Aug. 11
12th Annual Omaha Jewish Film Festival
Jewish Community Center Theater, 333 S 132 St.
7 p.m., $8, 334.6463
For those looking for something more than the latest blockbuster, The Jewish Community Center Theater is hosting a festival of independent, international films this August. Starting things off Sunday is The Ballad of the Weeping Spring (2012), a stylized homage to Spaghetti Westerns and samurai epics out of Israel. Written and directed by Benny Toraty and staring Uri Gavriel, the movie will be presented in Hebrew with English subtitles. The Ballad of the Weeping Spring follows the former leader of a Mizrahi band, Jossef Tawila (Gavriel), living a solitary life after an accident split his band apart twenty years ago. The film begins when the son of his friend and former band mate comes to Tawila with a request from his dying father. (aristocratps.com) Tawila decides to journey through the past to reunite the band to play an old composition for his dying friend, perhaps healing himself in the process. The Ballad of the Weeping Spring won four Israeli Oscars (Ophir Awards) in 2012 and is noted especially for its pan-ethnic soundtrack. A deli dinner will precede the film, beginning at 6 p.m. and will cost $12. Reservations for dinner are required and can be made by phone. The festival will continue through Sunday, August 25th with films The Other Son, Hava Nagila—The Movie, and Up the Wrong Tree on August 18th, 21st, and 25th respectively, all at 7 p.m.