San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2019

[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!

[Chris Knipp]

SARAH SMITH: BLACK HAT (2019)



Forbidden sexuality in the Orthodox community

In this 14-min. film Shmuel (Adam Silver), a Hasidic Jew, sneaks off at night, his payot tucked into a watch cap, his black hat in a bag, to go to a nearby gay bar where he drinks and eventually makes out in the back room with an interested, attractive young black guy called Jay (Sebastian Velmont). In the excitement, he repeats something he has done even at shul: he forgets his black hat. Unknown to him, there is a sympathetic colleague, Jacob (Alan Lennick), sitting at the bar, who recognizes him, and returns the hat to him at shul the next day. The film dramatizes the fact that queerness isn't normally okay in the Hasidic world. Needless to say, it exists. This is just a sketch, with an atmosphere of the furtive, a lot of dithering for such a short film. For a full-fledged painting, see Haim Tabakman's stunning 2009 feature Eyes Wide Open about forbidden love between two gay butchers in the ultra-Orthodox community of Jerusalem, which ends tragically. There is a review-comment by Danielle Solzman on Sarah Smith's short from the viewpoint of an Orthodox person who identifies as transgender. She mentions the star-studded Orthodox lesbian tale Disobedience, with Rachel McAdams and Rachel Weisz, which we reviewed here last year.

Black Hat plays with the feature City of Joel, a documentary feature by Jesse Sweet about political conflict with the Kiryas Joel ultra-Orthodox community in Orange County, California when it seeks to expand.

Black Hat, 124 mins.., debuted at Toronto Sept. 2019 with its US premiere at Tribeca. fOURTEEN FESTIVALS LISTED ON ITS POSTER, AND IT HAS played at various Jewish film festivals; screened for this review-comment as part of the SFIFF.
SFJFF showtimes for City of Joel:
Monday July 22, 2019 1:15 p.m. CineArts
Thursday July 25, 2019 3:45 p.m. Castro Theatre
Tuesday July 30, 2019 1:00 p.m. Albany Twin

[Chris Knipp]

TOMÁS YVAN TOPOLÁNSZKY: CURTIZ (2018)




A drama feature about the director Michael Curtiz, at work on his film, "Casablanca"

Curtiz is a Hungarian movie - set in Hollywood. The time is 1942 and the prolific Hungarian-born Jewish Warner Brothers contract director Michael Curtiz (né Kertész, like the great photographer) is struggling to complete his one Oscar winner. Perhaps "struggling" isn't the right word. Curtiz, as depicted by the excellent Ferenc Lengyel (who even looks like the director), is a mean, stubborn, cantankerous, utterly confident womanizer. He's only struggling because of studio issues; government observers trying to turn this into wartime American propaganda; and family issues. Curtiz's daughter Kitty (Evelin Dobos), unseen for eighteen years, has turned up to haunt him and he is burdened by his inability to save his sister in Europe from extermination by the Nazis. These issues roil about for the run time of the film.

The shooting of Casablanca - on several lots at Warner Brothers - seems suspended, which seems appropriate, since Casablanca itself is about people in limbo, waiting.

Shooting the film as shown here consists mainly of trying to think of alternate endings - what to do with the main characters, whether to include an airplane in the final scene, and so on. And the film, made without a big budget, provides some enjoyable approximations of old style Hollywood sets, one in an airline hangar, and the plane that is all façade is fun.

The movie ends when Curtiz - though the writers are the Epstein brothers (Yan and Raphael Feldman, not him) comes up with a conclusion. As a strategy, the filmmakers avoid too-obvious references to cliché moments of this very famous film, and keep us from even glimpsing what would only be disappointing approximations of Bergman and Bogart.

