San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2022 FORUM THREAD

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2022

FESTIVAL THREAD

SFJFF WEBSITE

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Films I will watch:
10 Questions for Henry Ford (Andy Kirschner 2021)
And I Was There (Eran Paz 2020)
Crossing, The (Florence Miailhe 2021)
Faithful, The: The King, The Pope, The Princess (Annie Berman 2021)
Grossman (Adi Arbel 2021)
Karaoke (Moshe Rosenthal 2022) Opening Night Film
On This Happy Note (Tamar Tal-Anati 2022)
Perfect Strangers זרים מושלמים (Lior Ashkenazzi 2021)
Reel War, A: Shalal (Karnit Mandel 2021)
Remember This (Derek Goldman, Jeff Hutchens 2022)
Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life (Patrice O’Neill 2022)
Restless Hungarian, The (Tom Weidlinger 2022)
Simchas and Sorrows (Genevieve Adams 2022)
Speer Goes to Hollywood (Vanessa Lapa 2020)
Summer Night (Ohad Milstein 2021)
Take the A Train (Yair Asher, Itamar Lapid 2021)
We Burn Like This (Alana Waksman 2021)

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SFJFF MAIN VENUE, THE CASTRO THEATER, SAN FRANCISSCO

SFJFF42 2022 PREVIEW

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SASSON GABAY and RITA SHUKRUN IN Karaoke

SFJFF42 Showcases 71 Films Exploring Global Jewish Experience Over 10 Days of Live Screenings and 7 Days of Online Streaming

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - June 28, 2022 - The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) has announced the complete lineup for the 42nd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), returning to the San Francisco Bay Area July 21 through August 7, 2022. The Festival, the oldest and most revered event of its kind worldwide, presents 71 films from 14 countries—narratives, documentaries, and shorts—that explore the past, present, and future of Jewish experiences and filmmaking. After two seasons of primarily online events, SFJFF42 brings its bold programming back to theatrical venues, with 10 days of screenings planned July 21–31 at the historic Castro Theatre in San Francisco and the Albany Twin Theater in Albany, followed by a selected streaming program via the JFI Digital Screening Room from August 1–7. Tickets to all programs are now on sale to Jewish Film Institute members and on sale to the general public at 10am on Thursday, June 30. Visit sfjff.org for more information.

SFJFF42 offers groundbreaking feature and short films that offer nuanced, complex perspectives on Jewish history, culture, and communities around the world. The Festival presents 5 World Premieres, 3 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, 3 United States Premieres, and 14 West Coast Premieres. SFJFF42 expands the Festival’s focus on the art of short filmmaking, with 31 shorts presented across 3 programs (live and online), and paired with feature films. SFJFF is the only Academy Award®-qualifying Jewish film festival for the Best Documentary Short category.

Five films at SFJFF42 are supported by the Jewish Film Institute via its Completion Grants and Filmmaker in Residence programs: My Name is Andrea (Dir. Pratibha Parmar); Remember This (Dirs. Jeff Hutchens, Derek Goldman); Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life (Dir. Patrice O’Neill); A Reel War Shalal (Dir. Karnit Mandel); and I will take your shadow (Dir. Ayala Shoshana Guy).

JFI Completion Grants provide funding to emerging and established filmmakers for bold stories that promote thoughtful consideration of Jewish history, life, culture, and identity. Launched in 2020, the Completion Grants have awarded nearly $200,000 to date to twelve projects. The third round of Grantees will be announced during a special online awards ceremony at SFJFF on Monday, August 1. The Filmmakers in Residence program is an annual, competitive artist residency that provides creative, marketing, and production support for emerging and established filmmakers in the United States with projects in all stages of production. JFI’s 2022 Residents will engage in workshops, meetings, and community programs during the Festival.

Additional highlights include 10 Special Presentations that alternately entertain, delight, provoke, and challenge established narratives and forms, from Opening Night’s Karaoke and the searing Take Action Spotlight To the End to the eye-opening Special Preview of The U.S. and the Holocaust and the virtuosic Remember This. SFJFF42 continues to spotlight Bay Area-produced films, with 10 programs directed, produced, or acted by filmmakers connected to Northern California.

OPENING NIGHT: Karaoke
Thursday, July 21 • 6:30pm • Castro Theatre
Moshe Rosenthal, 2022, Narrative, Israel, 103 minutes, Hebrew w/ English subtitles, West Coast Premiere
Meir and Tova are a Sephardic upper middle class couple, seemingly resigned to live out the rest of their semi-retirement in the banal comforts of an upscale apartment complex in a Tel Aviv suburb. When Itsik, a sexy bachelor from Miami, moves into the building’s penthouse, their lives are gleefully upended. Energized by their newfound friendship with Itsik, Meir and Tova undergo personal transformations, but will their relationship as a couple be a casualty of expressing their individual desires?

