San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2019

[Chris Knipp]

DANIEL SCHECHTER: SAFE SPACES (2019)


JUSTIN LONG (LEFT) IN SAFE SPACES

Plea for compassion - but what about taste?

A jejune but eager, up to date, and assertive "writing" teacher called Josh Cohen (Justin Long) who the festival blurb calls "a 38-year-old Brooklyn man-child" is an adjunct creative writing professor in New York City who tells a girl student in class to "write what hurts," which in this case turns out to be to describe a date where the boy asked her to let him jerk off on her butt and she did. The premise and scenes feel like the hip HBO anthology series "High Maintenance" except this is about a subject that's become trite of late: political correctness. While everybody uses foul language - college students in front of teachers in class, adult children in front of elders in a hospital - a writing student is criticized for including no people of color in a story that's about his Jewish summer camp. Well, there could be people of color at the camp, as employees. If an African American might be tricky, Josh suggests in private the student might try an Asian. In a smaller, seminar-style class, we learn from a militant African American woman student that for her, "hashtag" and "me too" take on a special, inferior meaning: she uses them to refer to a white male's feeble efforts to be politically correct.

The issue of "appropriate speech" is tossed around, as Josh is repeatedly hauled in to a faculty committee to rehash his discussion of the jack-off moment and the girl's objection that Josh's pressing the girl student to reveal it awakened painful memories of a sexually abusive experience of hers. Josh makes the situation worse for himself by refusing to apologize. Does anyone consider that, first of all, you can't really teach writing and second, Josh gives no evidence of knowing anything about this art? He is only seen, and then only briefly, discussing content, not the quality of writing itself. Can he put a sentence together? Does style matter to anybody? You can't teach people how to write, and you certainly can't teach them style.

But while the issue of the campus and the eggshells teachers walk on is a running theme, the screenplay spends more time on the squabbling New York Jewish family to which Josh belongs as the "boy" who can no longer justify acting so childish. It's not funny anymore, as his brother David (Michael Godere) tells him. Most the the movie is domestic drama about siblings and parents. A grandmother (Lynn Cohen) is in the hospital. First she wants to die. Then she rallies and declares her willingness to undergo radiation, use her walker, and forge ahead. Meanwhile under the tutelage of Josh's hellish mother Diane (Fran Drescher), the grandmother's, her mother's, property gets divided up or dispersed, with her still alive. She's not in a very safe space, evidently. Is this funny? Perhaps it's realistic, and grandma's not really going to last very long.

It's a pleasure to encounter Richard Schiff, a mainstay of the Aaron Sorkin series "The West Wing," as Josh's father. He makes his initially minor role seem important because his line delivery is caustic and felt. Instead of the flailing improvisational manner we get from some of the other cast members, Schiff makes his words pointed. Other characters, like his wife Sherry (Dana Eskelson), or their hostile little son Ben (Tyler Wladis), are reduced to gestures, and even Schiff can't save a schmaltzy death scene. They do show up en masse for grandma's final hours, though. This family fights like cats and dogs. It's not pretty - or funny - and that may make it hard to care about them; the added-on treacle doesn't help. This is not unusual, though, perhaps not really all that bad. But it reads like a quite conventional domestic drama that has gotten hashtag campus politics tacked onto it to make it seem more contemporary.

Safe Spaces debuted at Tribeca April 2019; it was Reviewed there by Alison Crist for Hollywood Reporter. It also showed at Monclair and Woods Hole, and was screened for this review as part of the SFJFF.
SFJFF Showtimes;
Saturday July 20, 2019 8:50 at the Castro
Sun., July 21 6:10 at CineArts; Wed. July 31 8:30 pm Albany
Sunday August 4, 6:30 p.m. San Rafael.

[Chris Knipp]

ERIC FRIEDLER: IT MUST SCHWING! THE BLUE NOTE STORY (2018)


FRANCIS "FRANK" WOLFF AND ALFRED LION

A stunning German recreation of the world of Blue Note Records

There was a movie about this subject last year, Sophie Huber's 2018 Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes. It's an interesting, well-made film about this key jazz record label and the pair of German Jewish immigrants, Alfred Lion, Francis Wolff, behind it. But you won't ask why there should be another film so soon when you see this one.

