The 9th International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, featuring programs of Sephardic Films from around the world, was a cinematic celebration of the varied and rich history, cultures and identities of Sephardic Jewry and its widespread historical roots. Thought-provoking and entertaining, personal and historical, always educational, the International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival is gaining prominence as a unique cultural and artistic event in NYC with an ever increasing following. See review on the 9th International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival - contact us if you want to have an active part in the next film festival.

Leaving Spain and Portugal in the 15th century, the Sephardim settled mainly in the Ottoman Empire, Holland, the Caribbean Islands and Brazil. When the Dutch finally surrendered their holdings in (Pernambuco/Recife), Brazil back to the Portuguese, the Jews finally began making their way to North America beginning 350 years ago, in 1654. As 2004 marked the 350th anniversary of the first known organized Jewish presence in North America, we commemorated this anniversary, with the screening of the documentary The Rock and the Star, a moving documentary film that tells the story of the courageous pioneers who came to New Amsterdam from Portugal via Recife, Brazil to lay the foundations for the first Jewish community in North America.

Following on the success of previous years, the ASF brought a dozen classical and contemporary films about Sephardic Jewry to New York. With 14 screenings at the state-of-the-art theater at the Center for Jewish History, and one screening at the Manhattan JCC on the Upper West Side, this year’s Festival attracted the widest audience ever. Kicking off an exciting week of films was the New York premiere of The Last Sephardic Jew and a Q & A with its Spanish director Miguel Angel Nieto. In this moving film a young Sephardic rabbi, Eliezer Papo, takes a trip into the past, journeying all the way back to medieval Spain in search of answers to the puzzle of why the flourishing Jews of that country were forced to convert or flee. It follows the post-Inquisition wanderings of Spanish Jewry, bringing to light the hidden traces of Jewish life in such far-flung destinations as Thessaloniki and Istanbul. This film was presented in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes.

Desperate Hours, directed by Victoria Barrett is a powerful documentary film about Turkey’s efforts to rescue thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, reminiscent of the Ottoman acceptance of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. Through interviews with historians, diplomats, clergy and survivors, the film reveals how Turkish diplomats put their lives at risk to save Jews from being shipped to concentration camps. The film was followed by a round-table discussion led by the Consul General of Turkey in New York with the participation of the director Victoria Barrett and Bernard Touriel, a descendant of one of the rescued families.

The festival closed with the powerful and moving documentary, The Last Jews of Baghdad, directed by Carole Basri and Adriana Davis. The Iraqi Jewish community, once a flourishing center for Jewish culture, was devastated over the last 75 years by anti-Semitic persecution and the reign of Saddam Hussein. The Last Jews of Baghdad takes a historical and personal look at the persecution, torture, escape and exodus of over 160,000 Iraqi Jews between 1940 and 2003 utilizing documentary footage and interviews with the Jews who fled their beloved homeland of over 2500 years. The directors were present for a Q & A.

Please refer to the 9th International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival brochure for a complete program.

The 10th International Sephardic Film Festival will be held
February 2 – 8, 2006 - View Schedule.