I wrote a while back about a new movie coming out -- Tickling Leo. The film won the 2009 Jury Award for Best Feature at the 2009 Stony Brook Film Festival!From the makers of the film:
Set around the days of Yom Kippur, Tickling Leo is a contemporary drama that follows three generations of one Jewish family whose secrets threaten to wipe away its future. When he loses touch with his estranged father, Zak Pikler (Daniel Sauli) and his pregnant girlfriend Delphina (Annie Parisse) travel to an abandoned Catskills lake where the eccentric poet Warren Yitzchak Pikler (Lawrence Pressman) is living in solitude and declining health. As Zak copes with his father's dementia, Delphina inadvertently uncovers a secret the Piklers have been hiding since World War II: an impossible sacrifice they made in order to join Rudolph Kasztner’s controversial train out of Hungary.
I'm happy to announce that the film will be opening in New York on September 4, 2009, and locations can be found on their website. So if you're in the area, you should most definitely make plans to be THERE (after Shabbat, of course). If you can't make it out, the DVD will also be going on sale around the same time with plenty of extra and fascinating features, so head to Amazon.com. Did I mention Mary Stuart Masterson (of "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "Benny and Joon") is one of the producers? Expect quality folks! Once again, the trailer:
Well. The truth is often a hard pill to swallow, and this has been one of the hardest. Nay, most frustrating. Nay, most infuriating. This bl...
On Jews
He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished.
The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?