San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2022

[Chris Knipp]

GENEVIEVE ADAMS: SIMCHAS AND SORROWS (2022)


GENEVIEVE ADAMS, THOMAS MCDONELL IN SIMMCHAS AND SORROWS

In an ambitious directorial debut, Genevieve Adams references her own experience of marriage into a Jewish family

Genevieve Adams has made a semi-autobiographical film about Agnes (writer-director Genevieve Adams), a young pregnant Catholic-raised, now atheist woman who, with her fiancee Levi (Thomas McDonell), enrolls in a Judaism class taught by progressive, feminist Rabbi Cohen (Hari Nef, "Assassination Nation") in order to convert to his faith and satisfy his family. Adams went through something like this experience herself, and evidently came through it happily. Her film is humorous, but never bitter, even if the humor doesn't always come off. Agnes' family is represented here through a grandfather who raised her, played by 92-year-old two-time Tony winner John Cullum. Adams had no trouble playing pregnant since she was.

Adams, who is relaxed, and McDonell, who is good humored, are fine in every scene where they're together enacting their sometimes conflictual relationship (celebrating Christmas as an ethnic holiday becomes a sticking point). Some of the times in the rest of this movie are less successful. The setting is Williamsburg, Brooklyn and Manhattan and not for the first time I thought of the great HBO series "High Maintenance," whose scenes and locations are similar, and wished for some of that wit, specificity, and lightness of touch.

Agnes teaches a class for little kids. Having them talk like sophisticated adults have worked if children had been found who could recite such lines convincingly and understandably. Scenes with Cullum as the grandfather and Broadway vet Chip Zien as Agnes' prospective father-in-law ought to have flowed more seamlessly and with a surer tone.

Obviously there are simply flaws in Genevieve Adams's writing, which is rife with non-sequitur and overly explanatory moments; and in her direction and the editing;, which don't always find a smooth rhythm. This issue is notable in the Judaism class where neither the writing nor the delivery of Hari Nef as the rabbi feels quite right. Trimming would have helped the script.

But one supposes those who identify with this experience or are looking for a way to relate to it may find moments of satisfaction.

Simchas and Sorrows, 117 mins., debuted at Cinequest (San Jose/Redwood City) Apr. 7, 2022, and was screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (July 15-August 7, 2022). The film was shown Fri., Jul. 22, 2022, 5:30 pm at the Castro Theater.

[Chris Knipp]

PATRICE O'NEILL: REPAIRING THE WORLD: STORIES FROM THE TREE OF LIFE (2022)


DEMONSTRATION SHOWN IN REPAIRING THE WORLD

The 2018 Pittsburgh anti-Semitic massacre: a film about community response

Pittsburgh is "small," this film says; and the city's solidarity was great after the October 27, 2018 massacre of 11 Jewish worshippers (including a 97-year-old woman) at the Tree of Life Synagogue, the worst anti-Semitic attack in US history. There was an immediate outpouring of support across communities. It may have helped that the Squirrel Hill neighborhood where this happened is a particularly friendly one. It is also one with a strong Jewish element and the city is very segregated and yet "there is a level of unity and solidarity here that there isn't in other cities", says Wasi Mohamed, then Islamic Center director, who raised close to $1/4 million to help victims. This is an energetic and dedicated documentary that represents three years of work by director Patrice O'Neill, who has previously focused on attacks of this kind in her films. Here especially there has been a coming together. The ongoing collective action chronicled in O'Neill's film is a dramatic, wide and touching interpretation of the Jewish concept of "tikkun olam," repairing the world.

The accused (unnamed here, who pleaded not guilty and is still awaiting trial) is a white supremacist. This movement has grown greatly in recent years; clearly, Donald Trump tacitly supported it (and still does). Hence the new connection of the Black community with the Jewish community, also the Muslim community - great multi-ethnic, multi-religion unity developed.

But: there are white suprematists in Pittsburgh, and their threats nation-wide have abounded. Always they increase after a major incident like the Tree of Life massacre. Furthermore, a wide pro-gun coalition exists throughout the country. New Pittsburgh restrictions on the use of assault weapons in the wake of the Tree of Life attack were later struck down by the court as violating Pennsylvania gun laws.

Brad Orsini, director of security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh; appears here as one who, through the 2018 event, came to a greater understanding of what it would be like to be a member of a minority that is an object of hate crimes.

The Poway synagogue shooting of April 27, 2019 near San Diego, California, which saw one killed and three injured, again caused a gathering of Pittsburgh community figures covered in this film. Likewise August 3, 2019, when a gunman killed 23 in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas; the shooter is one who believes there is a Hispanic invasion in Texas. as local Hispanic hate crime representative explains. This upsurge of racist and anti-Semitic violence in the US following the Tree of Life attack has brought Pittsburghers continually closer together, as the film shows. Efforts show in the film in meet-ups across sectarian lines at the community level and meetings and classes in high schools. Three years after the 2018 attack, Pittsburgh reached out to the world, hosting the Inaugural Eradicate Hate Global Summit, an international conference on hate.

