San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

ISAAC CHEREM: LEONA (2018) CAPSULE


NAIAN GONZÁLEZ NORVIND, CHISTIAN VAZQUEZ IN LEIONA

Capsule review

Ariela (the disarmingly open Naian González Norvind, who co-scripted), is a 25-year-old Mexico City muralist from an observant, upper middle class Jewish family who falls in love (secretly, but not for long) with Iván (Christian Vazquez) an attractive, artistic non-Jewish man with whom she feels a lot in common. Her community is not amused. This film treats in specific detail a subject the outside world doesn't hear about. The 26-year-old director knows whereof he speaks, and the inbred M.C. Jewish community reportedly has not reacted favorably to this film. These people are very well off. Why must their society be so closed? Because, we're told, they came here 100 years ago, refugees from Syria, with nothing, and built it all up by rigid cooperation. In ghettos and shtetls, Jews were once inbred by necessity. Here and now they are so by choice. Assimilation into the goy world by a young woman isn't tolerated by this society, whose marriage and family rules seem more 19th than 21st century. Ariela must be a leona, a lioness: but she may not be up to it. A quiet shocker that mixes romance and ethnography.

Leona, 95 mins., debuted Oct. 2018 at Morelia (Michoacán, México) and has played at 16 Jewish Film Festivals plus the SFJFF, where it was screened for this capsule review.
SFJFF showtimes:
Sunday, July 21 8:45 pm CineArts
Wed. July 24 4:15 pm Castro
Sat. Aug 3, 6:35 pm Piedmont Theater
Sun., Aug 4 8:45 pm Smith Rafael

Best review I've seen is in Spanish by Alejandro Jiménez on Letterboxd.

[Chris Knipp]

NIKOLAUS LEYTNER: THE TOBACCONIST/DER TRAFIKANT (2018) CAPSULE


SIMON MORZÉ AND BRUNO GANZ IN THE TOBACCONIST

CAPSULE review - theatrical release coming soon

". . . a stunning recreation of the late 1930s in Vienna, thanks to the talents of director Nikolaus Leytner, his cinematographer and art director. The film expertly captures the tensions in the Austrian capital on the eve of Hitler’s takeover, and it also manages to be a vibrant coming-of-age story and an intriguing portrayal of Sigmund Freud, expertly portrayed by Bruno Ganz." - Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter.

In the first shot 17-year-old Frantz Huchel (robust young Everyman Simon Morzé) is hiding underwater in the lake as a thunderstorm rages, the water seemingly a safe cocoon for him. Out in the storm his promiscuous mother's latest lover, post copulation, takes a dip and is destroyed by lightening. Deprived of this source of livelihood, Mom sends Frantz to Vienna to apprentice to another lover, the tobacconist and one-legged WWI vet Otto Trsnjek (Johannes Krisch). Franz enters a miniature storybook world of Thirties shopkeeping, complete with period pornography hidden in a drawer for certain customers, all newspapers save the Nazi one, and a box of the best Havana cigars for the most special customers. Frantz sleeps in the shop, Otto at an apartment elsewhere.

The best touch in this atmospheric and visually pleasing but intellectually lightweight film (its YA storyline is never a total washout but sometimes belies its satisfying mise-en-scène) is what happens to Frantz at the end, as officials and bullies advise him to go back home but the future doesn't look rosy anywhere. He simply disappears, and the movie fades to black. Freud is gone, the shop has been closed, the Gestapo has the keys, the box of Havana cigars is left behind. The cozy, delightful mise-en-scène is plastered over with swastikas. What's left? Only tuneful credits roll. And credit is indeed deserved for dp Hermann Dunzendorfer and especially for production designer Bertram Reiter.

The Tobacconist/Der Trafikant, 117 mins., debuted at Hamburg Sept. 30, 2018 and had its US premiere in Jan. 2019 at the NYJFF at Lincoln Center, showing in numerous other Jewish film festivals including the SFJFF, where it was screened for this review.
SFJFF showtimes:
Tuesday July 23, 2019 8:10 p.m. CineArts
Thursday July 25, 2019 8:55 p.m. Castro Theatre
Saturday August 3, 2019 1:35 p.m. Smith Rafael
Sunday August 4, 2019 6:15 p.m. Piedmont Theatre

[Chris Knipp]

