San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2013

[Chris Knipp]

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. http://www.sfjff.org/

Filmleaf Festival Coverage thread H E R E.

This year for the first time thanks to screener access via Larsen Associates of San Francisco I will be reviewing or previewing some titles from this big Bay Area festival, with prsentations spread over four venues and in its 33rd year. Below are some of the titles I hope to cover. Some are short films. These are from many different countries, which will be identified in the coverage.)

Link index of Filmleaf reviews of the 2013 SFJFF:

After Tiller (Lana Wilson, Martha Shane) 2013
Afternoon Delight (Jill Soloway 2013)
Aliyah (Elie Wajeman)
All In (Daniel Burman) 2012
Americn Commune (Nadine Mundo, Rena Mundo Croshere 2012)
Amy Winehouse: The Day She Came to Dingle (Maurice Linnane 2012)
Art of Spiegelman (Clara Kuperberg, Joëlle Oosterlinck 2010)
The Attack (Ziad Doueiri 2012)--SFJFF Centerpiece Film
Before the Revolution (Dan Shadur 2013)
Behind Me Olive Trees (Pascale Abou Jamra 2012)
Dancing in Jaffa (Hilla Medalia 2013)
Every Tuesday: A Portrait of The New Yorker cartoonists
First Cousin Once Removed (Alan Berliner, NYFF 2012)
Gideon’s Army (Dawn Porter 2013)
In the Shadow (David Ondrícek 2012)
Jerry and Me (Mehrnaz Saeedvafa 2012)
Joe Papp in Five Acts (Karen Thorsen, Tracy Holder 2012)
Kenny Hotz's Triumph of the Will (Kenny Hotz. Sebastian Cluer 2011)
The Lab (Yotam Feldman 2013)
The Last Sentence (Jan Troell 2012)
My Father and the Man in Black (Jonathan Holiff 2013)
Red Flag: Spotlight on Alex Karpovsky (Alex Karpovsky 2012)
That Woman (Ed Dick 2012)
Trials of Muhammad Ali (Bill Siegel 2013)

(I had already previously reviewed Aliyah and First Cousin Once Removed in other contexts.)

Alan Berliner will be given the Freedom of Expression Award at the fest.

Click here for the Festival Coverage thread.

[Chris Knipp]

Some short reviews of short films coming in this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival begin here.

Behind Me Olive Trees (Pascale Abou Jamra 2012)
Red Flag (Alex Karpovsky 2012)
That Woman (Ed Dick 2012)

[Chris Knipp]

Previews of two documentaries: Gideon's Army, The Trials of Muhammad Ali.

[Chris Knipp]

Ziyad Douari: The Attack (2012) - SFJFF CENTERPIECE FILM


REYMOND AMSALEM AND ALI SULIMAN IN THE ATTACK

Irreconcilable differences

Ziyad Doueri's The Attack provides an obvious setup. When Amin Jaafari, a distinguished Palestinian surgeon in Tel Aviv, gets a major Israeli award, there is a terrorist bombing and his wife, killed in the incident, becomes the prime suspect. This is a complete shock to him.

We get the point: even a thoroughly assimilated Palestinian awarded a national honor by Israeli society still finds his security and sense of belonging hang by a thread. The doctor, after treating the injured, is himself a suspect and is held for brutal interrogation but later found innocent and released. His colleagues at the hospital nonetheless pass around a petition to strip him of his Israeli citizenship. But a few Israeli colleagues remain utterly loyal. Incredulous and now angry at his wife whom he seems no longer to know or understand, Dr. Jaafari goes to Nablus to investigate, at considerable personal risk, the sources of the bombing, starting with his own and his wife's family.

This is a setup to show Palestinian rage and the impossibility of a Palestinian's assimilating into Israeli society. But it's not a very obvious setup, after all, because this can't be a very typical case. Surely Palestinians who've won distinction in Tel Aviv don't turn out to have wives who are suicide bombers -- or do they?

This was also scheduled as the centerpiece film at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 30 (Castro Theater, San Francisco) and Aug. 4 (California Theater, Berkeley). Debuted at Teluride, then Toronto, fall 2012; limited US theatrical release Jun2 27, 2013. Screened for this review at Angelika Film Center, NYC, July 10, 2013.

For the full review see Filmleaf's Festival Coverage section for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival here.

[Chris Knipp]

Jill Soloway: Afternoon Delight (2012)


RACHEL HAHN IN AFTERNOON DELGIHT


In TV writer Soloway's short feature a bored, well-off Jewish LA wife (Kathryn Hahn) brings a dangerous element into her household in an effort to liven up her sex life, do good, or just relieve the ennui. More titillating than enlightening, with a definite reference to the protag's involvement in the local JCC to qualify for SFJFF inclusion and an annoying motormouth protagonist, AFTERNOON DELIGHT has the peculiar distinction of being a film made for women that women will probably not want to watch.

[Chris Knipp]

Hilla Medalia: Dancing in Jaffa (2013)



Award-winning Israeli documentarian Hilla Medalia follows world-famous ballroom dancing exponent Pierre Dulaine as he teaches Palestinian and Jewish Israeli fifth-graders etiquette and mutual respect in his hometown Jaffa, now a poor, mixed suburb of Tel Aviv. DANCING IN JAFFA, 84 mins., was picked up at Tribeca by Sundance Selects for US theatrical release jointly along with IFC, probably in the fall of 2013. It becomes part of an upcoming IFC/Sundance lineup that also includes Alexandre Moors' BLUE CAPRICE (ND/NF 2013), Abdellatif Kechiche's Cannes Palm d'Or winner BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR, and other Cannes films VENUS IN FUR Polanski, (from the stage play) and YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL (Francois Ozon).