RSS
LA-Based Nonprofit Announces $450,000 in Grants for Films About Holocaust, Antisemitism
An archival image featured in “Wednesdays in Mississippi.” Photo: JSP
Jewish Story Partners (JSP), a Los Angeles-based nonprofit film funding organization, announced on Thursday that among its new grantees, $450,000 will be distributed between 18 documentary films that focus on the Holocaust or antisemitism.
JSP also announced the creation of its Holocaust Film Fund and the Antisemitism and the Ecosystem of Hate Film Fund.
“In light of the rise of antisemitism, particularly in the aftermath of Oct. 7, and in response to the persistence of Holocaust denial and the myriad Holocaust stories yet to be told, JSP renews our faith in film as an indispensable tool to build empathy and fight against ignorance and hate,” the organization said in a press release.
JSP Co-executive directors Caroline Libresco and Roberta Grossman added: “At a time when nuance is sorely needed in public discourse, we’re proud to support films that elucidate complex realities and reflect a range of Jewish stories, perspectives, and experiences.”
One documentary that will receive a grant as part of the new round of film funding from JSP is titled The Last Man of the First Hour, from director Katharina Otto-Bernstein and producers Oleg Dubson and Sabine Schenk. It tells the story of 100-year-old CIA spy Peter Sichel, who escaped Nazi Germany as a Jewish refugee and became the first CIA station chief in post-war Berlin as well as an undercover operative during the Cold War.
Another film — titled We’ve Been Here Before: What the Punk Scene Can Teach Us About White Supremacy — “gets up close and personal with self-proclaimed misfits and nonconformists of punk subculture as they fight against white nationalists and neo-Nazis.” Jacob Kornbluth directed the documentary and co-produced the film with Francine Hermelin Levite.
A third JSP grantee is Wednesdays in Mississippi, which is a documentary about Dorothy Height, president of the National Council of Negro Women, and Jewish volunteer Polly Cowan, who together gathered a group of women activists from different races and faiths who wanted to build bridges across race, religion, and class during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1960s.
The jury that selected the 18 films receiving the grant said in a released statement that “the formally and thematically far-ranging documentaries we selected refuse to give in to reductionism or stereotypes, refuse to ignore tough questions.”
“Instead, they reveal a multiplicity of untold, unexpected global Jewish stories, both microscopic and sprawling across generations,” they added. “In a time of fractured truth and connection, these excellent projects expand our collective memory and our sense of shared humanity.”
JSP launched in April 2021 with support from Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and Maimonides Fund. Over the years, the film funding organization has awarded approximately $2.5 million in grants to 85 independent projects that tell the Jewish story.
JSP is also launching a new Education-Impact Program, in which it will annually provide more than 600 free screenings of three JSP-funded documentaries at nonprofits, schools, and religious institutions. The inaugural cohort of the Education-Impact grants is Ondi Timoner’s Last Flight Home, Tessa Louise Salomé’s The Wild One, and Iris Zaki’s Egypt, A Love Song.
The post LA-Based Nonprofit Announces $450,000 in Grants for Films About Holocaust, Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login