Author: Kate Sahagian

The New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival begins March 16

Eleven feature films, a five-film shorts package and a kids’ event make up the slate of screenings for this year’s New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival, which starts Thursday, March 16.

Screenings at locations across the state take place through Sunday, March 26; virtual screenings will run through Sunday, April 16.

“What I think is important is after the film there’s a conversation that happens at a film festival,” said Pat Kalik, one of the co-chairs of the festival. “People gather and are able to talk about what they just saw.”

The festival starts Thursday, March 16, with a screening of Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein at 7 p.m. at the Rex Theatre in Manchester. The documentary, which showcases the photography of Fred Stein, who shot in 1930s Paris and eventually fled to New York City, will be followed by a post-film discussion with filmmaker Peter Stein, Fred Stein’s son.

The post-film panel is an addition to this year’s program, Kalik said. Three of the films — including Dedication (the filmed version of Roger Peltzman’s one-man play about his mother’s brother, a celebrated pianist, who was murdered at Auschwitz) and Israel Swings for Gold (a documentary about the 2021 Israeli Olympic baseball team) — will feature in-person post-film discussions with their directors. Israel Swings for Gold will screen Tuesday, March 21, at Southern New Hampshire University’s Webster Hall in Hooksett at 7 p.m. and feature a discussion with Seth Kramer. Dedication will screen at the festival’s wrap party on Sunday, March 26, at 3:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord and will feature a discussion with Petlzman.

A Zoom discussion with filmmaker Steve Pressman, whose film Levys of Monticello is available virtually, is slated for Wednesday, March 22, at 7 p.m.

Kalik and her co-chair Ross Fishbein said that 9 of the feature-length movies will be available virtually — either during the festival’s initial in-person run or in the weeks following (Out of Exile and Dedication will be in-person only). The shorts package is completely virtual. Six of the feature films are getting in-person screenings, along with a special event for kids that will feature a screening of an episode from the cartoon series Shaboom! (that event is scheduled to take place Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m. at the Jewish Federation of New Hampshire in Manchester and include snacks and making a cardboard car; the program is free but registration is required).

“Offering that virtual component … has enabled us to continue to show films to people that may not be fully comfortable being in person yet, but also just reaching further within the state,” Fishbein said. “People that maybe don’t live within easy driving distance of one of the multiple locations where we’re showing a film, they can still enjoy the programming.”

The viewing and selection processes for the festival are started in the summer the year before it opens, Kalik said. This year, the selection team viewed approximately 60 movies before coming to a final decision.

The movies follow a multitude of themes and stories, Kalik said. She and Fishbein stressed that it was important to have movies that weren’t just about the Holocaust but also weren’t just romantic comedies. They wanted to show the diversity of Jewish and Israeli film.

“For me, it’s hard to pick out a favorite because each film has its own unique quality,” Kalik said. “You know, it’s hard to compare a documentary about a photographer to a film about the Israeli baseball team.”

New Hampshire Jewish Film Festival
When: First in-person screening is Thursday, March 16, at 7 p.m. at the Rex Theatre in Manchester; wrap party and final in-person screening are Sunday, March 26, at 3:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord. Virtual screenings will run through Sunday, April 16 — beginning March 16 or March 27, depending on the film.
Price: Individual tickets cost $12. Ticket packages are also available including for all in-person screening and all virtual screenings.

Schedule:
• Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein screens Thursday, March 16, at 7 p.m. at Rex Theatre (23 Amherst St. Manchester, 668-5588, palacetheatre.org/rex-theatre).
• Farwell, Mr. Haffmann screens Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m. at 3S Artspace (319 Vaughan St., Portsmouth, 766-3330, 3sarts.org) and The Showroom in Keene.
• PJ Goes to the Movies: Shaboom! event takes place Sunday, March 19, at 2 p.m. at Jewish Federation of New Hampshire (273 S. River Road, No. 5, Bedford, 627-7679, jewishnh.org).
• Israel Swings for Gold screens Tuesday, March 21, at 7 p.m. at Southern New Hampshire University (Webster Hall, Mara Auditorium, 2546 N. River Road, Hooksett, 645-9700, snhu.edu)
• Man in the Basement screens Thursday, March 23, at 7 p.m. at Red River Theatres (11 S. Main St., Concord, 224-4600, redrivertheatres.org)
• America screens Sunday, March 26, at 1 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.
• Dedication screens Sunday, March 26, at 3:30 p.m. at Red River Theatres in Concord.
More info: nhjewishfilmfestival.com

Films

Descriptions according to nhjewishfilmfestival.com

Features

• Follow swimming coach Eli in America(2022) as he travels back to Israel after his father’s death and his relationship with his childhood friend’s fiancée, who is a florist.

