JBJ May 9 Charity Performance

Thanks, Teale, for dropping me a line with this news.

Spielberg to attend Shoah institute fund-raiser in Philadelphia

Film great Steven Spielberg and some of his Hollywood friends will gather in Philadelphia to fete Comcast Corp. chief executive officer Brian L. Roberts - a sign of the city's growing clout in the heart of the movie-making industry.

The May 9 event is a first in Philadelphia for the University of Southern California's Shoah Foundation Institute. The gathering should raise $2 million for the institute's work preserving on digital files the memories of Holocaust survivors and expanding its archives of testimony from other genocides.

Spielberg established the institute in 1994 after filming Schindler's List, which told the story of German businessman Oskar Schindler, who managed to save some 1,100 Jews from the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Roberts said that this would be the largest public event he has done since the deal with NBC Universal and that he was honored to participate in it because he considered Schindler's List "one of the moving films of our generation." He is already preparing his remarks for the event. Jersey rocker Jon Bon Jovi is scheduled to perform at the gala.

According to one of the organizers, the cheapest ticket is $1500 (in case anyone was looking to attend).

You can read the whole article here.

~ Hath