About the Festival

The Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival, sponsored by the Bildner Center, has come a long way since it was inaugurated in 2000 with a roster of five films and an audience of 1,750. But it has never veered from its original goal of bringing sophisticated, international Jewish cinema that rarely makes it to local venues right to Central New Jersey’s doorstep.

This past fall, the ninth annual Rutgers Festival screened thirteen films –including four New Jersey premieres – to more than 5,000 attendees at the Regal Cinema Commerce Center in North Brunswick. The tenth annual festival is scheduled for November 1-10, 2009.

The Bildner Center takes a broad approach when choosing the films for the Rutgers Festival, offering a slate of critically acclaimed and prize-winning titles that explore the multi-layered, global Jewish experience.  Some films tackle uniquely Jewish issues, while others address universal themes through a Jewish lens.  With such a diverse selection, the festival draws a wide audience, too, reaching the region’s Jewish population as well as the Rutgers University community and the general film-going public.  

The Bildner Center makes each screening a multidimensional experience by inviting a guest speaker - either the director, a featured actor or a noted expert in the field – to preface each film and then engage in a dialogue with the audience at its conclusion.  Year after year, attendees remark that this opportunity to ask the questions raised by these thought-provoking films makes the issues more personally relevant and their film festival participation more meaningful.

Unique, too, is the way the festival not only reaches out to the community, but also gives back to the university by exposing the general student body to these distinctive films.  Professors of Jewish Studies and other academic departments at Rutgers are among the speakers invited to introduce the films, and they will often invite their students to attend the screenings.  Students may also have access to visiting film directors and scholars. 

The Bildner Center is able to bring the Rutgers New Jersey Jewish Film Festival to the Jewish community of Central New Jersey thanks to the ongoing support of the Karma Foundation.  An endowment established by David and Sylvia Steiner sponsors the screening of one special film during the festival each year.   Additional sponsors include the Regal Entertainment Group, the Center for Cultural Judaism/The Posen Foundation, and a growing list of Rutgers Festival Patrons.