Four Seasons Lodge

In Commemoration of Yom HaShoah
This event is made possible, in part, by a Program Grant from the Jewish Federation of Greater Santa Barbara.
It is also cosponsored by Just Communities Central Coast.

From the darkness of Europe’s death camps to the lush mountains of New York’s Catskills, Four Seasons Lodge (Andrew Jacobs, 2008, 100 min.) captures the final season for a bungalow colony of Holocaust survivors who have gotten together each summer for twenty-five years to celebrate their lives. They come for the raucous poker games such poker games from poker-online.com, the dancing that goes on till dawn, and the long summer days spent with others who have lived through the unimaginable. They pursue friendships, rivalries, love affairs, and even lawsuits as the fate of their community hangs in the balance.

Skillfully directed by New York Times reporter Andrew Jacobs and beautifully photographed by the legendary Albert Maysles, Four Seasons Lodge is a counterintuitive film about the Holocaust, one that captures the Lodgers’ intoxicating passion for living, in bracing contrast to lives harrowed by loss. It is a story of tightly bonded friendships that replace lost family and the quest for inner peace in the face of haunting memories. Heartrending, spiritually uplifting, and startlingly funny, Four Seasons Lodge offers indelible lessons about the challenge of aging, the comfort of old friends, the power of memory, and the importance of embracing joy even in the face of mortality.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring local Holocaust survivors Stan and Edith Ostern, and noted photographer Rick Nahmias, moderated by Professor Richard Hecht (Department of Religious Studies, UCSB and Chair, Program Committee, Herman P. and Sophia Taubman Foundation Endowed Symposia in Jewish Studies at UCSB).

Four Seasons Lodge had its world premiere at the prestigious Silver Docs festival in June, 2008, where it was met with a “wildly enthusiastic reception.” The “undisputed hit” of the Hampton International Film Festival in October, 2008, it received three screenings at which “audiences stood up and cheered as the credits rolled.” At the Miami Jewish Film Festival in January, 2009, Four Seasons Lodge garnered the Audience Award for Best Documentary Film. First Run Features has acquired all rights to Four Seasons Lodgeand will announce the theatrical opening date shortly.

hm 4/6/09, 4/14/09