The Last Blintz

Description

WINNER Jury Award Best Short Documentary
Atlanta Jewish Film Festival

WINNER Best Documentary Audience Award
New Jersey Jewish Film Festival

RUNNER UP Best Short Film Audience Award!
Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival

Official Selection
AFI Docs
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival
Austin Jewish Film Festival
Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival
UK Jewish Film Festival

Synopsis

The closing of The Cafe Edison (aka The Polish Tea Room), the Broadway diner immortalized in Neil Simon’s 45 Seconds from Broadway, is not just a story about another famous show business haunt shutting its doors, it is the fading away of a piece of an America past.

The Cafe Edison is an American Dream come true story about a multi-generational, big-hearted, mom-and-pop family business that is tragically and prematurely coming to an end. It’s also about gentrification on steroids and all-consuming greed. It’s about the heart, soul, authenticity, and distinctiveness of cities globally being flagrantly ripped away for yet another impersonal, cookie-cutter, corporate chain. It’s too late for The Cafe Edison… but, looking to the future, THE LAST BLINTZ is an impassioned plea for ‘progress’ that honors the past, protects the future and preserves the heart and culture of our great cities…before there’s nothing left.

Director

Dori Berinstein is a four-time Tony-winning Broadway producer and an Emmy-award- winning director, producer, and writer of film and television.

As an award-winning Documentary Filmmaker, Dori directed, wrote and produced: Marvin Hamlisch: What He Did For Love (2013 / Emmy Award / American Masters; Best Documentary Atlanta Jewish Film Festival); Carol Channing: Larger Than Life (2012 Showtime; Audience Award St. Louis Int’l Film Festival ); Gotta Dance (2009 Audience Award Palm Beach Int’l Film Festival); Some Assembly Required (2008 Best Documentary, Int’l Family Film Festival); ShowBusiness: The Road To Broadway (2007 Showtime – IDA Finalist 2006; Grand Jury Award Best Documentary Florida Film Festival).

Dori’s 12 Broadway productions include: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Tony Award); Legally Blonde: The Musical (Olivier Award), Thoroughly Modern Millie (Tony Award), The Crucible, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest (Tony Award), Fool Moon (Tony Award), Flower Drum Song, Enchanted April and Golden Child . Dori’s next Broadway Musical, Half Time, inspired by Dori’s documentary film Gotta Dance, will open on Broadway spring 2017.