A JEWISH LOVE STORY

Make Me a Match, a film by Dallas filmmakers Allen Mondell and Cynthia Salzman Mondell, had its first television airing on KERA in December, and has been accepted at the 2003 Melbourne International Film Festival. The hour-long documentary explores the unique ways in which Jews are searching for their soul mates.

Filled with hope and humor, trials and tribulations, Make Me A Match is a film for everyone who has ever been single, along with the family and friends helping them make a “love connection.” With its mixture of joys and disappointments, the film addresses what some rabbis say is one of the most important efforts in Judaism today – matching Jewish singles with each other and encouraging them to maintain their Jewish identity.

From Morristown, New Jersey to San Diego, California, and cities in between, Make Me A Match introduces viewers to different styles of matchmaking. The film follows one Dallas woman to a dating service, to singles events, and a session on the internet as she looks for a Jewish mate. Twenty-four enthusiastic matchmakers in San Diego; a modern-day Tevye-like matchmaker in Crown Heights, Brooklyn; a rabbi and his wife from Morristown, NJ, who have been matchmaking for 20 years; the singles scene at an annual Dallas-Fort Worth singles convention and a Jewish dating service; a sample of catching a catch on the internet – all show Jewish singles seeking soul mates and the Herculean efforts Jews make to hold onto their identity.

Make Me A Match is priced at $99 for synagogues, JCCs and community organizations; $125 for museums and universities; and recently became available to the home video market for $25 (plus shipping.)

The film enjoyed its premiere in a benefit sponsored by the Dallas JCC and then in Fort Worth, sponsored by the Jewish Federation. Winner of The Videographers Awards, the film has screened at Jewish film festivals in San Jose, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, San Diego, Vancouver (Canada), Portland (Oregon) and Philadelphia. It has also been selected for competitive screenings at non-Jewish film festivals in Long Beach, California, aboard the Queen Mary, in Northampton, Massachusetts, at the Ojai (California) Film Festival, the Athens International Film Festival and the Dallas Video Festival. It has played in Austin, Tulsa, Corpus Christi, Lawrenceville and Tenafly, New Jersey, Savannah, Minneapolis, Houston and on Long Island. It has also been licensed by Israeli television for airing later this year.

Filmmakers Cynthia and Allen Mondell have created more than 30 documentaries since founding Media Projects in 1978. Their work includes six films for The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas on the life and legacy of President John F. Kennedy; Funny Women, a film about women comedians for The Women's Museum, in association with the Smithsonian Institution, based in Dallas; Dreams of Equality, a film on women's rights produced for the Women's Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, New York; and West of Hester Street, a documentary about Jewish immigration from Russia to Galveston, Texas in the early 1900's.

Their current film project, The Spirit of Women, is being produced for The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future, located in Fair Park. It's a look back at the federally funded National Women's Conference which brought 20,000 women from around the world to Houston in 1977. The film mixes archival footage and still photographs with interviews of women today reflecting on the Houston event and its impact on the status of women.

Media Projects has received numerous awards and festival placements including: the CINE Golden Eagle, American Festival (Blue and Red Ribbons), Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, Jerusalem Film Festival, FILMEX-Los Angeles, National Educational Film Festival, The Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco, The USA Film Festival in Dallas, Houston International Film Festival, The Birmingham Film Festival and the Women in Communications Matrix Award.

Major funding for Make Me A Match was provided by the M.B. & Edna Zale Foundation and the Abe Zale Foundation.

The film was edited by Mark Birnbaum and Phil Allen. Tim Cissell composed the original score. Length 59:30.

For more information or to purchase a video, please contact Media Projects at 214-826-3863 or go online at www.mediaprojects.org.

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