Over the course of two weeks, the 8th Annual Farthest North Jewish Film Festival will show 12 films. There is a wide variety, from drama to comedy to documentary.
Every October, a committee of about six people begins looking for Jewish films to show. The main organizers, Elyse Guttenberg, Luke Hopkins and Jerry Lipka, have been working for months, previewing films and negotiating for screening rights for the festival.
These films can be about contemporary conflicts, Yiddish film and theater, historic films, or Holocaust films. The organizers search internet databases, read summaries of films, and end up previewing about 20 to 25 films before selecting the ones to show at the festival. Once they choose the films, they have to pay for them and the screening rights. That costs about $3,000. The admission, which is by suggested donation, offsets the high cost of the film festival. There are also many donors who contribute to make the film festival possible.
After the festival, the films are donated to the UAF Rasmuson Library. The library currently has about 40 films in their collection.
Michael Gesser, owner of Alaska Coffee Roasters, started showing films at his coffee shop about eight years ago. On Feb 25, it was converted into a theater to show "Rashevski's Tango," a film about a family coping with the death of their patriarch and "Watermarks," a documentary of Jewish women swimmers during the 1930s. There were approximately 50 people in attendance.
The festival's selection varies a lot. "Cowboy" and "Backseat Bingo" are short comedy pieces.wws"Wondrous Oblivion" is a family film and the main film of this festival is "Go for Zucker," a German comedy about a dysfunctional Jewish family.
The committee is made up mostly of people from Or Ha Tzafon, the synagogue in Fairbanks. The congregation has roughly several hundred members. Gerry Berman, of the Sociology and Social Work departments at UAF, explained that people who are extremely religious cannot live in Fairbanks because they need special foods not found here.
Berman is on the organizing committee for the film festival. He travels to Israel every summer to see his family and usually attends a film festival there where they show 120 films in 10 days.
Eight years ago the film festival began with just a few shows at the coffee house and has now expanded to 12 films shown at the Blue Loon and Pioneer Park.
The final film, "Making Choices," is a documentary by UAF professor Robert Prince about four Dutch Americans who resisted the Nazis during the occupation of the Netherlands.
If you missed the first rounds, there's still more to come. There is no admission fee, but the suggested donation by students is $5. Check out www.mosquitonet.com/~orhatzafon/ for more information.
