Foodievents

Art Films! About Gefilte Fish! At the Jewish Museum!

Martha Rosler prepares a meal … or a Bris.Photo: Getty Images
Food is at the heart of New York Jewish culture, and if you don’t believe us, check out the Jewish Museum’s exhibit of short films on the subject. “Food for Thought: A Video Art Sampler,” whose title you’ll have to endure until February 27 when the whole shebang ends, includes two shorts from the seventies and two more from the aughts. In artist Martha Rosler’s famous Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), an angry woman parodies a cooking show in which all the tools are weapons (nothing explicitly Jewish here, though Rosler is a member of the tribe); in Jessica Shokrian’s mini-commentary on displaced people Ameh Jhan (2001), an elderly Iranian-Jewish woman makes meatballs in contemporary Los Angeles. The other films make an excellent pair: In Laura Kronenberg (Cavestani)’s Abbie Making Gefilte Fish (1973), Abbie Hoffman prepares the dish on Christmas Eve in the Chelsea Hotel; Boaz Arad’s Gefilte Fish (2005) shows an artist exploring the food and his mother’s preparation of it through the use of a puppet, parrot, and other bizarro approaches. We don’t understand why this hasn’t been proclaimed the event of the season.

“Food for Thought: A Video Art Sampler,” Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Ave., at 92nd St.; 212-423-3200.

Art Films! About Gefilte Fish! At the Jewish Museum!