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The Maine Jewish Film Festival’s 10th-anniversary brochure is a glossy foldout — printed in grays and crisp orange and bursting with photos of this season’s filmmakers — suggesting a newer, bigger, better festival to come; one seemingly a frog’s leap away from its small, community-driven past.
And in some ways — like adding the Nickelodeon Theater for more seating, bigger opening and closing events, and the creation of an satellite viewing program for distant Maine towns — MJFF is ripping the seams of its old, now too small, festival finery. Benjamin Bertram, a professor of English at USM and president of MJFF, isn’t worried that the changes will affect the heart of the festival. “We’re at an important juncture,” Bertram says. “We’ve got some of the best films we’ve ever had, more [financial] support, bigger audiences . . . and we’re growing to accommodate that.” As the only independent Jewish film festival in a city of Portland’s size, a swell in attendance and content might be just the thing to solidify it as a force in the ever-expanding universe of American film festivals. Bertram believes this year “might be one of the best” because of such growth — much of which is the result of a substantial grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
MJFF’s second decade will be ushered in March 17-25 with its ethos intact and both eyes trained: one on the past, one on the future. Bertram says that while the festival still aims to examine the complex historical, cultural, and emotional aspects of the Jewish experience, this year’s committee has structured the 10th-anniversary celebration to encourage folks of varying beliefs to “meet at the same place to engage in the films, share ideas, concerns and begin the process of building an expanded local community based upon empathy and acceptance” — two qualities our current world is nearly bankrupt in.
With films that reflect MJFF’s ideology, the changed festival has managed to straddle the old and the new while finding plenty of room for everybody, somewhere in between.
51 Birch Street, By Doug Block | 2006 | March 22, 7:45 pm | The Movies on Exchange, Portland | 88 minutes
We all think we know our parents. Yet as we age, in small increments we realize we’ve never truly understood them. Doug Block takes this life-paradigm to the highest level in an intimate documentary detailing the discovery of his parents’ separate, secret existence.
While reading through his mother’s diary after her sudden death, Block unearths both her deepest intimations and the uncomfortable truth of his parents’ failed relationship and hidden lifestyles. Rough film stock full of painful, private, and heartening interviews juxtaposed against shots of assumed familial bliss keep us panting for the next scene, while Block’s narration provides a needed emotional outlet from his shocking discoveries. With a gracious nod to the sometimes-sad truth of love and family, this film reminds us that in an unraveling world, it is this familial glue, whatever its strength, that holds us together.
The First Time I Was 20, By Lorraine Levy | 2004 | March 24, 7:30 & 9:30 pm | The Movies on Exchange, Portland | 97 minutes | French with English subtitles
A teenager in late-’60s France, Levy’s heroine, Hannah, is branded with the painful traits of a high school “outcast.” Yet instead of letting others determine her value, she fights back with empathy for her detractors and an immutable sense of self — revealing that peace can arise from understanding, and accepting, difference.
