Between the Lines, a 2001 award-winning documentary film by Yifat Kedar about Amira Hass, the only Israeli journalist living in the Occupied Territories, will be screened as part of the 2004 Maine Jewish Film Festival at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 14, in the Keck Classroom (G52) of Pettengill Hall. A facilitated discussion with the filmmaker will follow the 58-minute screening (in Hebrew and Arabic, with English subtitles), and the public is invited to attend free of charge.

Interested in reporting the truth, the Jerusalem-born Hass writes for the daily newspaper, Ha’aretz, from her home in Ramallah, 30 miles north of Jerusalem. Filmmaker Yifat Kedar documents the dangerous and often lonely life of this courageous woman.

Hass is the only child of a mother who survived the Holocaust and is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about the Territories since 1991. Originally produced for Israeli television, the film follows her for two years, beginning in 1999, when there was a period of optimism and euphoria in Israel. The worsening political situation affects her daily life as well as the lives of those she covers. Tanks pass her apartment and bombing disturbs her sleep, but she stays to live among the Palestinians and to report from the inside.

“Even if you don’t agree with her, it is hard not to admire the courage of this solitary, brave, and tenacious woman who attempts to share her perspective about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict under dangerous and difficult conditions,” writes Sheera LaBelle in a review essay for the 2004 Maine Jewish Film Festival program.

Another Road Home, an award-winning documentary in English by Israeli filmmaker Danae Elon chronicling her search for the Palestinian man who cared for her as a child, will be screened as part of the 2006 Maine Jewish Film Festival at 8 p.m. Wednesday, March 22, in Room 105 of the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall, Bates College. The public is invited to the screening, co-sponsored by Bates Hillel and Temple Shalom Synagogue-Center, Auburn, free of charge. Seating is limited. For more information, e-mail Cali Lanza-Weil at this clanzawe@bates.edu.

Shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, noted Israeli author Amos Elon and his wife, Beth, hired a Palestinian man to care for their 6-month-old daughter, Danae. Musa Obeidallah continued in this role for the next 20 years and was able to save enough money to send his eight sons to the United States. In the early 1990s, amid the mounting tension of the Israeli occupation and the Palestinian Intifada, the two families lost track of each other.

In her documentary, Danae Elon sets out to find Obeidallah, first reconnecting with his sons, in New Jersey, and then reuniting with Obeidallah himself. The film explores the delicate boundaries between family, class and politics, and uncovers an emotionally complex story that is ultimately optimistic.

“An amazing achievement,” writes Los Angeles Times film critic Kevin Crust, who calls the movie “touching, painful and powerfully affecting. The bond between this Palestinian man and the Israeli woman he helped nurture is so palpably strong and pure….Seldom does something so personal resonate with such universal implications. If governments and politicians could deal with one another with a fraction of the compassion that Elon and Obeidallah families do, the world would obviously be a better place.”  Another Road Home has been recognized at film festivals around the world.

The movie follows Helfand and her co-director, Daniel B. Gold, as they travel, with humor and a piece of vinyl siding in their hand, from Helfand’s Long Island hometown to America’s vinyl manufacturing capital, Lake Charles, La., and beyond in search of answers about the nature of polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Her parents’ decision to “re-side” their house with this seemingly benign cure-all for many suburban homes turns into a toxic odyssey with twists and turns that most ordinary homeowners would never dare to take.

“Blue Vinyl manages to be charming and chilling in equal measure,” wrote a Toronto Sun reviewer about this feature that won the cinematography award in documentary competition at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival and received two Emmy nominations for best documentary and best research.

Acclaimed for making films that are simultaneously humorous and inquisitive, Helfand is as recognized for her environmental health activism and community organizing as she is for her filmmaking. Co-founder of the nonprofit Working Films, Helfand links documentary filmmaking to long-term social change.

Blue Vinyl is the second collaboration for Gold and Helfand  — herself a cancer survivor who underwent a hysterectomy at 25 after contracting a rare form of cervical cancer due to her mother’s ingestion of the drug DES, a synthetic estrogen that was supposed to prevent miscarriage. With Gold, Helfand chronicled that period in her life, exploring the personal impact of toxic chemical exposure on her relationship with her mother, in her documentary, A Healthy Baby Girl (Sundance, 1997), which garnered her a Peabody Award for excellence in journalism and public education.

