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January 2010: Reel Time
Rising Son
The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival flourishes with Kenny Blank at the helm
By Brianne Britzius
 It seems a monumental task: Screen 400 or so Jewish-themed movies and whittle them down to the best. But thanks to a seventy-person committee, Atlanta Jewish Film Festival executive director Kenny Blank didn’t have to go it alone. After four months of group and individual viewings, the team narrowed the entries to seventy. Then it was up to Blank to cull the fifty or so films attendees will see at this year’s event, scheduled for January 13 to 24 at three metro theaters.
The number of entries alone could stand as proof that Blank—who took over in 2005—has accomplished his goal of making the AJFF a “complete film festival experience.” But he’s also enhanced the festival’s reputation by lining up guest speakers and striving to break expectations. “They think, ‘Oh, that’s gotta be a bunch of dreary Holocaust films,’” says Blank, whose father and stepmother, Arthur and Stephanie, are presenting sponsors. “[There’s] really so much more to the Jewish experience, and we really try to deal with universal themes and universal stories.” That includes Ajami, a Crash-like film set in Israel, and Protektor, which follows a radio journalist and his wife in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. One standout, says Blank, is Berlin ’36, the portrayal of a German Jew’s removal from the 1936 Olympics by the Nazis.
Blank has also brought about tangible growth: Under his watch, attendance has more than tripled to 18,000, and the event has been stretched to twelve days. Before this year’s festival, though, the AJFF will host a special event January 4: Grammy winner (and longtime MGM Studios music coordinator) Richard Kaufman will conduct the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra in a concert showcasing scores from Jewish-influenced movies such as Driving Miss Daisy and Exodus.
Photograph by Neda Abghari
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