• In Barren (2022) the young ultra-orthodox couple Feigi and Naftali live at home with Naftali’s parents. While Naftali is away, a visitor named Rabbi Eliyahu comes to stay in the household, promising to help Feigi with treatment for being barren. When Naftali returns, the couple must face a difficult crisis that leads to questions about faith and trust.

• Roger Peltzman turned his one-man play into the film Dedication (2022). The play and film follow Peltzman’s family’s escape from Berlin to Brussels in 1933, focusing on his uncle Norbert, a popular pianist in Belgium, who was killed in Auschwitz at 21 years old.

• Farewell, Mr. Haffmann (2022) follows the story of Joseph Haffmann, a jeweler in occupied Paris in 1941. After sending his family away, Haffmann seeks out the help of his employee after he fails to escape the city.

• In the documentary Israel Swings for Gold (2022), the Israeli Olympic baseball team makes its first appearance at the Olympics. Because there were no professional media devices available at the village, the teammates documented the experience themselves with videos and pictures.

• Join older couple Tova and Meir as they explore what life has to offer them, with the help of their eccentric neighbor Itzik, in the film Karaoke (2022).

• Learn more about the family that owned Thomas Jefferson’s famed estate, Monticello, for more than a century in this documentary. The Levys of Monticello (2022) tells the history of the Levy family, as well as how it intersects with the rise of antisemitism in American history.

• In The Man in the Basement (2022), a couple sell their unused cellar to a former history professor. In a dark turn, they find out that the professor is an antisemitic conspiracy theorist and has befriended their teen daughter.

• Actress Mariette Hartley explores the dating scene as an older woman in Hollywood in Our (Almost Completely True) Story (2022). When she finds herself smitten with comedian Jerry Sorka, and him with her, unexpected challenges arise, leaving Mariette wondering if she’s too old to find love.

• The documentary Out of Exile: The Photography of Fred Stein (2021), follows how a young photographer, fearing the Nazi party, traveled to France in the 1930s to document everything he saw. When an accident ended his life, Stein’s photography seemed to vanish with it, until his son, Peter, brought the pictures back into the art world.

• The documentary Reckonings (2022) follows the untold true story of the negotiations between Jewish and German leaders determining the reparations for the survivors of the Holocaust.

Short films

• A Kaddish for Selim (2022) follows a young British Jewish man who changes his name to fight in World War I.

• Give It Back (2019) follows Olivia, a girl new to Israeli society, and her blossoming friendship with an Ethiopian boy named Alem.

• In Nazi-occupied Albania, Ismail must choose between his nation’s honor code to protect visitors (in his case, two Jewish men) and the safety of his family in Ismail’s Dilemma (2020).

• In Pops (2021), sisters Elli and Roz must honor their father’s dying wish, even though it’s unusual.

• Space Torah (2020) documents the journey of Jewish-American astronaut Dr. Jeff Hoffman as he brings parts of his religion and culture into space.

Featured photo: Israel Swings for Gold. Courtesy photo.

Classical groups join to present Requiem

With the 100th anniversary of Symphony NH happening in April, the organization wanted to do something to celebrate its longstanding relationship with another classical music pillar of southern New Hampshire, the Nashua Choral Society.

“Thinking back to 2019, with everything that’s happened since then, lots have changed in four-plus years,” said Deanna Hoying, the executive director at Symphony NH.

The groups will be performing Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, a popular choice for full orchestras and choirs. The symphony performed the same piece in 2019, when it was hired by the choral society. This time, there are some differences.

To boost their numbers, Hoying said, the Nashua Choral Society invited the Nashoba Valley Chorale to perform with them. Another change is the location, with this concert taking place at the Immaculate Conception Church in Nashua.

“There’s a very different sound in a church facility than in a big concert hall,” said Hoying. “There’s something magical about hearing that work and singing that work in a church. I’m so grateful to have them; both choirs and church have been delightful to work with.”

A requiem is traditionally a Catholic mass for the dead, Hoying said. Preceding the piece, at first as a small joke, is Death of a Poet, a string orchestration composed in 2014 by TJ Cole, inspired by the poem written by Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov. Hoying said the symphony strives to pair contemporary, living composers with greats like Mozart.

