Las Vegas
Jewish Film Festival
The mission of the Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival is to provide inclusive educational and cultural outreach to the entire Jewish Las Vegas community and non-Jewish community through the lens of Jewish content cinema with a focus on identity, history and culture; promoting solidarity with Israel and remembrance of the Holocaust.
In Production: Rita Deanin Abbey DOCUMENTARY
completION by the spring of 2025
The Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival is producing a documentary film about the artist, author, and teacher Rita Deanin Abbey, (1930 - 2021). The documentary is being directed by Joshua Abbey and is projected to be completed by the spring of 2024.
Rita Deanin Abbey was born in Passaic, New Jersey on July 20, 1930, to Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants Joseph and Frieda Deanin.
She began her lifelong career as a visual artist at Goddard College in Vermont, then at the Arts Students League in New York, and in classes with Hans Hoffman.
She received her MFA from the University of New Mexico where she met her first husband and father of her two sons, author Edward Abbey.
An Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas where she taught for 22 years, she had 50 individual exhibitions, including a major retrospective at the Palm Springs Art Museum. She participated in over 100 national and international group exhibitions.
In addition to thousands of individual works of art in mixed media, Rita also produced six books: Rivertrip, Art and Geology, Rio Grande Series, Seeds Yet Ever Secret, In Praise of Bristlecone Pines, and Isaiah Stained-Glass Windows.
In 1985 Rita married Dr. Robert Belliveau who became her greatest fan, patron and lifelong partner.
In 1993, she constructed an 11-ton, 20 ft. steel sculpture, Spirit Tower, commissioned by the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District for the Summerlin Library and Performing Arts Center.
In 2000, she completed the Isaiah Stained Glass Windows for the main sanctuary of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas. Her 1970 Wall of Creation installation at Temple Beth Sholom’s original Oakey Blvd. location was an enduring icon of the Southern Nevada Jewish community.
Rita’s oral history and archival documents are part of the Southern Nevada Jewish Heritage Project at UNLV Libraries Special Collections.
Transcripts of the interviews with Rita Deanin Abbey by Claytee White from November 29, 2014, and February 26, 2015, are available in the UNLV Oral History Collection.
The Rita Deanin Abbey Museum is located in Northwest Las Vegas and was the artist's home and studio. The now public venue displays her large-scale sculptures and a curated selection of her extensive body of artwork.
Anyone interested in supporting the documentary film is encouraged to contact Joshua Abbey at HDreality@aol.com.
Past Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival Programs
The Las Vegas Jewish Film Festival is currently producing a feature length documentary film, please visit our recent festival presentations below.
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