This year’s 7th annual spring film fest will present 10 Boston area premieres including special programs for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom Ha Shoah), Israel Memorial Day (Yom Hazikaron) and Israel Independence Day (Yom HaAztmaut)

The opening program – which coincides with the Brandeis Spring Arts Festival - features Dziga and his Brothers, a new Russian film tribute to the famous Kaufman brothers who revolutionized cinematography preceded by one of the restored gems Jewish Life In Bialystok from the archives of the National Center for Jewish Film.

Highlights of the festival include Anouk Aimee’s marvelous performance in Marceline Loridan-Ivens feature film A Birch-Tree Meadow (the literal translation of Birkenau) about her experiences at Auschwitz Birkenau. Winner of the best Jewish film in Jerusalem in July, Mark Jenkins of The Village Voice voted this film the best-undistributed feature of 2003. It will screen at 7 pm on Holocaust Remembrance day preceded at 4 PM by Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust a poignant new documentary that opened commercially in NYC in February to rave reviews.

In commemoration of Israel Memorial Day a special screening of The First Israeli in Space: Ilan Ramon who was a soldier as well as an astronaut will be held on Saturday evening April 24th. Filmmaker Neil Weisbord, (a former WGBH-TV director) followed Ilan Ramon and his family for four years as he trained for this historic flight The screening will provide a proper tribute to this fallen hero. At 4:30 pm on Sunday the 25th, David Ofek’s documentary, No. 17 is Anonymous provides an appropriate tribute to those who have been killed and injured in the numerous terrorists’ incidents. This simple yet poignant film won DocAviv in April 2003 and was invited to New Directors in NYC and Hotdocs in Montreal

In celebration of Israel Independence Day, The Barbeque People provides some mystery, levity and ethnic flavor. This feature opens and closes on a hill in Ashdod overlooking the Mediterranean Sea the site of an annual Independence Day BBQ of the Iraqi community.

The festival covers a wide range of Jewish experiences – many focusing on immigration (Exodus to Berlin) and identity (Black Israel) before closing on a lighter note with a new German film about post-Communist adolescence, When Grandpa Loved Rita Hayworth.

All screenings will take place in the Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque in the Sachar International Center located on the Brandeis campus in Waltham, MA

Tickets are $8, Seniors $6, groups of 20 or more $5, festival passes $60, senior festival passes $50 Brandeis University faculty and students free with ID.

The National Center for Jewish Film is a non-profit archive and resource center established in 1976 to preserve and restore the cinematographic records of the Jewish experience. As the world leader in the preservation of Yiddish language cinema, NCJF has restored 32 such films to date, including Tevye, The Dybbuk, The Light Ahead, Overture to Glory, and The Singing Blacksmith.