Spring Film Festival will Return with Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor

Leaping from the front pages of today’s newspapers, immigration will be this year’s theme. Through the lens of four riveting films we will analyze characters who are Jewish immigrants in twentieth-century America. After a lull of three years, our METNY award-winning series will return on April 20th, for its thirty-fourth year, in its usual format--as a festive dinner-theater.

HESTER STREET, starring Carol Kane; AVALON, starring Armin Mueller-Stahl and Elijah Wood; MISS ROSE WHITE, starring Kyra Sedgwick and Maximilian Schell; and RAGTIME, starring Mandy Patinkin, Elizabeth McGovern and Jimmy Cagney in his final film role will comprise our roster. Our backdrops will be the 1890s Lower East Side, 1940s Baltimore, mid-century Brooklyn and New Rochelle in 1910. Each session is self-contained and begins with a delightful buffet delicatessen dinner, a formal introduction to the film, a complete screening, and lively (often contentious) group discussion. Although aficionados have been attending our series for years (some actually for decades), newcomers are immediately made to feel at home.

Our guest lecturer for three of the sessions will once again be Rabbi Azriel Fellner — distinguished congregational leader, scholar-in-residence, lecturer, podcaster, and commentator on contemporary Jewish life and American culture. Elaine Katz, founding Chairman of the Festival, former Cornell National Scholar and teacher, will present one of the sessions. We will gather on consecutive Thursday spring evenings and one asymmetrical Wednesday.

Here is an opportunity to get back inside a "movie theater" with friends and fellow congregants, to have high-level discussions of cinema, and to eat that pastrami sandwich on rye that you’ve been yearning for throughout Passover. Save April 20th, April 27th, May 3rd and May 11th and watch for registration information in later mailings.

See you at the movies!