 The idea of the Jewish Film Society has appeared among Czulent’s members some time ago. Most of our activities are directed towards Jewish Community and Czulentarians, however we do want to invite for disussion people from outside surroundings, but interested in Jewish issues. It’s already more than a year since The Jewish Literary Salon has been started and it became famous among Cracowians. Our next step was to prepare discussions about Jewish matters in relation to movies. In October this year we started cooperation with “Mikro” cinema, known in Cracow among movie mavens and fans of alternative productions. “Mikro” is also a place, where in fact The Festival of Jewish Culture has started in the 80’s- long before it became a world-famous and respected event. In November we were happy to show the first movie- “Aimee & Jaguar” directed by a German Max Färberböck. The movie is based on the novel from 1994, that soon became a bestseller and was translated into 17 languages. The author, Erika Fischer, now resident in Willa Decjusza in Cracow accepted our invitation for the meeting after the showing. “Aimee & Jaguar “ tells a true story of love between Lilly Wust, wife of a Nazi and mother of four sons and a young Jewish lesbian, Falice Schragenheim involved in underground resistance. The story takes place in the German capital in 1943, and shows the life of Berlinens in the middle of the war. The movie is not wide known in Poland and evoked controversions not only in our country. To advertise the meeting we used mostly direct methods- distribution of self-made posters and leaflets, sending e-mails to friends and people who might be interested, inviting peers from the University. The information has also appeared in a few web portals and newspapers- Gazeta Wyborcza and Dziennik Polski. When we started the show, the cinema that can gather about 80 people was full. The public’s reactions for the movie were enthusiastic and most of the people stayed for the discussion after the movie, led by a debuting in such a role Katarzyna Czerwonogóra and translated by Maja Brand, luckily much more experienced. Erika Fischer was telling to interested audience about the work at the book, meeting with the old lady Lilly Wust; about Jewish identity and situation of Homosexuals in the Third Reich; about how the relationship with Felice influenced sexuality of Lilly Wust’s sons and historical councience of young Germans and Austrians. The talks kept going even after the official end of the meeting. On the next meeting we would like to show one more movie related to the World War II – this time a Polish production. “Długa noc” (‘A long night”) directed by Janusz Nasfer was not accepted to be shown by a communist censorship, and even in democratic Poland it is almost not known to the young generation. It is a psychological drama referring Polish-Jewish relations. We hope it will be as popular as “Aimee & Jaguar”. Successively we would like to show movies on Israeli- Palestinian conflict, on Jewish tradition and contemporary Israeli pictures not known by Polish audience. In year 2008/2009 the Movie Club was supported by The Rothschild Foundation (Europe).
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