Scott Rosenfelt speaks out about Orthodox rabbis abusing children in 'Standing Silent'

Scott Rosenfelt of Branford is known for his big box office hits, but he never had a filmmaking experience like he did with “Standing Silent,” a documentary about the sexual abuse of children by Orthodox rabbis and educators.

BRANFORD — Producer Scott Rosenfelt has an impressive resume of popular films, “Mystic Pizza,” “Extremities,” some of which are among the biggest grossing movies of all time — “Home Alone,” “Teen Wolf” — but his involvement with “Standing Silent,” a small documentary with a powerful message, tapped into his conscience in a way he’d rarely experienced before as a filmmaker.

The film is one of 22 on the 10-day schedule of the Hartford Jewish Film Festival, which kicked off March 17. It makes its Connecticut premiere Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the venue of fest presenter, the Mandell Jewish Community Center, 335 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford, where Rosenfelt and journalist Phil Jacobs, one of the subjects of the film, will be on hand for a post-screening talk

Written by Rosenfelt and Ellen Goldwasser, the film documents the sexual abuse of children by Orthodox rabbis and educators, primarily in the Baltimore area, where Jacobs was the editor of The Baltimore Jewish Times.

Rosenfelt talks about the first time he met one of the other victims at a Starbuck’s in Florida.

I shook his hand and looked into his eyes, and I felt a transference like a character in an M. Night Shyamalan movie where a bolt of electricity came out of his hand. I saw this shattered life, this emotionally broken man,” says Rosenfelt.

His story was the same one that Jacobs himself had been carrying around for years, and had confided to Rosenfelt’s brother Bob, who lives in the Baltimore area. Rosenfelt learned about it on one of their annual trips to Florida for baseball’s spring training.

For nearly a decade, Rosenfelt, Jacobs, Bob and some friends rented a house in Florida for the trip. Every year, Bob would say, “Make sure Phil has a private room.”

Finally, five years ago, says Rosenfelt, “I said, ‘What’s the big deal about Phil having his own room?’ My brother said, ‘I guess it’s OK to tell you,’ and he told me what happened to him

At the time, Jacobs was writing a story for his paper about one of the victims, whom Rosenfelt met at the Florida Starbuck’s. After the meeting, Rosenfelt says he went outside and just couldn’t shake it from his mind.

I said, I’m going to figure out how to make a documentary about this. I make feature films, but this is compelling. Phil thought I was kidding. That’s how it came about.”

Not only did Rosenfelt, who is professional-in-residence at Quinnipiac University’s School of Communications this semester, help raise the money for the film, he also decided to direct it after an original partnership didn’t work out.

“The truth was, the film was always my vision. I didn’t feel I should have brought anyone else in,” he says.

When it became obvious that it was really going to happen, Rosenfelt says there was some trepidation and back and forth with one of the subjects about whether it was a good idea.

“Dredging all this stuff up was not easy in a psychiatrist’s office, never mind on camera,” he notes.

The reception has been, as one might expect, positive from the secular community and victims and their families, controversial among the Orthodox community, which Rosenfelt says, “circled the wagons instead of what they should be doing.”

Rosenfelt, who divides his time between Los Angeles and Branford with his wife and three children, studied documentary filmmaking when he was at The Tisch School for the Arts at New York University, but he learned the reality of the stop-and-start nature of the doc business, where you shoot as much as you have money for and shutter production until the piggy bank fills up again and continue.

The project, which had a $200,000 budget for which Rosenfelt was able to secure a grant from the Sundance Documentary Film Program, took three-and-a-half years with a crew of three to film in Baltimore, New York and Israel, and was “draining, for Phil mostly, but it was tough,” says Rosenfelt.

The film debuted last February at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, and with more than 25 film festival appearances, landed on the radar of HJFF Director Harriet J. Dobin.

The industry veteran says the experience taught him that, “There’s a responsibility to filmmaking. As I started getting underway, I felt we’ll do some interviews and piece this together, but I started to realize you’re not only invading and affecting people’s lives, you’re outing them in a very, very vulnerable position ... It’s a tremendous responsibility once you embark on something like this, and I don’t take it lightly ...” he says.