More Top-Notch Films at Cinema Judaica

The Laemmle Theaters’ Cinema Judaica ’95 continues to offer outstanding pictures, old and new, at the Monica 4-Plex.

Mathieu Kassovitz’s “Cafe au Lait” (today at 12:30 and 9:30 p.m.) is an amusing, up-to-the-minute romantic comedy involving a Woody Allenish young messenger (Kassovitz); his beautiful girlfriend, daughter of a white father and a black mother; and her other boyfriend, the rich, athletic son of an ambassador from an African nation.

Also screening today is Susanne Bier’s compassionate, emotion-charged and deeply perceptive “Freud Leaving Home” (at 2:45 and 7:15 p.m.). Its key setting is the comfortable Stockholm apartment of the Cohens, who are about to celebrate the 60th birthday of the vivacious Rosha Cohen (Ghita Norby). Still living at home is her neurotic daughter (Gunilla Roor), a perennial psych student nicknamed Freud. The hopefully joyous occasion takes a thoroughly unexpected tack that forces Freud at last to confront her need for independence. The result is a film at once sad, funny and courageous.

Incredible as it may seem, Johanna Heer and Werner Schmiedel’s outstanding “The Art of Remembrance--Simon Wiesenthal” (Wednesday at 2:30 and 7 p.m.), a festival highlight, is the first feature-length documentary on the man who from his first day of his liberation from Mauthausen concentration camp dedicated his life to bringing Nazi criminals to justice. The film offers a comprehensive survey of Wiesenthal’s remarkable life and ongoing work, which includes efforts on behalf of all people deprived of human rights. The point that Wiesenthal makes so well is that while he may forgive his tormentors he cannot do so on behalf of the millions who died in the Holocaust.

Gila Almagor, grande dame of the Israeli cinema, fashioned one of her finest roles in “The Summer of Aviya” (Thursday at 2, 4:30 and 9:30 p.m.), a charming, funny and deeply poignant memoir of a bright 10-year-old girl, Aviya (Kaipo Cohen, an enchantress), whose warm, loving and fiercely independent mother (Almagor) is periodically wracked with mental breakdowns. It was directed tenderly by Eli Cohen. In this exhilarating--and never maudlin--1988 film, Almagor in effect is playing her own mother, a woman slowly being driven mad by the loss of her policeman husband to an Arab sniper, and by the Holocaust, although she had fled Poland before World War II broke out.

Almagor has but two harrowing scenes in “Under the Domim Tree” (Thursday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 7:30 p.m.), the beautiful, bittersweet sequel to “The Summer of Aviya.” Set in 1953, the film finds the now teenage Aviya (again Kaipo Cohen) living at a kibbutz-like boarding school housing teenage survivors of the Holocaust because her mother (Almagor) is now confined to a nearby mental institution.

The school’s setting is idyllic, but moments of camaraderie are easily shattered by the teenagers’ tormented memories. In almost all instances, eight years after World War II ended, none of them knows for sure whether their parents or most other relatives are dead or alive. This is a gentle, loving film about confronting pain and loss, beautifully directed, as before, by Eli Cohen.

Information: (310) 394-9741.

*

Note: Several of the films in Cinema Judaica ’95 begin playing today at the Town Center 5 in Encino. Information: (818) 981-9811.

Gregg Bordowitz’s 25-minute “Fast Trip, Long Drop,” which screened last week in the festival, will screen again Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Sunset 5. It is a video diary, spanning several years and recording the filmmaker’s blunt and honest attempt to deal with his HIV status and eventual AIDS diagnosis.

Playing with it is Isaac Julien’s 54-minute “A Darker Side of Black,” an incisive and disturbing study of the homophobia that has been emerging in gangsta rap and reggae, starting with Jamaican musician Buju Banton’s 1992 “Boom Bye Bye,” which called for the shooting of all gays and lesbians. The talented maker of “Looking for Langston” and “Young Soul Rebels” does not merely expose and protest this trend, but looks for its historic roots in slavery, colonialism, chronic poverty and ignorance. Banton and his successors use religion to justify their homophobia; Julien also makes clear that much of this music is also exceedingly demeaning to all women--straight or gay. Also, “Young at Hearts,” an upbeat take on old age, reprises Saturday and Sunday at 11 a.m. at the Monica 4-Plex.

Information: (213) 848-3500.