43rd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Preview

A Gaza Weekend

Openly anti-Semitic comments and efforts by radical right-wingers to use the law to control women’s bodies may be the types of political developments that undercut belief in humanity’s capability for evolving towards the future of “Star Trek”’s Federation.  Fortunately, the 43rd edition of the S.F. Jewish Film Festival (hereafter “SFJFF”) arrives just in time to remind viewers of the necessity of Judaism’s credo of repairing the world.

But that’s not the only bit of Jewish culture being presented by the 67 short and feature-length films from 18 countries that make up this year’s SFJFF program.  During the period running from July 20 to August 6, 2023, festival attendees coming to the Castro and Vogue Theatres in San Francisco and the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland can see a Holocaust survivor try to prove his grumpy neighbor (the legendary Udo Kier) is Adolf Hitler, a Sephardic Jewish grandmother transform the seedy underbelly of New York City with her adult theater empire, or an underground network of women defying unjust laws to ensure women have nationwide access to RU486.

Here are some ideas for films to check out: 

Opening Night Film “Remembering Gene Wilder” kicks off the SFJFF 2023 festivities.   Ron Frank’s documentary presents the life of the comic actor best known for playing timid accountant Leo Bloom in “The Producers” and the first screen Willy Wonka in “Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory.”  Aside from the cornucopia of hilarious clips from Wilder’s many films, Frank’s movie also presents Wilder the husband of late comedian Gilda Radner’s husband as well as Wilder the mensch.

Curious about the real-life inspiration for “Dirty Dancing?”  Then check out Lex Gillespie’s documentary “The Catskills.”  It’s a fond look at the summer vacation destination for Jews known as the Borscht Belt.  These family-run resorts and bungalows served many purposes for 20th century Jews.  The recreation area provided a getaway from the grinding poverty of New York City life, a place for blacklisted actors to work, and even a refuge to allow Jewish-American life to thrive.

A Compassionate Spy

This year’s SFJFF Episodic Spotlight selection is “Madrasa,” which is written by Sayed Kashua (“Arab Labor”) and directed by Guri Alfi.  This comedy series is set at Jerusalem’s Peace School for Bilingual Education.  Viewers follow the school’s teen students as they struggle with both the growing pains of adolescence and more serious issues reflecting problems in Israeli society.  Among the stories playing out are: a romance between a new Palestinian Israeli student and a Jewish Israeli student wanting a “more normal” high school experience; Arab students concerned about whether the Peace School will continue to offer them the best academic education possible; and two boys from different backgrounds who bond over the question “What’s the Hebrew word for manga?”

On June 8, 2016, two men opened fire at a popular Sarona Market restaurant in Tel Aviv, and succeeded in killing four people.  Tal Inbar’s chilling documentary “Closed Circuit” assembles a collection of security camera footage from that day to reconstruct the events leading to that fateful shooting.  Interspersed throughout the film are interviews with the shooting’s survivors, including an eighth-grader dining with his stepmother and father, and a Hebrew-speaking Palestinian worker at the restaurant who wound up getting racially profiled as a shooting suspect.

If you read the New York Times’ coverage of Israel, you might have seen the work of celebrated war photographer Mich Bar-Am.  As the newspaper of record’s chief photo correspondent for Israel, his decades of work has resulted in an impressive trove of over 500,000 photographs.   In director Ran Tal’s documentary “1,341 Frames Of Love And War,” a mining of Bar-am’s photograph collection becomes an occasion for the photographer’s musing on both Israel’s history and the personal cost of bearing witness to multiple wars.  

Are pride in one’s Jewish-American identity and unwavering support for the state of Israel politically conjoined?  That’s the question facing Jewish-American subjects Simone and Eitan in Eric Axelman and Sam Ellertsen’s documentary “Israelism.”  Eitan joins the Israeli Defense Forces.  Simone advocates for Israel on American college campuses.  But when they both witness Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians, they have a serious re-think regarding their unquestioning love of the Israeli state.

Want to get a preview of Israeli ideas for keeping the Palestinians on the West Bank in their places?  Then come to the H2 section of Hebron.  That eastern section contains the only Jewish settlement located within a Palestinian city.  What should have been a site for Israeli-Palestinian peaceful coexistence got turned by Jewish religious zealots into what’s now an 800-person enclave protected by the might of the Israeli military.  Idit Avrahami and Noam Sheizaf’s documentary “H2: The Occupation Lab” recounts both the history of Hebron and the Israeli military’s current use of the H2 section as a testing lab for new ways of controlling Palestinians in the West Bank areas.

