Jewish Film Festival kicks off in Berlin

The 16th Jewish Film Festival in Berlin and Potsdam got underway at the city's Astor Film Lounge Sunday with the German premiere of French director Jean-Jaques Zilbermann's zany comedy, La Folle Histoire D'Amour de Simon Eskenazy (He's My Girl).

The role of Simon, a gay Jewish clarinet player who was the main character in the director's 1998 movie, Man is a Woman, is again played by Antoine de Caunes.

This time round, Simon falls in love with Naim (Mehdi Dehbi), a transsexual Arab who works as a waiter in Paris. When Simon's ill mother moves in with her son, the impetuous Naim pretends to be a nurse and moves in too, in order to get on the mother's good side.

Inevitably, hilarious scenes follow. The film went down well with the Berlin audience which applauded strongly at the end of the 100-minute-long matinee screening.

The 2010 Jewish Festival features 23 films from the USA, Britain, France, Austria, Holland, Germany, Argentina, Russia and Israel. Two of the festival movies, Lisa Geduldig's Esther and Me, and Eve Annenberg's, Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish, are due to receive their world premieres at the 14-day Berlin-Potsdam event.

Sixteen other films are scheduled to make their German debut at the festival. Famous for the sheer diversity of its films, and long considered a highlight of Berlin's cultural calender, the Jewish Film Festival has this year faced enormous funding difficulties.

Nicola Galliner, the event's founder-director told dpa that not until virtually the last moment was she certain the event would be able to go ahead as planned.

"Raising the 200,000 euro financial backing for the festival proved a nightmare," said London-born Galliner, warning that the festival's long-term future remained "uncertain."

Ultimately, however, the Berlin authorities, the State Lotto Foundation, the local Jewish community, and other organisations had ensured the 2010 event "would not be lost to the Berliners," she said.

More than 30,000 cinema-goers attend the Jewish Film Festival every year, according to Galliner, who stressed that the movie jamboree was not a "purely Jewish event," but was equally a magnet for non-Jewish Berliners.

A film bound to attract attention this year is Lillian Birnhaum and Peter Stephan Jungk's 52-minute-long documentary A Bridge Between Worlds, which deals with the life of internationally famous conductor, composer and jazz pianist Andre Previn.

"Few people in Berlin are aware that this exceptionally gifted man who, for almost 20 years was the conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, and who in Hollywood won four Oscars in Hollywood for his film music scores in earlier years, was born here in Berlin in 1929," said Galliner.

Previn, whose ancestors were of Russian-Jewish origin, lived with his parents in Innsbruckerstrasse in Berlin's Schoeneberg district in the 1930s when Nazi mobs occasionally went on the rampage in the German capital.

But by 1938 as the Nazi oppression increased, the Previn family fled to Paris and then in 194l on to the United States, where Andre subsequently became a world famous musician and conductor.

In the 1920s, Previn's father had been a successful lawyer in Berlin. But once the Nazis seized power he was banned from practicing his profession. Himself a talented pianist he had encouraged Andre's early interest in music.

In the United States, as the film reveals, Andre Previn never restricted himself to classical music. A gifted composer and jazz pianist he also wrote the musical scores for several hugely successful Hollywood films, including the Oscar-winning, Streetcar Named Desire.

In "Bridge Between Worlds" Previn is seen being interviewed by two of his ex-wives - movie star Mia Farrow, and world famous violinist Anne Sophie Mutter.

The British dramatist Tom Stoppard and the noted soprano Renee Fleming are also seen in conversation with the 81-year-old.

In the documentary, Previn talks of returning to Berlin in the 1950s but not being able to find the house where he and his parents had lived in the 1930s.

The building at 19 Innsbruckerstrasse was destroyed during a war-time bombing raid. Now, a modern four-storey high block of flats stands on the plot. "You don't even find a plaque noting that Previn once lived there," says Galliner sourly.