Enjoying one of the most successful runs in its nine-year history, the New York International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, presented by American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House, in cooperation with Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, opened and closed with record-breaking attendance. The eleven films shown during the weeklong Festival (February 3-9) aptly illustrated its theme, Roots and Origins. The selected films represented the diversity of Sephardic history and its traditions from the past to the present, through equally diverse cinematic genres, showcasing the artistic achievements of seasoned as well as up-and-coming Sephardic filmmakers and actors.

Both the opening night screening of The Last Sephardic Jew, by Miguel Angel Nieto, and the closing night world premiere screening of The Last Jews of Baghdad: End of an Exile, Beginning of a Journey, by Carole Basri, Adriana Davis, and Bryan Durr, played to sold-out crowds with the films being projected simultaneously in the Leo J. Forchheimer Auditorium and the Paul S. and Sylvia Steinberg Great Hall. As bookends to a Festival focusing on origins and roots, these two documentaries complimented each other perfectly. Each one is an exploration of personal, family, and community histories of Sephardim, one from Spain and the other from Iraq, and their strong ties with the histories and destinies of the countries and cultures in which they planted roots.

In The Last Sephardic Jew, we traveled with Rabbi Eliezer Papo as he followed the paths of the Jews who left Spain in 1492, to such far-flung places as Thessalonica, Istanbul, Serbia and Curacao. While exploring the origins and scope of Sephardic influence, the film’s older subjects are left to wonder aloud if their grandchildren will continue to sing the Ladino songs that they cherish, once they are gone. Filmmaker Miguel Angel Nieto charmed the audience during the Q & A following the film, and during the reception that followed. Many audience members sought out Mr. Nieto to share the stories of their own families whose origins were from many of the cities visited by Rabbi Eliezer Papo in the film. The Last Sephardic Jew was also viewed by more than 150 people at its second screening at the JCC Manhattan, the first time in the Film Festival’s history that ASF/SH has partnered with this dynamic new facility on the Upper West Side.

The Last Jews of Baghdad demonstrated the depth of the roots of Jewish culture – in this case in Iraq – and the incredible loss and displacement felt by this community as they were forced to flee the land they had called home for 2,700 years. The loyalty that the Iraqi Jews felt for their homeland prevented many of them from escaping from the country earlier in the 20th century, and it was only after being imprisoned and tortured that many finally left. As one survivor and his wife, now living in California, showed the still half-full bottle of whisky, signed and dated by their Iraqi friends and given to them as a talisman of luck for their clandestine journey out of Iraq more than 20 years ago, one felt the full impact of both the loss and hope felt by all of the survivors.

Carole Basri and Adriana Davis’s passion for this project was evident during the Q & A after the film. Basri dedicated that night’s screening to Mithal Al-Alusi and his two sons, Ayman and Jamal Al-Alusi. Mithal Al-Alusi, leader of the newly formed Democratic Party of the Iraqi Nation, supports normalizing relations with Israel and, this past January, was the first Iraqi government official to visit Israel when he attended an anti-terrorism conference in Herzliya. Al-Alusi and his political party ran a ticket of 25 people in Iraq’s recent election, despite death threats against him because of his views on peaceful co-existence with Israel. Unfortunately, just the day before the screening of the film, on February 8th, Al-Alusi’s two sons and a bodyguard were killed in an assassination attempt on Al-Alusi. Al-Alusi survived. Adding to the poignancy of the film’s content were Basri’s personal connections to it. She noted that absentee votes were cast in the first free election in Iraq in more than 50 years on the same date, January 27th, as the hanging in Liberation Square of nine Iraqi Jewish “spies” in 1969, that was highlighted in the film. Basri cast her own vote on January 30th.

Over the intervening weekend, neither fair weather nor the Super Bowl deterred crowds from turning out. With the prominence of Persian/Iranian filmmaking on the rise, it was an artistic “coup” for the Festival to present the New York premiere of the Iranian film Abjad, which had two well-attended screenings. Haideh Sahim, Executive Director of the International Society for Iranian Studies, shared some observations with the audience before the film. She noted that the name of the film’s protagonist, Emkan, a Muslim boy who falls in love with a Jewish girl on the eve of the Iranian revolution, while not a name normally found in the Persian language, nevertheless signifies “possibilities,” thus lending another layer to a lyrical and complex film.