SPECIAL PREVIEW: The U.S. and the Holocaust
MOnday, July 25 • 7:30pm • Castro Theatre
Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, Lynn Novick, 2022, Documentary, USA, 45 minutes (excerpt), English
Extended conversation with Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein, moderated by Michael Krasny.
America’s response to one of the greatest humanitarian crises in history tested the ideals of democracy. This film sheds light on what the United States government and the American people knew and did as the catastrophe unfolded in Europe. By investigating events leading up to and during the Holocaust with fresh eyes, Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sara Botstein dispel the competing myths that Americans either were ignorant of what was happening to Jews in Europe, or that they merely looked on with callous indifference. The filmmakers have prepared a 45-minute special preview of the three-part (six-hour) series, which will be followed by an extended conversation moderated by Michael Krasny. Co-presented with KQED. The three-part series premieres on PBS September 18–20, 2022.

CLOSING NIGHT: Let It be Morning
Sunday, July 31 • 7:45pm • Albany Twin Theater
Eran Kolirin, 2021, Narrative, Israel/France, 101 minutes, Hebrew and Arabic w/ English subtitles
Director Eran Kolirin (The Band’s Visit, 2007), poignantly weaves a satirical story around Sami, a middle-class Palestinian businessman based in Jerusalem, and his family who are attending his brother’s wedding in the small Arabic village in Israel where he grew up. Unexpectedly, Sami’s hometown is placed under a military lockdown in a search for West Bank Palestinians living in the village, including those working on the construction of a second home for his family. Sami, now unable to return home, is torn between allegiances and forced to reassess his past and confront his future.

KARAOKE (Moshe Rosenthal 2022)

Opening night film, shown Thurs., July 21, 2022.

Rosenthal's interesting feature debut is about a man and woman in their sixties who find themselves through the challenge posed by the presence of a rich, flashy, essentially shallow neighbor.

AND I WAS THERE (Eran Paz 2020)

An Israeli artist-filmmaker, now in his thirties, finds videotapes he made while a soldier when his unit invaded Palestinian houses and treated the occupants callously 18 years earlier He has made a film about this. Compare Ari Forman's more artful Waltz with Bashir. But this one is powerful raw material, especially the found footage and Paz's meeting with one of the victimized Palestinians for conciliation, and lunch. One hour film.

Schedule
Monday August 1, 2022
12:01 a.m.
JFI Digital Screening Room

GROSSMAN (Adi Arbel 2021)

A short (54-minute) film bio about major Israeli writer David Grossman, now 68. He is almost continually talking to the camera, which seems to be a coup for this interview-shy person. Most touching: the story of the loss of his younger son, Uri, to fighting as an Israeli soldier. Missing: much about his leftist politics.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
JFI Digital Screening Room
Monday, Aug 1, 2022 12:01 AM - Sunday, Aug 7, 2022 11:59 PM

SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD (Vanessa Lapa 2020)

An attempt to expose the slickest Nazi that fizzles, as I wrote last Oct. when this came out in theaters. Review republished here because included in the SFJFF.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Sunday July 31, 2022
11:30 a.m.
Albany Twin

A REEL WAR: SHALAL (Karnit Mandel 2021)

A short documentary in which the filmmaker depicts her discovery of a small cache of what may be a much larger one of Palestinian films that go back to before the State of Israel's establishment - a stolen (shalal, "confiscated") legacy of the Palestinian people. She seeks to find a larger file held by the IDF, but without success.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Friday July 29, 2022
1:00 p.m.
Albany Twin

WE BURN LIKE THIS (Alana Waksman 2021)

A lost young woman in Montana, grandchild of Holocaust survivors, reconnects with her Jewish heritage through encountering antisemitism. But this pretty but meandering film seems a rather strange way of approaching this subject.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Monday August 1, 2022
12:01 a.m.
JFI Digital Screening Room

REMEMBER THIS (Jeff Hutchens, Derek Goldman 2022)

A filmed solo performance by David Strathairn of a stage piece dramatizing and recounting the remarkable life of Polish hero Jan Kaski, who sought to make known to world leaders about the massacre of the Jews during WWII. From this and other researches it inspired I learned about Kaski and gained new insight into the Holocaust.

At the Castro Theater yesterday.

Special Presentation: Center Stage

Actor David Strathairn, directors Derek Goldman and Jeff Hutchens, and producer Eva Anisko expected to attend. Post-film Q&A moderated by Carey Perloff, former Artistic Director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.

THE FAITHFUL: THE KING, THE POPE, THE PRINCESS (Annie Berman 2021)

The filmmaker, wo provides a constant intimate voiceover, recounts here decades-long pursuit of the nature of celebrity by following fans of Elvis, the Pope, and the late Princess Diana. And she is also recording her own obsession, with Elvis and with making this film, which began in rows and rows of little videotapes.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Monday July 25, 2022
11:15 a.m.
Castro Theatre

THE CROSSING/LA TRAVERSÉE (Florence Mialhe 2021)

Riffing off memories of her mother and great grandmother the artist-filmmaker tells a story of siblings fleeing wartime violence, through many vicissitudes, to enter a new land. The story never quite jells, but the hand painted animated images are frequently gorgeous, evoking numerous modern artists with fluid line and brilliant color.

