Film Fest Package: Want to Go to the Movies?

ARTS&LIFE

FILM FESTIVAL

Still shot from the film Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen

Want to Go to the Movies?

The Lenore Marwil Detroit Jewish Film Festival is back in person.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Film fans who have missed the ambience of watching big-screen cinema while joined by other viewers can look forward to opportunities for that experience at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in West Bloomfield.

The Lenore Marwil Detroit Jewish Film Festival, running April 24-May 4, invites movie enthusiasts into the Berman Center for the Performing Arts with an offering of nearly 30 films — dramas, comedies, documentaries — and seven filmmaker presentations.

Home viewers can enjoy their own JCC film opportunities as part of the festival — only after the theater showings are completed. Ten films will be available virtually May 5-8 also with the enhancement of pointed discussion.

“We are so thrilled to be back in person presenting films from the United States as well as other countries that include Israel, France, Spain and the Netherlands,” said Stephen Kantrowitz, the new senior director of Cultural Arts at the JCC.

“Our Film Festival Committee, chaired by Eric Lumberg, has maintained the highest of standards in making this year’s selections and has set off the first day with three screenings that involve special programming.”

The film Fiddler’s Journey to the Big Screen, at 1 p.m., will have the mood set by a live fiddler entertaining in the lobby before and after the screening. A Tree of Life, at 4 p.m., will be accompanied by an on-screen presentation moderated by Rabbi Joseph Krakoff and featuring director Trish Adlesic and author Mark Oppenheimer, who wrote the book (Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood), on which the film is based.

Image of Victory, at 7 p.m., which is about an attack at a 1948 kibbutz, will feature a pre-recorded interview with director Avi Nesher being questioned by Detroit Shaliach Yiftah Leket.

The festival centerpiece is set for 7 p.m. Sunday, May 1, with the presen-

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FILM FESTIVAL

What Was Lost

A still shot from the film

Writer-director Bianca Stigter’s upcoming appearance at Detroit’s Jewish Film Festival serves as a reunion in some ways. Besides participating in a formal discussion of her documentary, Three Minutes — A Lengthening, she will be meeting with the Metro Detroit family so important to her research. Stigter felt welcomed years ago by relatives of Maurice Chandler, 97, identified as a youngster among the people in a web posting of a traveler’s private souvenir movie made in Nasielsk, Poland, a year before the Nazis invaded and decimated the Jewish population in that town.

After seeing the three-minute web post and thinking about the time before the Holocaust, Stigter decided to seek out more information about the townspeople shown so she could elaborate on their personal stories before the Holocaust by using the impact of professional cinema.

“It was wonderful connecting with the Chandler family,” said Stigter, whose interviews with Chandler helped identify some of those who surrounded him and formed the basis for additional research. “They couldn’t have been more hospitable and kind to me, and I couldn’t be more impressed with them. They gave me their time freely.”

The film and Stigter’s experiences in making it will be spotlighted at 7 p.m.

Sunday, May 1, at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield. Also participating will be Glenn Kurtz, who found his grandfather’s 16 mm film in the Florida home of his parents, did his own research with the Chandler family as well as through many archival explorations and wrote about those recognized in Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Straus and Giroux). WXYZ newsman Simon Shaykhet Bianca will be the moderator. Stigter “It’s so meaningful to me that the film will be shown at this festival and that the Chandler family will be present to experience the way this story connects with people,” said Kurtz, who points to positive audience reactions during earlier showings that included presentations at the Sundance Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. “Mr. Chandler’s astonishing memory has been critically important to preserving the

Three Minutes — A Lengthening shows a snapshot of life before the Holocaust in Poland.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Meet Stephen Kantrowitz

The new senior director of cultural arts at the JCC has been busy.

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

From helping to launch a theater reboot of the Lenore Marwil Detroit Jewish Film Festival to beginning a new job as senior director of Cultural Arts at the Jewish Community Center (JCC) in West Bloomfield, Stephen Kantrowitz is keeping busy.

Although Kantrowitz did not have a voice in choosing what will be offered as part of the 24th annual cinema showcase, he is mapping out logistics for the event and getting acquainted with longtime festival committee members.

“I’m very excited to be at the West Bloomfield JCC, and I have great plans for the Cultural Arts Department,” said Kantrowitz, who was a violin performer before transitioning into 25 years of producing and presenting programs to bring more than 1,000 shows to Jewish and nonsectarian venues around the country.

“I look forward to working with Metro Detroit’s Jewish community to make the existing initiatives grow and create new and exciting initiatives that will engage a wider audience at the JCC and connect them with our community.”

Kantrowitz’s entertainment interests started at age 9, when the New Jersey school he attended offered instrumental training and free instruments. He chose the violin in keeping with the direction then preferred by an older brother and sister, who moved on to other fields.

Attendance in the pre-college curriculum at the Manhattan School of Music led to appearances at celebrated venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York. He has worked with well-known Jewish musicians, such as pianists Vladimir Feltsman and Ethan Bortnick.

“I decided I wasn’t going to focus on music at Montclair State University because I wanted to explore other things as well, like writing and theater,” said Kantrowitz, who majored in English. “I continued to play the violin for a number of years while becoming co-founder and co-director of the National Jewish Theatre to produce and tour works by Jewish artists.”

