Woodstock Film Festival: Staged Screenplay Reading of FEEDING MRS. MOSKOWITZ

FEEDING MRS. MOSKOWITZ Screenplay by Barbara Pokras and Fran Pokras Yariv Based on the novella by Barbara Pokras Featuring cast from Actors & Writers, including stage and screen actors Lori Wilner, Dannah Chaifetz, Mikhail Horowitz, Joe White, Mark St Germain, Katherine Burger, Davis Hall, Mary Gallagher, Nina Shengold and Brian Macready. Directed by Shelley Wyant.

FEEDING MRS. MOSKOWITZ tells the story of the remarkable Golde Moskowitz, an elderly Russian widow living alone with her memories. In Golde’s world, “signs” are everywhere, the dead converse with the living, and dreams are real. Natalie Holtzman, a thirty-six-year-old graphic artist longing for connection, fills her world with work and her commitment-wary boyfriend, Artie. One sweltering summer morning, Golde decides to do some grocery shopping. Natalie, on her way to work, quite literally “runs into” her, and the lives of both women are forever changed. Gracefully poignant, FEEDING MRS. MOSKOWITZ explores the world of two women at different stages of their lives with deft humor and heart-warming detail.

Barbara Pokras is an Emmy award-winning film editor and a member of American Cinema Editors, Inc., Motion Picture Editors Guild and New York Women in Film and Television. She was an adjunct professor in the Cinema Department of the University of Southern California (1995-1997) and is a graduate of that university. Barbara and husband Bob Malkin of the iconic Soho gallery, ThinkBig! and ThinkBig! A Tiny House Resort, live in Upstate New York, with their rescue dogs, Noodle and O”Henry.

Fran Pokras Yariv grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut, received her B.A. in creative writing and M.A. in education at Syracuse University. She is the author of the novels Leaving, The Hallowing, Last Exit, and Safe Haven and was awarded a Writers Guild of America, East, Foundation Fellowship in screenwriting. She and her husband, Dr. Amnon Yariv, professor of applied physics and electrical engineering at Caltech, live in Pasadena, California.

We wish to acknowledge James Hardy, producer, Bob Hope Enterprises and Alhambra Pictures, who believed in the book, commissioned the screenplay and thoughtfully guided us through numerous revisions. Thank you, Jim!

Actors & Writers is a professional theater ensemble that performs old and new plays in the Hudson Valley area including Odd Fellows in Olivebridge, Maverick Concert Hall in Woodstock, Unison Arts in New Paltz, and ASK in Kingston Rondout.