Local Students Screen Films Inspired By Holocaust Survivors

MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIF. - Seventh-grade students from the Beach Cities will screen their original short films on topics related to injustice on Sunday, March 11, in a culmination of the Holocaust-inspired “Righteous Conversations Project” at Congregation Tikvat Jacob in Manhattan Beach.

In its first year at Congregation Tikvat Jacob, the “Righteous Conversations Project” is a Los Angeles-based program that connects Holocaust survivors and students to facilitate dialogue and social action through creative expression. The program began in 2011 and is in its inaugural year in the South Bay.

Nearly two dozen students from Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, and Redondo Beach heard first-hand accounts from three Holocaust survivors and then worked with Righteous Conversations Project filmmaker mentors to develop their own original public service announcements tackling issues such as homelessness, equal pay for men and women, and the environment. A central component of the program that works to inspire students to “repair the world” is that each PSA will be gifted to a local non-profit organization working to combat these issues in the world.

“Inspired by the fact that the survivors, in a sense, lived to tell about an enormous injustice they have experienced, the kids then pick an injustice - something wrong in their world they would like to shine a light on - and tell the world about it by creating short films, or Public Service Announcements, about those topics,” said Amir Orbach, a Congregation Tikvat Jacob teacher. Orbach, along with the Righteous Conversations Project creator Samara Hutman, brought the program to the South Bay.

The students will screen their PSAs on Sunday, March 11, from 9:30 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. at Congregation Tikvat Jacob, 1829 N. Sepulveda Blvd., in Manhattan Beach. The event is free and open to the public.

For more information about the Righteous Conversations Project: http://righteousconversations....

For more information about Congregation Tikvat Jacob: www.ctjmb.org