Noam Dromi, managing director of Reboot Studios spoke with filmmaker and actor Matthew Shear about his new film Fantasy Life. The film’s Jewishiness feels deeply lived-in. It’s not an “issue film” in the traditional sense, but something more intimate and textured, rooted in a cultural sensibility many people will recognize: the humor, the neurosis, the searching for meaning and the complicated inheritance of history. The story touches on themes of identity, intergenerational memory, assimilation and the sometimes uncomfortable ways we relate to our own backgrounds. But it does so through characters who feel very human, funny, flawed and deeply self-aware. Read more to learn through our conversation with Shear about the making of the film, the ideas behind it, and the cultural questions it raises.
This week, we’re sharing two powerful reflections from the creators behind The Nita & Zita Project, a film Reboot Studios is proud to have supported through fiscal sponsorship and creative development. Together, these pieces trace the remarkable journey of two Jewish immigrant sisters who transformed themselves into international burlesque performers in the 1920s, and later into reclusive, visionary artists in New Orleans whose handmade worlds continue to inspire generations. Through deeply personal essays by producing partner Sharon Gillen and director Marci Darling, Nita and Zita emerge not just as figures of the past, but as guides for the present, women who chose visibility over erasure, creativity over fear and devotion to each other as a form of resilience. The film celebrates marginalized women who lived by their own rules as trailblazers, dancers and creators and explores themes of identity, sisterhood and devotion. Watch it on Apple TV, Fandango at Home, Google Play, YouTube Movies. Read Gillen and Darling’s reflections.
Artist and Reboot Network Member Ari Salka created the set design for the performance piece, Dis-order, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles March 19 and March 20. A reimagining of the Passover Seder, the piece asks what forces move through us when we enact an ancient spring rite, and what is left unspoken when we gather around the table. The audience is seated around the periphery of a large, hollow triangular table, reminiscent of Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party.” The tablecloth by Salka forms the setting for an evolving installation and transforms the ritual dinner table into the visual and psychological core of the performance. Dis-order examines and pulls apart the traditions that we take for granted as part of the Passover ritual. Read more about Salka’s process.
Reboot Network member Todd Krieger offers us a spirited reflection on the enduring genius of Mel Brooks, sparked by HBO’s Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man! In it, Krieger explores how Brooks didn’t just shape American comedy; he transformed Jewish survival into an act of joyful defiance. From the Borscht Belt to Blazing Saddles and The Producers, Brooks reframed fear and persecution as objects of ridicule, wielding satire not as self-deprecation but as a bold assertion of power. More than a tribute, the essay argues that Brooks’ greatest legacy is permission: the courage to mock what terrifies us, to commit fully to absurdity and to meet darkness with laughter. In heavy times, Krieger suggests, Brooks’ life and work offer more than entertainment, they model resilience as an art form. Read Krieger’s reflection on Brooks.
As a formerly Orthodox, now secular, deeply online millennial woman who loves the incredible extended chain of shared imagination that makes up the Jewish people’s collective narrative world-building, Reboot Network member Miriam Anzovin refused to accept the interpretations of Tanach, Talmud, midrash and folklore that she was handed as a final draft. After all, Jewish texts are multivocal – there is rarely is a “final word.” Her “Jewish Lore Reactions” project, an ongoing short-form digital video series in which she remixes and retells epic stories about iconic figures from Jewish lore, began as a response to what she learned – part delight, part frustration, part existential scream – and a desire to give a voice to female characters who have been marginalized, flattened, or weaponized by a tradition shaped largely by male storytellers. Read more about her Jewish Lore Reactions.