Roberta Grossman's Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh and Gini Reticker's Pray the Devil Back to Hell (above, lower photo) will be screened as part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series on Wednesday, November 11, at 7 p.m. at the Linwood Dunn Theater in Hollywood. Admission is free.
Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh tells the story of poet, diarist, and paratrooper Hannah Senesh, who took part in the only military rescue mission for Jews during the Holocaust. Blessed Is the Match was also produced by Grossman, who will be present to take questions from the audience following the screening, and by Lisa Thomas.
Pray the Devil Back to Hell follows a group of women in Liberia who, gathering daily in the central market area of Monrovia, mounted a peaceful campaign against that country’s nasty civil war. Demonstrators later staged a sit-in at the location of peace talks in Ghana, and have been credited for the changes that eventually took place in Liberia. Pray the Devil Back to Hell was produced by Abigail E. Disney.
Meri Roth, Marcela Nohynkova in Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh
The 28th annual “Contemporary Documentaries” series is a showcase for feature-length and short documentaries drawn from the 2008 Academy Award nominations as well as other productions considered by the Academy that year.
All films will screen at the Linwood Dunn Theater at the Academy’s Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study on Wednesdays at 7 p.m., except for the IMAX presentations on December 9. Filmmakers will be present at screenings whenever possible. Doors open at 6 p.m. All seating is unreserved.
The Linwood Dunn Theater is located at 1313 Vine Street in Hollywood. Free parking is available through the entrance on Homewood Avenue (one block north of Fountain Avenue). For more information, call (310) 247-3600 or visit www.oscars.org.