Huntington's Cinema Arts Centre explores Jewish life in new film festival
"The City Without Jews" is a 1924 Austrian Expressionist film by Hans Karl Breslauer, based on the novel of the same title by Hugo Bettauer. It wil be featured at the Long Island Jewish Film Festival. Credit: H. K. Breslauer-Film
It was a movie that needed to be shown: “The City Without Jews,” a 1924 silent film based on Hugo Bettauer's novel about life in Austria after Jews are banned from the country. As chilling as its premise was its backstory: After National Socialists sabotaged public screenings, Bettauer was assassinated by a Nazi party member. Following a final showing at an Amsterdam theater in 1933 – held to protest Hitler’s rise to power – the film vanished until an incomplete copy appeared in the Netherlands in 1991. An intact copy, found in a Paris flea market in 2015, was digitally restored through a crowdfunding effort.
Dylan Skolnick, co-director of Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre, says he felt the film worthy of something more than just an isolated screening. “At a moment when antisemitism is very much on the rise,” he said, “here’s a film from almost 100 years ago, and the issues it’s talking about are still very much present.”
During staff meetings at the Cinema earlier this year, the idea of building a festival around that silent film began to take shape. The result is the Cinema’s first inaugural Long Island Jewish Film Festival, comprising six titles — most of them contemporary — about Jewish life and culture. Scheduled for the weekend of April 14 to 16, the festival will feature in-person guests at some screenings and live musical accompaniment for “The City Without Jews.”
Skolnick, whose Jewish parents, Vic Skolnick and Charlotte Sky, founded the Cinema in 1973 (Sky is co-director with her son), is aware that the festival arrives at a fraught moment for his community. The Anti-Defamation League reported 3,697 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. for 2022 – the highest yearly total since the organization began keeping records in 1979. Long Island, too, has seen its share of incidents over the past year, including a rash of antisemitic flyers left at homes and on car windshields.
Here’s the full schedule for the Long Island Jewish Film Festival, which runs April 14-16 at the Cinema Arts Centre, 423 Park Ave., Huntington. Tickets are $15-$17; an all-film pass is $60. For tickets and more information call 631-423-7610 or go to cinemaartscentre.org.
I LIKE IT HERE (Apr. 14 at 7 p.m.) Critically acclaimed filmmaker Ralph Arlyck will attend this screening of his first-person documentary. It began as a portrait of his neighbor, a reclusive Hungarian immigrant, but grew into a meditation on aging, survival and memory.
MY NEIGHBOR ADOLF (Apr. 15 at 1 p.m.) In this comedy-drama set in early 1960s Colombia, a grouchy Holocaust survivor (David Hayman) develops an unlikely theory about his new German neighbor (Udo Kier).
AMERICA (Apr. 15 at 3:30 p.m.) An Israeli man returns to his home country and reconnects with a childhood friend. Written and directed by Ofir Raul Graizer (“The Cakemaker”).
FAREWELL, MR. HAFFMANN (Apr. 15 at 7 p.m.) In Nazi-occupied Paris, a Jewish jewelry shop owner (Daniel Auteuil) must turn his business over to an employee (Gilles Lellouche).
THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS (Apr. 16 at 2 p.m.) An Austrian city changes dramatically after the passage of a law banning Jews. Featuring live music by Klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent-film pianist Donald Sosin.
SHTTL (Apr. 16 at 5 p.m.) A Jewish village in Soviet Ukraine prepares for a Nazi invasion in this drama starring Moshe Lobel, who played Tevye in an acclaimed Yiddish production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in New York. Lobel will attend the screening. — RAFER GUZMAN
Still, the festival wasn’t launched solely as a response to recent headlines, according to Skolnick. “It’s certainly part of the larger picture, and it’s very important,” he said, adding: “It’s about more than that. This is what we do, we explore all kinds of culture. And Jewish culture has been essential to our mission for 50 years now.”
For programming, Skolnick turned to an old friend, the film programmer and curator David Schwartz. The two grew up on the same street – Prospect Road in Centerport — and their lives keep intersecting thanks to a shared love of movies. Schwartz worked as a teenage volunteer at the Cinema Arts Centre (back when it was called the New Community Cinema) and recently returned to host its Preview Club, a subscription series that offers advance screenings of new movies. (Schwartz’s resume also includes the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens and Netflix’s Paris Theater in Manhattan.)
2022 film "I like it Here" directed by Ralph Arlyck, wil be featured at the Long Island Jewish Film Festival. Pictured: Elizabeth and son. Credit: Argot Pictures
“I have such a deep connection to this theater,” Schwartz said of the Cinema. “When I grew up it was just the neighborhood theater, and now it’s a role model. Every time someone opens up a theater around the country, they want it to be like the Cinema Arts Centre. It’s really become the perfect example of an independent theater that’s serving a community.”
To find films, Schwartz scanned other Jewish film festivals – there are dozens in the U.S. alone — and found himself gravitating toward titles from Menemsha Films, an art-house distributor known for highlighting Jewish cinema. Schwartz chose three Menemsha titles: “Farewell, Mr. Haffman,” a drama set in Nazi-occupied Paris; “America,” which follows a Chicago man’s return to Israel; and “Shttl,” about a Yiddish-speaking village in Soviet Ukraine.
For Long Islanders, the Cinema’s new festival could be their best bet to see the films on a big screen, according to Schwartz. “This is a very difficult time we’re in for film exhibition in general,” he said. “The fact that there’s so many Jewish film festivals, that guarantees that there’ll be a life for these films.”
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