Sunday 11th March 2012 at 7.30 pm
Director: Paul Morrison
BAFTA Awarded and Oscar nominated:
SOLOMON & GAENOR 1999 (105 mins)
This is a tragic love story between a Jewish young man and a Welsh woman in the beginning of the century. The movie is mostly in English with parts in Welsh and Yiddish (subtitled).
Just as Romeo and Juliet had to live out their tragic love in the midst of warring families, so to do Solomon and Gaenor in 1911 Wales. This is a true star-crossed-lovers’ film that finds its main characters fighting against the most impossible odds. Gaenor is from a Protestant Welsh family, whose lives are being tossed about by the coal miner strikes. Solomon is a son of transplanted Russian Jews, who run a goods shop on the other side of the mountain.
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd with Nia Roberts, Sue Jones-Davies, William Thomas, Mark LewisJones, Maureen Lipman, David Horovitch & Aled Phillips
Rabbi Daniel Levy (who plays Rabbi Wolfe) is an Orthodox Rabbi, and at the time was the Rabbi of the Orthodox Synagogue in Cardiff.
This is a beautiful and tragic love story. But more than just a love story with romance and sentimentality, this film is an authentic portrayal of the cruel realities of barriers and bias between two families, or two cultures, so to speak.
Solomon & Gaenor" is a beautiful work of art. I strongly urge you to see this movie, and allow it to challenge your possible hidden prejudices.
