This summer the White Mountain Jewish Film Festival returns to Bethlehem’s historic Colonial Theatre, sponsored by the Bethlehem Hebrew Congregation and cosponsored by the JFNH and Colonial Theatre. Evenings include complimentary social hour refreshments for ticket holders held on the theater’s outside patio. Our guest speakers introduce the film and stay for the audience Q & A when the lights go up!
Bethlehem has been known to have the purest pollen free air in the nation and the Colonial Theatre, one of the oldest continuously operating movie theatres in the country has just installed a “state of the art” Heating, Ventilating, Air Conditioning and Air Purifying System which will be running through all of our film events.
Movie Times - All Films:
Box Office Opens: 5:30 PM | Patio Opens: 6:00 PM | Guest Speaker: 6:30 PM | Film: 7:00PM
Tickets are sold at the door or Purchase online here.
General Admission: $10.00 | BHC and JFNH Members: $9.00 | Season Pass (5 Films): $40.00
Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem
July 7, 2022
Viviane Amsalem has been applying for divorce for three years. But her husband Elisha will not agree. Viviane's determination to fight for her freedom, and the ambiguous role of the judges shape a procedure in which tragedy vies with absurdity, and everything is brought out for judgment, apart from the initial request “Gripping cinema from start to finish.”Manohla Douglas NT Times
Running time: 115 minutes
Countries: Israel, Germany, France
Languages: Hebrew, Moroccan-Arabic, French
Starring: Ronit Elkabetz, Menashe Noy, Sasson Gabai, Simon Abkarian
Guest Speaker: Norbert Goldfield
Norbert Goldfield MD
is founder and Executive Director of Healing Across the Divides (www.healingdivides.org; HATD) and of a bipartisan venture “Ask Nurses and Doctors” or AND (www.asknursesdoctors.com). His latest book is “Peace Building through Women’s Health: Psychoanalytic, Sociopsychological, and Community Perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”. He is a practicing internist.
Borrowed Identity
July 21, 2022
Directed by one of Israel's most celebrated directors (Eran Riklis), A Borrowed Identity delves into the life of a smart Arab youth and two Israeli teens he befriends at an elite boarding school in Jerusalem. With war waging in the background, the three navigate the landscape as teenagers do, with only a partial nod to reality and attention to social norms.
The film, a semi-autobiographical screenplay by Arab-Israeli journalist Sayed Kashua, offers a powerful perspective on coexistence in the Middle East.“… a heart-tugging drama about Jewish and Palestinian Israelis and cultures that can both collide and embrace.”Linda Cook Quad City Times
Starring: Tawfeek Barhom
Running time: 105 minutes
Country: Israel
Languages: Arabic Hebrew
Guest Speaker: Professor Sue Lanser
Guest Speaker: Susan S. Lanser
Professor Emerita of English, Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Comparative Literature Brandeis University
Susan S. Lanser & Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan
Israeli–Palestinian narratives and the politics of form: reading Side by Side
As the first foray into a larger study of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian narratives through a narratological lens, this essay focuses on a single volume, Side by Side: Parallel Histories of Israel-Palestine (2012). With recourse to classical concepts in narrative theory, the authors compare the formal practices deployed in each history, giving particular attention to questions of narrative voice, temporality – i.e. order, duration and frequency – and addressing questions of narrative agency and character formation in a collective history. They also ask how these accounts imagine possible worlds, giving rise to bifurcations between what happened and what could have happened. Their aim is to show not only how narratology can be used in a politically charged context, but also how that context can unveil gaps and limitations in narratology. They also demonstrate that the Israeli and Palestinian narratives, read through the lens of their form, diverge and converge in ways that are less predictable than the oppositions of content might suggest.
The Tiger Within
August 4, 2022
A story featuring an unlikely friendship between a homeless teen and a Holocaust survivor, sparking larger questions of fear, forgiveness, healing and world peace, starring multiple Emmy Award-winning actor, Ed Asner.
