The Empty Saddle: Remembering Samuel Johnson

(TEANECK, NJ) -- The 18th annual Teaneck International Film Festival, with virtual and live programs from November 5-12, 2023 , includes films by or with a number of former and current Teaneck residents. Come out to see the films and meet some folks you knew - or know - who have written, directed, or produced them.

David Levin, whose hometown is Teaneck, is behind the movie that will lighten your mood and leave you laughing. Viral Vignettes takes a look at people living through the pandemic and sharing their misery on camera. Levin, an Emmy award-winning executive producer, writer, and director has created documentaries, children’s programming, comedy, music, commercials, and marketing campaigns – and - wrote a Superman comic book which today is regarded as one of the rarest issues ever printed. His fictionalized account of life in isolation during Covid, features a number of stars whom you will recognize from TV shows of yesteryear. In showing us everyday life, celebrations, seders, and even romance on zoom, we see the humor that helped us get through it.

Bella!, the documentary about the formidable Bella Abzug, a three term US Congresswoman who broke the glass ceiling in the 1970’s, will be followed by a talkback with the film director and Teaneck’s own retired NJ Assemblywoman, State Senator, and Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, whose story is very similar to that of Abzug, whom she knew. From Loretta’s early days of marching to support Chavez and the grape boycott in the 1960’s, to her terms on the Teaneck Township Council and, on the State level, her campaign for gun control, support of LGBTQ+ causes, and efforts on behalf of women’s right to choose, to mention just a few of her successes, she has demonstrated that she was – and is – as formidable as the subject of the film.

Teaneck resident Rabbi Steven Sirbu, of Temple Emeth, will be on the panel that follows the showing of Shared Legacies, a documentary about the historic relationship between Blacks and Jews prior to and during the Civil Rights Movement, and, Empty Saddle: Remembering Samuel Johnson, a short film that chronicles the work of the NJ Social Justice Remembrance Coalition in conjunction with the Equal Justice Institute to bring a historical marker to the Eatontown site of the 1886 lynching of Samuel “Mingo Jack” Johnson – the only documented lynching in New Jersey history. Rabbi Sirbu is a member of the Coalition and was chairman of the “Soil Project” which had a ceremony, including soil collection, in Eatontown. With him on the panel will be director Andrew Sherwood and Rev. Kerwin Webb, who is the Coalition liaison to the EJI.

The list of local celebrities continues: Teaneck’s Allison Joseph, founder of Jew in the City, will participate in the talkback following the short film Hollywood’s Orthodox Jew Problem about the rise of anti-Semitism, and the depiction of Jews in movies. Theodora Lacey, longtime Teaneck resident, retired Teaneck Public Schools teacher, and civil rights activist who knew Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, will be on the panel following the screening of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. The overturn of Roe vs. Wade is the focus of the short film, Under G-d, directed by Teaneck’s Paula Eiselt, who will participate in the post-film discussion. And film editor Brian Kates, who grew up in Teaneck, will be on the panel following the screening of All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, that tells the story of renowned artist and activist Nan Goldin’s personal fight to hold the Sackler pharmaceutical family accountable for the opioid crisis.

Check out the times and venues for these films (and all the others) at www.teaneckfilmfestival.org and buy tickets in advance.