You want a good reason to attend the Jewish International Film Festival?
I’ll give you three.
The foundation stone, or should that be trope, of all rom coms is a lie, a perpetuating fib that grows bigger, deeper as the spade becomes a shovel that becomes an excavator and the truth is finally laid bare.
It’s deceit that de-seats the love and marriage carriage, often a fraudulence fermented in good faith, a brew untrue, that curdles in the cold, hard light of truth.
In modern day Munich, Anne is an Aryan so infected with guilt of Germany’s anti Semitic policies during the Nazi era, she is infatuated with Jewish culture, running a bookshop that promotes Jewish writing.
She also works in a Jewish retirement home, aiding one particular old timer with his wartime memoirs and allowing him the liberty of fondling her tush.
Coming a cropper after tripping over a tome, Anne comes in contact with a Jewish emergency doctor, and his goy pal, gynaecologist, Daniel.
Daniel is looking for love after being dumped by his wife so she could pursue a lesbian relationship and Anne is looking to embrace anyone, seemingly, as long as they are Jewish.
A tale of misguided cultural appropriation, LOVE & MAZEL TOV is a serious comedy of errors, smartly made, with some cute and acute observations of ideological idiocy.
Tel Aviv is the setting for KARAOKE, an examination of a moribund marriage.
Meir and Tova are comfortably middle class, he a retired teacher, she a designer, these empty nesters have grown old together, the bones of their bond made brittle by familiarity, the marrow of their matrimony sucked dry by disappointment.
Into their lives comes Itsik, a new tenant in their apartment block, bringing a little Miami vice and testosterone spice into their plateaued existence.
Strata wars, social status, sex and seduction snakes through this subversive story of static relationships, jealousy, envy and self opinionated narcism.
THE ART OF SILENCE is a documentary about the life, work and legacy of maestro mime, Marcel Marceau. Through performance and interview with the man, as well as interviews with those who knew him during the war years and his wife, daughter and grandson, who carry on his theatrical principles, film maker Maurizius Staerkle portrays the performer as a complex and deeply compassionate man, a super star of stage but also a great mensch.
So what are you waiting for?
The Jewish International Film Festival is screening now. Session times can be found at jiff.com.au