The classic film, Pillar of Salt, was another coming-of-age-story, this time of a Jewish boy in Tunisia, based on the novel by Albert Memmi. Directed by Chaim Shiran, a founder of the Sephardic Film Festival nine years ago, the film was introduced by his daughter, Ofrit Shiran and dedicated to his late wife, Vicki. The classic, Tunisian celebratory music played in the film during Alexander’s bar mitzvah inspired joyful clapping and singing from many audience members in the auditorium.

A particular highlight of the weekend films was the screening of the documentary Derrida, and the following Q & A with New York University Professor Avital Ronell, a scholar and protégé of the late, influential philosopher. While the film touched briefly on Jacques Derrida’s Algerian Jewish childhood, it was questions from the audience, and Ronell’s insightful and articulate responses, that shed light on Derrida’s complicated relationship to his Judaism. Ronell described him as “non-identitarian,” and that Derrida’s way of “negotiating at the borders” was what defined his philosophy and his own approach to his life. The fascinating Q & A eventually had to be moved into the Great Hall so that it could continue while the auditorium was prepared for the next film.

La Terza Luna was a film that integrated the classic Shylock tale into its storyline. The plot moved between fantasy and reality, present and past, until the film’s conclusion whereby the protagonist – a reclusive novelist and the metaphorical Shylock character – finds redemption and inner peace. Filmed in the hauntingly beautiful Jewish ghetto of Venice, La Terza Luna received two screenings, both attended by its Swiss director Matteo Bellinelli. When asked why he co-wrote and directed a film with a Jewish theme, Bellinelli attributed it to his fascination with the beauty and history of the Venetian Jewish ghetto, as well as to the strong influence that his experience meeting and filming the great author Isaac Bashevis Singer had on him.

The two Israeli movies, Bonjour Monsieur Shlomi and Bar Mitzvah, both depicting the lives of Israelis of Moroccan origin, had audiences teary-eyed and smiling at their touching and uplifting endings, wherein strong family love and loyalty overcome adversity. The documentary, Desperate Hours also had some audience members in tears, but this time for the lives lost in the Holocaust and the amazing courage and fortitude shown by the Turkish government and its diplomats abroad who risked their lives to protect and save Jews, some of whom were Turkish citizens, living in Nazi-occupied countries. The film, which will soon be aired on PBS, was followed by a panel discussion with the Turkish Consul General in New York, the Honorable Omer Onhon, the film’s director Victoria Barrett, Turkish Jewry expert Niso Abuaf, and survivor Bernard Turiel. In his remarks, the Consul General emphasized Turkey’s continued dedication to its citizens of Jewish descent, citing the post-9/11 bombings of synagogues in Turkey and the response of his government, that a terrorist act against Jewish Turks is a terrorist act against all Turks.

Finally, the documentaries The Rock and the Star and Paths of Memory: The Trajectory of the Jews in Portugal were a fitting pair of short films that recounted the migration of Spanish Jews to Portugal and then to colonies in the New World as they fled the Inquisition. Some Portuguese Jews, however, could not flee and were forced to convert to Christianity. Although these “New Christians” may have eventually been absorbed into the now dominant Christian culture, their surnames reveal their Judaic origins, and their Jewish-Portuguese influences are considered to have been fundamental to the ethnic formation of the Brazilian people. Katia Mesel, Brazilian director of The Rock and the Star, that told the story of the Jews’ brief respite in Recife, Brazil before coming to New Amsterdam, soon to be New York City, was on hand from her native Recife. She recounted her grandfather’s influence – his knowledge of history and pride in their family’s Judaic heritage – as inspiration for her film.

The 9th New York International Sephardic Jewish Film Festival drew audiences both young and old, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, Jewish and non-Jewish, and enjoyed the support of cultural and business institutions that represented the many countries in which Sephardim have had their roots including Spain, Italy, and Brazil. Despite what their titles might seem to suggest, the films that opened and closed the Festival -- The Last Sephardic Jew and The Last Jews of Baghdad – were less about the end of legacies than about resiliency and the determination to honor one’s roots and origins, and to hold onto traditions and carry them forward. It was clear from the enthusiasm of the audiences, and from the pride and connection to their Sephardic heritage that the subjects expressed on film, that the influence and identity of Sephardic Jewry remains vibrant, alive, and looking toward the future.

Some films are available for purchase. Please contact the American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House at 212-294-8350 for information, and if you are interested in sponsorship or volunteer opportunities for the 10th Anniversary Sephardic Jewish Film Festival.

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