Where is Home? A Film and Discussion Series October 18, 2007

Where Is Home? A Screening and Discussion Series

The search for a place to call home is a longstanding quest in Jewish life. Thanks to the modern practices of tourism and filmmaking, these journeys are conceived and documented in unprecedented ways. For many, the search for home is a journey of self-discovery, in which travel occurs not only across space but also through time and is as much an internal search as it is an encounter with places and people. Where Is Home? examines how filmmakers document these journeys-whether their own or others, imaginary or actual-as means of interrogating Jewish notions of time and space, whether personal or national, past or present.

On My Way to Father's Land 6:30 October 18
1995, 98 minutes
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Aner Preminger
The filmmaker brings his father back to his native Vienna as part of a quest to understand his history as an Austrian, a Jew, a communist, and a Zionist.
Discussant: Matti Bunzl, Associate Professor of Anthropology at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Roots 6:30 October 25
2004, 107 minutes
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Pavel Loungin
This farcical comedy follows the exploits of a Jewish con-artist who turns a small town in provincial Ukraine into a fake site of heritage tourism for unsuspecting Americans.
Discussant: Olga Gershenson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Return to Oulad Moumen 6:30 November 1
1994, 50 minutes
French with English subtitles
Directed by Izza Genini
Filmmaker Genini uses a family reunion to retrace the history of her large and widely scattered family back to its beginnings in a small village in Morocco.
Discussant: Joelle Bahloul, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies and of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington.

Voyages 6:30 November 8
1999, 111 minutes French, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, with English subtitles
Directed by Emmanuel Finkiel
Three distinct but related sequences, set in France, Poland, and Israel, trace a moving interplay of stories of communion, memory, and language among Holocaust survivors.
Discussant: J. Hoberman, Senior Film Critic of the Village Voice.
All films will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers and scholars
$10/$5 students and seniors
For all reservations and inquiries, please call the Center box office at: 917-606-8200 or visit www.ticketweb.com and enter the search keyword "Center for Jewish History."

Official Website: http://www.cjh.org