The Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, the city’s largest film festival as well as the second most attended festival of its kind in the world, kicks off Jan. 30 with an impressive LGBT track. Tickets are on sale now, and some screenings are already sold out.
The 13th annual festival runs through Feb.20. In all, more than 70 films will be shown over a three week period. Opening night this year will be held at the Cobb Energy Centre with the crowd-pleasing “Hava Nagila (The Movie).”
Subsequent screenings take place all over the city, including the Regal Cinemas Atlantic Station Stadium 16, Lefont Sandy Springs, Georgia Theatre Company Merchants Walk, Regal Cinema’s North Point Market 8 and the United Artists Tara Cinemas 4.
This year ends on an especially high note for LGBT film with “Any Day Now” (Music Box Films), starring out actor Alan Cumming as Rudy, a gay West Hollywood man who must deal with a prejudicial and antiquated court system as he attempts to adopt a boy with Down syndrome in 1979.
Cumming gives the performance of his career and even has the opportunity to sing a couple of numbers in the movie.
“Any Day Now” is written and directed by straight filmmaker Travis Fine, an Atlanta native, based on an original screenplay by George Arthur Bloom.
When police raided a Fort Worth, Texas, gay bar on June 28, 2009, it was just the beginning of angry City Council meetings, protests and rallies — and, eventually, healing and change.
“Raid of the Rainbow Lounge,” a documentary that chronicles what happened in Forth Worth following the police raid, premieres in Atlanta on Oct. 7 as part of Out on Film.
Director Robert Camina said he looks forward to bringing his film to Atlanta because of the similarities he sees in Texas raid and the one at the Atlanta Eagle, just 10 weeks later. Camina and Atlanta Eagle attorney Dan Grossman will join a panel discussion after the film.