After the Defy Film Festival kicked off local film festival season in East Nashville at the end of August, local cinephiles have been on a nonstop movie marathon with the Nashville Film Festival and the International Black Film Festival both opening Sept. 29. But the movie mania isn’t over yet: The Nashville Jewish Film Festival celebrates its 22nd year of bringing educational and entertaining Jewish-themed films to local audiences this week with an opening night on Wednesday, Oct. 12. This year, NJFF is offering a hybrid slate of virtual and in-person screenings featuring hard-hitting historical dramas, a romantic comedy of errors and a moving music documentary that’s sure to be a fave with local songsmiths.
The Nashville Jewish Film Festival opens with director Luís Ismael’s historical costume drama 1618. The movie re-creates turn-of-the-17th-century Portugal and drops viewers in the middle of the Inquisition, telling the true story of a how the Jews in the city of Porto in northern Portugal were forced to convert to Christianity, becoming known as New Christians. When a new representative of the Portuguese Inquisition returns to the city, he suspects the New Christians have continued to preserve their Jewish religion and culture in secret, and when he orders new arrests, he brings the city to the verge of collapse. 1618 screens at the Belcourt on Wednesday, Oct. 12, at 7 p.m.
1618
Amanda Kinsey’s Jews of the Wild West tells the overlooked story of the Jews who helped to shape America’s western expansion. By the early 1900s, more than 100,000 Jews had made the dangerous journey across the country to put down roots in the Wild West. Men like Meyer Guggenheim and Levi Strauss found their fortunes, and Wyatt Earp, Bronco Bill and Pancho Villa all had connections with the diaspora we have to thank for Kinky Friedman. Jews of the Wild West is screening virtually from Oct. 13 at 7 p.m. until Oct. 15 at 7 p.m. via nashvillejff.net
Elena Yakovich’s Song Searcher tells the remarkable story of musician and scholar Moyshe Bergovsky, who spent the decades of the early 20th century crisscrossing Ukraine during the early days of the Soviet Union. Bergovsky recorded hundreds of performances of authentic Yiddish folk music, and preserved them from the horrors of both the Holocaust and Joseph Stalin. Local musicologists will be intrigued by Bergovsky’s discoveries, and we suspect this one will have the attention of Nashville’s musical production community at the mention of “wax cylinders.” Song Searcher screens at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 26, at the Belcourt.
The Nashville Jewish Film Festival closes with a screening of Love and Mazel Tov 7 p.m. at the Belcourt on Thursday, Nov. 3. Wolfgang Murnberger’s romantic comedy centers on a Berlin bookshop owner and a handsome doctor who meet and fall in love, but their burgeoning relationship may be upended by a few harmless little lies and a case of mistaken identity.
See the Nashville Jewish Film Festival program guide for trailers, times and tickets.
