Actually, you can go home again. Just not this year.
So the Denver Jewish Film Festival learned a month and a half before the opening of its 16th installment next week.
After spending last year away from its home on South Dahlia Street during an extensive renovation, programmers were looking forward to launching the fest at the Mizel Arts & Culture Center’s renamed, reimagined Elaine Wolf Theatre next week. Only the impressive space isn’t quite ready for its close-up. (It’s set to open March 24.) So the festival has reteamed with an old collaborator, the Denver Film Society.
Starting Thursday, the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax will be abuzz with 10 days of films from the U.S., Israel, Russia, the Czech Republic and Germany, to name a few. (The festival runs through March 4.)
Opening night has typically involved a fundraising tribute. This year is no different, though this time the fest truly honors one of its own when it celebrates the contributions of Sharon Haber. The diminutive dynamo and festival chair is one-half of the tag team that has helped hone an event worth anticipating.
Fest director Roberta Bloom is the other partner in deepening the appeal of a niche fest while keeping it connected to its core, if diverse, audience. Indeed, over the past several years, the festival has gotten better at nailing universal pleasures while embracing the challenges of a specialty film festival. Of course, the richest targeted fests have as their mission a bridging humanism.
“Restoration,” Yossi Madmoni’s father, son and son-wannabe drama, opens the fest and screens again on the final day. Many a festival programmer will confess that the first offering is a tricky, nerve-racking affair. That may be one of the reasons bigger fests like Sundance and Toronto now open with more than one movie.
“Restoration” turns out to be a gem. Israeli actor Sasson Gabai portrays Yakov Fidelman, an antique-furniture restorer in Tel Aviv. When his business partner dies, son Noah (Nevo Kimchi) suggests he give developers a crack at the property. Fidelman is offended.
Yakov and Noah are not merely at odds, they seem unrelated and, of course, bound to each other. The arrival of a mysterious young man named Anton (Henry David), content to apprenticeship under Fidelman, proves a catalyst.
“There are so many layers of complexity,” says Bloom, who admits she knew early in the selection process that they’d found their opener. “Not only is it beautifully shot, it’s about things taking place in contemporary Israel.”
And the world, she could add.
“Here’s the dad who has an appreciation for the old, for history, for restoring and preserving.” Noah, not so much. “The son is interested in the future, in looking ahead.”
While it’s easy to root for the fairly antisocial Fidelman (Gabai’s face is a work of geologic sculpting) and even easier to be suspicious of his seemingly materialistic son, Madmoni complicates matters with the fact that Noah is about to become a father himself.
There’s much nuance to “Restoration.” So much that it’s best not to get out ahead of the drama. Instead let its expert pacing lead you to meditative revelations. (“Restoration,” 7 p.m. Thursday; 10:30 a.m. March 4)
“Restoration” is among this year’s robust crop of films from Israel. The compelling documentary “Dolphin Boy” recounts the painstaking therapy of Morad, a young Arab Israeli teen sent to a reef in the Red Sea port of Eilat where dolphins are enlisted in therapy. Morad arrives nearly catatonic after a brutal assault. This tribute to a nimble medical doctor, a dedicated father and, yes, dolphin love is the MACC Teen Film Board’s selection. (1 p.m. Feb. 26)
There is even “Rabies,” a horror flick rumored to be Israel’s first.
This late-night offering is also the festival’s first amble into midnight- movie territory. (11 p.m. Feb. 25)
An enviro fest, too
The Denver Jewish Film Festival is not the only specialty festival opening next week bent on engaging a broader audience. The three-day Colorado Environmental Film Festival in Golden also opens Thursday. Most of the films screen at the American Mountaineering Center.
“We have to expand our niche, otherwise we become so narrowly focused as an environmental film festival,” says festival co-founder Dave Steinke of the U.S. Forest Service. “Gee, I spent all this carbon footprint to come to the film festival and now I feel guilty.”
To be effective, the fest is attempting to address audiences wary of, or exhausted by, the burdens of a kind of crisis cinema.
The fest does a swift job of addressing this nagging worry with opening night’s crispy, composed, thought-tweaking documentary “Switch,” which follows geologist Scott Tinker, director of the Bureau of Economic Geology, on a globe-trotting journey to suss out the future of energy. Director Henry Lynch is slated to appear the screening.
“Tinker” is a pretty rich name for an on-screen guide bent on fixing things and intrigued by invention. And the amiable energy researcher doesn’t disappoint as he wonders aloud — and in the most personable, non-scolding tone of curiosity — about the amount of energy we humans consume, require, produce.
Looking out over the Belle Ayr Mine in Wyoming, Tinker says with a note of gee-whiz, “That is a big pit.” It is, in fact, ginormous. From his and his guide’s perch on the edge of the world’s largest coal reserve, Tinker comments on a 400-ton payload truck that looks, he says, like the Tonka toys of his childhood.
Energy, says Steinke, is one of the four themes coursing through this year’s festival, which also offers EcoExpo and EcoAction events that are free and open to the public. The others are: sustainable agriculture (“Arise,” 1:30 p.m. Feb. 24), wilderness conservation (the poetic “Treeverse,” 11 a.m. Feb. 25) and, acutely meaningful to Colorado, the politics of water (the documentary short “Water for Carbon,” 6 p.m. Feb. 24, and local filmmaker Peter McBride’s short “Chasing Water,” 9 p.m. Feb. 24 at the Golden Hotel).
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
16TH DENVER JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL 16 The 10-day event runs Thursday-Mar. 4 and takes place at the Denver FilmCenter/Colfax, 2510 W. Colfax Ave. A variety of passes are available. Festival pass with 20 admissions, $120; 10 pack, $75; individual films, $9-$10. For schedule and ticket info: 303-316-6360 or
COLORADO ENVIRONMENTAL FILM FESTIVAL. The three-day fest of Earth-engaged short and feature-length films, plus panels and EcoExpo and EcoAction events, runs Thursday-Feb. 25 in Golden. At the American Mountaineering Center, 710 10th Street. All session pass, $40; individual session admission, $5. For schedule and ticket info:
