Cinema On Sundays
Film/Dialogue Series, October 2009-March 2010,
LeFrak Concert Hall
Ticket Information:
All film screenings take place in the LeFrak Concert Hall and begin at 2pm. The screenings are open seating; there will be no reserved seats.Doors open at 1:15pm.
Admission: $5 per screening; $10 subscription discount for series of three films.
Please visit or call the Kupferberg Box Office for tickets, 718-793-8080, during its regular hours. Tickets are on sale in the LeFrak foyer prior to each screening, if available. Free parking in Lot 15 on Reeves Avenue (behind the LeFrak building) and easy elevator access to the Concert Hall
For more information on this series, please call:
Center for Jewish Studies (718) 997-5730

The Year My Parents
Went on Vacation (2006)
October 25
Sunday, 2 pm
leFrak Concert Hall

Set in Brazil in the turbulent year of 1970, this poignant and humorous
coming-of-age story thrusts twelveyear- old Mauro (Michel Joelsas) into
a maelstrom of political and personal upheaval. When his left-wing militant
parents are forced to go underground, Mauro is left in the care of his Jewish
grandfather’s neighbor in Sao Paulo. The result is an intimate portrait of
Brazilian Jewish life and one youngster’s struggle with his identity.

Discussant -Dr. Eric a Goldman Dr. Eric a Goldman is adjunct associate professor of Cinema at Yeshiva University, president of Ergo Media, and film reviewer for New Jersey’s The Jewish Standard.

Waltz with Bashir
November 22
Sunday, 2 pm
leFrak Concert Hall



This Israeli film by Ari Folman was a 2009 Academy Award nominee
for the Best Foreign Language Film. It was the Golden Globe Winner as
the Best Foreign Language Film and the National Society of Film Critics
Best Picture of the Year. Waltz with Bashir was inspired by the 1982 war
in Lebanon and Israel’s “Operation Peace for Galilee.” It chronicles one
man’s descent into his half-forgotten past. The filmmaker Ari Folman, an
Israeli veteran of the First Lebanon War, encounters an old friend suffering
from nightmares of the conflict. Ari starts to ponder why his own
memories of the conflict are so disjointed. In an effort to penetrate his
“fog of war” and uncover “the truth,” he reconnects with old friends to
confront the horrors of war. While the movie has been hailed as innovative
in the way it fuses animation and documentary, it has critics who argue
that Folman has conflated and confused the real and the surreal, with
Israel cast as more a perpetrator than a victim.

Discussant: Professor Mark Rosenblum professor Mark Rosenblum is director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College as well as its newly funded initiative for “Ethnic and racial understanding.” His latest academic publications relevant to the Middle East and the film include The Jewish Condition, Challenges and Response—1938–2008 (co-editor, Transaction publishers, 2008) and “after rabin: The Malaise of the israeli Zionist left” in Contemporary Israel: Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy and Security Challenges (Westview press, 2008). His project “america and the Middle East: a Clash of Civilizations or Meeting of Minds?” has been awarded a number of grants and featured in the New York Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education as well as on CBS-TV national news, national public radio, and a host of electronic and

Samson (Poland, 1961)
March 7, 2010
Sunday, 2 pm
leFrak Concert Hall



Based on a novel by Jewish writer Kazimierz Brandys, it is yet another
instance of Andrzej Wajda’s collaboration with Jewish intellectuals
and artists. It tells the story of a Jew subjected to anti-Semitism at the
university who accidentally kills a non-Jewish Polish citizen and is
imprisoned, then put into the ghetto after the Nazis invade. From there he
is abandoned by his Polish friends, finds a Jewess in hiding, but gradually
is convinced of the need to resist by his inspiring contact with the communists

Discussant: Dr. Stuart liebman Dr. Stuart liebman is professor of Media Studies at Queens College. He was the Founding Coordinator of the Film Studies program at the CUNY graduate Center and served there from 1993 to 2000. a specialist in early European and post-war german cinema, he has written extensively on early French filmmakers such as renoir, Dulac, and Epstein.