Young Foundation Film Festival Is Returning

BETHEL — The Robert S. Young Foundation for Jewish Culture of the United Jewish Center will sponsor its Third Annual Free Film Festival beginning this weekend.

Screenings will be at Bethel Cinema, 269 Greenwood Avenue. Tickets can be picked up until the Thursday prior to each show, or reserved by calling the United Jewish Center at 748-3355. Advance tickets can be picked up at the United Jewish Center, 141 Deer Hill Avenue in Danbury.

The reserved tickets will be held at the cinema’s Will Call window. Seating is limited to 99 people.

All films will start promptly at noon, and organizers request that attendees arrive no later than 11:45.

The series will open on Sunday, January 9, with Hitmakers: The Teens Who Stole Pop Music. A look at a different kind of Brooklyn gang, this 90-minute documentary explores the pop songwriters who pumped hit after hit out of New York’s legendary Brill Building during the 1950s and 60s.

By profiling Carole King and Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, and Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, the film looks at how these songwriters, nearly all of them Jewish kids from Brooklyn, were at east writing classic tines for black and white artists alike, creating many of the hits that are classics today.

The second film this year will be Heir To An Execution, on Sunday, February 13.

The trial and execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, during the height of the Cold War, shook America to its core. Fifty years later, the Rosenbergs’ granddaughter, Ivy Meeropol, goes on an exhaustive quest to find the “true” Rosenbergs, and to answer the question that has haunted her family to this day: What drove the Rosenbergs to sacrifice their lives and jeopardize the future of their children.

The third film in the series, which will be on Sunday, March 6, has yet to be announced. Those interested can contact the United Jewish Center closer to the planned screening date to find out what the film will be.

All attendees of any of the films are invited to gather for a discussion of their film over lunch at nearby Jonathan’s Restaurant. Directions will be available at Bethel Cinema.