17th Annual New York Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Monday, March 17, 2014

Monday, March 17, 2014 at the Center for Jewish History

3:00pm – Kisses to the Children

KissesToTheChildrenThe stories of five Greek-Jewish children who were saved by Christian families during the German Occupation.  Their personal accounts of survival add an indelible humanity to the history and cover a wide range of issues.  The film also depicts the life of the Greek Jewish communities before the War, with rare images of Occupied Greece from archival material, as well as amateur films by German soldiers and illegal footage shot by Greek patriots.
Director: Vassilis Loules. Greece, 2011.  115 mins. Greek w/English subtitles.

 

5:30pm – A Bookstore in Six Chapters:The Story of Renee and Solon Molho US Premiere

ReneeMolho_Bookstore1Renee Saltiel and Solon Molho grew up in one of the greatest Sephardic Jewish communities, Salonika, or Thessaloniki, in today’s Greece. 90,000 Jews lived there before WWII and by the time the Germans had rounded up the city’s Jews, almost none were left.  A few returned. Renee and Solon did manage to survive, thanks to a Spanish diplomat and some very brave Greek families.
Writer/Director: Edward Serotta. Vienna, 2013. 25 mins. Produced by Centropa in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum Thessaloniki.

 

6:30pm – The Longest Journey: The Last Days of the Jewish Community of Rhodes

LongestJourney1The 2,000 year-old Jewish community of Rhodes was almost destroyed when the majority of its residents were transported to Auschwitz on July 19, 1944.  The film weaves together testimonies of three of the few Jews to have survived Auschwitz. They, along with the film crew, returned to Rhodes from their respective lives in New York, Rome and Brussels and recount memories of family and communal life, interactions with the local Greeks, Turks and Italians, cultural traditions, as well as the tragic last days of their community. Through the lens of these narrators, their early lives in Rhodes unfold as a sort of ‘paradise lost’.
Director:  Ruggero Gabbai. Italy, 2012. 52 mins. Italian w/English subtitles.  Post-screening discussion with Stella Levi and Alessandro Cassin, Centro Primo Levi.

 

For more information:
Website: http://www.sephardicfilmfest.org/
Email: [email protected]
Call: 1 (212) 294-8350 x1

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