The Arts

Wooed by Israel funding, Bollywood movie filmed in Tel Aviv

Bollywood superstar Jacqueline Fernandez was in Israel this week with a crew of 80 to shoot scenes for an action-comedy film opposite Indian heartthrob Sushant Singh Rajput, in the first Bollywood movie to be filmed in the Jewish state. “Drive,” described as an Indian version of Hollywood’s “The Fast and the Furious” franchise and likely […]

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International, Middle East, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Being harassed by Harvey Weinstein was ‘disgusting’ and ‘pathetic,’ TV reporter says

Harvey Weinstein lured TV reporter Lauren Sivan into a quiet place in 2007 and then engaged in a “disgusting and kind of pathetic” display of sexual harassment, Sivan said in her first television interview about the encounter. Appearing Monday on NBC’s “Megyn Kelly Today,” Sivan — who is now a reporter with KTTV, a Fox

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Nazi-looted Pissarro painting at centre of legal tussle

A painting by impressionist master Camille Pissarro that was seized from its French Jewish owner during World War II is at the centre of a court battle beginning Tuesday in Paris after surfacing at an exhibition. “La Cueillette des Pois” (Picking Peas), a gouache from 1887, emerged earlier this year on display at the French

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International, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

‘My Jerusalem Book’ like having an advance guide

My Jerusalem Book by Barbara Shaw, Design and Illustration by Shlomi Gorodetsky, Barbara Shaw Gifts Publishers, Jerusalem, Israel, © 2017, ISBN 978-965-572-210-9, p. 128, $24.90 By Fred Reiss, Ed.D. WINCHESTER, California – Jerusalem is unlike any other city in Israel. It lacks the cotillion atmosphere of Tel Aviv, or the innovative climate of some of the

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Middle East

Salman Rushdie chortles over Larry David’s ‘fatwa’

Author Salman Rushdie thinks it’s pretty, pretty funny that the long-awaited premier of HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” has a plot modeled on his own experience of being targeted by the Iranian regime with a fatwa. In the first episode of the 9th season, which aired October 1, Larry David’s eponymous character talks about a musical

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Leonard Cohen poems to be published in final book

NEW YORK — The final poems of Leonard Cohen, completed days before the legendary songwriter died, will be published in an anthology next year, his estate announced late Friday. Entitled “The Flame,” the volume will include Cohen’s unpublished poems as well as his prose pieces and illustrations and lyrics to his three final albums. Get

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Books, Poetry & Short Stories, International

Harvey Weinstein loses key supporters in wake of sex harassment allegations

LOS ANGELES — Harvey Weinstein continued to lose key support over the weekend from people within his close circle of associates and in the larger media industry as the disgraced film executive moved to contain the fallout from his sexual harassment scandal. Two important members of his crisis team quit Saturday, including Los Angeles attorney

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Theatre, Film & Broadcast, USA

Tel Aviv Mayor supports theater that honored terrorists

Hundreds of people, including Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, rallied at Jaffa’s Arab-Hebrew Theater Friday. The Arab-Hebrew Theater is facing a cut in the state subsidies it receives after it honored Dareen Tatour, an Israeli-Arab poet who was indicted in 2015 for incitement to violence and support of terrorism. “This is a theater that does

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Middle East, Theatre, Film & Broadcast

Painting by Hitler at Italian museum attacked by screwdriver-wielding man

An oil painting by Adolf Hitler on display in an Italian museum suffered minor damage Thursday after a man attacked it with a screwdriver. A spokesperson for the Museum of Salo, east of Milan, said that the middle-aged man shouted “Bastard,” before lunging at the untitled painting, which is being shown publicly for the first

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International, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts

An Iranian piano prodigy. A big dream. And an arduous visa process.

When the Iranian pianist and composer, Amir Darabi, was accepted to Berklee College of Music this past summer, everything seemed to be going his way. He had already established himself as a piano prodigy in his home country, released a full-length debut album and performed in numerous prominent venues, including Tehran’s Roudaki Hall. He didn’t

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Middle East, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, USA

France 24’s web documentary “If I Ever Come Back” wins audience awards at the Swiss Web Festival

France 24’s Stephanie Trouillard has been awarded the Audience Award at the Swiss Web Festival for her work chronicling the last days of a French Jewish girl who died in the Holocaust. In 2010, a collection of wartime letters and photographs was discovered in an old cupboard at a high school in Paris. Forgotten for

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Jewish History, Theatre, Film & Broadcast