Australian doco featuring at L.A. Jewish Film Festival
“Death in Brooklyn”, a documentary film made by ABC-TV on the 1991 Crown Heights riots during which a Melbourne man studying in New York was stabbed to death, will feature at this week’s Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.
Death in Brooklyn
;
The one-hour movie directed by Tracey Spring tells the story from the perspective of those were involved in the riots including the father of Gavin Cato, a black 7-year-old who was killed when a car driven by by an ultra-orthodox driver mounted the pavement and the stabbing death in the tensing riots of Yankel Rosenbaum…an innocent bystander. Rosenbaum, whose permanent home had been in Melbourne, was studying in New York. His brother Norman features in the documentary.
These riots came to symbolise the racial and religious tensions between Blacks and Whites and Jews and Gentiles in New York City. The release of the film marked the 20th anniversary of the riots.
Director Tracey Spring told J-Wire: “It’s an honour to be selected for the festival. I hope people in LA will go and see the film, because it’s a moment in American history that Australia is a huge part of. The story is told by two very different men – a Caribbean- American father in Brooklyn and an orthodox Jewish brother in Melbourne – who find common ground and genuine friendship in the midst of tragedy. It’s a story that was just waiting to be told in the documentary form.”
Death in Brooklyn” will screen at Laemmie’s Town Center cinema in Encino on May 9 at 5 p.m
and at mid-day at Temple Judea, Tarzana on May 7
Tracey Spring is a director on the ABC Compass program.
“
Yankel ob”m was a doctoral student not a Yeshiva student. He was in NY working on his PhD. It seems that common prejudice labels any young man sporting a yarmulka and beard as a ‘yeshiva student’.