Maine Jewish Film Festival Goes Online, Partners with Bowdoin

Film screenings begin on November 7 and will last for fifteen days, with one movie being shown each day and available for fifty-five hours. “There is a wonderful mixture of features and documentaries, and many films will be accompanied by discussions,” said Professor of Cinema Studies Tricia Welsch, who also directs Bowdoin’s cinema studies program.

Among the festival’s offerings, she said, are The Tobacconist, a feature about the friendship between a young boy and Sigmund Freud during the Nazi occupation of Vienna, a documentary called Heading Home that profiles the Israeli national baseball team as they compete for the first time in the World Baseball Classic, and My Polish Honeymoon, a romantic comedy about a French couple who travel to Poland to connect with their Jewish heritage.

“One of the festival’s eleven post-screening discussions will be hosted by our own Rachel Reinke, associate director of the Sexuality, Women, and Gender Center,” Welsch added.

That discussion, she explained, will take place on November 12 at 7:00 p.m. and is associated with the film #Female Pleasure, which tells the story of five determined women from different cultures (including the Hasidic community) who break the silence imposed on them by their patriarchal societies.