![]() “Esther Broner: A Weave of Women,” about the famed women’s rights advocate, was produced with the film center’s assistance and will screen at the Boston festival on Nov. The center has long had a relationship with Jewish film festivals throughout the country. Lisa Rivo, co-director of the National Center for Jewish Film, attributes the growth of Jewish film festivals to the broader growth of the international film festival circuit. It’s the way more people connect to Judaism than anything else, but the organized Jewish community doesn’t recognize that.” “Everyone says that community support for the arts is disappearing, but the Jewish film festivals keep getting bigger. “We get hardly any support for this conference that is so clearly needed,” Zablocki said. The network, which sold out its June conference in New York, aims to help festivals share knowledge and ideas, as well as establish standards of practice. ![]() The Jewish Film Presenters Network now has a mailing list of more than 250 people. Isaac Zablocki, the director of film programs at the JCC in Manhattan, started a coordinating body several years ago for the organizers of Jewish film festivals. “My vision when I moved to Los Angeles was to reach the Hollywood community and to attach it to the Israeli film community,” said Meir Fenigstein, the Israel Film Festival’s founder. ![]() The Israeli festival also has drawn a succession of high-profile Hollywood honorees and presenters over the years, including Sacha Baron Cohen, Danny DeVito, Kirk and Michael Douglas, Dustin Hoffman and Bette Midler. That’s in addition to the Israel Film Festival, which screened six films in New York in its inaugural year of 1982 and now draws thousands to viewings in Los Angeles, New York and Miami. Several cities, including Philadelphia and Chicago, have separate festivals devoted exclusively to Israeli films. The institute’s president and CEO, Macy Hart, hired the director of the San Diego Jewish Film Festival, Lynette Allen, to create Jewish Cinema South, a now-defunct program that launched a host of successful festivals, including those in Nashville, Houston and Mobile, Ala. In the south, many Jewish film festivals owe their existence to the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which runs programs to support Jewish life in 13 states. The festival remains “one of the largest programs that the federation runs,” said Jane Hochstein, the director of the Dayton JCC. In Dayton, Ohio (Jewish population: 3,500), the festival reported a 25 percent increase in attendance in 2012 over the year before, and an additional 11 percent increase in 2013. Honolulu and Fairbanks, Alaska (the Farthest North Jewish Film Festival). There are large festivals in major Jewish centers such as New York, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, and smaller festivals in places like Omaha, Neb. Estimates vary, and depend to a degree on what qualifies as a film festival, but the total number ranges from 60 to well over 100 across the country. Since Jewish film festivals in the United States were launched in the 1980s, the field has grown dramatically. At a time when Jewish arts professionals have grown concerned over waning communal support for their endeavors, Jewish film festivals continue to thrive.
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