The 2025 Portland Jewish Film Festival
Documentaries explore great variety of lived experiences
Films February 12 to February 23, 2025
The Portland Jewish Film Festival is back! On sale are tickets to the six documentaries in the 2025 film festival; the first film screens Feb. 12, the final one Feb. 23.
This year’s event is poised to serve a larger audience: movies screen at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, and at PAM CUT’s Tomorrow Theater in Southeast Portland. And the documentaries explore a great variety of lived experiences – those of women, Blacks, Israelis, Palestinians, disabled people, and Holocaust survivors, from post-World War II right up to the present day.
The doc “Shari & Lamb Chop” opens the festival. “Shari Lewis and her puppets like Lamb Chop were transformative for children’s television, teaching them about growing up through laughter, creativity, and heart,” Rebekah Sobel, executive director of OJMCHE, said.
She continued, “Their timeless magic makes them the perfect way to kick off our film festival, celebrating storytelling that inspires, uplifts – and also challenges – audiences of all ages.”
On tap flicks also include “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” that features never-before-seen footage from the first organized interracial civil rights protest in U.S. history. Through four living protesters, it takes viewers back to a 1961 picket line at the now-defunct Maryland-based Glen Echo Amusement Park. Its segregated carousel stoked Jews living nearby to join the picket line with Black students and well-known Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, to fight segregation. Arrests ensued in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
“ADA – My Mother the Architect” profiles Ada Karmi Melamede, one of the most prolific architects of her generation in Israel and abroad. She is tested by the realities of career and motherhood, a unique mother-daughter bond, and a fragile nation grappling with unrealized dreams. Through the lens of her daughter’s camera, Melamede is revealed to be an extraordinary protagonist whose life story is intertwined with the story of the turbulent and complicated country she loves.
Samuel Habib, like most folks in their early 20s, struggles with adulting: becoming independent from family, intimacy, and launching a career. But unlike most, Samuel is a disabled adult with a rare genetic disorder who must tackle these – and many more – challenges from his automated wheelchair and with help from a communication device. In “The Ride Ahead,” Samuel seeks an assist: He turns to other disabled adults to learn how to avoid what are all too common for people like them: unemployment, isolation, and institutionalization.
Ka.tzetnik is a Holocaust survivor who became a feted writer, recluse, and prolific user of LSD, one way he coped with trauma suffered during World War II. Coded like the Auschwitz prisoner number on his arm – 135633 – and within the name he gave himself, Ka.tzetnik led a life of secrecy that morphed into myth, as explored in “The Return from the Other Planet” that includes a post-screening, in-person Q&A with the filmmaker.
Closing night’s “The Other” examines Israelis and Palestinians working in tandem as peace-builders, anti-occupation activists, artists, academics, ex-fighters, and bereaved parents. Before Oct. 7, 2023. And then the Hamas terror attacks occurred, launching a war. The filmmakers returned to their subject matter and subjects, showcasing through October 2024 another reality: an entire ecosystem of peace builders and activists in Israel-Palestine working together toward a better future.
Portland Jewish Film Festival. Passes and tickets are on sale. Films Feb. 12 to Feb. 23, 2025. For passes and more information, such as about Q&A and talkbacks: visit the PJFF website.
About Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education
The Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education explores the legacy of the Jewish experience in Oregon, teaches the enduring and universal relevance of the Holocaust, and provides opportunities for intercultural conversations.