Mozart’s Requiemis most famous for being a source of conspiracy theory by the music community, as it was the last piece he worked on before his death. In modern times, the piece was popularized by the movie Amadeus (PG, 1984), which follows the life of Mozart told through the viewpoint of his rival Antonio Salieri.

Hoying said this will be, in many ways, a more meaningful production of the mass than the performance in 2019. This performance will be part of the symphony’s centennial year, and it will be honoring the years of collaboration between the symphony and the Nashua Choral Society.

Even beyond that, the music will weigh heavier after the pandemic, Hoying said. She added that, even with the official end of pandemic-era restrictions, audiences have still been wary of coming out to shows. She hopes for the music to be cathartic and healing after years of isolation and loss.

“Everyone will have their own independent response, depending on their own experiences,” Hoying said. “There’s a level of joy that, for many of us during the pandemic, we missed that part. Even if it’s a requiem, there is such joy in this ability to recognize and move on.”

Mozart’s Requiem performed by the Symphony NH
Where: 216 East Dunstable Road, Nashua
When: Sunday, March 5, at 3 p.m.
Price: $45 for adults, $35 for seniors 65 and older, $10 for youth 10 to 17, $10 for students 27 and younger with valid identification, and free for youth younger than 10 accompanied by an adult.
Visit: symphonynh.org.

Featured photo: Symphony NH’s full orchestra. Courtesy photo.

Poetry Society hosts virtual session with displaced Ukrainian poets

As the first anniversary of the start of the war in Ukraine looms, the New Hampshire Poetry Society is showing its support for Ukrainian poets.

Through a virtual event, the New Hampshire Poetry Society will have poets who are currently or have been refugees in Poland read poetry written in their native language.

Ewa Chrusciel, a member of the New Hampshire Poetry Society and the person who proposed the reading, said that she, state’s poet laureate Alexandria Peary, and Society president Melanie Chicoine will read the translations of the poems.

Chrusciel said she wanted to find a way to respectfully honor the beginning of the war and the experiences of those displaced by it. To her, written word, especially poetry, is one of the main ways she can show support for Ukraine, especially if those writers hail from the war-torn nation.

“When countries are occupied, [written word is] how we carry on when languages are banned or when we are divided by other countries,” Chrusciel said. “When the territory is divided, the language becomes the nation, the poetry becomes the nation.”

When Chrusciel visited a theater she loved in her native Poland, she said, she was shocked to see the space was being used to house displaced families from the war in Ukraine. She had intended to take in a show on her routine visit, or at least catch up with some members of the artistic community.

Through some connections at the theater, Chrusciel quickly made a workshop for 14 writers who found themselves stranded by the war in their homeland.

“It was a bit like the tower of Babel,’” Chrusciel said. “I speak Polish and English, some spoke Polish, Ukrainian and English. There was lots of translation going on, but it still felt like a very united, transcendent moment.”

It took all of three hours in the performance space for Chrusciel to feel that these women were her close friends. Over the course of the war, Chrusciel said, she has met up with many of the writers still in Poland. Many members of the group have moved around, staying with family in other parts of Europe or in America. Chrusciel said she knows two of the writers went back to Ukraine.

When the group met, Chrusciel hoped to keep the meeting lighthearted. She didn’t intentionally bring up the writers’ displacement as a source for the workshop. She brought humorous poems to inspire the writers, but the poets were drawn to tackling the most relevant topic in their lives.

“That experience of loss was palpable,” Chrusciel said. “[The poems] would always transpire on the topic of loss and displacement and homesickness.”

At the virtual reading, Chrusciel hopes the writers, and the listeners, can learn more about how the war has affected the poets. She said that having people hear the poetry will be a step toward understanding the pain and hope of the Ukrainian writers.

While not all the writers from the original group will be joining the virtual event, Chrusciel said all of them have continued writing, and will continue to document their experiences any way they can.

“Poetry can save a human,” Chrusciel said. “They write down those details they see and feel. Their poetry isn’t just a playground, it’s a witness, it’s a testimony, and it’s a responsibility.”

Voice In A Shattered World: Ukrainian Women Writers On War And Displacement
Where: Saturday, Feb. 25, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
When:On Zoom, link is listed on the website.
Visit: psnh.org

Featured photo: Ukrainian writers group in Poland. Photo courtesy of Ewa Chrusciel.