Jewish Delis: Something to Kvell About!

To many African Americans, soul food is sacrament, ritual, and a key expression of cultural identity. But does this traditional cuisine do more harm to health than it soothes the soul?

The history of Camp Kinderland, founded in the 1920s to provide Jewish children an escape from the hot New York City summers.

Seven months after helping her terminally ill mother during the end of her life in home-hospice, filmmaker Judith Helfand becomes a "new old" single mother at 50. Overnight, she's pushed to deal with her stuff: 63 boxes of her parent's heirlooms overwhelming her office-turned-future-baby's room, the weight her mother had begged her to lose, and the reality of being a half century older than her daughter.

The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.

OUTREMONT AND THE HASIDIM reveals the challenges of accommodating the “Hasidim” – or ultra-Orthodox Jews – in the affluent Montréal borough of Outremont.​Some 7,000 Hasidim live in or near this choice neighbourhood of Québec’s Francophone elite. After settling there more than 70 years ago, the Hasidim are a rapidly growing minority group which today represents about 23% of Outremont’s population.​Thanks to unprecedented access to this self-isolated community, the film lifts the veil on its practices, traditions, music and life as they had never before been seen on Canadian television, without ignoring the community’s expectations, fears. and hopes.

A look at the Jewish community in Rădăuți, Romania, from 1974 to 1976.

The 100-year story of the iconic restaurant chain Horn & Hardart, the inspiration for Starbucks, where generations of Americans ate and drank coffee together at communal tables. From the perspective of former customers, we watch a business climb to its peak success and then grapple with fast food in a forever changed America.

Philoxenia is a short documentary highlighting the synergy between the Greek notion of philoxenia ("friend of the stranger") and Southern hospitality, as expressed through Birmingham, Alabama's Greek-owned restaurants. The film features six local favorite restaurants, two historians and, of course, a lot of mouthwatering dishes.

A food-loving and scientific tribute to the Mediterranean diet and, not least, the liquid gold: olive oil.

"People of the Graphic Novel" is a playful introduction to the history of an art form: from the first "funny pages" to seminal artists including Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman.

An offbeat, irreverent musical documentary that tells the story of a group of Jewish songwriters, including Irving Berlin, Mel Tormé, Jay Livingston, Ray Evans, Gloria Shayne Baker and Johnny Marks, who wrote the soundtrack to Christianity’s most musical holiday. It’s an amazing tale of immigrant outsiders who became irreplaceable players in pop culture’s mainstream – a generation of songwriters who found in Christmas the perfect holiday in which to imagine a better world, and for at least one day a year, make us believe.

Documentary about the final performance of the "Brooklyn Baseball Cantata" led by Cantor Suzanne Bernstein in a small local reform synagogue.

For their joint Bat Mitzvahs, cousins Panda and Mimi made short films exploring what it means to them to be both Jewish and Chinese.

À nos terres : Autonomia paisana

After years as a struggling actor, Daniel was cast to play a part in Conan O'Brien's "human-centipede-menorah." His bizarre experience evolved from one of shame into a deepening connection with his personal heritage, a reckoning with the choices he'd made, and ultimately a desire to tell the story of EIGHT NIGHTS. This is a film about our deep connection to the people we love. At a time when we couldn’t see some of those whom we love most, the making of this film felt even more poignant.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

Documentarian Judith Helfand adopts z daughter at the age of 50.

Through revealing interviews with experts and victims' families, this gripping documentary examines the problem of deadly foodborne illness in the US.

The birth of modern stand-up comedy began in the Catskill Mountains - a boot camp for the greatest generation of Jewish-American Comedians.

Four 12-year-olds—Sharon, Tom, Moishy, and Sophie—prepare for their bar or bat mitzvot.