SAMEH ZOABI: TEL AVIV ON FIRE (2018) CAPSULE



KAIS NASHIF AND YANIF BITON IN TEL AVIV ON FIRE

Israeli and Arab meet over a soap opera

The comedy follows Salam (Kais Nashif of Hany Abou-Assad's tense 2005 thriller Paradise Now), a scrawny Palestinian loser who gets successful as writer for a 1967-set Palestinian TV soap with a female spy, a terrorist, and an Israeli general when an unlikely alliance develops between him and an Israeli checkpoint officer (Yanif Biton) who wants to manipulate the action to please his wife: the show is a hit with Israeli as well as Arab audiences. The film plays with writers constantly changing endings and adding far-fetched twists, and is as silly as the soap it encompasses. But it takes us to a fanciful, less grim occupied land where Arabs and Jews mix in the name of silly melodrama. Alas, if Jay Weissberg's Variety review is right, for this film, "Israeli money means Arab play is impossible." As is shown in the film, fantasies of Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation are just that. I came to like the loose-limbed style of Kais Nashif and the way the film feels as thrown-together as the soap it depicts. Director Sameh Zoabi is from a tiny Palestinian town but studied at Colombia and teaches at NYU.

[I]Tel Aviv on Fire[/I تل أبيب على النار], 100 mins., debuted in the Orizzonti section at Venice Sept. 2, 2018 (Best Actor for Kais Nashif) and played at many international film festivals, now in Jewish film festivals, including SFJFF for this review. A limited US release starts July 26, 2019. Now showing at Quad Cinema, Landmark at 57 and the Beekman Theater in NYC. Coming to SF Bay Area: Aug. 9 following at Landmark’s Clay Theatre. San Francisco and Landmark’s Shattuck Cinemas, Berkeley.

[Chris Knipp]

MATT RATTNER: STANDING UP, FALLING DOWN (2019)


BEN SCHWARTZ, BILLY CRYSTAL IN STANDING UP, FALLING DOWN

Two comics walk into a bar. . .

"I was smoking weed with my dermatologist. . ." The lead in Standing Up, Falling Down (a too-graphic title) uses his real life for comedy and is fed the possibility of that line by new circumstance. He acquires a dermatologist, with whom he almost immediately smokes weed.

Clowns in drama are usually sad and here you have two of them. No matter that Billy Crystal plays Marty, an alcoholic dermatologist in east Long Island. To us he's still a comic, the more famous one. He plays opposite Ben Schwartz, also a comic who has played many small roles in TV and film. Is this perhaps Schwartz's best, biggest one? He's loose, appealing, and smart as Scott, an aspiring comedian who has run out of money after four years in Los Angeles attempting to succeed at standup. He is back home in his old bedroom at loose ends, living with his mother (Debra Monk), his distant businessman dad (Kevin Dunn) and his scoffing adult sister Megan (Grace Gummer). His is 34 and unemployed. His sister is 30, working in a pretzel shop, and dating a security guard. Scott goes for a drink at a bar and the drunken man in a fedora he meets in the men's room peeing into the sink, Marty (Billy Crystal) turns out to be a dermatologist. Scott sees Marty in his office for his arm rash, which turns out to be due to stress. He gets some free cream because he can't afford to pay for meds, and they become pals, getting high together.

This fills a need for both of them. Marty is lonely and alcoholic. His duties don't seem very demanding. He hasn't always been this way; it happened with the decline of his clinically depressed second wife; both wives died. See what I mean about clowns being sad? He'd like to fight his way back. He and Scott hit it off. Scott is stressed (hence the rash) and awkward and disappointed with himself. It's hard facing the old place, the old people. Marty is good company, an inspired drinking partner. But Scott discovers that "34-year-old hangovers feel like brain cancer."

We've briefly seen Scott performing, before his return home. He's loose, smart, entertaining, and real. We see him doing standup again briefly at Governors of Levittown. Again he's funny and real. All his humor this second time comes from the events we have just seen. It's like a review of the action so far, recast as humor. Nice. He is good playing off the mike. Most of the time everyone else is somehow playing off him.

Does Billy Crystal get to do standup? Obviously not. But let's just say Marty's quick on his feet. And while he's a drunk, he has some wisdom to offer to Scott. One nugget that's underlined: "Regret's the only thing that's real." Crystal deserves credit for being good every moment without ever hogging the screen or playing Marty like a comedy routine. Marty's an amusing drunk, good company to some (not the barman, who's sick of him), but when he goes home, very alone.