A sequel of sorts, Blue Vinyl picks up essentially where A Healthy Baby Girl left off in front of the Helfands’ house as they are putting up the blue vinyl siding.

Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House, an award-winning documentary film by Deborah Dickson about two lesbians who won a landmark domestic-partner benefits case, will be screened as part of the 2003 Maine Jewish Film Festival at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 8, in Pettngill Hall’s Keck classroom (G52), 4 Andrews Rd. Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz will attend and participate in a post-screening discussion. A reception will follow. Admission is $3 and tickets can be purchased at the door.

Brooklyn-born, straight-talking Ruthie Berman and Connie Kurtz are Jewish grandmothers who have been friends for 40 years, and lovers for 25. The funny, painful, life-affirming documentary about their circuitous journey toward each other explores issues of love, lust, family, friendship, change and hard-won acceptance. The pair overcame the obstacles of homophobia to become outspoken advocates for gay rights. They gained national attention when they sued the New York City Board of Education in 1988, and made history five years later when they won domestic-partner benefits for themselves and all New York City employees.

The Boston Globe called the 2002 film “a portrait of two feisty Jewish grandmothers who’ve been in a relationship for 25 years and recount their joys and hardships with inimitable zest.”

Directed by three-time Oscar nominee Dickson, the 56-minute film garnered audience awards for best documentary at the Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and at the Los Angeles Outfest, and received the Golden Space Needle Award for best documentary at the Seattle International Film Festival.

The Maine Jewish Film Festival, held this year from March 8 through 13 in Portland, presents films to enrich, educate and entertain a diverse community about the Jewish experience. For more information about the festival, visit here or call 207-831-7495.

The Bates screening is sponsored by Bates Hillel.

Panelists include Michael Peisner, chair of the International Committee of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine; Rebecca Neuwirth, coordinator of special projects for the American Jewish Committee (AJC); and Steve Hochstadt, professor of history at Bates College.

“This timely discussion is an opportunity to hear experts in the field and learn more about the conflict,” says Bates senior Matt Scherzer of Simsbury, Conn., vice president of Bates Hillel.

President of the International Committee of the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine from 1998 to 2000, Peisner is a member of the Portland law firm Curtis Thaxter Stevens Broder & Micoleau. He received his undergraduate degree in economics with high distinction from the University of Michigan and worked as a management auditor for the U.S. General Accounting Office for two years. A cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, he served as articles editor of Michigan’s Journal of Law Review.

As AJC special projects coordinator, Neuwirth works in close cooperation with the organization’s executive director on international and domestic policy. With 115,000 members worldwide, AJC is devoted to eradicating anti-Semitism and advancing understanding between peoples. Neuwirth also serves as executive director of Thanks to Scandinavia, an AJC institute founded in 1963 by Danish humorist and pianist Victor Borge and New York attorney Richard Netter. The organization has awarded thousands of scholarships to Scandinavian students and educators in gratitude for efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazis during World War II.

Neuwirth edits the AJC Journal, a bimonthly newsletter, and directs the AJC Fellows Program, an international student internship opportunity. She has helped to raise and distribute funds for Kosovar refugees, Turkish earthquake victims and U.S. families affected by the Sept. 11 attack.

A historian of modern European history, Hochstadt has chaired the history department chair at Bates since 1995. A member of the board of directors of the Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine and of the Sino-Judaic Institute of Menlo Park, Calif., Hochstadt teaches a biennial lecture course, “The Holocaust in History: The Genocide of European Jews,” one of Bates’ most popular offerings. In 1994, Hochstadt wrote the script for an Emmy-nominated video, Maine Survivors Remember the Holocaust. Awarded the 2001 Pizzagalli Construction Company Celebration of Excellence Award given to those who “set examples for others by their commitment to excellence,” Hochstadt received the 2000 Allan Sharlin Memorial Prize for Mobility and Modernity: Migration in Germany, 1820-1989 (The University of Michigan, 1999), given by the Social Science History Association for best book in social science history.

Hochstadt has a forthcoming collection of Holocaust documents for students in courses like his own. His long-term research project concerns European Jewish refugees in Shanghai. Hochstadt’s grandparents were among those who fled Vienna for Shanghai.