First Jewish Film, Tv Festival

To all intents and purposes it looked like Hollywood and its halcyon days when kleig lights, the news and radio media and thousands of spectators filled the main street to scan the motion picture celebrities making their way into a posh cinema for a world premiere. Here, however, the din outside the Jerusalem Theater marked the opening Sunday night of the first “World Jewish Film and Television Festival.”

Fifty entries from 15 countries have been selected from more than 160 submitted for consideration at the feast, organizing officials reported. An international panel of judges participating in the event include top ranking members of film and television arts from the United States, Great Britain, and Scandinavia. Twenty television networks are also participating, including BBC (Britain), CBC (Canada), ABC (U.S.). Television Francaise I and networks from other European countries.

The festival got underway with the showing of several documentaries. The first was “Next Year in Jerusalem,” a 90-minute presentation by CBC with a star-studded cast, reviewing Jerusalem’s history through the ages. At a brief ceremony at the opening of the festival, Aharon Yadlin, Education Minister, stressed that his ministry regards film making a major art and an integral part of Israeli culture. Melville Mark, festival director, recalled a visit to David Ben Gurion at Sde Boker in 1969 when he told the former Premier of his dream to organize a Jewish film festival and a Jewish world communications center.

The festival comprises three concurrent events a film contest, a symposium and an exhibition. An average of 16 films a day will be screened covering a wide range of Jewish subject matter, including public affairs, Bible, travel, politics, culture, religion and drama, Symposiums will include such topics as “The Image of the Jew in the Mass Media” and “Towards a Jewish Communications Center.”