FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Jennifer Kaplan
860-561-5771

MIXED BLESSINGS FILM TO BE SHOWN AT DOVETAIL CONFERENCE IN BERKELEY, CA

“Mixed Blessings: The Challenges of Raising Children in a Jewish-Christian family,” a documentary film by Jennifer Kaplan of West Hartford, Connecticut will make its world premiere at the Dovetail Institute for Interfaith Family Resources Fourth National Conference at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California on August 7, 2004.

There are over 1,000,000 Jewish-Christian couples in the United States. Interfaith marriage and the dilution of religion, has been a major concern, particularly for the Jewish community, over the past 30 years. The purpose of the film is to provide insight for interfaith families or couples considering interfaith marriage.
The principal narrative arc of “Mixed Blessings” tells the stories of four Jewish-Christian couples who have come together, despite their different faith backgrounds. The film explores the challenges and conflicts that can take place within families who are deciding how to answer the question of their children’s spiritual and religious education. Never has a film dealt so intimately and directly with the issues of the raising of children in interfaith families. Experts included in the film are noted author and psychologist Dr. Joel Crohn, renown sociologist Dr. Egon Mayer (now deceased), therapist and Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, Father Owen Moran and Rabbi Steven Chester.

Following the screening, Producer and Director Jennifer Kaplan, will lead a discussion with conference attendees. Ms. Kaplan began making this independent film five years ago after attending several documentary film classes at Union Theological Seminary in New York as well as the summer film program at the Maine International Film & Video Workshops in Rockport, Maine.

For more information about the film, go to the film’s website www.mixedblessingsfilm.com.