Here is a calendar of upcoming events, up and down the country. Some are organized by us, others by like-minded organizations and groups.
Daniel Gold and his father shortly after the war
DANIEL GOLD: HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR MEETING
Hidden by his parents as the Nazis rounded up the elderly and the children in their Ghetto, they were unable to prevent their own incarceration in Dachau Concentration camp.
When the war ended Daniel Gold, was reunited with his father but his mother perished in the camp. He and his father made their way as refugees to Israel. Eventually he joined the IDF as part of his compulsory military service and became a fighter pilot, fightingin both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Following his military service he enrolled at a University and eventually rose to becoming a Professor of Medical Microbiology. He is touring New Zealand, telling his story to high school students and re-acquainting them to the evils of intolerance and the Holocaust. He will be addressing the society at a public meeting in Christchurch.
He has a remarkable and fascinating story to tell.
Please register your interest for security and catering purposes (see event contact details)
Daniel Gold and his father shortly after the war
DANIEL GOLD: HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR MEETING
Hidden by his parents as the Nazis rounded up the elderly and the children in their Ghetto, they were unable to prevent their own incarceration in Dachau Concentration camp.
When the war ended Daniel Gold, was reunited with his father but his mother perished in the camp. He and his father made their way as refugees to Israel. Eventually he joined the IDF as part of his compulsory military service and became a fighter pilot, fightingin both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Following his military service he enrolled at a University and eventually rose to becoming a Professor of Medical Microbiology. He is touring New Zealand, telling his story to high school students and re-acquainting them to the evils of intolerance and the Holocaust. He will be addressing the society at a public meeting in Christchurch.
He has a remarkable and fascinating story to tell.
Daniel Gold and his father shortly after the war
DANIEL GOLD: HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR MEETING
Hidden by his parents as the Nazis rounded up the elderly and the children in their Ghetto, they were unable to prevent their own incarceration in Dachau Concentration camp.
When the war ended Daniel Gold, was reunited with his father but his mother perished in the camp. He and his father made their way as refugees to Israel. Eventually he joined the IDF as part of his compulsory military service and became a fighter pilot, fightingin both the 1967 and 1973 wars. Following his military service he enrolled at a University and eventually rose to becoming a Professor of Medical Microbiology. He is touring New Zealand, telling his story to high school students and re-acquainting them to the evils of intolerance and the Holocaust. He will be addressing the society at a public meeting in Christchurch.
He has a remarkable and fascinating story to tell.
JIFF is the home of the most comprehensive range of Israeli and Jewish-themed films in Australia and New Zealand. The films premiere in our annual three-week film festival in November or our newly established Holocaust Film Series in March. JIFF is building on the long and proud 24-year history of Jewish film festivals in Australia.
Son of Saul (2015)
In the horror of 1944 Auschwitz, a prisoner forced to burn the corpses of his own people finds moral survival upon trying to salvage from the flames the body of a boy he takes for his son. 107 minutes.
Cannes Film Festival 2015
| Won FIPRESCI Prize |
Competition László Nemes |
| Won François Chalais Award |
László Nemes |
| Won Grand Prize of the Jury |
László Nemes |
| Won Vulcain Prize for the Technical Artist |
Tamás Zányi (sound designer)
for the outstanding contribution of sound to the narration.
|
| Nominated Golden Camera |
László Nemes |
| Nominated Palme d’Or |
László Nemes |
Ghent International Film Festival 2015
| Nominated Grand Prix |
Best Film László Nemes |
Hamburg Film Festival 2015
| Nominated Critics Award |
László Nemes |
Hawaii International Film Festival 2015
| Nominated EuroCinema Hawai’i Award |
Best Film László Nemes |
London Film Festival 2015
| Nominated Best Film |
Official Competition László Nemes |
Sarajevo Film Festival 2015
| Won Special Jury Prize |
Feature Film László Nemes |
| Nominated Heart of Sarajevo |
Best Film László Nemes |
Join us for a highly informative and interactive presentation by acclaimed Professor Yoram Barak on a survey of the available evidence, observations and hypotheses on how Alzheimer’s Disease might be prevented. This is the second in a 2-part series of lectures.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr. Yoram Barak is an assistant professor of Psychiatry at the Sackler School of Medicine of Tel-Aviv University, and director of the Psychogeriatric Department at the Abarbanel Mental Health Center. Trained in medicine and psychiatry at the Sackler School of Medicine, he became an Israel Medical Scientific Council Specialist in Psychiatry in 1993, and was awarded a Masters in Health Administration from Ben-Gurion University of Beer-Sheva, Israel in 2004.
Dr. Barak is also a consultant for the National Multiple Sclerosis Center in Israel and a special consultant on Positive Psychology for the Israel Defense Forces. He was president of the Israeli Association of Old-Age Psychiatry, and is currently on the editorial board of the Israel Journal of Psychiatry and the Open Psychiatry Journal. Research interests include multiple sclerosis, cancer, depression, schizophrenia, obsessive–compulsive disorder, suicide and geriatric psychiatry. He has published extensively in these areas, and is author and co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles.
He is currently on Sabbatical and teaching at the Otago University School of Medicine in Christchurch.
VENUE: Northwood Villa Clubrooms, Northwood Villas Cres, off O’Neill Ave, Northwood, Christchurch
WHEN: 2pm, Sunday, July 3, 2016
ADMISSION: Please bring a plate of finger food, we’d be grateful if you could avoid pork or seafood products.
FEEL FREE TO INVITE YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
If you’ve not heard of Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin, you’ll wonder how that could have been once you’ve seen what he does in this film. For dance aficionados, this is surely the most anticipated artist portrait since Wim Wenders’ Pina.
