Washington Jewish Film Festival

The Washington Jewish Film Festival is an annual event that promotes the preservation of Jewish culture by showing films with Jewish themes and encouraging a dialogue about a variety of issues. The film festival, sponsored by the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center’s Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts, will present 62 features, documentaries and shorts from 20 countries, in eight venues. Each screening will be followed by a discussion with filmmakers, actors and scholars.

Dates: December 3-13, 2009

Washington Jewish Film Festival Highlights

• Films representing Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Tunisia, United Kingdom, and USA
  
  
• 2009 WJFF Visionary Award honoring German Filmmaker Michael Verhoeven.
  
  
• Mid-Atlantic Premiere of Black and White at the Embassy of Ethiopia, followed by special Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
  
  
• Award-winning doc Heart of Stone, followed by discussion with Beth Toni Kruvant, Director and E. Ethelbert Miller, Author/Director, African American Resource Center, Howard University.
  
  
• East Coast Premiere of Jump, starring Patrick Swayze, with special guest Lilly Berger, producer.
  
  
• DC Premiere of Room and A Half, about the life of Joseph Brodsky, followed by discussion with Alla Verlotsky, Film Distributor and Leon Wieseltier, Literary Editor, The New Republic.
  
  
• North American Premiere of Marcel Reich-Ranicki – The Author of Himself, followed by panel discussion with Dror Zahavi, Director; Katharina Trebitsch, Producer; Dr. Barbara Buhl, Head of Fiction, TV Movie and Motion Pictures, Westdeutscher Rundfunk Television; Moderated by Marc Pachter, Cultural Historian and former Director of the National Portrait Gallery.
  
  
• Newly restored prints of The Jester (Poland, 1937) and The Earth Cries Out(Italy, 1949).

Festival Venues

• The Avalon, 5612 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC
  
  
• Aaron & Cecile Goldman Theater, 1529 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC
  
  
• AFI Silver Theater, 8633 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, MD
  
  
• Goethe-Institut Washington, 812 Seventh Street, Washington, DC
  
  
• Embassy of France, 4101 Reservoir Rd NW, Washington, DC
  
  
• Embassy of Switzerland, 2900 Cathedral Avenue NW. Washington, DC
  
  
• Embassy of Ethiopia, 3506 International Drive NW. Washington, DC
  
  
• Harold and Sylvia Greenberg Theatre, American University, 4200 Wisconsin Avenue NW – at Van Ness Street, Washington, DC

Tickets

Opening Night: $25 (+ Anniversary party); Closing Night: $25 (+ Hanukkah party)
Evenings & Weekends: $10
Weekday Matinee Screenings & Daytime Docs (before 6 p.m.): $6 except A Matter of Size on Friday, Dec 4
$1 off discount for seniors & students (except opening & closing)
2 free screenings at JCC.

Official Website

www.wjff.org