That initiative continued through the organization’s transitioning to Broadway Ala Carte and his acceptance of other positions, most recently as director of cultural affairs for the city of Miramar, Florida, where he produced, programmed and administered about 300 presentations annually.

He has been at the helm of shows that have reached from the Broadway musical Show Boat to concerts featuring finalists on the TV hit America’s Got Talent.

Kantrowitz, who began working remotely for the West Bloomfield JCC in March, has turned over management responsibilities for Broadway Ala Carte to his wife, actress Jodi Chekofsky. Currently getting her attention is the tour titled The Phantoms … Unmasked! spotlighting Phantom of the Opera stars.

“I’ve done collaborations and brought programming to venues for many different Jewish organizations — Hadassah, B’nai B’rith, ORT,” said Kantrowitz, who also oversaw cultural arts at the YM-YWHA of North Jersey (JCC). “We’ve done shows beyond only those with Jewish themes. We did an original salute to the late comedian Fanny Brice (Second Hand Rose) that my wife created before taking on the role.”

Besides getting to know the Michigan Jewish community, Kantrowitz is looking forward to getting to know the state. This will be his first experience in Michigan.

“The crux of many of my programs has been to bring guest artists to communities and to find ways to connect them with students who are budding artists and budding performers,” Kantrowitz said.

“I would be very interested in exploring those types of partnerships with local colleges and schools, and inviting guest artists who are masters in the trade from all over the country. They can share their experiences and help the next generation get ready for their own careers.”

At home, Kantrowitz enjoys fusion cooking, mixing traditional Jewish recipes with recipes from other cultures.

“I’m a lifelong fan of professional wrestling,” he said. “I like the theatricality. I know it’s fake and not a sport, but it’s very entertaining to me. My father got my brother and me hooked on it.”

Stephen Kantrowitz

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FILM FESTIVAL

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history of his childhood home and Nasielsk’s Jewish community.”

Kurtz’s work on the nonfiction text ensued after Chandler’s granddaughter Marcy Rosen was directed to the three-minute film through the web browsing of friend Jeffrey Widen. She recognized her grandfather because of resemblances to relatives and got in touch with Kurtz to thank him for making the film public through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“Mine was the first in a series of amazing steps, and that was wonderful,” Rosen said. “That’s why the film is so special. It takes this tiny piece and makes it a little bit bigger. You can see a little bit more into this world.

“I think it’s so often when we are learning, studying or thinking about the Holocaust, we’re seeing it from a very particular angle. We look at everything that was lost, and the film does show us everything that was taken away.

“We can also look at the things we still have with these little glimmers into Jewish life. We can try to understand the places that we came from and contributions of people who are nameless but helped preserve us — like the woman who helped save my grandfather.”

Stigter approaches the film from the viewpoints she holds as a longtime historian and cultural critic in the Netherlands.

“I always want to know what it was like before — what was there before,” she said. “We know what happened afterwards.”

In taking on this project, Stigter also was affected because the vacation film was in color.

“We tend to see the world from before 1950 in black and white,” she said. “Here, you suddenly see it in color, and that made it very vivid for me. I want viewers to understand that the film [vividly] shows a different world and a different time as proof of what really happened and then not to forget it.”

As both an historian and filmmaker traveling to festivals, Stigter expresses concerns about advancing technology distorting film content such that movie viewers can turn skeptical about what they see or react to the distortions that actually promote propaganda.

Chandler, who divides his time between Michigan and Florida, has been impressed with Stigter’s persistence and efforts in establishing the content for the film narrated by Helena Bonham Carter, but as one of the few Nasielsk survivers, he has a stronger overall message.

“We have to think about survival every day,” Chandler said. “We have to look out for the Jewish people.”

Details

Three Minutes — A Lengthening can be seen at 7 p.m. Sunday, May 1, in the Berman Center for the Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield. $12. To buy tickets, go to theberman. org/on-sale. Masks are required.

Maurice Chandler shares his story at Hillel Day School surrounded by great-grandson Lev Eisenberg, granddaughter Marcy Rosen and daughter Evelyn Rosen.

FILM FESITVAL continued from page 53

DETAILS

To get a full list and synopsis of films, go to jlive.app/ organizations/118. To buy tickets, go to theberman. org/on-sale/. Prices range from $5 (virtual) to $12 (in person). Masks are required at the JCC.

tation of Three Minutes: A Lengthening, a documentary with Detroiter connections to Poland before the Holocaust. Famed filmmaker Bianca Stigter, based in the Netherlands, appears for the showing and discussion session that includes author Glenn Kurtz, who wrote the

Still shot from the film The Conductor

book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (see accompanying story).

Among the films filling out the festival in theater are The Levys of Monticello, about a Jewish family that preserved Thomas Jefferson’s home; Tiger Within, about the friendship shared by a Holocaust survivor and homeless teen; The Conductor, about a woman breaking the orchestral glass ceiling; and One More Story, about a skeptic’s encounter with love.

The virtual presentations include A Common Goal, about Muslim members of an Israeli soccer team, and Love and Mazel Tov, about romance amid comedic misunderstandings.