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Martha's Vineyard

MVHC Summer Institute
Film and Speaker Series

Summer Institute Donor Pledge Form

The last glorious weeks of summer remain to be enjoyed on Martha's Vineyard, but the Summer Institute season ended two weeks ago … and what a great season it was! Appreciative audiences came on eight Sundays to a wide array of films---entertaining features & provocative historic documentaries--- from the Boston Jewish Film Festival.

On six Thursdays in July & August, the S.I. Speaker Series featured prominent experts from the front lines of politics, science and the arts. The diverse roster of speakers offered insights from many points of view, and the series attracted near-record attendance and lively Q & A sessions.

On Friday mornings following each of these events, our generous Donors enjoyed lavish brunches at gracious Island homes: an opportunity to schmooze at length with the speakers from the night before, up close & personal.

All in all, the 2010 season was one of the most successful in our 12-year history, attracting support not merely from the S.I./Hebrew Center community, but from an ever-increasing number of the greater Island community who have come to recognize the Summer Institute as the Vineyard's preeminent political and cultural center.

Summer Institute Films

It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it: The hard-working committee led by Shelly Eckman has viewed and discussed more than thirty films, and has selected eight to feature in this summer’s series – the very best of the Boston Jewish Film Festival.

If you’re a summer family trying to decide when to begin your seasonal stay on the Vineyard, you might want to consider this: The Summer Institute film series at the Hebrew Center presents two award-winning, critically acclaimed movies on our new big screen this June.

June 20: Wondrous Oblivion Academy Award nominee Paul Morrison directs this charming story of 11-year-old David Wiseman, whose passion for cricket far exceeds his skill. It's London in the 1960s, and racial tensions are extreme, so when a Jamaican family moves next door, the neighborhood is horrified, but it's David's chance to get in the game he loves. Watch the trailer Los Angeles Times review

June 27: Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh Academy Award nominee Joan Allen narrates the first documentary on a remarkable woman, the World War II poet Hannah Senesh, who became a resistance fighter and a latter-day Joan of Arc. Safe in Palestine in 1944, Hannah volunteers to parachute behind Nazi lines to rescue Jews in her native Hungary, the only outside rescue mission for and by Jews during the Holocaust. Watch the trailer Boston Globe review

July 11: Eli & Ben The world of 12-year-old Eli is turned upside down in director Ori Ravid's debut feature. Eli's father, a Tel Aviv architect, is accused of accepting bribes. Attempting to exonerate his father, Eli encounters corruption, injustice and hypocrisy in both adults and children. In the process, he will rediscover his father and taste the bitter sting of first love. Watch the trailer JVibe review

July 18: Ajami The 2010 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Film is set on the streets of Jaffa's Ajami neighborhood, a turbulent melting pot of conflicting cultures and politics. The story is told through the eyes of the city's Israelis and Palestinians, wealthy and poor, and explores the tragic consequences of enemies living as neighbors. "An enormously important film," declares The Village Voice. Watch the trailer Huffington Post review

July 25: A Matter of Size In this genial 2009 comedy from directors Sharon Maymon and Erez Tadmor, four overweight blue-collar Israelis give up dieting and find self-acceptance in the sport of Sumo wrestling, where size is an asset. Their tutor is a former Sumo coach, now a Hebrew-speaking Japanese restaurateur. Writes Variety: "The laconic script by Maymon and Danny Cohen Solal captures the essence of Israeli Jewish humor." Watch the trailer The Forward review

August 1: Jazz Baroness Director Hannah Rothschild tells the story of her great-aunt, the remarkable Nica de Koenigswater, wealthy granddaughter of Britain's first Jewish Member of Parliament. She left her husband and five children after WW II to become the unlikely muse of Thelonius Monk. Her Park Avenue apartment was the scene of a scandal: Charlie Parker's death from a drug overdose. Classic jazz tunes provide the score for this lyrical, haunting portrait of an incredible life. Watch the trailer New York Daily News review

August 8: The Little Traitor Based on a novel by Amos Oz. In Palestine, 1947, just months before statehood, 11-year-old Proffy Liebowitz and his friends spend their time plotting ways to harass the British occupiers, anything to get them to leave. One evening Proffy is caught out past curfew by a British officer (played by Alfred Molina). What ensues, surprisingly, is a life-changing friendship between two foes. Watch the trailer San Francisco Chronicle review

August 15: Killing Kasztner, the Jew Who Dealt with Nazis Named this season's Best Documentary at the Boston Jewish Film Festival. Director Gaylen Ross chronicles the life of Reszo Kasztner, a Hungarian Jew who negotiated with the Nazis to save 1,700 Jews during the war. Later vilified as "the man who sold his soul to the Devil," Kasztner was assassinated in 1957. Ross succeeds in making Kasztner's killer speak candidly for the first time in 50 years. Watch the trailer Boston Globe review

Speaker Series

The Vineyard Gazette has hailed the Summer Institute as the Island's "preeminent intellectual, political and cultural summer lecture series." For this summer, we've reached out to speakers from the front lines of politics, science & the arts whose perspectives promise to enrich our understanding of the world around us.

All through the program listings below, you'll find we've hyperlinked the speakers' names. If you'd like to explore and learn more, by all means click away -- think of them as little surprises, each link taking you to a page that introduces you more fully to one of our featured guests this summer.

All Summer Institute forums are held at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays in the Harriet B. Freedman Learning Center at the Hebrew Center. Admission is $15.

July 8: Bruce Riedel & Martin Indyk Our season opens with two speakers whose authority on matters of global politics is hard to match. Come to this forum prepared for fresh insights into the shifting dynamics between the US and the nations of the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, focuses on political transition, terrorism and conflict resolution. He was a senior advisor to three U.S. presidents on Middle East and South Asian issues. At the request of President Obama he chaired an interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan for the White House that was completed in March 2009. Martin Indyk is vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program at The Brookings Institution. Previously, he was the founding director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and a Brookings senior fellow. He served as U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995-7 and from 2000-1.

July 15: Ruth Marcus Ruth Marcus is a columnist and member of the Washington Post editorial board. A graduate of Yale University and Harvard Law School, she has covered every institution in Washington, from the White House to the Supreme Court to Congress. Nominating her as a finalist in commentary for the Pulitzer Prize, the Pulitzer board cited "her intelligent and incisive commentary on a range of subjects, using a voice that can be serious or playful."

July 22: Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. Dr. Altman, a member of The New York Times science news staff since 1969, has been called "the dean of U.S. medical correspondents." He's one of the few full-fledged medical doctors working as a full-time daily newspaper reporter.

July 29: Michael Chertoff Michael Chertoff served as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. Prior to that, as an Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Dept. of Justice, he oversaw the investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and formed the Enron Task Force, which produced more than 20 convictions, including those of CEOs Jeffrey Skilling and Kenneth Lay.

August 5: Partisan Women: A Lively Panel Angela "Bay" Buchanan, former Reagan administration official, conservative activist and CNN news analyst, shares the podium with Catherine "Kiki" McLean, who has served as a spokesman or senior advisor for Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Al Gore and Barack Obama. Ann Brown (herself a former Clinton Administration official) has agreed, bravely, to moderate this meeting of two popular and provocative pundits from inside the Washington Beltway.

August 12: Joe Morgenstern Joe Morgenstern, the Wall Street Journal's film critic, is the winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Mr. Morgenstern has worked at The New York Times as a foreign correspondent, reporting from Switzerland and France. He was a theater and movie critic for the New York Herald Tribune, and Newsweek's film critic for two decades. His freelance writing has appeared in many publications, including the New Yorker.