2025 Series - Welcome Back
Meet us at The Colonial Thursdays at 7:00 PM, July 10, July 31, August 7,
August 21, September 4
The 2025 White Mountain Jewish Film Festival returns to the Colonial Theatre this summer for four films focusing on the Jewish experience in America, Israel, and throughout the world. Filmgoers can again enjoy the magic of watching great theatrical presentations on the big screen of Bethlehem’s historic Colonial Theatre, one of the oldest continuously operating movie theatres in the country - and one of the safest with state of the art air conditioning and filtration systems!
As always, your ticket includes our festival’s famous patio parties beginning at 6:00 p.m. with complimentary refreshments and an assortment of beverages. At 6:30 p.m. the evening’s guest speaker will introduce the film and then stay for a Q & A as the house lights go on at the end of each film. We were grateful to receive rave reviews of our selection of last year’s WMJFF films and guest speakers.
Movie Times - All Films:
Box Office Opens: 5:30 PM | Patio Opens: 6:00 PM | Guest Speaker: 6:30 PM | Film: 7:00PM
Tickets are sold at the door or Purchase online (coming soon)
General Admission: $10.00 | BHC and JFNH Members: $9.00 | Season Pass (5 Films): $40.00
July 10 - Shoshana (2023)
Inspired by real events, SHOSHANA is a political thriller set in the 1930s in Tel Aviv, a brand new European, Jewish city being built on the shores of the Mediterranean.
Thomas Wilkin (Douglas Booth) is in love with the city and with Shoshana Borochov (Irina Starshenbaum). Through their relationship the film explores the way extremism and violence pushes people apart, forcing people to choose one side or the other.
Watch the Trailer here.
Guest Speaker: Rick Winston – Film Historian
Rick Winston was the co-owner of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater for 29 years, and was Programming Director for the Green Mountain Film Festival for 14 years.
He has taught film history at Burlington College, Community College of Vermont, Goddard College, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and has made presentations throughout Vermont on film history.
In the mid-60s, Janis Ian, a teenage singer-songwriter from New Jersey scores a hit ("Society's Child," 1966) about an interracial relationship. The song launches her illustrious career but also ignites controversy, and she plunges into an emotional tailspin–only to emerge from the ashes with an even bigger hit ("At Seventeen," 1975) about body shaming.
For the next six decades, Janis overcame homophobia, record industry misogyny, and a life-threatening illness to produce an indelible body of work that continues to draw large audiences around the globe.
July 31 - “Janis Ian: Breaking the Silence”(2024)
Guest Speaker: Peter Cunningham, Photographer
Peter has been a professional photographer for over 30 years. His teachers include Baptist fisherman Lester Tate, dancer Martha Myers, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Zen Master Bernie Glassman and singer-songwriterJanis Ian. Peter has exhibited his photographs and Still Films in New York, Krakow, London, Paris, Tokyo, Jerusalem, Kigali, Nanjing, Beijing, Berlin and Grand Manan, Canada. His clients include singers, teachers, chefs, playwrights, athletes, accountants, actors, fishermen and clowns. He teaches “Photography as Zen Practice” in the US and China. is co-author with Peter Matthiessen of “Are We There Yet? A Zen Journey through Space and TIme”, and is a founding member of “The Order of DisOrder”.
Brian Epstein, a man who lived a thousand lives in a few short years, a visionary who transformed music history. From running a Liverpool record store to shaping the sound of a generation,
Epstein's journey is a rollercoaster of ambition, passion, and relentless pursuit of greatness. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd stars as the mastermind behind The Beatles' meteoric rise, navigating a whirlwind of unprecedented fame, cultural revolution, and personal demons. But behind the glitz and glamour lies a man seeking acceptance and love in a world not ready. Midas Man peels back the curtain on the swinging '60s, revealing the triumphs, heartbreaks, and secrets of the man who changed the face of music forever. Step into Brian's world, where every touch turns to gold, but the most precious treasure remains just out of reach.