A redemptive story about the power of forgiveness and unconditional love to transform lives and overcome ignorance, fear and hate… Gerri Miller Jewish Journal
Guest Speaker: Larry Hott
Larry Hott, Florentine Films/Hott Productions
has produced over twenty-five major documentaries for PBS and national broadcast. His awards include an Emmy, two Academy Award nominations ,a George Foster Peabody Award, the DuPont-Columbia Journalism Award, the ErikBarnouw Award.
Hott was the Fulbright Fellowin Film and Television in the United Kingdomin 1994 and Fulbright Specialist in Vietnamin 2015.
His recent films include “The War of 1812,” “Frederick Law Olmsted: Designing America,” “Rising Voices: The Revitalization of the Lakota Language,” and “The Warrior Tradition.”
He is now producing and directing “The Niagara Movement: A Mighty Current of Protest” for national PBS broadcast next year.
Closer To The Moon
August 18, 2021
A Romanian police officer teams up with a small crew of old friends from the World War II Jewish Resistance to pull off a heist by convincing everyone at the scene of the crime that they are only filming a movie.
Running time: 112 minutes
Countries: Romania, United States
Language: English
Guest Speaker: Rick Winston
Rick Winston was the co-owner of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater for 29 years, and was Programming Director for the Green Mountain Film Festival for 14 years. He has taught film history at Burlington College, Community College of Vermont, Goddard College, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and has made presentations throughout Vermont on film history.
My German Friend
September 1, 2022
The momentous sweep of post-war Argentinian history distilled into a tender love story.
It’s the late 1950s, and in an affluent and quietly respectable part of Buenos Aires, young Sulamit Löwenstein strikes up a friendship with her next-door neighbor Friedrich over the whereabouts of her family dog.
She’s the daughter of German-Jewish immigrants to Argentina, he’s the son of a senior SS officer. Both characters will struggle to escape their political inheritance over the next three decades and manage their growing passion and love.“
“…successfully illustrates the Jewish concept of “tikkunolam”, repairing the world through personal, political, and social action. Patricia Nuriel. Wofford College
Drama: 1 H 43 M
Director: Jeanine Meerapfel
Starring: Max Riemelt, Celeste Cid
Subtitles: English
Guest Speaker: Marjorie Agosin
Marjorie Agosin: Our Speaker: Award-winning Chilean author, poet, and professor.
Marjorie Agosín was raised in Chile, the daughter of Jewish parents who fled Europe. The family moved to the United states to escape the military coup that overthrew Salvador Allende’s Socialist government.
In both her scholarship and her creative work, Professor Agosin focuses on social justice, feminism, and remembrance and has received numerous honors and awards for her writing and work as a human rights activist, including a Jeanette Rankin Award in Human Rights and a United Nations Leadership Award for Human Rights. The Chilean government honored her with a Gabriela Mistral Medal for Lifetime Achievement. Agosín is the Luella LaMer Slaner Professor in Latin American studies and a professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Wellesley College.
As an author, she writes in many forms. Among her many books of poetry are AT THE THRESHOLD OF MEMORY (White Pine, 2003), AN ABSENCE OF SHADOWS (White Pine, 1998), and STARRY NIGHT (White Pine, 1996) , winner of the Letras de Oro Prize for poetry from the Spanish Ministry of Culture. Her most recent books of prose are WRITING TOWARDS HOPE: THE LITERATURE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN LATIN AMERICA (Yale, 2006), SECRETS IN THE SAND: THE YOUNG WOMEN OF CIUDAD JUAREZ (White Pine,2006) and CARTOGRAPHIES: MEDITATIONS ON TRAVEL (Georgia, 2004), introduce by Isabel Allende.
Marjorie is an activist and spokesperson for women's rights in Third World countries. Her honors include a National Endowment for the Arts, the Letras de Oro Prize for Poetry, and the Latino Literature Prize. Massachusetts.
Other Film Series
We have saved our past film series logs for your knowledge base. If you need assistance finding a past film or have suggestions for future seasons, please email Artistic Director Dorothy Goldstone: dorothygoldstone@gmail.com