Extras
Awards & Recognition
2011 WJFF Visionary Award Honoring Aviva Kempner
The annual award recognizes and pays tribute to courage, creativity and insight in presenting the diversity of the Jewish experience through the moving image. We are honored to name as the 2011 WJFF Visionary Award recipient "our own" Aviva Kempner. In conjunction with the award, the WJFF is presenting a retrospective of several of Kempner's films-- Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (December 9 at 1:00 pm), The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (December 11 at 2:30 pm) and Partisans of Vilna (December 10 at 6:15 pm). Kempner also will present and discuss her newest project, The Rosenwald Schools, at a work-in-progress screening and discussion (December 11 at 10:30). The filmmaker will appear at all screenings of her work.
Winner of a 2001 Peabody Award
Voted Best Non-Fiction Film 2000
by the New York Film Critics Association
Best Documentary 2000
National Board Review of Motion Pictures
In the 1930s Jewish Mothers would ask their sons: "What kind of day did Hank have?" Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers Slugger who came close to breaking Babe Ruth's home run record, was baseball's first Jewish star. Tall (6'4"), handsome, and uncommonly good-natured, Greenberg was a secular Jew from the Bronx who became "the baseball Moses," an icon for everyone from Walter Matthau ("I joined the Beverly Hills Tennis club to eat lunch with him. I don't play tennis") to Alan Dershowitz ("I thought he'd become the first Jewish president"). Aviva Kempner's loving tribute is chock full of wonderful archival footage from the '30s and '40s and interviews with a self-effacing Greenberg and many of his tiger teammates. Plus Many Patinkin's rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" -- in Yiddish!
Best Documentary 2000
Chicago Film Critics
Best Documentary 2000
Las Vegas Film Critics
Voted Best Documentary Film 2001
by the National Society of Film Critics
Best Documentary
2001 Festival de Sevilla Cine y Deporte
For new non-theatrical bookings contact the National Center for Jewish Film.
The National Center for Jewish Film
Lown 102, MS 053
Brandeis University
Waltham, Massachusetts 02454
www.jewishfilm.org
781.736.8600
Email Blair Lesser Sullivan blairs@brandeis.edu
For posters and hats please visit our Web Shop.
Best Documentary 2000
Florida Film Critics
The President's Award
2001 Columbus International Film & Video Festival
1999 CINE Golden Eagle Award Winner
Spirit Award for Best Sports Documentary
International Sports Video and Film Awards
A recent Quote from a fan
"After watching the Hank Greenberg documentary on Showtime last night, I felt it necessary to contact you. YOUR documentary was not only a magnificent american piece But more importantly a magnificent piece of jewish history. It was the first time that I ENJOYED crying!! I cried for Hank's triumphs and for the ddisgusting treatment he endured at the onset of his remarkable career. AH LEBAN AUF DIR!!! I look forward to the Gertrude Berg (who I was fortunate to know) film."