Film Categories: Jewish

  • Heimat

    The short film “Heimat” is one story from ten stories in “Three Borders.” It is the story of the filmmaker’s father about migration and homeland. “Three Borders” is a 55-minute found-footage film reminiscent of Chris Marker’s “La Jetée” (1962). It consists of family photos of the artist and of other anonymous found (family) photos. In the style of Magic Realism, the video narrates anecdotes from the families of Alisa Berger’s Jewish father and her North Korean mother. They address the overcoming or the construction of inner and outer borders which span three generations.

  • THE GENDER LADY: THE FABULOUS DR. MAY COHEN

    Roe v Wade and women’s abortion rights are under concerted attack in a number of American states. In Canada abortion has been legal for more than 30 years, but access to abortion services varies considerably across the country and conservative MPs and MLAs are increasingly participating in anti-choice strategy gatherings. Into this retrogressive context arrives a timely documentary: the compelling story of a courageous, pro-choice feminist campaigning Canadian family physician, “The Gender Lady – The Fabulous Dr May Cohen”. Dr. May Cohen has advocated for women’s health, women’s rights, abortion rights, LGBT rights and human sexuality for more than fifty…

  • The Gender Lady: The Fabulous Dr. May Cohen Short

    This is a short preview of the full documentary The Gender Lady: The Fabulous Dr. May Cohen. Dr. May Cohen is a brilliant Canadian physician and women’s rights trailblazer. For over 60 years, she has advocated powerfully in Canada and internationally for women’s reproductive rights, women’s health and women physicians’ advancement — and in the end, for us all. May is widely recognized for her many contributions to women’s health, sexuality, abortion choice and human rights. Numerous medical awards bear her name. The Gender Lady explores Dr. Cohen’s life and career and her extraordinary gender equity and human sexuality contributions.…

  • Akin

    “Akin” marks the first creative collaboration between Toronto-based artist Chase Joynt (Everyday to Stay) and NYC-based filmmaker Brooke Sebold (Red Without Blue). With haunting suburban visuals backed by the rich sounds of Toronto based-band Ohbijou, “Akin” powerfully engages in a relationship between an Orthodox Jewish mother and her transgender son as they navigate silent secrets of a shared past. Hauntingly beautiful. Rarely have I watched a film that is such a perfect union of parsimony and punch. It left me breathless. – Michelle Stone Perfectly timed and sequenced, “Akin” is so resolutely personal in it’s detailing. Joynt points to a…

  • Xam

    Xam is a sci-fi exploration on the future of surveillance and body hacking. While in the London subway, an unsuspecting man opens a strange text, rendering him unconscious and dragging him through a wormhole. He awakes, lost, on the train tracks in Kiev, Ukraine, unable to communicate with friends or family. With the help of the hacker community in Kiev, and then Paris, the man harnesses alternative virtual transmissions in an attempt to find his way home. Xam is told through an intimate, first-person frame and video collage to emphasize the increasing integration of human and technology. The story is…

  • Which Way Is East

    “A frog that sits at the bottom of a well thinks that the whole sky is only as big as the lid of a pot.” When two American sisters travel north from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi, conversations with Vietnamese strangers and friends reveal to them the flip side of a shared history. Lynne and Dana Sachs’ travel diary of their trip to Vietnam is a collection of tourism, city life, culture clash, and historic inquiry that’s put together with the warmth of a quilt. “Which Way Is East” starts as a road trip and flowers into a political…

  • A Biography of Lilith

    In a lively mix of off-beat narrative, collage and memoir, A Biography of Lilith updates the creation myth by telling the story of the first woman and for some, the first feminist. Lilith’s betrayal by Adam in Eden and subsequent vow of revenge is recast as a modern tale with present-day Lilith (Cherie Wallace) musing on a life that has included giving up a baby for adoption and work as a bar dancer. Interweaving mystical texts from Jewish folklore with interviews, music and poetry, Sachs reclaims this cabalistic parable to frame her own role as a mother. Partially supported by…

  • Gay As In Happy: A Queer Anti-Tragedy

    An award-winning experimental autoethnographic documentary about queer joy, resistance, and resilience in the face of abuse, trauma, and transphobia.

  • Still Got It?!

    After 3 years out of the modeling industry and back in school, Adam wonders: “Have I still got it?” Ignoring the not-so-subtle warnings from his friends, our endearingly oblivious protagonist confidently decides to give modelling another shot and sets up a meeting with an agency. What follows is a series of failures, wake-up calls, and a surprising new path of self-discovery.

  • A MAGICAL SUBSTANCE FLOWS INTO ME

    A magical substance flows into me opens with a crackly voice recording. The voice is that of Dr. Robert Lachmann, an enigmatic Jewish-German ethnomusicologist who emigrated to 1930s Palestine. While attempting to establish an archive and department of Oriental Music at the Hebrew University, Lachmann created a radio program for the Palestine Broadcasting Service called “Oriental Music”, where he would invite members of local communities to perform their vernacular music. Over the course of the film, Jumana Manna—herself a Palestinian from Jerusalem—follows in Lachmann’s footsteps and visits Kurdish, Moroccan and Yemenite Jews, Samaritans, members of urban and rural Palestinian communities,…