Shown today, July 26, 2022 at the Albany Twin

SUMMER NIGHTS (Ohad Milstein 2021).


Exploring the world around his six-year-old son, a prizewinning Israeli short film of singular grace and simplicity. I thought of Nicholas Philibert's wonderful To Be and to Have; but where this film ends is where that one begins, the start of school.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Thursday July 28, 2022
6:00 p.m.
Albany Twin

THE RESTLESS HUNGARIAN (Tom Weidlinger 2021)

The filmmaker explores the life and achievement of his father Paul Weidinger (1914-1999), an important structural engineer for major architects who escaped from Europe in 1939 and concealed for the rest of his life that he was a Jew. The life and the film trajectory don't satisfy the way Nathanial Kahn's great My Architect does, but Tom is an accomplished documentarian and provides a vivid picture of the many phases of his father's varied life.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Friday July 29, 2022
3:05 p.m.
Albany Twin

A REEL WORLD: SHALAL (Karnit Mandel)

Tomorrow:

Quote:

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Friday, July 29 · 1pm
Albany Twin
Albany, CA
While digging in an Israeli archive, a film researcher stumbles across never-before-seen footage from a long-lost Palestinian Liberation Organization archive seized by Israel in the 1982 Lebanon war

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.

TAKE THE 'A' TRAIN (Yair Asher, Itamar Lapid 2021)

The Israeli feature film follows Yeshi, a 30-something jazz pianist with classical chops on a return visit to Tel Aviv from Paris. It's a somewhat random portrait of a directionless generation of young Israelis.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES
Schedule
Friday July 29, 2022
8:45 p.m.
Albany Twin, Albany CA

SIMCHAS AND SORROWS (Genevieve Adams 2022)

Seeking a rom com effect, with a New York and Brooklyn setting, Adams wrote, directed, and stars in this semi-autobiographical film while pregnant (as her character's written to be) about an atheist raised Catholic who consents to attend Judaism class with her Jewish fiancée to please his conservative family. Moments focused exclusively on Adams and Thomas McDonell, who plays the fiancée, work quite well; many others are less successful. I missed the light touch of HBO's "High Maintenance," which might have made something juicy out of this theme.

Already shown last Friday afternoon at the Castro Theater in San Francisco.

REPAIRING THE WORLD: STORIES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE (Patrice O'Neill 2022)

Begins with the worst anti-Semitic massacre in US history, 11 killed at the Tree of Life Synogogue in Pittsburgh. Patrice O'Neill and her cameraperson spent three years chronicling in detail the warm and ongoing community response which cut across sectarian and racial and ethnic lines. The film is conventional in style, but the information it contains is special. Frequently moviing.

Last theatrical event of the festival. It continues till Aug. 7 online.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Schedule
Sunday July 31, 2022
2:00 p.m.
Albany Twin

MORE THAN I DESERVE (Pini Tavger 2021)

An outsider in Israel, a poor immigrant from Ukraine with a single non-religious mom, tries to prepare for his Bar Mitzvah and it gets complicated. This excellent feature debut won best screenplay at Jerusalem. Tavger honed his skills on a series of short films.

SFJFF SHOWTIMES:
Saturday July 30, 2022
8:45 p.m.
Albany Twin
Monday August 1, 2022
12:01 a.m.
JFI Digital Screening Room

Films watched and links to reviews
10 Questions for Henry Ford (Andy Kirschner 2021) - no review
And I Was There (Eran Paz 2020)
Crossing,The/La traverséé (Florence Miailhe 2021)
Faithful, The: The King, The Pope, The Princess (Annie Berman 2021)
Grossman (Adi Arbel 2021)
Karaoke (Moshe Rosenthal 2022) Opening Night Film
More Than I Deserve (Pini Tavger 2021)
On This Happy Note (Tamar Tal-Anati 2022) - no review
Perfect Strangers זרים מושלמים (Lior Ashkenazi 2021) - no review
Reel War, A: Shalal (Karnit Mandel 2021)
Remember This (Derek Goldman, Jeff Hutchens 2022)
Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life (Patrice O’Neill 2022)
Restless Hungarian, The (Tom Weidlinger 2022)
Simchas and Sorrows (Genevieve Adams 2022)
Speer Goes to Hollywood (Vanessa Lapa 2020)
Summer Nights (Ohad Milstein 2021)
Take the A Train (Yair Asher, Itamar Lapid 2021)
We Burn Like This (Alana Waksman 2021)