Valeria Is Getting Married

Meet Tamar Manessah, the subject of Brad Rothschild’s documentary “Rabbi On The Block.”  She’s a Chicago South Side community organizer who decides to become a rabbi and serve as a bridge between communities.  While fighting for reproductive rights and gun control, she also counsels and cares for her neighbors from a street corner.  However, Manessah’s desire to be ordained clashes with ongoing racism and misogyny in the Jewish community.

Paula Eiselt’s documentary short “Under G-d” shows how the Jewish community responded to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization aka the vile Supreme Court case nuking Roe v. Wade.  Rabbis, Jewish organizations, and interfaith leaders have been inspired by Jewish women’s lived experiences to launch lawsuits challenging Dobbs on the basis of religious freedom.

Nuking of a far different sort haunted Ted Hall, the central subject of Steve James’ documentary “A Compassionate Spy.”  In 1943, Hall was a Harvard math and science prodigy who at 18 years old became the youngest physicist working on the Manhattan Project.  Yet for Hall, the American scientists’ success in building the first atomic bomb soon gave way to terror at the prospect of an American monopoly on atomic weaponry.  To save humanity’s future, Hall decided to leak crucial information about the Bomb to the Soviets…  

The Take Action Spotlight film slot belongs to Tracy Droz Tragos’ timely documentary “Plan C.”  The film’s title is the name of the nonprofit organization co-founded by central subject Francine Coeytaux.  Plan C’s members dedicate themselves to provide accurate information on and access to the birth control drugs collectively known as RU486.  Tragos’ film follows the organization over four eventful years, from the need to expand capacity despite the COVID outbreak to the b.s. repeal of Roe v. Wade.

Local talent H.P. Mendoza goes from edgy musicals to the apparently straightforward subject of dealing with grief in “The Secret Art Of Human Flight.”  The loss of his wife and creative partner has turned children’s book author Ben Grady into a hermit.  A curious online video showing a man stepping off a cliff and suddenly flying starts drawing Grady out of his shell.  Soon with the assistance of the man in the video and the titular book, the writer becomes obsessed with following the book’s instructions and eventually breaking free of Earth’s gravity.

Nelly And Nadine

In the personal documentary “I Like It Here,” veteran documentary filmmaker Ralph Arlyck discusses his feelings about aging and being on life’s last lap yet still finding pleasures in being alive.  Whether it’s facing the stiffening of his mind and body or enjoying his rural surroundings, there’s both wistfulness and wisdom in the director’s reflections.

Kit Vincent’s Centerpiece Documentary “Red Herring” deals with the parental trauma of losing one’s child before they die.  In this case, it’s the director who receives a terminal diagnosis at age 24.  Vincent’s divorced parents try to deal by pursuing obscure hobbies ranging from raising chickens to growing medical marijuana.  But as the clock slowly ticks down, Vincent’s formerly distant father Lawrence starts becoming more present in his dying son’s life.  Celebrating Purim and Hanukkah helps Lawrence find solace for his son’s condition.

Centerpiece Narrative honors go to Leon Prudovsky’s dark comedy “My Neighbor Adolf.” Misanthropic Jewish Holocaust survivor Marek Polsky has resettled himself in 1960 Argentina.  The news of Adolf Eichmann’s arrest in Argentina has Polsky suspiciously eying his new neighbor Herzog (Udo Kier).  Could this bad tempered old man with a fondness for painting and an expansionist agenda actually be the disguised notorious Nazi leader Adolf Hitler?  Polsky feels there’s only one way to find out. 

If you missed Magnus Gertten’s touching documentary “Nelly & Nadine” at last year’s Frameline festival, don’t make the same mistake twice.  In 1943, French opera singer Nelly Mousset-Vos was arrested for her work with the French Resistance and sent to the female political prisoner camp known as Ravensbruck.  During a Christmas Eve song concert, the opera singer got a request for a “Madame Butterfly” aria.  The requester turned out to be Nadine Hwang, the daughter of China’s ambassador to Spain.  That first meeting would lead to a romance between the two women that Nelly’s granddaughter Sylvie Bianchi remained unaware of for decades.

Thanks to social media non-moderation and the alt-right, the centuries-old conspiracy theory about a secret cabal of Jews plotting world domination has once again moved into the cultural mainstream.  Maxim Povdorozkin’s partially animated documentary “The Conspiracy” looks at the sordid history behind this conspiracy theory.  Mayim Bialyik narrates this film which ties Jewish history to three prominent families: the Warburgs (prominent German bankers), the Dreyfuses (member Alfred Dreyfus would get wrongly accused of treason), and the Bronsteins of Ukraine (their son would famously change his name to Leon Trotsky).   .

