Wishing You a Happy Sukkot with the LEGO Sukkot 101 Movie

The Lego Movie franchise is a computer-animated adventure-comedy film series based on Lego construction toys. The franchise started in 2014 with The Lego Movie, which was directed and written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

The film quickly expanded into a franchise, including two spin-off films, The Lego Batman Movie and The Lego Ninjago Movie, both with 2017 release dates; a sequel; and a third spin-off, The Billion Brick Race, scheduled for release in 2019.

The LEGO toy animation style was an inspiration for Bimbam (formerly G-dcast), the new media studio making Jewish videos, apps and animated series for kids and adults to create a film with Lego characters and props to provide a full explanation of the Sukkot holiday.

The LEGO Sukkot Movie is a thorough description of the holiday in a very entertaining style. We hope you enjoy it as we head into the week of Sukkot celebrations. We'll be celebrating Sukkot and Shabbat for the next three days and we'll be back with more Jewish humor on Sunday.

Chag sameach and Shabbat shalom!

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This video was made possible with generous support from The Koret Foundation, as part of its Initiative on Jewish Peoplehood.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this video.

The Lego Passover Movie - A New Retelling for a New Generation

In each and every generation, a person is obligated to regard himself as though he actually left Egypt. As it says: "You shall tell your son on that day, It is because of this that God took me out of Egypt" (Exodus 13:8). 

But every generation has its own methods of communication, and uses them to tell the story in a different way. We've heard the Passover story retold many different ways at the seder this weekend, and in many varieties of YouTube videos.  

The Lego Passover Movie (video below)  is the second in a series of productions filmed with a single iPad by 8-year-old director Ayal Englander and his 13-year-old sister Yaffa.  Their voices are the only ones heard in the movie.  

Ayal is very interested in Legos and collects ‘mini-figures’ in part so he will have the characters to retell the narratives of the Jewish holidays.  The first installment was the Lego Purim Movie .

He went to a nearby week-long summer camp program on filming ‘stop-action’ movies and really took to it.  It is a lengthy process of constantly resetting the figures and the backgrounds, and it also involves a lot of trial and error.  

Making the movies is not only fun for him, but it also allows him to retell these important stories focusing on the details that he feels are central, casting them in his own words and from his own perspective.

We think Ayal has a real future in movie making. (Full disclosure: Ayal and Yaffa are grand-nephew and grand-niece of Jewish Humor Central Blogger-in-Chief Al Kustanowitz.)

Enjoy!