Photo: Menemsha Films
Shared Legacies at JFilm Festival
After being canceled last spring due to concerns surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak, the JFilm Festival returns to immerse audiences in the Jewish experience with virtual screenings, panel discussions, and more. This year, the festival also has a clear mission of highlighting how communities can acknowledge and work together against social injustice and corruption.
Kathryn Spitz Cohan, executive director of Film Pittsburgh, the nonprofit that organizes JFilm and other major film events in the city, believes addressing these issues is central to their mission.
"I would say we're really trying, through the films that we curate, to move people from point A to point B, meaning bringing people together to understand that we're more alike than different regardless of our skin color, our religion, our political beliefs," says Spitz Cohan. "We're really trying to help people to realize that that is indeed the case. And that, you know, racism, anti-Semitism, these ills that the world is challenged by, that they're not for anybody's good. Nobody benefits."