A conventional film in form, this is nonetheless an impressive enough one for its coverage of trauma and community response. O'Neill has made a real effort to represent all elements of the community. Patrice O'Neill is a leader of Not in Our Town, a movement to build hate-free communities across the country.

Repairing the World: Stories from the Tree of Life, 90 mins., debuted at the Pittsburgh JFilm Festival on May 5, 2022 and won the best documentary audience award at the festival. It was screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 15-August 7, 2022. West Coast Premiere.

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


IN FRONT OF THE TREE OF LIFE SYNOGOGUE IN REPAIRING THE WORLD

[Chris Knipp]

PINI TAVGER: MORE THAN I DESERVE (2021)


MICHA PRUDOVSKY, YAAKOV ZADA DANIEL IN MORE THAN I DESERVE

The complicated life of a poor Ukrainian boy in Israel who wants a Bar Mitzvah

Pini Tavger is a gifted filmmaker who has honed his skills with a number of shorts, and this feature debut, which he wrote and directed, winning the best screenplay award at the Jerusalem Festival, is a vivid and intense slice of life. A boy's life. A poor boy from Ukraine who immigrated to Israel with his single mom, who's got more than one strike against him, but is a fighter. He even tackles a big bully on the soccer field of his working class neighborhood and subdues him; and, at least at first, he has jumped in as goalie and gotten high praise.

Pinchas (Micha Prudovsky) is a slight strawberry blond thirteen-year-old. The soccer boys call him "Pinkie." He sees neighborhood boys being coached for their Bar Mitzvahs and he wants in. The portrait of his mother, Tamara (Ana Dubrovitzki), isn't sympathetic. Why is the movie so hard on her? She gathers some sympathy later, but not much. She is a single mom, she works nights at a hospital, she's a lousy cook, and she is sleeping with a married man called Yossi (Udi Razzin) and it's not going to work. She and her son speak Ukrainian, but they also speak Hebrew. We don't know how long they have been in Israel but the living room has a tall pile of cartons with stuff yet unpacked.

The man giving the Bat Mitzvah preparation, who lives nearby, is Shimon (Yaakov Zada Daniel) who's a Chabadnik, the Israeli sources tell us, and he develops a personal relationship with Pinchas, teaching the boy he is named after a great Jewish hero. In a quiet way, Pinchas does well with the recitations, good at cadences because he's rather musical. But also, it develops, perhaps Shimon connects with Pinchas' outsider status, because it turns out he is recovering from an extremely dissolute youth in which he used all kinds of drugs, was an addict, was a Don Juan, and had a band. Such problems!

All this is before Shimon and Tamara start to notice each other and Shimon takes the place of Yossi. Pinchas did not like Yossi, but he can't very well like his Bat Mitzvah coach sleeping with his mother. This might seem an absurd mess of plot twists except that this movie has an easy naturalness and simplicity about its style that draws you in, even as it depresses you,. And as Pinchas, young Prudovsky has a blond, smooth, neutral coolness that is quite appealing: he has the subtle durability of the picaresque hero, or anti-hero. Since we don't see him at school we are left to assume that while it's not great for Pinchas, it's doable - or he would not have the energy left over for his attempts at entering the neighborhood soccer game.

Meanwhile Shimon's home life has emerged:. He lives with his parents. He has been told he must marry:. He won't get that synagogue position he wants unless he accepts a proper wife. But he wants a woman he loves even if he knows that is "More than I deserve." What his parents will not allow is for Shimon to shack up with Tamara: nix on that! They tell her. Yet there is time for a sequence at the sea with the three of them, Tamara diving in clothed, then Shimon and Pinchas stripping down and diving in too. There is also a sequence where the atheistic Tamara, partly loving Pinchas, partly hoping naively to please Shimon, makes an effort to go through a purification ritual and achieve a DIY Kosher kitchen. On the one hand we glimpse a fringe of makeshift Jewish orthodoxy, as it such a contradiction in terms were possible. On the other hand we see an orthodox misfit holding out for a woman he loves, recalling Akiva, the chasidic hottie protagonist of the Israeli television series "Shtisel."

We sense that Pinchas is a powerless observer of much of his own life. But even at the disenchanted end, we see that he has coping skills that won't quit. This is most of all his portrait, and it has the neat composure of a well-made short story; hence we understand why Tavger received the best screenplay award. More Than I Deserve is very, very bittersweet story of marginal Israeli life by a promising filmmaker that reminded me of Haim Tabakman's astonishing 2009 film Eyes Wide Open.

More Than I Deserve, 82 mins., debuted at Jerusalem Aug 27, 2021, winning the best screenplay prize. Tavger, who wrote and directed, has made a number of shorts on related subjects. This is his feature debut. Screened for this review as part of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, July 15-Aug. 7, 2022.

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


MICHA PRUDOVSKY, ANA DUBROVITZKI IN MORE THAN I DESERVE