JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

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Filtered By: Sol Clear All

Absolutely No Spitting

Absolutely No Spitting

"So, you know how I told you to never spit? And that you're not allowed to spit and you shouldn't spit? SO... I need you to spit" And thus begins a very quirky, sometimes self-deprecating, and always heymish spit-driven DNA-journey-turned-love-letter between Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, a fifty-something new old mom, and her much beloved and very spunky four-and-a-half-year-old adopted daughter Theo. And thank G-d they call NYC home - because it's the perfect place to embrace life as a multi-racial, multi-cultural, pan-global family.

Afternoon Delight

Afternoon Delight

Rachel is a quick-witted, lovable, yet tightly coiled, thirtysomething steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’s bohemian Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right—chic modernist home, successful husband, adorable child and a hipster wardrobe. So why is she going out of her gourd with ennui? Plagued by purposelessness, Rachel visits a strip club to spice up her marriage and meets a stripper whom she becomes obsessed with saving.

Near the end of the war in Lebanon, a group of Israeli soldiers defends an isolated mountain outpost next to a 12th-century fortress called Beaufort Castle.

“I want to get to that place where I have no strength to hide anything.” After a decade of stardom in Israel as part of the illustrious Batsheva Dance Company, dancer/choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith at age 30 pursues a solo career in the U.S. Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, Bobbi Jene is a portrait of a dancer which is as unflinching, wondrous and embarrassing as life itself.

This classically styled hardboiled detective yarn explores how Hungary reacted to the rise of the Third Reich.

Judith Helfand: Freedom of Expression Award 2019 | COOKED: Survival by Zip Code

Judith Helfand: Freedom of Expression Award 2019 | COOKED: Survival by Zip Code

In July 1995, a heat wave overtook Chicago: high humidity and a layer of heat-retaining pollution drove the heat index up to more than 126 degrees. City roads buckled, rails warped, electric grids failed, thousands became ill and people began to die - by the hundreds. Cooked tells the story of this heat wave, the most traumatic in U.S. history, in which 739 Chicago citizens died in a single week, most of them poor, elderly, and African American. Balancing serious and somber with her respectful, albeit ironic and and signature quirkly style, Peabody award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand explores this drama that, when peeled away, reveals the less newsworthy but long-term crisis of pernicious poverty, economic, and social isolation and racism. Cooked is a story about life, death, and the politics of crisis in an American city.

Gett: The Trial of Vivian Amsalem

Gett: The Trial of Vivian Amsalem

In Israel there is neither civil marriage nor civil divorce. Only Rabbis can legitimate a marriage or its dissolution. But this dissolution is only possible with full consent from the husband, who in the end has more power than the judges.

Still image from Inside Llewyan Davis

Inside Llewyn Davis

New York, 1962. The downtown folk scene. Solo singers, duos and trios are playing the Gaslight and cutting and releasing records. And the talented, abrasive Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is getting beaten to a pulp in the back alley... again. The picaresque and panoramic Inside Llewyn Davis, named after the protagonist's no-sell recording debut, ponders the question: how can someone be an angel when he's singing and playing and a miserable lout the instant the music stops?

The film details the journey of Bert Trautmann in his rise from German World War II soldier to English footballing legend.

A cantankerous 88-year-old has waited to fulfill a promise to a friend who helped him escape the Holocaust.

Set in German-occupied Prague, this visually stunning, highly original thriller explores how much we might compromise for love. Emil accepts a job promotion to be the on-air voice of the Nazi propaganda in order to protect Hana, his Jewish wife. Meanwhile, Hana’s glamorous life as a movie star comes to an abrupt end. As she rebels against her Emil’s attempts to control her every move, Hana sets out on some dangerous adventures.

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

In Search of Israeli Cuisine

Renowned chef Michael Solomonov explores a diverse world of food drawn from more than 100 cultures. Chefs, farmers, vintners, cheese makers and home cooks discuss their roots and show specialties that both preserve and update traditional recipes using global inspiration. Uniquely and lovingly prepared shakshuka, boreka, maqluba, couscous and a kugel that challenges expectations are just a few of the irresistible dishes featured. Warning: This movie will make you hungry!

Snowy, a four-inch-long pet turtle, has lived an isolated life in the family basement. With help from a team of experts and his caretaker, Uncle Larry, we ask: Can Snowy be happy, and what would it take?

Saul Ausländer is a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando, the group of Jewish prisoners isolated from the camp and forced to assist the Nazis in the machinery of large-scale extermination. While working in one of the crematoriums, Saul discovers the body of a boy he takes for his son.

Tel Aviv On Fire | CENTERPIECE NARRATIVE

Tel Aviv On Fire | CENTERPIECE NARRATIVE

Salam, an inexperienced young Palestinian man, becomes a writer on a popular soap opera after a chance meeting with an Israeli soldier. His creative career is on the rise - until the soldier and the show's financial backers disagree about how the show should end, and Salam is caught in the middle.

Waltz with Bashir thumbnail

Waltz with Bashir

Waltz with Bashir This devastating animated documentary by Israeli filmmaker Ari Folman is a kind of fictionalized documentary using rotoscope-animation techniques with live action footage to depict Folman's search for the traumatic lost memories of his experiences as a soldier in the 1982 Lebanon War.

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