Boulder Jewish News Arts, Culture, Events, Lifestyles, Holidays, Synagogues, Education
The ninth annual Boulder International Film Festival, being held here February 14-17, features 47 films on a huge variety of topics.
Two films will be of special interest to the Jewish Community. Tickets are $12/$10 seniors and students and are available on the BIFF website.
Defiant Requiem is a documentary feature and one of the most powerful movies you’ll ever see. It tells the incredible story of conductor Raphael Schächter, an inmate at the Nazi concentration camp of Terezin, who formed a choir of 150 Jewish prisoners to perform Verdi’s Requiem. This fantastically difficult chorale was committed to memory by the choir members and performed 16 times, often to international visitors and inspectors escorted by Adolf Eichmann. Ironically, the Nazis didn’t understand the Latin text, and they failed to understand that Verdi’s immortal work was a towering, operatic rage against oppression and death. In this film, conductor Murry Sidlin brings an orchestra and 150-voice choir back to the same warehouse in Terezin to produce a soaring and unforgettable performance. English and subtitled. Directed and produced by Doug Shultz. Produced by Whitney Johnson. Narrated by Bebe Neuwirth. Colorado Premiere. Hear from Terezin survivors Edgar and Hana Krasa, Doug Shultz and Whitney Johnson in person at the event. Defiant Requiem is co-presented by the Boulder Jewish Community Center (JCC) and 18 Pomegranates.
The Friday screening will be introduced by Kathryn Bernheimer, Cultural Arts Director, JCC.
Screenings will be Friday, February 15 at 2:30 p.m. at the Boulder Theater, and Saturday, February 16, at 12:15 p.m. at eTown Hall. Click here to purchase tickets.
Toronto Film Festival called No Place on Earth “… one of the most incredible stories of Holocaust survival to make it to the big screen.” Chris Nicola was spelunking in a 77-mile-long Ukrainian cave in 1993 when he discovered stoves, buttons and shoes that were clearly left by people who had lived there. Fascinated, he began to ask locals for an explanation. “Maybe some Jews lived there” was the most he could get. After a decade of searching, Nicola found a man in the Bronx who, with his extended family, had lived underground for 511 days starting in 1942, the longest uninterrupted underground survival in recorded human history. Through interviews and diaries, Nicola and director Janet Tobias piece together the history of the 38 people who lived there. The film reaches its emotional pinnacle as some of the survivors travel back to the caves, and we witness these former dwellers as they see their long-time home for the first time since 1944. Colorado Premiere. Director Janet Tobias will be here in person.
No Place on Earth will be screening on Sunday, February 17, at 3:00 p.m. at the Boulder Theater.