This is a bigger production and a German one, executive produced by Wim Wenders and directed by the major German documentary filmmaker, Eric Friedler. The result is a rich experience. There is a parade of jazz greats, just about anyone still living who recorded during the glory days from 1939 to 1965. Beyond that, there are the visuals. The script by Silke Schütze and the director Eric Friedler called for thirty minutes of animation to bring lost moments of Alfred and Frank's world in Germany and America to life. These are done in an original way that's stylized but fairly realistic. Toward the end there is a sequence of really snappy, gorgeous animation showing how the graphics of some of the classic Blue Note album covers are put together: it's a delight to the eye. The constant excerpts of key recordings alternate with the eye candy of the special visuals while the voices of jazz greats like Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Lou Donaldson, and Wayne Shorter, alternating with narration by several jazz historians, tell us what Blue Note was like. It's an impressive mix, and beautifully organized.

It was like a family. Frank and Alfred treated their African American musicians, victims of racism, with kindness because they were themselves refugees from extreme persecution. We hear at length about the recording sessions, very late at night, the drinks and sandwiches provided for all sessions, the taxis later to New Jersey to Rudy van Gelder's recording studio, the unique respect, and in the Sixties, the way Blue Note played a part in the civil rights movement. Alfred and Frank were always crusaders for civil rights. They valued their musicians. They also focused on modern jazz, not the retro stuff, and they let the musicians play what they wanted to play - though indeed, always there, paying attention, dancing a silly little off-beat jiggly dance (noted in the other film) when happy, insisted when they were not that the piece should be played again, because it "must schwing."

Each talking head contribution is in itself a portrait of the artist. It's extraordinary to hear at length from Sheila Jordan, a key jazz vocalist who is not 90, and still looks really good, hair and makeup immaculate. It's a little surprising that Ron Carter, the stellar bassist who has had a million recording dates, is still angry at the prejudice he experienced. Wayne Shorter, so enigmatic and sad as a player, is bubbly and full of smiles in speech. Rudy van Telder, 91, is giving his last interview. Lou Donaldson, 92, provides an essential running narrative in his high-pitched voice.

When Monk came along, it's acknowledged that he represented genius, and time is taken to listen to him and talk about him and watch him at work, including the spinning.

The film takes time to talk about too many individual recordings and artists to note here. One that stands out is perhaps their earlierst hit, Sidney Bechet's "Summertime," signaled as music whose soulful sweetness still resonates today. Of Blue Note's 1000 record albums, it's been said that 750 are classics. A lot of attention is paid to the distinctive Blue Note recorded sound and of the evolution of the recording studio, and the uniquely positive atmosphere Frank and Alfred maintained.

Pretty much any major jazz performer in the early years not included in this group who talk on camera simply isn't around anymore. Missing giants include John Coltrane, Monk, bebop keyboard pioneer Bud Powell, Art Blakey, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Joe Henderson and Jackie McLean. But we hear about them, especially Thelonius (who, we are reminded, nobody called that: he was "Bubba").

Another unique aspect of this film is its featuring of copious dialogue in German, both Alfred speaking and German announcers in New York broadcasting in the Thirties to Germany. It's stressed that both Alfred and Frank came from a part of the German Jewish population who considered themselves far more German than Jewish, in fact hardly Jewish at all, because they were not religious or particularly ethnic, and were very imbued with a sense of their German culture. (Neither of them ever lost his heavy German accent.) Alfred's England-based nephew points out his uncle's sense of Germanness. Perhaps this is a reason why Frank delayed a couple years coming to New York even though the Nazi scourge was clear. Frank was a photographer, had been from when the two met and became friends at the age of 16, and Frank and Alfred both loved jazz when the met, too.

This film talks more about Alfred as the one who ran the business till his retirement forced by ill health. But it delves further into the reclusive, private personality of Frank, giving numerous descriptions of what he was like by the musicians and revealing his black girlfriend even Alfred hadn't know of, who was present at his funeral with her children. The film warmly recreates the pair throughout in the animations, and presents interviews with both Alfred's wives. This, like the previous film, talks about Frank's omnipresent photo-making at recording sessions and at other odd moments. The film is full of Frank's striking black and white stills of the musicians making music, which make the essential part of some of the best of the albums. The other film shows a lot of the album covers too, but this one has the graphic animation of covers that is so dazzling and delightful.

In fact, it's hard to think of anything that could be better in this film, except sitting all day and listening to Blue Note Albums on a classic hi-fi record player. This is one of the best films about jazz in a while.

It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Story, 115 mins., debuted at Munich July 2018; also played at Telluride and Warsaw. It was screened for this review as part of the SFJFF. Jazz fans, don't miss it!
SFJFF showtimes:
Saturday July 20 1:15 Castro Theater
Tues., July 23 12:30 CineArts
Sat. July 28 1 pm Albany twin

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[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