WATERVILLE — The Maine Film Center will host a satellite of the Maine Jewish Film Festival at Railroad Square Cinema Saturday and Sunday. Satellite events will include an opening party, five film screenings, and a visit from filmmaker Monica Haim, who will present her film “Awake Zion,” according to a Maine Film Center press release.
Shannon Haines, executive director of the Maine Film Center, said, “we are thrilled to be partnering with the Maine Jewish Film Festival on this event. We have long admired their programming and are grateful for the opportunity to share it with our audience.”
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The festivities kick off at 6:30 p.m. Saturday with an opening party catered by Barrels Community Market. The party will be followed by an 8 p.m. screening of “The Jewish Cardinal,” a film about the true story of Jean-Marie Lustiger, the son of Polish-Jewish immigrants, who maintained his cultural identity as a Jew even after converting to Catholicism at a young age and later joining the priesthood.
Film screenings will continue Sunday with the documentary “An Apartment in Berlin,” which follows three young Israelis as they embark on a journey into the past by retracing the life and refurnishing the original apartment of a Jewish family from Berlin once deported by the Nazis.
Additional screenings include “My Australia” at 3 p.m. and “Epilogue” at 5:30 p.m. “My Australia” is a narrative film about 10-year-old Tadek and his brother, who are arrested for anti-Semitic gang activities in 1960s Poland only to learn that their mother is a Holocaust survivor. This film will be free for those 18 and younger.
“Epilogue,” also a narrative film, depicts an elderly Israeli couple as they bravely face the disillusionment that comes with old age in this telling portrait of a now-marginalized generation whose hopes, beliefs and ideas for the country they helped build have, over the years, revealed themselves to be mostly pipe dreams.
The festivities will culminate with a 7:30 p.m. screening of “Awake Zion,” with filmmaker Monica Haim in attendance for an introduction and a Q&A following the film. “Awake Zion” is a documentary that unites Jewish and Jamaican musicians, scholars and historians as they explore shared histories and common beliefs going back to the Old Testament, helping recognize the foolishness of prejudice and acknowledge our universal human experience.
Tickets for festival screenings cost $8 for adults, $6 for students and seniors.
For more information, visit mainefilmcenter.org or railroadsquarecinema.com.
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