Hartford Jewish Film Festival

About the Event

Join us to celebrate the diversity and richness of Jewish culture and history through the medium of film.

The Phyllis Hoffman Hartford Jewish Film Festival is back for its 29th year this winter, ready to captivate audiences with a diverse array of films, speakers, and special events. The Film Festival Committee carefully selects films that showcase the breadth and depth of Jewish cultural, religious, historical, and social conditions of the modern era. These films offer audiences the opportunity to experience powerful stories and moving images that challenge and inspire.

Schedule of Events

3:00pm - Ain't No Back to a Merry-Go-Round at Mandell JCC

Reel Talk: Avi Patt, Maurice Greenberg Professor of Holocaust Studies and Inaugural Director of the Center for the Study of Antisemitism, in conversation with Cheryl Greenberg, Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of History at Trinity College, and Deacon Arthur L. Miller, former Director of the Office of Black Catholic Ministries for the Archdiocese of Hartford.

When five Howard University students sat on a segregated Maryland carousel in 1960, the arrests made headlines. When the largely Jewish community near Glen Echo Amusement Park joined the Black students in picketing, the first organized interracial civil rights protest in US history was born. The pickets attracted Nazis, Congressmen, and a press avalanche. Picketing together for these unlikely allies led to partying together, and union organizers mentored student activists. Ten 1961 Freedom Riders, including Stokely Carmichael, were incubated on the Glen Echo picket line, and the carousel arrests were challenged in a Supreme Court case. With never-before seen footage, and immersive storytelling by Emmy-award winning director Ilana Trachtman, four living protesters rescue this untold story, revealing the price, and the power, of heeding the impulse to activism. Acclaimed actors Jeffrey Wright, Mandy Patinkin, voice the Black and mainstream presses, respectively, with additional voiceover by Bob Balaban, Lee Grant, Peter Gallagher, Dominique Thorne, Alysia Reiner and Tracie Thoms.

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