stones

This inspiring documentary profiles four women, each putting tremendous effort into helping women around the world in unique ways. A Brazilian graffiti artist speaks out against domestic violence; a Senegalese hip-hop musician educates young women about the perils of genital mutilation; a classically trained dancer in India helps heal victims of sex trafficking through movement therapy; and a young American finds high-end U.S. markets for poor Kenyan women’s hand-sewn clothing.

Little White Lie

Daring to ask questions about her true identity, around which her parents had kept a careful silence throughout her entire childhood, filmmaker Lacey Schwartz gently but firmly pulls back the curtain on matters of race and family secrets in her deeply personal and riveting documentary. Schwartz raises larger questions for us all: What factors—race, religion, family, upbringing—make us who we are? And what happens when we are forced to redefine ourselves?

Live and Become

In this sweeping, emotional saga from the director of Train of Life, an Ethiopian boy from a Sudanese refugee camp is airlifted to Israel during Operation Moses, which transported 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 1984. Adopted by a Mizrahi family, Shlomo grows up, falls in love and serves in the Israeli army but is plagued throughout by two secrets: He was not born a Jew and is not an orphan. Radu Mihaileanu has created a monumental drama following one young man’s epic quest for his roots and identity.See also: Spotlight On: Ethiopian Jews and Jews of Color

Living in Conflict

About This Film

The Living Orphan

We proudly present a restored print of prolific director Joseph Seiden’s The Living Orphan, courtesy of the National Center for Jewish Film. Based on Sholom Secunda’s Yiddish play Der Yusem, this drama of an immigrant showbiz family features rare footage of New York City in the 1930s. "A recording of a vanished landscape," writes film scholar J. Hoberman, "... as well as a two-hankie backstage domestic saga."

Local Angel

LOCAL ANGEL: THEOLOGICAL POLITICAL FRAGMENTS is a first-person film by New York-based artist Udi Aloni, son of Shulamit Aloni, a founder of Israeli peace and civil rights groups. Grounded in its maker’s progressive politics, the film questions how ancient ideas of place and sanctity inform the contemporary debate over Israel and Palestine. Followed by a panel, The Temple in Time and Space.

Local Call!

While astronomer Felix Mandel’s career and domestic life ascend in importance, his Jewish faith is in retrograde--until his dead father begins to harangue him with collect phone calls from the Great Beyond. Things move fast in this absurd Parisian farce as Felix (masterfully played by Sergio Castellitto) completely unravels, but an old faith and a burgeoning romance help to turn this fragmented modern man into a new and whole human being.

The Locket

Initially scripted by future blacklistee Norma Barzman, who was denied credit, The Locket is a compelling film noir treating a female protagonist with empathy and psychological depth. Laraine Day plays a bride facing a crisis hours before her wedding, prompting a mental breakdown and institutionalization. A neglected gem, and a marker of what the "woman’s film" might have become nearly a quarter-century before feminism.

The Lonely Child

“The Lonely Child” is a haunting Yiddish lullaby written during the Holocaust, capturing the heartbreak of a mother and daughter torn apart by war. Eighty years later, the daughter of the child in the song embarks on a powerful journey to trace the song’s unexpected impact across generations.

Long Distance

Amikam Goldman’s affecting documentary follows the fate of four foreign workers in Israel through their phone conversations with loved ones back home. As they try to maintain ties with those they have not seen for years, universal stories of economic hardship, daily frustration and loneliness emerge amid the persistence of love and hope.

Long Distance (2020)

Rachel is losing her sight to the point she can't even call her daughter who is in labor on the other side of the world. Seeking for help, she opens her door to passersby strangers, striving for one moment of connection.

The Longing: The Forgotten Jews of South America

The poignant and inspiring story of six South Americans who long to affirm their Jewish faith against all odds. They believe they are among millions descended from crypto-Jews, immigrants to the Americas who secretly practiced Judaism despite centuries of draconian prohibition during the Spanish Inquisition. Now their descendants wish to reclaim a heritage and a faith long buried, but face resistance from both within and outside the Jewish communit

Looking for Mr. Israeli

A personal essay about a self-questioning, tenacious American Jew who sets out to find a crush he saw only in a magazine fifty years ago, while wrestling with his evolving relationship to Israel.

Looking for Yadida

Memory, loss, and the quest for truth are central to this hidden story of Mizrahi babies who vanished from Israeli hospitals in the 1950s, explored through rare testimonies and revelations.

Looking for Yedida

For decades, the fate of Yedida, the director’s lost aunt, remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, nurses from 1950’s children homes break their silence, revealing new details about one of Israel’s most painful and unresolved cases.

Lookout

About This Film

The Lorax

About This Film

Loss

In Loss, as a muted modern Berlin rolls by, noted Germans ruminate about the extinguishing of German Jewish life and culture and the intellectual, moral and spiritual void that loss has created.

Lost Cause

A film about an allegorical musical about a Yom Kippur service that goes off the rails and transforms into an attempted community therapy session.

Lost Islands

Israel’s 2008 box office hit focuses on the Levis, a large, fun-loving family—at times quirky, but mostly typical. As the naive days of the early 1980s wane, they encounter concurrent tragedies: a car accident that leaves the father wheelchair bound and the uneasy distancing of once-inseparable twins. When one of the sons joins a commando unit fighting in the nationally polarizing war with Lebanon, the Levis’ personal struggles become indelibly intertwined with Israel’s own.

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

Love & Stuff | 3:45pm pst

Love & Stuff is a multi-generational love story. Told in the first person, in deep consultation with the past, filmmaker Judith Helfand explores the transformative power of parenting, our complex and emotional attachment to “stuff” and what it is we really need to leave our children.

Love & Taxes

Despite his job assisting a high-powered San Francisco corporate tax attorney, Josh Kornbluth hasn’t filed his own taxes in years. When his boss finally convinces him to file, so begins an unexpected and hilarious journey that will change his life. Seamlessly blending scenes from Kornbluthss finally convinces him to file, so begins an unexpected and Love & Taxes will capture your heart and make you never want to do your taxes the same way again.

The Love and Death of Yosef and Zilli

Following a long and loving marriage, Yosef and Zilli tell their son Doron of their plan to commit suicide together. As the plan starts to materialize, Doron seeks to preserve his parents memory with his video camera.

Love Comes Lately

Love Comes Lately evokes the Nobel Prize–winning Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer in word, spirit and deed in a winning film by Jan Schütte. At the center of three intertwined Singer stories is the elderly writer Max, who lives “in a state of permanent confusion,” enhanced by a thriving libido and a vivid imagination that has his dream life merging with his waking, and both with his fictions. Starring Otto Tausig, Rhea Perlman and Tovah Feldshuh.

Love Inventory

About This Film

Love Iranian-American Style

She’s smart and articulate, funny and vivacious... and she’s tall. So why, at 25, isn’t she married yet? Cultural anthropology does a screaming loop the- loop in Love Iranian-American Style, a fearless autobiographical look at the filmmaker’s lovelorn life.

Love is Thicker Than Water

In this modern-day retelling of the story of Romeo and Juliet, Arthur is a bike messenger from a working-class Welsh mining town and Vida is a cellist and daughter of a wealthy Jewish family from London. Their hipster romance takes on gratifying depth when their families—and their divergent backgrounds—come into play. The film feels simultaneously polished and experimental as it delicately explores hard questions about faith, love and devotion.

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