Making movies truly moving

by Tim Irwin

We at Heartland Truly Moving Pictures have been excited about our partnership with the JCC over the past year and more. 

At Heartland, we believe that films can not only entertain, but also inspire, educate and engage. 

This is the reason why many of the screenings we've co-hosted with the JCC have included interaction with the people behind the films. The audience has been able to talk to the filmmakers directly, allowing a connection between the audience and the filmmakers that creates a deeper, more meaningful film experience. 

We’ll be offering another opportunity for this kind of experience as a part of the JCC Ann Katz Festival of Books and Arts on Saturday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. when we show three of the best-received short films from the 2012 Heartland Film Festival and talk to filmmakers from each film.

A scene from It Ain't Over

It Ain’t Over, a documentary short film about a man’s struggle with ALS, received the Audience Choice Award in the Short Film category; we will be seeing the film and talking to producer Karl Koelling about the film and its impact. 

We will also see Mr. Bellpond, a fantastical narrative short film about a playwright, and we will have a chance to ask director A. Todd Smith some questions after the screening. 

Finally, we are excited to screen Kipp Normand, a Festival Award-winning short from the 2012 Festival, about the titular Indianapolis folk artist. Director Jonathan Frey is scheduled to attend the screening in person for a Q&A. 

These three films cover a wide spectrum of topics and experiences, and it is always a treat to be able to chat with filmmakers after seeing their films. 

We’re very thankful for our relationship with the JCC, and how it allows us to bring these films and filmmakers to interested audiences outside of our mid-October Festival. And we’re excited to continue screenings next year, too!

Guest blogger Tim Irwin is the Artistic Director for Heartland Truly Moving Pictures. The nonprofit organization annually produces the internationally known Heartland Film Festival and supports community film screenings with partners like the JCC Indianapolis throughout the year.

An Accidental Tourist Comes to Indianapolis

by JCC Staff and Gregory Dawson

Former Indianapolis Star columnist Gregory Dawson returns to the city for a JCC Indianapolis 2012 Ann Katz Festival of Books and Arts author event on November 12 at 7 p.m.

At the festival, Dawson will discuss his latest book, Judgment Before Nuremberg: The Holocaust in the Ukraine and the First Nazi War Crimes Trial. But before his talk, Dawson is sharing the personal story behind the publication of his books with JCC Banter Blog readers.

I’m an accidental tourist – through my own history, and through the history of the Holocaust in a place most people still don’t associate with the Holocaust: Ukraine.

This is remarkable since Ukraine is where the Holocaust as the man on the street thinks of it – the systematic, mass extermination of the Jews – began. Not Auschwitz or Sobibor or Treblinka.

I was one of those men in the street until recently. Growing up in Bloomington in the 1950s and 60s, an IU music faculty brat, I knew nothing about the Holocaust. It wasn’t taught in public school and my mother never talked about the war. My only religion was IU basketball. I didn’t know I was Jewish until I was a teenager.

I was 30 when my mother first told me about her escape from the Nazis in Ukraine. I was 56 when I traveled to Ukraine to research and write her story, Hiding in the Spotlight, published in 2009. I went back a second time in December 2010, this time walking the exact route of the death march my mother’s family followed to the killing field outside Kharkov, on the same day and in the same bitter cold they had done it nearly 70 years before. 

With the writing of Judgment Before Nuremberg, the accidental tourist’s journey was complete.

- Gregory Dawson, November 2012