FIND MOVIES
Movie List
Loading ...
or
Find Theaters and Movie Times
or
Search Movies
listenlive2a

Alternative media at the BJFF

By PETER KEOUGH  |  October 31, 2012

After six decades of futility, maybe it's time for a new approach to achieving peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Some of the films in this year's Boston Jewish Film Festival offer solutions that sound a little crazy, except when you consider the alternatives.

For example, if negotiations between the living don't work, how about conferring with the dead? In Marco Carmel's flaky but irresistible My Lovely Sister (2011; screens November 15 @ 7 pm, West Newton Cinema) Rahma has disowned her younger sibling, Mary, after she marries an Arab. Or is it because she suspects that her husband Robert has the hots for Mary and maybe had an affair with her? Either way, Rahma tells her sister she's "dead" to her, which becomes complicated when Mary drops dead for real and her ghost haunts her — and flirts with Robert. Carmel takes this variation on The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, addles it with folklore and schmaltz, and ends up with a spectral vindication of love and forgiveness.

If the supernatural doesn't do the trick, how about another medium: the Internet? The title vessel in Thierry Binisti's poignant and complex A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (2010; screens November 10 @ 7 pm, Coolidge Corner) contains a letter from Tal, a teenage Israeli girl, to any Palestinian who finds it. Naïm, a teenager in Gaza City, retrieves the note, and at first he responds with sarcasm. But their exchange deepens, just in time for the Israeli attack on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, to threaten their fragile connection with suspicion and hostility. Binisti's premise may sound naïve at first, but it sure beats hatred, fear, death, and destruction.

THE 24TH BOSTON JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL | November 7-19 at Coolidge Corner + Museum of Fine Arts + Somerville + West Newton + Arlington Capitol + Suburbs

  Topics: Features , Boston Jewish Film Festival
| More


Most Popular
ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
Share this entry with Delicious
  •   REVIEW: INDELIBLE LALITA  |  January 08, 2013
    Over time, the vicissitudes of the human body can wreak havoc with one's sense of identity.
  •   OSCAR PREDICTIONS: DJANGO AND ZERO FADE AS LINCOLN LANDSLIDE LOOMS  |  January 02, 2013
    Had you asked a couple of weeks ago, I would have given Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained and Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty good odds at raining on Steven Spielberg's Lincoln parade. But reality has since intruded.
  •   ENHANCED INTERROGATION: CIA RESEARCH IN ZERO DARK THIRTY  |  January 07, 2013
    NEW YORK — After surviving right-wing Senate investigations into possible access to classified CIA material while it was in production, Zero Dark Thirty , now in the theaters, faces charges from left-wing critics of being in favor of torture, not to mention accusations of inaccuracy from Democratic senators Barbara Feinstein and Carl Levin and Republican senator John McCain.
  •   REVIEW: ZERO DARK THIRTY  |  January 09, 2013
    Densely detailed, superbly shot and acted, illuminating and thrilling, it is the best film of 2012.
  •   REVIEW: JACK REACHER  |  December 27, 2012
    "Who is Jack Reacher?"

 See all articles by: PETER KEOUGH