“A spectacular and celebratory investigation of a modern dancer’s creative process, this documentary tracks the four decades-long career of renowned choreographer Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of Israel’s Batsheva Dance Company. Thoughtfully and painstakingly researched, the film is packed with visually arresting archival footage from every stage of Naharin’s professional (and personal) life…
Choreographed pieces move in kinetic bursts from the rehearsal studio to the stage and, in interviews, dancers who’ve worked with him and colleagues from different periods offer insights in terms both admiring and blunt. Naharin is similarly expressive – about… the joys of physical expression, his struggles to convey his vision to those tasked with embodying it and the dance-world backdrop against which he developed his singular choreographic style and movement language, known as Gaga.
Heymann, a veteran documentarian whose filmography includes an earlier work about Naharin, skillfully constructs a portrait from these elements, methodically adding layers and sometimes revisiting previously seen footage, arming the viewer with new revelations and a more complicated understanding.” — Lynn Rapoport, San Francisco International Film Festival
Investigative journalism meets conspiracy thriller as Alex Gibney (Going Clear, NZIFF15) goes on the trail of Stuxnet, the extraordinary computer virus that metastasised around the world before it arrived at its target, Iranian nuclear facilities, and performing its mission: exploding uranium-enrichment centrifuges.
Undeterred by muzzled officials, the indomitable Gibney shows how Stuxnet – or ‘Olympic Games’, as its architects called it – was cooked up covertly by the US and Israel, creating a new level of virus complexity and a new class of weapon. One of Gibney’s sources, dramatised as a composite individual and played by a digitally reconstituted actor (one of many striking visual effects), says the worm may never have come to public attention had it not been for a unilateral Israeli move to recalibrate Stuxnet’s code and accelerate its impact. A wider operation had to be abandoned, and Tehran retaliated in kind, attacking US institutions with malware and parading its own burgeoning ‘cyber army’.
Gibney manages not only to illuminate in plain terms how Stuxnet worked, but to also issue a powerful warning about the Pandora’s box it opens. Echoing ideas explored in his WikiLeaks documentary We Steal Secrets, Gibney argues that in the face of an emerging cyber-conflict threat, which is analogous to that of nuclear weapons many decades ago, international norms and rules of engagement must be developed outside the shadows of secrecy and denial. — Toby Manhire
“Zero Days is reminiscent of that scene in Skyfall when Q tells 007 that he can do more damage with his laptop before his morning cup of Earl Grey than Bond can do in a year.” — Nicholas Barber, BBC
The German-Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt left her indelible imprint on 20th-century thought by coining the concept of the ‘banality of evil’ when reporting on the 1963 trial of Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann. This spirited documentary illuminates that often abused idea and draws a larger picture of Arendt’s often conflicted engagement with the defining phenomena of her era – and maybe ours too.
Richly illustrated with historical footage, Vita Activa offers an intimate portrait of Arendt’s life and work – both deeply informed by the aftermath of World War I, the rise of Nazi Germany and its systematic elimination of European Jews.
“Directed by Israeli documentarian Ada Ushpiz, who has degrees in philosophy and history as well as filmmaking experience, Vita Activa closely examines Arendt’s ‘active life’ with the goal of putting us inside her formative experiences, the better to reveal who she was and where her attitudes came from. There are interviews with old friends and academic experts and extensive use of filmed interviews Arendt herself gave, as well as the effective reading of excerpts from her essays and letters by actress Alison Darcy. Though the talk is smart and constant here, Vita Activa also benefits from the director’s sharp eye for effective, often rarely seen newsreel and home-movie footage.” — Kenneth Turan, LA Times
“There are moments in Vita Activa, an urgent and often startling documentary from Israeli director Ada Ushpiz, where I could feel her trying to reach across the decades and talk to us.” — Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
It’s that time of the year again folks.
Please submit nominations for Committee members and President one week beforehand, being 5pm Sunday 14 August.
After the formalities are over, we will be showing the movie “The Concert.”
“The Concert” is a 2009 French comedy-drama film by Radu Mihăileanu, starring Aleksei Guskov, Mélanie Laurent and Miou-Miou.
It is about the redemption of a former world-famous conductor of the Bolshoi Theatre orchestra, known as “The Maestro,” Andrey Simonovich Filipov, who had had his career publicly broken by Leonid Brezhnev for defending Jewish musicians and is reduced to working as a mere janitor in the theatre where he once conducted, becoming an alcoholic in the process.
It won the Best Original Score and Best Sound awards at César Awards 2010. It was also nominated for two Magritte Awards in the category of Best Film in Coproduction and Best Editing for Ludo Troch in 2011, and Best Foreign Film at the 68th Golden Globe Awards.
Please bring a plate of finger food. We’d be grateful if you avoided pork or seafood products.
CANTERBURY UNIVERSITY: RAPHAEL WEIN AND NAFTALI GROSS
Tuesday October 25, 12 noon
THE NZ INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS INVITES YOU TO WHAT PROMISES TO BE AN ENGAGING AND FASCINATING ADDRESS
Ethical Dilemmas of Serving in the Israeli Defense Forces: Israel’s war against terrorism.
About the Speakers:
Raphael is a Business Administration and Political Science Student at Ariel University and is a reservist in the IDF. Naftali is a medical student at the Hebrew University and a volunteer paramedic for Magen David (the equivalent of St John’s Ambulance Service in NZ) and is also a reservist in the IDF. Both were combatants in the 2014 Gaza War.
Venue: Logie 104, University of Canterbury, Ilam, Christchurch.
A map showing the location of the venue may be obtained by clicking this link.
Admission is free
Feel free to pass this notice on to anyone else you feel may be interested.