Articles by Stephen Schaefer

Technology

Diversity of Jewish experience highlights film fest

For today’s opening of the 37th Boston Jewish Film Festival. Artistic Director Joey Katz has spent the past year viewing, booking and refining the films, docs and events that make it all work year after year. “This year,” Katz began, “our Festival highlights the diversity of the Jewish experience, featuring films about the power of activism, history, and the many ways one can have an impact on community, culture, and politics. “We continue to highlight inclusive and diverse stories of people with disabilities, queer identity and social justice. Along with thrilling dramas and raucous comedies!” This 37th edition runs Nov. 5-16 in theaters and is virtual Nov. 17-19. Opening night at 7 p. m. is “The Most Precious of Cargoes.” “I start watching films right after the previous festival wraps up,” Katz revealed, confirming what a full-time job this is. “This film struck me as an opening night film: It’s powerful, emotional with really beautiful animation. “But it’s not a family film per se. Because when people hear it’s animated, I say, ‘Keep in mind it’s telling a story about WWII and the Holocaust.’ “It evokes Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and the realities of people living in squalor during the war. People who are being exterminated on a massive scale. “But in the narration that feels ‘fairy tale-esque.’ It’s unique in the way it ties into the larger themes of the festival. “There are,” he added, “a number of films this year where people with different afflictions and religions can see the reality of other situations.” This year’s centerpiece screening on Nov. 12 is “All God’s Children,” which Katz calls, “A powerful doc about a white Jewish female rabbi and a Black Baptist reverend who bring their congregations together to fight racism and antisemitism. It shows the power of bringing people from different perspectives but with shared goals together, and also the challenges. “It’s not always a seamless melding but the end result is powerful. We will have the Boston Community Gospel Choir, an interfaith choir. “We’re trying to continue what we did last year by including musical numbers to help people get immersed into the worlds in the films.” Already sold out is “Midas Man,” about the Beatles promoter and manager Brian Epstein. Among the most intriguing entries, from a Hollywood perspective, is “From Darkness to Light,” a doc at the Coolidge Corner Nov. 11. about Jerry Lewis’ highly personal Holocaust drama “The Day the Clown Cried” which he financed, began filming, abandoned, never to be seen. “Unique!” Katz calls it. “Rarely do we have films that tap into film history. There’s a mystique and allure with this film that has so much unknown about it.” bostonjfilm.org

Technology

John Slattery soldiers up for historic role in ‘Nuremberg’

Tall, lean and topped with a crown of snow-white hair, Boston’s own John Slattery has – on stage, television and in films – managed a spectacular career playing smart, commanding and occasionally devious men. In Friday’s “Nuremberg,” a historical look back at the final reckoning for the defeated, monstrous Nazi leaders, executed for their “crimes against humanity,” Slattery, 63, is one of the key, if little known today, players: Burton C. Andrus. While Adolf Hitler and new wife Eva Braun, Joseph Goebbels, his wife and their six children and Heinrich Himmler committed suicide, it was decided that the captured Nazis would be tried by the Allies – France Germany, Russia and the US – in a world court whose daily proceedings in 1946 reverberated around the world. “Nuremberg” shows how complicated and necessary that was. Andrus, Slattery learned, “was first and foremost, a decorated soldier! With a great career, who was determined to carry out the assignment, knowing that the eyes of the world were on him – and everybody else – as they were trying to bring these people to trial. “It was a high wire act that they all had to try to carry out without screwing it up. “Burton Andrus wrote his own book and I read that. Then I read ‘The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,’ the book (about Hermann Göring – Russell Crowe – with Rami Malek’s psychiatrist) on which the script was based. And (writer-director) James Vanderbilt’s script obviously. “We talked about what parts of his personality were useful to the story. I mean, he was a peacock. He wore one of those chrome helmets that (US Army commander) George Patton wore. He wore one of those a lot. He had his riding crop. “We left out the chrome helmet because there wasn’t time to explain that choice sufficiently so that it wasn’t a distraction. “But I had to come up with a way to understand the emotion. Someone said, ‘Imagine how tired everybody was by the end of the war.’ I mean, if nothing else, just how exhausted they all were at the end of this war. “And how much they all wanted to just go home. Like, ‘Can’t we just get rid of these people and go home?’ “I’m sure that’s how a lot of them felt. But that wasn’t the assignment. That wasn’t the job. And they all saw the importance of the assignment. “So it was just another mission that they had to finish and put their personal feelings aside.” What makes Slattery say yes to a role? “You look for the potential in it because you don’t know how it’s going to turn out. Whether it’s directing, acting or whatever, you can only hope that it turns out well. “Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t.” “Nuremberg” is in theaters Friday