Watch the trailer here
August 7 - “Midas Man” – (2024)
Guest Speaker: Erik Taros, Beatles Historian
Beatles & Rock 'n' Roll Historian, Film Maker and Archivist Erik Taros is an original generation Beatles fan who has been seriously researching and collecting rare music media since the mid-seventies. He has contributed to multiple books (mainly about The Beatles) and served research and archival roles on such films as “Eight Days A Week: The Touring Years” (Director Ron Howard), “Get Back” (Director Peter Jackson), “Beatles ’64” (Producer Martin Scorsese) and “The Lost Weekend: A Love Story” (Director Richard Kaufman) as well as a half dozen other films. He has worked directly at the request of Beatles’ Apple Corps LTD management company on the majority of these projects. Erik stages several two-hour lectures concerning Beatles history which feature rare materials from his archive which cannot be seen elsewhere. Erik iscurrently in talks with the A&E Network to develop a Beatles series to be released in 2026.
A '60s graduate student (Timothy Hutton) recalls his parents (Mandy Patinkin, Lindsay Crouse), executed in the '50s for selling atomic secrets. The film, directed by Sidney Lumet, is based on E. L. Doctorow’s novel inspired by the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for espionage.
Watch the trailer here
August 21 - Daniel – (1983)
Guest Speakers: Robert and Ellen Meeropol with Rick Winston
Robert Meeropol is the younger son of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1953, when he was six years old, the United States Government executed his parents for ”conspiring to steal the secret of the atomic bomb. ”For over 40 years he has been a progressive activist, author and public speaker. In the 1970’s he and his brother, Robert Meeropol, Michael, successfully sued the FBI and CIA to force the release of 300,000 previously secret documents about their parents.
In 1990, after leaving private practice, Robert founded the Rosenberg Fund for Children. The RFC is a public foundation that provides for the educational and emotional needs of children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities. The Fund also supports youth who have been targeted for their own activism.
Ellen Meeropol is the author of five novels (The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister's Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest) and the guest editor for the anthology, Dreams for a Broken World. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women's Prize, The Women's National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Ellen is a founding board member of the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which was started by Robert in 1990 in honor of his parents' refusal to "name names." Ellen's dramatic script telling the story of the foundation has been produced five times, most recently in Manhattan in June 2013, featuring Eve Ensler, Angela Davis, and Cotter Smith.
Rick Winston – Film Historian Rick Winston was the co-owner of Montpelier’s Savoy Theater for 29 years, and was Programming Director for the Green Mountain Film Festival for 14 years. He has taught film history at Burlington College, Community College of Vermont, Goddard College, and the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, and has made presentations throughout Vermont on film history.
Ruth,(Lena Dunham) a neurotic businesswoman from New York, takes her father Edek(Stephen Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor on a journey to Poland to make sense of her family's past. Edek's hesitation to confront his past and his often odd demeanor cause more than just one dispute between him and his daughter. The trip unfolds into a story that encapsulates the emotion of discovery and drama with humor. Based on the best-selling autobiographical novel TOO MANY MEN by New York-based writer Lily Brett.
Watch the trailer here
September 4 - Treasure – (2024)
Guest Speaker: Lori Lefkowitz - Ruderman Professor and Director of the Jewish Studies Program and Director of the Humanities Center at Northeastern University.
She is the author of In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identity, which was named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Women’s Studies. Her awards include a Fulbright professorship at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, an academic fellowship at the Philadelphia Association for Psychoanalysis, a Woodrow Wilson dissertation fellowship in the Women’s Studies Division, and a Golda Meir post-doctoral fellowship at Hebrew University. She was the founding director of Kolot, the Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she held a chair in Gender and Judaism,and is the founding executive editor of the website Ritualwell.org
Other Film Series
We have saved our past film series logs for your knowledge base. If you need assistance finding a past film or have suggestions for future seasons, please email Artistic Director Dorothy Goldstone: dorothygoldstone@gmail.com