Who, What & Where: Oscars, comedy festival, Primo Levi on screen and a little bit of Jewish history
Our weekly round-up of what's on in the world of entertainment
Louisa Walters is Features Editor at the Jewish News and specialises in food and travel writing
OSCARS: The Sound of Success
CODA is the first movie with a majority deaf cast nominated for an Oscar. There’s one surprising Jewish figure that we have to thank for the gift that is its star Marlee Matlin — Henry Winkler. Apparently, the two met when Matlin was just 13, when he saw her perform in an amateur production. He told her: “You know Marlee, you can be whatever you want to be, just follow your heart and your dreams will come true.”
She has won an Oscar, a Golden Globe, was nominated for four Emmys, has had her name immortalised on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and has been part of countless TV shows and movies, so Winkler’s words of wisdom were sound. Matlin lived with the Winklers while filming Children of a Lesser God and she and her husband were married (by both a rabbi and a priest) on the front lawn at their house. They have four children, two boys and two girls, and have raised them in an interfaith home with Jewish traditions.
Matlin was raised Jewish, attending Congregation Bene Shalom in Skokie, Illinois — a congregation that was started nearly 50 years ago by deaf Jews, which incorporates both deaf and hearing culture. Matlin had her bat mitzvah there. “I had the benefit of a rabbi who could sign… I learned how to speak Hebrew phonetically, and I signed and spoke,” she says.
COMEDY: Are you Having a Laugh?
We could all do with a laugh right now so JW3’s comedy festival next week has come at a really good time. From world-famous prankster Simon Brodkin’s stand-up show Troublemaker (sold out for March but returning in May) and brand-new female-written TV comedy pilots, to a live recording of the iconic podcast Are You Feeling Funny and the legendary Misogynist Film Club, join some of your favourite names in comedy for a week of riotous laughs.
13-22 March
STREAMING: Man to Man
The 2005 film Primo, Antony Sher’s translation of Primo Levi’s If This Is A Man from page to stage, has recently been released to stream by Digital Theatre. Levi’s work is an opus on the horrendous scale of the horrors of the Holocaust, viewed from his very singular perspective as a man who was not only subject to the nightmares of the concentration camps, but who ultimately survived Auschwitz. Sher’s interpretation of Levi’s testimony is a tour de force. The brutality of the Holocaust, so often spelled out in the scale of its slaughter, is reduced by Levi to the minutiae of individual humans, the unimaginable detail of their lives and deaths in the hell of Auschwitz, and described with a harrowing eye for detail. From the glimpses of passing stations and landscapes, momentarily seen through the gaps in his cattle truck’s walls, to recognising the provenance of different camp inmates from the numbers tattooed on their arms, it is the detailed horrific picture painted by Levi’s, and ultimately Sher’s, words that define this unique narrative. The stage is bare save for a solitary chair, set amid stark but carefully plotted lighting designs. A haunting cello accompaniment underlies Sher’s eloquent reverence as his spoken narrative transports the audience/viewer from Italy through Austria, Czechoslovakia and ultimately Poland, all of them under the malevolent control of the Third Reich. Levi died in April 1987 and Sher much more recently in December 2021. The recording of this drama is a tribute to them both – it is unmissable.
Jonathan Baz
To access the film visit www.digitaltheatre.com/watch/41413292
You can read more of Jonathan’s reviews at www.jonathanbaz.com
FILM: Max’s Last Moment
The late Max Von Sydow gives a tender final performance in Echoes of the Past, a poignant and powerful drama inspired by one of the darkest moments in modern Greek history- the Nazi massacre of Kalavryta on December 13, 1943. Directed by Nicholas Dimitropoulos, the film follows a high-flying lawyer (Astrid Roos) who is representing the German government after Greece launches a multi-billion legal claim for war reparations. Her investigation brings her to the last survivor of the tragedy, Nikolaos Andreou (Von Sydow), and leads them both to the traumatic past. The film took the number one spot when it opened in Greece and won the Youth Audience Award at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival.
Available to view on Sky, Amazon and iTunes.
ACTRESS: Famous Fundraiser
Jewish actress Mila Kunis was born in what is now Chernivtsi, Ukraine. She and her family fled the former Soviet Union in 1991 as a family of seven, arriving in the US with their suitcases and just $250. After watching the atrocities unfold in her homeland over the past two weeks Mila and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, are using their huge platform to raise money for humanitarian aid efforts to Ukrainian refugees.
“I have always considered myself an American, a proud American. I love everything that this country has done for me and my family, but today I’ve never been more proud to be a Ukrainian,” Kunis said in a video announcing their fundraiser on Instagram.
“The events that have unfolded in the Ukraine are devastating. There is no place in this world for this kind of unjust attack on humanity. Ashton and I have decided to match up to $3 million-worth of donations to Airbnb and Flexport, which are both helping with the relief effort. We want to raise $30 million.”
MOVIE: Real Escapism
Daniel Radcliffe stars as Tim Jenkin, a real-life ANC activist who was branded a terrorist – and imprisoned – in Africa’s maximum-security Pretoria prison in the late 1970s during Apartheid. Along with fellow freedom fighters, Daniel Goldberg and Stephen Lee, played by Ian Hart (God’s Own Country,) and Daniel Webber (The Punisher, The Dirt), Tim made a complex and daring escape 18 months into his incarceration using handcrafted wooden key
Escape from Pretoria is available to watch for £4.99 on www.ukjewishfilm.org
This Week in Jewish History
By Jewish News Historian Derek Taylor
Plymouth Synagogue is the oldest Ashkenazi shul in regular use in the English-speaking world. It was built in the winter of 1761 and consecrated in March 1762. If you walked past the white building today you wouldn’t know it was a synagogue but it was created by an extended Jewish family from Holland called Emden. If you want evidence of the existence of the Almighty, Plymouth was flattened by the Luftwaffe in 1941 and only two buildings in Catherine Street survived – the dispensary and the synagogue. You can still see the mikveh and there is a beautiful two-storey ark, decorated with gold leaf. To prevent 18th century vandals abusing the building no door was positioned on the front of the building. There are only 34 Jews left in the community to keep the synagogue going, but the tiny congregation hold Shabbat and festival services.
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