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The Winnipeg International Jewish Film Festival

A harrowing, Oscar-winning drama set in a concentration camp, an Argentinean comedy-mystery in which a lawyer is obliged to turn detective, and a documentary telling the extraordinary story of how 70 musicians escaped the Nazis to form the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Winnipeg International Jewish Film Festival once again proves to be a one-stop cinema shop for feature films that prove to be extraordinarily diverse while addressing themes of Jewish identity and history.

The 2016 edition kicks off Tuesday, May 24, and runs for two weeks, until June 7, at the Berney Theatre, Rady Jewish Community Centre, 123 Doncaster St.

Tickets are $10.50 per screening ($8.50 for Rady JCC members) and are available at 204-477-7510 or online at www.radyjcc.com. All foreign-language films are subtitled. This year’s fest includes:

Apples from the Desert (Tapoukhim min ha’midbar) (Israel, 2014): A rebellious teen escapes her ultra-Orthodox Jewish parents to explore life in the secular world in this adaptation of the award-winning Israeli play. Tuesday, May 24, at 7:30 p.m. and Tuesday, June 7, at 3 p.m.

Baba Joon (Israel, 2015): Irael’s Best Foreign Language Film submission to the Academy Awards (and the first Israeli film in Farsi) examines the country’s Iranian Jewish population from the perspective of an immigrant (Navid Negabhan) who expects his son to learn the family business, only to learn the lad has other ideas. Saturday, May 28, at 8 p.m. and Monday, June 6, at 3 p.m.

Dough (U.K., 2015): A curmudgeonly kosher baker in London’s East End reluctantly enlists the help of a Muslim teenager who has a secret side gig selling marijuana to help his struggling immigrant mother to make ends meet. When some pot accidentally falls into the mixing dough, the challah starts flying off the shelves. Wednesday, June 1, at 7:30 p.m. and Friday, June 3, at 1 p.m.

Felix and Meira (Canada, 2015): An unconventional, illicit romance blossoms between Meira, a young Hasidic housewife and mother, and Felix, a man lost in mourning the recent death of his father in Montreal’s Mile End district. Thursday, June 2, at 7:30 p.m.

Fever at Dawn (Hajnali láz) (Hungary, 2015): This drama, based on a true story, is set in Sweden in 1945 where a 25-year-old Hungarian camp survivor is told he has six months to live. Waging war on his own fate, he writes letters to 117 Hungarian women also recovering in Sweden to seek a wife among them. Tuesday, May 31, at 3 p.m. and Tuesday, June 7, at 7:30 p.m.

How to Win Enemies (Cómo ganar enemigos) (Argentina, 2015): A young lawyer/mystery fan turns detective when a romantic encounter results in both his lover and his life savings going missing. Sunday, May 29, at 7:30 p.m.

Labyrinth of Lies (Im Labyrinth des Schweigens) (Germany, 2014): In the early 1960s, a young public prosecutor uncovers documents that help initiate the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials against some members of the SS who served in Auschwitz, a dangerous investigation given the vast numbers of Germans either implicated or guilty of war crimes. Monday, May 30, at 7:30 p.m. and Thursday, June 2 at 3 p.m.

Midnight Orchestra (L’orchestre de minuit) (Morocco, 2015): The son of a once-famous Jewish musician returns to his Moroccan home to bury his father and reunite the former members of his father’s band. Tuesday, May 31. at 7:30 p.m.

Rabin in His Own Words (Rabin BeMilotav Shelo) (Israel, 2015): This documentary employs rare archival footage and private letters to tell the story of Israeli prime minister Yitzchak Rabin. Monday, May 30, at 3 p.m. and Monday, June 6, at 7:30 p.m.

Once in a Lifetime (Les héritiers) (France, 2016): A dedicated history teacher at a French high school achieves unexpected results when she gives her apathetic students an assignment to study child victims of the Nazi concentration camps encompassing a face-to-face encounter with a Holocaust survivor. Friday, May 27, at 5 p.m. and Wednesday, June 1, at 3 p.m.

Orchestra of Exiles (Orchester im Exil) (USA-Israel, 2012): This doc examines the story of Bronislaw Huberman, a celebrated Polish violinist who helped rescue some of the world’s greatest musicians from Nazi Germany to form the future Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. Wednesday, May 25, at 7:30 p.m.

Son of Saul (Saul fia) (Hungary, 2015): This Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film closely follows a Hungarian member of the Sonderkommando on an impossible mission to provide a proper burial for the body of a boy he takes for his son.  Friday, May 27, at 1 p.m. and Sunday, June 5, at 7:30 p.m.

Theodore Bikel: In the Shoes of Sholem Aleichem (USA, 2014): This double-doc examines the intersecting lives of Yiddish author-playwright Sholom Aleichem and actor/musician/Aleichem enthusiast Theodore Bikel.  Sunday, May 29, at 2 p.m.

