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Filtered By: Clear All

Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream

Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream

Just as its iconic pink box has graced Passover seder tables for generations of American Jews, so, too, Streit’s matzo factory has stood for some 80 years on the Lower East Side. For many Jews, a family business has been a way to make a living and a way to ensure that the next generation could do better. This is all challenged by the need for modernity, the pressures of foreign competition and enticing real estate offers. —Sara L. Rubin

Sturgeon Queens

Sturgeon Queens

What do Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Morley Safer have in common? They each are passionate about their love for the smoked fish at Russ's Daughters. This venerable establishment has been around for 100 years, and in this humorous, heartfelt and mouthwatering documentary we meet the delightful 100-year-old and 92-year-old daughters of the store’s name and the sturgeon queens of the title. Preceded by Salomea’s Nose.

In September 2010 New Yorkers were delighted by the overnight appearance of a temporary sukkah city erected in Union Square. These were the winning entrants from a global architectural competition designed to reimagine the humble sukkah. Featuring luminaries such as Michael Arad, Paul Goldberger and Maira Kalman, Sukkah City chronicles the process of judging the entrants and the drama that ensued as the winning teams shifted from concept to construction.

Swim Little Fish Swim

Swim Little Fish Swim

Idealistic musician Leeward and his breadwinner wife Mary share a tiny New York apartment where they raise their three-year-old daughter. When aspiring young French artist Lilas crashes on their couch and strikes a chord with at-sea Leeward, the couple’s ideological conflicts come into sharper focus. Writer/directors Ruben Amar and Lola Bessis’s first feature (and her acting debut as Lilas) is a heartfelt film about the struggle between creativity and adulthood.

The Talent Given Us

The Talent Given Us

Family road trips should be illegal. But then you would miss out on one of the wackiest, fun-house-mirrored, rollicking rides of your life with this family, their meshugas flapping from their mini-van like so many damp bathing suits. Sundance hit The Talent Given Us is Wagner’s narrative feature film about a New York Jewish family, which happens to star his New York Jewish family.

Ariel lives in New York, far from the lively Jewish district in Buenos Aires where he grew up. But when his father summons him back home for help, Ariel reluctantly returns. The Tenth Man is a kindhearted comedy with a gentle romantic touch. Director Daniel Burman (All In, SFJFF 2012) joyfully upends the old adage that you can never go home again and instead says, maybe under the right circumstances, you can. —Jay Rosenblatt

The Way We Were

The Way We Were

About This Film

The lives, loves, scandals and fixations of a tight-knit group of high society Manhattan youth are dissected with humor and compassion in this sexy drama from first-time feature director Joey Kuhn. The story centers on Charlie, a struggling young artist, whose loyalty to—and longtime crush on—his dashing best friend Sebastian are challenged when Sebastian’s swindling father is jailed and Charlie starts falling in love with someone else.

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali threw off what he called his “slave name,” Cassius Clay, joined the Nation of Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War. Boasting archival interviews including Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis, Bill Siegel’s documentary tackles some of the greatest themes of our times: power, race, faith, identity and freedom from the legacy of slavery. Like its articulate subject, Siegel’s doc “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

Very Semi-Serious

Very Semi-Serious

Famed and would-be cartoonists return to the New Yorker week after week to vie for the approval of the acerbic, egotistical, funny and deeply human cartoon editor Bruce Mankoff. From the neurotic Roz Chast to the offbeat Bruce Eric Kaplan, these humorists draw us into their sometimes eccentric, sometimes morose, always delightful world views. Like binging on a year’s worth of New Yorker cartoons, Very Semi-Serious delights and leaves you wanting more.

Once upon a time (in 1988), in a Palestinian town near Bethlehem, 18 dairy cows were purchased by the people of Beit Sahour from an Israeli kibbutz. This well-crafted, creative documentary, which includes stop-motion animation, explores the strange mixture of political complexities and bovine hijinks that were manifested by the town’s efforts to take dairy production—and fiscal resistance—into their own hands.

Watchers of the Sky

Watchers of the Sky

About This Film

Welcome to Leith

Welcome to Leith

In 2010 the attempted takeover of a tiny rural North Dakota town by notorious anti-Semite Craig Cobb ignited a national media frenzy. Filmmakers Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker captured the rising tension between machine gun–toting racists and pistol-packing residents leading to Cobb’s armed street patrol that took events to their inexorable conclusion. This chilling document powerfully highlights the rise of hate groups and the often questionable methods used to silence them. TL

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

The 1960s’ most famous, rabble-rousing and radical defense attorney is put on the witness stand by two of his two daughters in this riveting documentary. For Sarah and Emily Kunstler, it’s an effort to understand and reconcile with a man of contradictions who defended not only civil rights activists, the Chicago 7 and American Indian militants, but also accused rapists, terrorists and assassins. An exciting portrait of every revolutionary’s ideal= lawyer. Followed by social justice discussion at the Castro.

Thirteen-year-old Nono is sent on a secret mission by his police inspector father in this winning drama about following one’s best hunches, based on David Grossman’s novel.

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