Tulane Jewish Studies hosting Israeli Film Festival

The Jewish Studies Department at Tulane University and the Stacy Mandel Palagye and Keith Palagye Program for Middle East Peace will hold an Israeli Film Festival at Tulane on Oct. 26 and 27.

Shai Ginsburg, the Andrew Mellon Assistant Professor for Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Duke University, will be the main speaker. His field is in Israeli and Jewish cinema.

The festival begins with “Life in Stills” at 5 p.m. and “The Hangman” at 7 p.m. Both films will be in LBC Stibbs, room 203.

“Life in Stills” is about a 96-year-old woman in Israel and how she joined with her grandson in an attempt to save her late husband’s life work — about one million negatives depicting Israel’s defining moments — when “The Photo House” was slated for demolition. It won Best Film at the Israeli Films Competition in 2011.

“The Hangman” is the story of Shalom, a Sephardi prison warden who was the hangman for Adolf Eichmann following the Nazi officer’s conviction. He later became a ritual slaughterer, but continued to carry “a national burden that dramatically shaped his life.”

“The Garden of Eden” will be screened at noon on Oct. 27, followed by “Life Sentences” at 2 p.m. Both films will be in the Jewish Studies conference room.

“The Garden of Eden” is a 2012 film about the Sakhne, one of the largest and most-visited parks in Israel. The film progresses through a year of season changes and looks at the wide range of Israeli society through the stories of people who work there and who visit.

“Life Sentences” won Best Documentary at the 2013 Jerusalem Film Festival. It is about an Arab man who marries a Jewish woman, living quietly with their children. It is later discovered that he was behind numerous mysterious terror attacks in the late 1960s, prompting the woman to flee with their young children, eventually landing in Montreal’s Orthodox community. The film centers on identity and the son’s eventual journey back to Israel and shedding of all labels.