Boston Russian Jewish Community Loves Bosfilm's Movies

From JRT's readers on Bosfilm's movies, see related link -- December 4Th in West Newton Cinema

Marina Garelik

Personally for me the work on  the movie "We love Israel" and organizing the movie series was very exciting and fulfilling. I intend to continue both -- working on documenting our Jewish Russian  life around the world and organizing more  Jewish movie screening in Boston. There is a big need to contemplate on many many pressing issues in our life. Russian Jewish community of Boston  now is well established, mature and vibrant. There  is a lot of energy and life worth looking at and enjoying.  It was also a big surprise for me to find that lots of my relatives  around the world, especially in Israel, asked me to send them copies of the movie "We love Israel". Yes, we love you -- people of Israel ( Although, I know that for my politically sophisticated relatives in Israel from the Left and Right, the movie  will be considered too simplistic).

Tanya Gorlin

My impressions about We Love Israel film shown in the West Newton movie house on December 4Th, 2005 ----

My seeing this film was very personal. I participated in preliminary discussions about a necessity of celebrating Israel in 2004. It was the first year, when most of the Jewish organizations refused to do celebrations on the Independence Day of Israel, motivating it by the fact that in 2004 most of the Boston Jewish resources would be used for the Maccabees Olympic Games taken place in Boston in the Summer 2004.

As a result, Russian Jews decided to take the charge: find sponsors and speakers, negotiate with officials and police about a place and date, and, the most important thing, to bring Bus #19 blown up by Palestinian terrorist attach.

The film We Love Israel reflected this event which attracted people of all generations: grandparents, their children and grandchildren all walked together with Israeli flags and slogans with words of love to Israel. This fact itself filled my heart with pride for our Russian community and our deep attachment to Israel. The quality of speakers was outstanding. In the film we saw two of them - Brigette Gabriel, a founder of American Congress For Truth, and Igor Branovan, a doctor and the President of Russian-American Jews for Israel based in New York. I was greatly impressed by the speech of Ms. Gabriel (part of her speech was shown in the film), who, being a Lebanese Arab, defended and supported Israel with a passion, rarely seen in the world we are presently living in.

There is a very touching historical background in the film (early century Jewish immigrants from Russia to America, some historical events which led to Israel Independence, etc), great music from the film "Schindler's List" which created a feeling among the audience that our event would be part of a history of Jewish Boston - the history we, Russian Jews, can be proud of.
Thank you very much, Misha Brusilovsky, Boris Furman, and Marina Gorelik, for being a driving force in creating this film. Thank you, members of Land of Israel Committee and Boston for Israel. Thank you, our wonderful co-patriots, who participate in the Rally for Israel, 2004.

Anna Lanskaya

Sunday Night at the Movies

A lot of Russians got together last Sunday in the West Newton
Movie Theater to see three short documentaries related to
Israel. The theater was full, some people were sitting on the
steps. A lot of familiar faces in a pact movie theater, almost all
Russians, who braved the snow.
The first movie "Pavel and Lyalya". In a promotional literature
it was described as a love story. So I was surprised to see
elderly woman (Lyalya) taking care of her terminally ill
husband (Pavel), story takes place in Jerusalem, where
they come to find cure of his illness.

Black and white movie where Lyalya talks to Pavel, to us
and mostly to herself while going about her sad routine.
The biggest surprise was that after couple minutes into the
movie I realized that I know Pavel and Lyalya. Pavel Kogan,
well known ed in Leningrad documentary movie (regisser) was
a friend of my aunt and I have seen him in Leningrad hundred
years ago, when I was a child and he a young and handsome
man. I met Lyalya in Boston after him passing away.
This is sad but beautiful film full of love.

After the show while we were standing in the foyer, discussing
the movie, I met  the man visiting Boston from Israel (originally
from Leningrad) we realized we have many mutual friends
back  home, meaning Leningrad.
Pavel in this movie is asking Lyalya"take me home, take me to
Leningrad"
This evening  took me to  Leningrad and Israel.

Michael Brusilovsky, Bosfilm

I'd like to thank all who came to see "Israel.   Three Films about Love" to West Newton Cinema and sent us worm feedback.   We plan to continue producing new films for and about our community and   showing rearly screened artistic films from all over the world. Please go   to our web site www.bosfilm.org to   see fragments or films produced by Bosiflm during the last five years. We'll   webcast "We Love Israel" on our web site also. We spend more than a year working on this film and I am very proud to   know that it's a success.

P.S.

Music in "We Love Israel" is original. It was created by a young talented composer Val Galaktionov from Ohio. We couldn't use music from "Schindler's list" because of copyrights. Working with Val we decided to create a musical citation from "Schindler's list" main musical theme. We play this piece by the end of "bus #19" fragment, when we call names of every person killed in this bus. 

posted by: jrtelegraph

 

Comments

[donna Stanger]

Can someone from this organiztion please give me a call