The setup has nowhere to go but down or nowhere at all, because it refuses any schmaltzy bright new dawns for either of the two men. Even seeming successes, like Scott's appearance at Governor's, seem to fall flat. The fact that the flame still burns for him with his beautiful ex, Becky (Eloise Mumford), is just trouble, since she's happily married, or at least her jocky husband Owen (John Behlmann) thinks so. Mabye there are a few too characters, and some, like large local comic Murph (Leonard Ouzts), barely get a line or two. Nonetheless the main secondary characters, Scott's sister, her "awesome" boyfriend Ruis (David Castañeda), his annoying but caring mom (Debra Monk);, Marty's buddies at the bar, his unforgiving son Adam (Nate Corddry), his daughter (Caitlin McGee), even Scott's indifferent dad, are all made three-dimensional thanks to good casting, Peter Hoare's writing, and first-timer Matt Rattner's direction.

There are good scenes, some funny, some not. The meet-cute in the men's room is the first. Another comes when Marty and Scott are stoned in his "Snoop Dog" Seventies Caddy and Ruis, the sister's security guard boyfriend they've only heard about, comes up playing like a cop and scares them to death. Probably all of this is cliché, including the funeral taken over by the recent friend who delivers the most touching elegy. But Cristal and Schwartz are fun to watch, and this is a calling card for Matt Rattner.

Standing Up, Falling Down, 91 mins., debuted at Tribeca Apr. 25, 2019. It has been screened for this review as part of the SFJFF.
SFJFF showtimes:
Thursday July 25, 2019 6:00 p.m. CineArts
Saturday July 27, 2019 6:05 p.m. Castro Theatre
Sunday July 28, 2019 3:25 p.m. Albany Twin
Saturday August 3, 2019 6:25 p.m. Smith Rafael

[Chris Knipp]

ALYSSA BOLSEY: BEYOND THE BOLEX (2018) CAPSULE


JACQUES BOLSEY IN BEYOND THE BOLEX

Capsule review

A documentary about the filmmaker's great-grandfather, Jacques Bolsey, a Jewish Russian refugee who emigrated to America. We learn about Bolsey and his famous invention, the "Bolex" portable movie camera, a design that became a classic and favorite of filmmakers looking for quality and portability. Alyssa Bolsey makes good use of a recently discovered archive - a family attick loaded full of Bolsey's inventions and papers - to explore the inventor's, and the invention's, history. Alyssa Bolsey devoted her life to this project for a dozen years, and it shows in the depth and richness of information provided in this fascinating film.

Bolsey was of Russian Jewish origin, but emigrated to Switzerland at an early age. His original name was Jak Bogopolsky. His runaway creativity as an inventor may have been against his own interests financially; in any case he was never after wealth. His greatest invention was the portable 16mm. movie camera known as the Bolex. It's like the camera version of a Swiss Army knife, a durable, handy, infinitely flexible tool that has inspired many photgraphers in their early work, some experimental ones throughout their careers, and it is still manufactured today. Some who used it: Bruce Brown, Jonas Mekas, Darren Arronofsky, Stephen Speilberg, Christopher Nolan, Wim Wenders, Ridley Scott, David Lynch, Michel Gondry. And that's that's just a few. It's used in filmmaking classes at the New School. And on and on.

Beyond the Bolex, 80 mins., with a 52 min. Arte version, was released at DOC NYC Nov. 2018. Screened for this capsule as part of the SFJFF 2019.
SFJFF showtimes:
Thursday July 25, 2019 6:00 p.m. CineArts
Saturday July 27, 2019 6:05 p.m. Castro Theatre
Sunday July 28, 2019 3:25 p.m. Albany Twin
Saturday August 3, 2019 6:25 p.m. Smith Rafael

[Chris Knipp]

PETER KENNETH JONES: HENRI DAUMAN: LOOKING UP (2018)


HENRI DAUMAN BEHIND A LEICA IN HENRI DAUMAN: LOOKING UP

A brilliant French lensman with a difficult past

"Looking Up," which refers to Henri Dauman's early photos of skyscrapers from below in New York, is the title of a retrospective of his photographs shown in Los Angeles at at KP Projects/Merry Karnowsky Gallery April 28 to May 12, 2018. This film is a follow-up, a personal review of his life and career. He flourished during the heyday of magazine photography in the Fifties and Sixties, before the decline of journalist caused hard times. That was his first US exhibition, we learn. The photographs are wonderful. Some of them, like Kennedy family marching in JFK's funeral cortège, are famous, but his name is too little known.

