Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 21, 2014

From left: Sephardic Educational Center (SEC) director Rabbi Daniel Bouskila; SEC president, Neil. J. Sheff; and festival honorees Joelle Rimokh, Yehoram Gaon, Jack Rimokh and Ronald J. Nessim. Photo by Michelle Mivzari

Israeli Sephardic actor Yehoram Gaon, Los Angeles attorney Ronald J. Nessim, and philanthropic couple Joelle and Jack Rimokh were the honorees at the opening gala of the Los Angeles Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, taking home the Cinema Sepharad Lifetime Achievement Award, the Maimonides Leadership Award and the Sephardic Legacy Award, respectively.

The Nov. 9 event at the Paramount Pictures studio lot featured an array of activities, including a silent auction, dinner buffet, a screening of the film Operation Sunflower (starring Gaon) and an award presentation.

And the late-afternoon gathering marked, in celebratory fashion, the official kickoff of the annual Sephardic film festival in Los Angeles, which featured films depicting the Sephardic Jewish experience. The weeklong festival, which ended Nov. 16 at the Laemmle Music Hall in Beverly Hills, featured films about Jewish communities in Iran, Morocco, Yemen and India, among others.

The Sephardic Educational Center (SEC), an international nonprofit education and culture organization that has its own historic campus in the Old City of Jerusalem, organizes the festival every year. Nessim, a former chairman of the center, is the son of the late Jose Nessim, the SECs founder.

Neil J. Sheff,SEC president and a Westside immigration attorney who helped create the film festival, also attended the gala.

Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) featured the Los Angeles premiere of social justice-oriented filmmaker Ann P. Merediths 2014 Holocaust documentary, Triangles: Witnesses of the Holocaust on Nov. 9.

From left: Triangles filmmaker Ann Meredith and her film subjects, Gabriella Karin, Eva Nathanson and Anne Berkovitz, appeared at Beth Chayim Chadashim. Photo by Glenn Berkovitz

The movie explores the lives of Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles and others who were victims of the Shoah, according to the films publicity materials.

See the rest here:

Moving and shaking: L.A. Sephardic Jewish Film Festival, Beth Chayim Chadashim and more

Category: Sephardic
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