The Saint John Jewish Historical Museum. (Image: © 2018 Google)
The Saint John Jewish Historical Museum is turning to film this week for its sixth annual Jewish Film Festival.
Executive director Katherine Biggs-Craft says the festival is the main fundraiser for the museum and showcases films that highlight Jewish culture and experiences.
“We bring in films that you would never expect to see in Saint John, all related in some way to Jewish life, Jewish history, so they could be biography, comedy, a wide range of things,” she said.
Biggs- Craft says the attendees of the festival are largely non-Jewish.
“We do have Jewish members of the community who do come because these are their stories or their family’s stories, they can connect to them, but we have a wide range of audience members. There certainly seems to be an audience for this and we get a really good turnout,” she said.
“People will go away having learned something new about Jewish life, Jewish culture, and that may translate into them coming back to activities at the museum.”
Biggs-Craft says one of the movies she is most excited about is ‘The Tobacconist,’ which depicts a young man and his friendship with psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
“He’s a customer of this tobacco shop where this young Jewish man is working and Freud’s this psychoanalyst, he knows everything and this young man needs some advice about girls. So pulling somebody out of history, and in a realistic way [he’s] being brought back to life, and seeing how he’s going to interact with this young man to understand women,” she said.
The museum will be screening a film each day this week at 7 p.m., with ‘The Tobacconist’ playing on Wednesday. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Ticket are $10, and can be purchased at the door or at the Imperial Theatre.
A full list of movies showing this week can be found online.
