Jewish Film Festival back for 2022

The 7th Stowe Jewish Film Festival will return to Spruce Peak Arts — and beyond — this summer.

This year’s hybrid festival features both in-person and virtual screenings, and the theme is “The Jewish Experience,” offering a multiplicity of cultures, languages, countries, traditions and colors.

Patterns of immigration have taken Jews all over the world, melding and merging, creating hybrid cultures and complex identities.

All film screenings will include director Q&As via ZOOM for the in-person audience and recorded then posted for those viewing virtually.

For the first time, the Stowe Jewish Film Festival will expand beyond its Stowe home to offer a film screening at the Big Picture in Waitsfield.

The festival will conclude with a festive multidisciplinary celebration of film, food, dance and music at the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe.

Films this year include:

• July 13: “Yerusalem,” Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, Stowe, 7 p.m. This documentary follows the dramatic and tumultuous journey of the Jewish Ethiopian community as it finds its way back to the heart of the Jewish people — Jerusalem — after centuries of isolation.

• July 21: “UnRaveling,” at Big Picture Theater, Waitsfield, 7 p.m. “Did Pancho Villa really try to kill my grandfather?” While attempting to unravel a family mystery, the filmmaker reveals a dynamic story of borderland relations between a Texas Jewish merchant family and its Mexican neighbors at the beginning of the 20th century.

• July 27: “The Missing Tale,” at Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center, 7 p.m. A sensitive and intimate portrait of the few remaining members of the ancient Jewish community of Cochin, India.

• July 31: “The Mamboniks,” at Jewish Community of Greater Stowe, 7 p.m.

This film is the story about the irresistible appeal of music and dance. Crossing geographic and cultural boundaries, the mambo became a sensational trend in the 1950s among Jews in New York, Miami and the Catskills. Free dessert buffet and a dance party with a DJ and mambo and salsa dance instructor follows.

The film festival, a program of the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe, works with the intention of bringing community together, both internal and external. The festival is an opportunity to reach out to others in the central Vermont region to engage in community building and dialogue through cultural entertainment.

Tickets for in-person screenings are $10 in advance, $15 at the door. Virtual screenings are $10. Or watch all four (in person or virtually) for $36. To buy tickets, read more about the films or sign up for virtual screenings, go to sprucepeakarts.org.