Dauman became a leading photojournalist after he emigrated at 17 in 1950 from France to New York. His work eventually was seen by millions in Life and on the covers of Time and L'Express, Epoca and Paris Match.. His photos are "a who's who of pivotal figures of the 20th century, including John and Jackie Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, Brigitte Bardot, Elvis Presley and countess others," wites Frank Schenk in his Hollywood Reporter. review.

In Peter Kenneth Jones's documentary, Dauman tells his own story into the camera, much like Toni Morrison in the currently showing The Pieces I Am - but with a lot of lovely still photographs, which he explains were always informed by his love of films, especially American noir. He told only his two wives about his very difficult early years we learn of here. A Jew born in Montmartre, Dauman and his mother escaped the infamous "rafle" of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris where thousands of Jews were taken to be sent off to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis. He was separated from her during the war as he fled into the country in hiding. His father was sent to Auschwitz and killed. Reunited with his mother in Paris after the Liberation when he was 9, he lost her again when she was one of six poisoned by an evil neighborhood pharmacist. He was in a succession of orphanages age 13-17. He taught himself photography and was already a success as a teen, doing, the French Wikipedia article tells us, "portraits of celebrities for Radio Luxembourg and the famous Agency stars Bernand."

The French government helped him find his American uncle Sam in New York to be his guardian and sailing on "the newly renovated liner La Liberté he went to America at 17. The time was rough here to. His uncle's wife wasn't friendly. He was housed in a room in the Bronx and worked in a lingerie factory. But he stuck to photography and, working like a demon, starting with the magazine France-Amérique, made a name for himself photographing celebrities, especially French ones, gaining note for a series on Elvis Presley doing military service. The Wikipedia article reviews Dauman's extensive achievements, which include color photography and directing documentaries. Some of these things the film barely touches on. At the end it lavishes much attention on Dauman today, his second wife, the two of them visiting a beautifully photographed Paris, and his children and grandchildren, whom he understandably considers his greatest achievement, since he started with nothing on arriving in the US. It's difficult to do full justice to both the private and professional life of this brave and prolific man. The director, Peter Jones, is the boyfriend of Dauman's granddaughter, Nicole Suerez. Dauman’s son, Philippe, is president, CEO and chairman at Viacom, heir apparent to the media empire long helmed by Sumner Redstone. Henri Dauman also has a daughter, Suerez’s mother, and another son from a second marriage.

Henri Dauman: Looking Up, 86 mins., debuted at the Hamptons Oct. 6, 2018. Screened for this review as part of the 2019 SFJFF.
Showtimes SFJFF:
Thursday July 25, 2019 11:40 a.m. CineArts
Friday July 26, 2019 11:15 a.m. Castro Theatre
Wednesday July 31, 2019 1:30 p.m. Albany Twin


A WIDELY SEEN DAUMAN PHOTO: THE JFK FUNERAL CORTEGE

[Chris Knipp]

RACHEL LEAH JONES, PHILLIPE BELLAICHE: ADVOCATE (2018) CAPSULE


LEA TSEMEL

Capsule

Advocate is a documentary about vibrant Israeli human rights lawyer Lea Tsemel who has represented political prisoners for nearly 50 years. In his Hollywood Reporter review written at HotDocs, Keith Uhlich calls this film "absorbingly up close and personal." There have been several boldly revealing Israeli documentaries, namely The Gatekeepers (NYFF) and The Law in These Parts (SFIFF). There was also The Lab (SFIFF), an eye-opening film about Israeli's huge arms production and sales. In 2018 came Duki Dror's The Mossad (SFJFF), about Israel intelligence. Rachel Leah Jones's and Phillipe Bellalache's Advocate must be added to this impressive list.

Advocate, 108 mins., debuted at Sundance Jan. 2019 and has played in at least 9 other international festivals, including SFJFF, where it was screened for this capsule comment. In June it was the Opening Night film of the Film at Lincoln Center Human Rights Festival. At Docaviv it won first prize.
SFJFF showtimes:
Saturday July 27, 2019 3:20 p.m. Castro Theatre
Sunday July 28, 2019 5:55 p.m.Albany Twin

INTERVIEW about the film on Democracy Now!