Movie festival spans Vegas Valley, and Jewish sects

COURTESY OF DAVID LINCOLN

The documentary “Orthodox Stance,” part of the Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival, turns the lens on boxer Dmitriy Salita, left. Parts of the movie were filmed here.

By Joe Brown (contact)

Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009 | 2 a.m.

After wandering in the desert for the past year or so, the Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival has finally found a home.

At this time last year, just days before the festival began, managing director Joshua Abbey found himself scrambling for a venue — and a movie screen. After six years in residence at the Suncoast, a change in corporate ownership forced Abbey to hunt for a new venue. The festival found a home at the Summerlin Library, but at the last minute Abbey had to rent a projection screen from California.

Happily there has been no such mishegoss for this year’s festival, which begins Saturday with a screening of “Making Trouble,” a documentary about legendary Jewish female entertainers from Fanny Brice and Sophie Tucker to Gilda Radner and Joan Rivers. The film will be shown in the festival’s new permanent home at the recently opened Adelson School Performing Arts Center, which features a state-of-the-art auditorium with 375 stadium-style seats.

Each of the 13 films screened in the festival is underwritten by a Las Vegas area synagogue, a presentation arrangement that is unique in the small world of Jewish film festivals, Abbey says. “It’s been devised because we live in Las Vegas, and trying to promote arts and culture here, you have to be very creative.”

Abbey spends much of the year visiting the major Jewish film festivals, such as Toronto’s and San Francisco’s, and he cherry-picks the best of the best films. Each congregation is then offered about four films to choose from. They pay a participation fee to the festival and get all of the box office proceeds in return. “So they can double their fee if they market well,” Abbey says.

This year’s festival has more films than ever, and all but one are area premieres. (They may all be premieres, in fact: It’s unlikely that Louis Malle’s 1987 “Au Revoir Les Enfants” was screened commercially in Las Vegas.)

The increase, Abbey says, is because more Vegas-area synagogues — including, for the first time, two orthodox synagogues — wanted to participate. “Now every domination is represented, so it’s a big deal. It makes the festival more inclusive and more representational of the spectrum of the community.”

For instance, one of this year’s festival highlights, “Orthodox Stance,” is being presented by Chabad of Southern Nevada. The 2008 film is about Dmitriy Salita, a professional boxer who is also a rigorously observant Jew. Part of the film was shot in Vegas: Salita fought some of his early bouts here, and controversial boxing promoter Bob Arum was his first champion. Chabad Rabbi Shea Harlig makes a cameo, and will moderate a post-screening discussion.

Salita and Arum are scheduled to attend “Orthodox Stance” screening and that’s about the extent of the hype quotient of the Jewish Film Festival, which unlike many film fests focuses on the films rather than celebrities, parties and goody bags. “I don’t have the budget, unfortunately, to bring in other directors or special guests,” says Abbey, who is pretty much a one-man show, noting that each screening will offer a discussion moderated by the rabbi of the presenting synagogue.

Two additional venues extend the festival through the month. “Because this town also is so polarized in terms of where people live, I wanted to make sure the congregations from Green Valley and Henderson didn’t have to schlep all the way to Summerlin,” says Abbey, who added two screenings at the Cinemark Theaters at South Point. And the festival closes on Feb. 1 with a screening at the Historic Fifth Street School, which has a gorgeous restored auditorium and a high-end projection system, and is near Congregation Shaarei Tefilla, an Orthodox temple across from Circle Park.

So, why a Jewish film festival?

It’s a very successful means of strengthening Jewish community and sharing Jewish culture and history with the larger community, Abbey says. “Especially in times of crisis, like with the situation in Gaza, it’s very important to show that the Jewish community is unified and interested in sharing its values and experience.”

And though it’s called the Jewish Film Festival, Abbey notes that these are very strong independent art films that would appeal to anyone who loves great film.

Abbey says he tried to get the buzzed-about Israeli animated documentary “Waltz With Bashir,” which won the Golden Globe Award for best foreign language film on Sunday, but early word of mouth put it out of reach of most film festivals.

“Hopefully it’s not going to open the weekend of our festival,” Abbey says, laughing. “Otherwise, I’m going to have to go over there and make a pitch before each screening.”

Once more, Abbey’s in luck: “Waltz With Bashir” is scheduled to open Feb. 13 in Las Vegas.