The Last Mentsch (Der letzte Mentsch) (Germany, Switzerland, France, 2016): Facing imminent death, an aging German Holocaust survivor who spent his life trying to hide his Jewish heritage attempts to reconnect to his ancestry in a bid to be buried in a Jewish cemetery in Cologne. On Friday, June 3, at 5 p.m. and Sunday, June 5, at 2 p.m.

Wedding Doll (Hatuna MeNiyar) (Israel, 2015): A young woman with a mild intellectual and developmental deficiency strives for independence from her mother, a situation that comes to a head when she falls for the son of the owner of the toilet paper factory where she works. On Saturday, June 4, at 8 p.m.

— Randall King 

 

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

Portland-based four-piece Unknown Mortal Orchestra will be making a stop in Winnipeg Saturday, May 21. They’re currently on their second round of North American tour dates to support their latest record, Multi-love, released last May.

Multi-love is the third full-length for the self-proclaimed “psychedelic R&B, depression funk” band; its content explores the complications that come with being in a relationship, while its instrumentation steers deeper into the psychedelic than past releases, relying more heavily on synthesizer sounds.

“It felt good to be rebelling against the typical view of what an artists is today, a curator,” says singer Ruban Nielson in a news release. “It’s more about being someone who makes things happen in concrete ways. Building old synthesizers and bringing them back to life, creating sounds that aren’t quite like anyone else’s. I think that’s much more subversive.”

Whitney, a retro rock duo featuring Max Kakacek and ex-Unknown Mortal Orchestra member Julien Ehrlich, will open the night. The pair have been generating major buzz for their debut release, Light Up the Lake (due out June 3), including upcoming features with online music magazines Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound, and they even snagged a spot in Rolling Stone magazine’s weekly Playlist column earlier this month.

The WECC will be keeping the bar open until 1 a.m. after the show, with Vinyl Salon spinning records for those who want to hang out at the venue a bit later than usual. The same thing will happen Sunday night after the Savages show.

Tickets for Unknown Mortal Orchestra (with Whitney) are $18 in advance, and are available at the WECC, Music Trader, Into the Music and online at Ticketweb.ca. Doors at 7 p.m., music starts at 8 p.m.

— Erin Lebar

 

Bulrushes Gallery

Manitoba has great summers, but Mother Nature offers no guarantees for Victoria Day weekend, Canada’s official, unofficial kickoff to summer.

So if you’re out in lake country, here’s an indoor idea while the rainstorm passes through.

Bulrushes Gallery, 801 Kernstead Rd., in Winnipeg Beach, about 75 kilometres north of Winnipeg, opened for the summer in 2015 and is open on Saturdays in May to view its collection of works.

The gallery features works from three artists from the Toronto-based Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. They include Failed Icarus, a print from 1971 by Calgary artist Derek Michael Besant; From Milos, a serigraph by Danish-Canadian silkscreen artist Flemming Jorgensen of Vancouver Island; and Legends, a print by Order of Canada recipient Aba Bayefsky, whose Second World War-era works have been displayed at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

The gallery, which also is home to works by many artists from Manitoba, is open from noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays in May and is open Thursdays through Saturdays over the summer starting in June.

— Alan Small

 

GMB Chomichuk

After last year’s graphic novel Infinitum, a “time-travel noir” piece set in Winnipeg, prolific local writer and illustrator GMB Chomichuk returns with the first part of a trilogy tracing masked crime-fighters in the fictional metropolis of Maxima City. The three-part series is called Midnight City and is published by Chigraphic, an imprint of ChiZine Publications out of Toronto.

Chomichuk is the author of many graphic novels, children’s books and collections, and has collaborated with a number of local writers and illustrators in his endeavours. His published output includes titles such asThe Imagination Manifesto, Cassie and Tonk, Raygun Gothic and The Underworld.

He has dubbed the first book of the trilogy Corpse Blossom; it tips the hat to superheroes of the Golden Age, while adding a dark horror component that shines through in Chomichuk’s graphic illustrations.

The graphic novel is the story of Reginald Burton, best-known to citizens as the Risk, a member of the Midnight Society. Dubbed the “luckiest man alive,” the Risk’s fortunes take a turn for the worse when the Black Bat, a fellow member of the Midnight Society, is murdered by the Sphinx.

Things go decidedly south for the crime-fighter when he goes to visit his slain partner’s family; a nightmarish sequence of revelations send the hero reeling. What will become of our masked man? Stay tuned.

Chomichuk launches the first volume of Midnight City Wednesday, May 25, at McNally Robinson Booksellers at 7 p.m. Given the rate at which he puts pen to paper, expect the second instalment of the series, Fleshtree, sooner rather than later.

—Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson