AJFF: Audience Deserves Best Festival Ever
By Kenny Blank | Atlanta Jewish Film Festival
As AJFF heads into a new year of programming, we want to wish everyone a happy and healthy Rosh Hashanah and thank each and every member of our community for their continued support.
Because of you, AJFF has established itself both as one of Atlanta’s favorite cultural experiences and as the world’s pre-eminent showcase of great movies that explore Jewish and Israeli life. Because of you, our audience, we are dedicated more than ever to making the 17th annual festival our best ever. And because of you, we are introducing new programming events throughout the calendar year.
But most of all, you are the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival. We applaud the countless donors, volunteers and industry leaders who fuel the behind-the-scenes work of our dedicated and talented staff.
Some 200 film enthusiasts, who are a cross-section of ages and religious and cultural backgrounds, work to evaluate hundreds of film entries over a six-month period.
Others come together, brainstorming and collaborating, to identity compelling guest speakers to introduce festival screenings and facilitate dialogue.
Still more give of their time in fundraising, marketing, hospitality and other needs that underpin a world-class, three-plus-week-long show.
We couldn’t do any of it without those of you who turn AJFF into a passion project and reinvigorate our fervor for the mission of the festival. I am ceaselessly amazed at the community that is AJFF.
Rosh Hashanah is about new beginnings, new ideas and new possibilities. To every ticketholder who steps into an AJFF movie theater during the festival, thank you. Each of you is opening up to the realms and ideas that cinema explores in such a uniquely immersive way. By investing yourselves, you are each building social and cultural understanding, broadening your sense of the world, and delighting in one of the great art forms of the modern world.
As we embark on this new year, AJFF is taking your spirit and inspiration to heart with exciting new programs and initiatives. We look forward to sharing those with you in the coming months.
In the meantime, we hope you will mark your calendar now for the 17th edition of the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, returning to theaters Jan. 24 through Feb. 15, 2017, with our Opening Night Gala at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre and Closing Night at the Woodruff Arts Center’s Symphony Hall.
Thank you for giving us this opportunity to contribute to the cultural enrichment and civic dialogue of a vibrant community. It’s the best job imaginable, whose rewards derive from everyone who constitutes our AJFF family. We invigorate one another and always come away better for the experience.
For that, and for another new year, thank you, and l’shana tova!
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