Israelism

Tessa Louise Salome’s documentary “The Wild One” delivers a portrait of noted stage and film director Jack Garfein.  The man led a life which went from surviving the Auschwitz concentration camp to helping form Actors Studio West to directing productions that were ahead of their time.  Garfein himself, aided by Willem Dafoe’s readings and commentary from film historians among others, narrates this Albert & Judith Goldberg Award-winner. 

Luke Lorentzen’s 2023 Momentum Award-winning documentary “A Still Small Voice” follows aspiring chaplain Mati, who’s doing a spiritual care department residency at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital.  She provides emotional care and support to patients stressed out by uncertainty and grief.  But how can such emotional support be provided in the midst of the waves of COVID infection striking the entire world?

In Michal Vinik’s Israeli Academy Award-nominated chamber drama “Valeria Is Getting Married,” the titular character is a Ukrainian woman who’s come to Tel Aviv to fulfill an arranged  marriage to Eitan.  However, she starts having second thoughts after getting bombarded with Eitan’s big ticket gifts and her seeing that this marriage is the result of a monetary transaction.   Yet she has little desire to return to Ukraine.  What compromise can she reach?

Preceding Vinik’s film is Sue Zarco Kramer’s comedy short “Swipe NYC,” which follows the misadventures of a divorced middle-aged woman looking for love.  Syd (SFJFF Freedom Of Expression Award Winner Lisa Edelstein) is a realtor who reluctantly re-enters the dating pool hoping to use dating apps to find The One.  Instead, she keeps on encountering weirdos such as a painter with a decidedly unconventional fetish.  

One of the more fascinating film subjects at this year’s SFJFF is Chelly Wilson, the titular “Queen Of The Deuce.”  Valerie Kontakos’ documentary recounts the story of how a tomboyish Sephardic Jew emigrated to America in 1939 and reinvented herself.  Her first business may have been a hot dog stand.  But her greatest professional accomplishment was her two-decade reign over Manhattan’s 42nd Street area (aka “The Deuce”) as the head of a skin flick empire. 

John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” bears the distinction of being the only X-rated picture to date to win the Best Picture Oscar.  For those who haven’t seen the film yet, it’s the story of the friendship between two very unlikely friends: doe-eyed Joe Buck (Jon Voight) who’s come to late 1960s New York City to make a living as a gigolo, and tubercular hustler Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman).  Nancy Buirski’s documentary “Desperate Souls, Dark City, and The Legend of Midnight Cowboy” isn’t a film about the making of Schlesinger’s modern classic.  Instead, it’s a look at how the film was the product of the convergence of cultural elements (questioning of masculinity, the Vietnam War, and the counterculture) and Schlesinger’s personal experiences growing up closeted in England.

Bella!

Are cat pictures what’s needed to get members of Generation Z interested in learning the story of Anne Frank?  In Mickey Rapkin’s seriocomic short “The Anne Frank Gift Shop,” a pair of representatives from The Anne Frank Haus have asked a high-end design firm to reimagine the Haus’ gift shop.  But will the firm’s suggestions strengthen or trivialize the goals of the Haus?        

The East Bay Big Night film asks: what if Israel became an open air prison while Gaza became a place of relative safety?  That’s what happens after the UN embargoes departures from Israel thanks to an Israeli lab’s accidental release of the contagious ARS virus.  When wealthy British journalist Michael’s plan to leave Israel with his Israeli girlfriend Keren goes awry, the duo are forced to rely on the aid of Palestinians Emad and Waleed to get smuggled out of the country.  However, the two Palestinians know nothing of people smuggling as they’re only low-level scam artists.  But by the time that truth becomes known, Michael and Keren are forced to spend “A Gaza Weekend” with their wannabe transporters,  The forced stay becomes more stressful thanks to media hysteria and efforts by Hamas to hunt down Michael and Keren.  Director Basil Khalil’s dark comedy was written long before COVID-19 would change the face of the world.

SFJFF 43 closes things out with Jeff L. Lieberman’s rousing documentary “Bella!”  It’s a biographical portrait of the life of trailblazing feminist politician Bella Abzug.  This former labor and civil rights lawyer would wind up being elected to the U.S. House Of Representatives.  Over her amazing 65-year career, “Battling Bella” would help found the women’s rights movement, lead campaigns against the Vietnam War and nuclear testing, and fight for people of color and the LGBTQ community.

Hopefully, this taste of SFJFF 43 will inspire the reader to check out the films mentioned or some of this year’s other offerings.  And if a particular film inspires them to do their part to help repair the world, more power to them.     

(To learn more about SFJFF 43’s films and to order advance tickets, go here.)

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