Arts & Entertainment
Park Theatre Presents Israeli Film Festival This Weekend
Three award-winning films will be shown this Saturday and Sunday.
This weekend, Rhode Island Center for the Performing Arts at the Park Theatre will present its first-ever Israeli Film Festival, featuring three award-winning films.
“The Matchmaker” will be shown on Jan. 14 at 7:30 p.m., “A Matter of Size” will be presented on Jan. 15 at 4:00 p.m. and a screening of “Restoration” will take place on Jan. 15 at 7:00 p.m.
“If people would like to get an idea on Israeli culture and roots, it would be a nice way to spend the weekend,” said Yusuf Gandhi, Director of Programming for the theatre.
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According to Gandhi, the films were selected from eight that were considered. Recommendations were made by Israelis who live in America.
The Park Theatre’s website describes “The Matchmaker” as a “coming of age story, filled with emotion – love, despair and malice — combining young love with Holocaust memory, vivid and quirky characters in a time when Israelis were still unable to grapple with or talk about the Holocaust.”
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The movie is set in the summer of 1968 in Haifa, Israel. The film was released in 2010. The running time is 118 minutes. Click here to view the trailer.
“A Matter of Size” is a comedy about Israeli sumo wrestlers, which in itself is a funny concept. When a group of overweight people are fed up with their strict diet regime, they discover the world of Sumo, where fat people like them are honored and appreciated.
The comedy, which has won several international awards, was released in 2009 and lasts 92 minutes. Click here to view the trailer.
In the film “Restoration,” the repairing of a 1882 Steinway piano serves as a metaphor for the complex set of frayed relations between the characters. The 90-minute feature, which debuted in 2009, was highly acclaimed at the Sundance and Jerusalem Film Festivals. Click here to view the trailer.
The Park Theatre presented an Irish Film Festival this past November. Future film festivals will feature other cultures.
“We plan to have film festivals from different countries and ethnicities so that the community can gain some knowledge of the various cultures,” Gandhi said.
