Underground Railroad Film Series

Underground Railroad Film Series

CINEMA AND CONVERSATION

Each month from September through February 2009, at various 'safe houses' in greater King County, the Underground Railroad Film Series partners with community groups, organizations and traditionally marginalized populations to host a screening of films by or about Black people that intersect across cultures, providing opportunities for community engagement and self-reflection.

November brings us two stops on the Underground Railroad with films on November 13 and November 20, 2008. Check them both out!

ASHKENAZ
Documentary - ISRAEL 2008; 79 min
Director- Rachel Leah Jones

Date: Thursday, November 13
Time: 7PM
Location: Langston Hughes
104 17th Ave S.
Admission: Suggested donation of $5
Filmmaker in attendance

Ashkenaz is a fascinating study of Ashkenazi culture and people.

What happened to the Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe when they came to settle in the Middle East and what happened to Middle Eastern and North African Jews as a result of the encounter? How did the 'others' of Europe become the Europe of 'the others'? And how are the Palestinians related to all this?

Filmmaker Rachel Leah Jones sets out to reveal the bubbling layers of the Israeli 'melting pot' and there is hardly a stone she leaves unturned: Pale skinned and dark skinned; young and old; Holocaust survivors and Holocaust experts; Moroccan poets pondering their Arab-Jewish identity and Yiddish lovers lamenting the loss of their mama loshen (mother tongue); native dwellers whose existence has been threatened by the new
European comers and intellectual youngsters composing the manifesto of a new movement for the protection of Ashkenazi culture. This cacophony is weaved together with the subversive lyrics of one of Israel's most intriguing Rock ensembles 'HaBiluim' creating a cutting edge investigation that goes under and beyond Israel's 'black and white' politics.

Co presented with the Seattle Jewish Film Festival

BLACK ISRAEL documentary, January 17 2008

a film by Maurice Dores

Location:Cal Anderson House at Cal Anderson Park, 1635 - 11th Avenue, Capitol Hill, Seattle (Broadway Playfield area), near Richard Hugo House

Thursday, January 17, 2008 at 7:00 p.m. – Suggested donation: $5.00. This film is 88 minutes long.

This engaging film is a vibrant portrait of pluralistic 21st-century Jewish identities across the globe. It documents Africans and African-Americans who live in Israel and practice Judaism there. Africans from Nigeria, Togo, the Congo, Zaire, Lagos and Ethiopia have emigrated to Israel to work or to study Judaism. They were unable to study their religion at home since there was no one to teach them.

In the Negev desert, several thousand Black Americans who fled the urban slums in the 1960's have formed an independent community where they practice their own version of the Hebraic religion under the law of their leader Carter Ben Ami. Although they have been denied citizenship in Israel, they enjoy friendly relations with Israelis and believe Israel is "the kingdom of Paradise on Earth."

Many Black Jews born in the Caribbean have moved to the U.S. to practice Judaism. One congregant of the Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in Harlem, born in Trinidad, recalls that his father's family which had Sephardic roots, kept kosher and celebrated the Sabbath. We meet a diverse group of people from a Harlem rabbi who reveals his thoughts on the spread of Judaism in sub-Saharan Africa, to Rebecca Walker, the biracial daughter of civil rights activist Alice Walker and to an African learning Yiddish in Paris. As one Jew from Nigeria concludes "Judaism has no color."

"Black Israel is highly recommended for jr. high, sr. high, college, and general adult audiences interested in Judaic studies, Religion in general, and area studies focusing on Israel as well as for general audiences interested in Jews, Israel, and/or people of color." Sheila Intner, Simmons College GSLIS at Mt. Holyoke for EMRO

New York Jewish Film Festival, 2004
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 2003
San Francisco Black Film Festival, 2003

"A fascinating documentary that explores the incredible diversity of Judaism and its influence on a population of Africans and Afro-Americans." --Bernard Loupias, Nouvel Observateur

"...shows Black Jewishness finding its place in the diversity of Judaism." --Serge Blumenfeld, Le Monde