JTA — Sam Firstenberg, the Israeli-raised director behind cult B-movie staples like “American Ninja” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” is getting an unexpected career revival — thanks to one of his most overlooked films.

“Riverbend,” his little-seen 1989 action drama, will screen for one night at Alamo Drafthouse theaters in five cities on April 29, offering a fresh look at a film about a group of Black Vietnam veterans who arrive in a Southern town and liberate it from a racist sheriff.

It could also revive interest in the 25 or so films Firstenberg directed between 1981 and 2002, which fans celebrate for their unironic commitment to over-the-top action, niche cultures, and pure entertainment value. In films such as “American Samurai,” “Cyborg Cop,” “Delta Force 3: The Killing Game,” and “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo,” Firstenberg has been a prolific purveyor of what some critics praise as “earnest shlock.”

It’s a career rooted in the long afternoons a young Firstenberg spent at Smadar, the movie theater in Jerusalem’s German Colony neighborhood. Firstenberg watched the best that midcentury Hollywood had to offer.

Firstenberg, whose given first name was Shmulik, was born to a Jewish family in March of 1950, in Wałbrzych, Poland. His parents had returned to Poland after fleeing eastward from the Nazis to the Soviet Union.

The family arrived in Jerusalem when Firstenberg was 6 months old. Once in Israel, Firstenberg became immersed in cultures other than his own, which, he says, was key to his versatility behind the camera.

“I grew up in a neighborhood that consists of a lot of immigrants from all over the world,” Firstenberg said in an interview. “So, you know, we came from Poland with a Polish background, but around us, there were Hungarian Jews, Romanian Jews, Jews from Morocco, Jews from Tunisia, from Iraq, from Yemen, from all over the world, Indian Jews.”

“So my neighborhood was a melting pot of all kinds of cultures from all over the world. I didn’t understand it. I’m telling you all of this [retrospectively], but I grew up in this, all kinds of different food and cooking, and everybody was talking different languages,” he said. “We grew up in a kind of chaos of listening to 30, 40 different languages and cultures.”

Eventually, this led the future filmmaker to the movies. Smadar, now known as Lev Smadar, began screening films for the public in 1950. Firstenberg would spend afternoons watching double features.

“That’s where we were exposed to cinema. So from a very early age, maybe 7 or 6 years old, I would go, and every week he would change the two movies,” he said.

It was a crash course in genres.

“Those movies were mainly Hollywood movies, mainly Westerns, adventure movies, World War II movies, organized crime, gangster movies. Here and there are some musicals,” he said. The showings ranged from classics like “High Noon” and “Bridge on the River........

© The Times of Israel