First-time director Tomas Yvan Topolanszky deserves a lot of credit for several things. Everything is shot in rich contrasty black and white with velvety blacks and beautiful angular lights and shadows, figures shot into the light, rimmed with brightness, beams shooting down from high above at an angle. This visual style, thanks to the set designers and the cinematographer, is glamorous and pleasing to the eye. It's not the look of the actual Casablanca , which I remember as softer and rich in pale grays, but it's probably not meant to be. What is Topolanszky trying to do? He has explained in an interview that Andrew Vajna, the Hungarian-American producer (who has a pivotal role in Hungarian movies) had called for a film about "notable Hungarian people," which for the young director narrowed down to Curtiz or photojournalist Robert Capa. Easier to shoot on a studio lot than roam battlefields, so Curiz won out.

Jack Warner (Andrew Hefler), Hal Wallis (Scott Alexander Young), a Hungarian colleague, and various underlings are brought in to give the impression that we're really at Warner Brothers. There's arguing over what to do with the German officer character, played by Konrad Veidt (Christopher Krieg). The pivotal outsider, though, is the US government propaganda advisor, Johnson, played by Irish actor Declan Hannigan. He constantly tries to manipulate the action of the movie to make it what he thinks will best fan American enthusiasm for the war. Curtiz firmly resists and rejects calls to patriotism. To Johnson's question, "Do you love your country?" He rejoins, "Which one?" Johnson also is drawn to Kitty, much to his detriment. He has one sexy and intimate scene with her at the set bar, followed later by a rough and inappropriate one in a hallway where he goes so far he is ostracized. The filmmakers seem to be saying Cosablanca is a political film that is politically neutral: it's about how uneasy and dangerous war and nationality are.

Curtiz might do best as material for a film student's paper in which she could talk about how the new film comments on the old. But that conversation seems less likely to enthuse the average viewer. I have never been a big fan of Casablanca (not that this would undermine a good film about making it). The old movie's appeal, not inconsiderable, seems not that of great cinema but of the campy cult movie, for the iconic lines and iconic stars, which there's no discounting, for sure. But it may be time to move toward more contemporary and complex commentaries on wartime limbo, like Christian Petzold's Transit (NYFF 2018). Curtiz has occasional charm, and its leads have some intense moments, but it doesn't provide interesting answers about its material or even pose good questions.

Curtiz, 98 mins., debuted at Montreal. It is presenting in Jewish film festivals and was screned for this review as part of the SFJFF.

[Chris Knipp]

GARRET PRICE: LOVE, ANTOSHA (2019) CAPSULE


ANTON YELCHIN IN LOVE, ANTOSHA

Capsule

When Anton Yelchin died tragically in a freak accident caught between his SUV and the gate of his house at the age of 27, all Hollywood was shocked. After watching this documentary, we understand what we lost. Behind his manic energy and baby face and boyish smile was a tireless creative mind and a searching intelligence. Many were touched by him, he was a great friend. We discover about his CF and how he fought it. CF shortens lives, and that's another reason why he seized life by both horns. We look into some of the 69 films he made (Star Trek, Green Room, Like Crazy) and we begin to understand why he was so beloved by his peers, like Chris Pine,Kristen Stewart, Jodie Foster, John Cho, Martin Landau, Jennifer Lawrence, and his childhood friends who remained very close. Of Anton's starring role in Charlie Bartlett (2008), when he was nineteen, I wrote "he reveals an abundance of charm and energy here. He doesn't have the subtlety or irony of somebody like Kieran Culkin--or Holden Caulfield--or the suavity of Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off--but his character doesn't call for any of that." And that describes him in a lot of his movies, charm, eagerness, and fresh energy. But here we learn about his music, his still photography, his dark side, his journals, his attractiveness to women, and above all his enormous love for his Russian skater emigre parents, and his special adoration of his "Mamoosha." It was to her he constantly wrote, "Love, Antosha." He was just beginning, and this is a sad and touching and beautiful elegy.

Love, Antosha, 92 mins, debuted at Sundance Jan. 2019, and showed in at least four other domestic film festivals and some Jewish film festivals. It was creened for this review as part of the SFJFF. Theatrical release is slated for Friday, Aug. 2, 2019.
SFJFF showtime:
Monday July 29, 2019 6:00 p.m. Albany Twin