Posts tagged ‘San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’
Deeper Into Movies: San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 42
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival just completed its 2022 run, which marked a return to in-person programming after two pandemic years during which the festival was almost exclusively online. As usual the programming spanned a wide range of genres and films.
The festival opened with the Israeli narrative, Karaoke, which looks at a middle-aged Tel Aviv married couple whose lives are upended when a swinging bachelor moves into the penthouse of their apartment building. The film is a subtle study of a seemingly banal and ordinary couple, unobtrusively revealing its story with restraint and insight. There’s a whisper of queerness that’s too understated to be called a twist but the information adds complexity to the overall effect of the film.
Another narrative, Haute Couture, is much more conventional and much less successful in its storytelling. Although beautifully shot and nicely acted, the film lacks much depth in its characterizations and is at its core deeply problematic. The story follows Esther, a seamstress in the Dior fashion house who meets Jade, a streetwise young French Arab woman, and takes her under her wing by giving her an apprenticeship at Dior. Though on the surface Haute Couture seems forward-looking by including actual Arab characters in a film set in France, most of the characters’ various cultural identities are plot devices that are quickly skimmed over, including a token trans character who primarily serves as window dressing. Even Esther’s Jewish identity is quickly introduced but ultimately irrelevant to her actions. Esther also utters some pretty egregiously racist comments, but the film uses the old trope of including an even more racist character to make Esther seem less offensive by comparison. Structurally, the movie races from one contrived plot point to the next, and Jade’s worshipful acceptance of her “rescue” from her ghetto roots reeks of white saviorism.
More successful were several documentary and essay film selections in the festival. JFF Director of Programming Jay Rosenblatt is a noted experimental filmmaker (his most recent accolade being an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Documentary) so it’s no surprise that the festival included films that depart from the standard narrative or documentary fare.
Oakland resident Pratibha Parmar’s My Name Is Andrea explores the life and legacy of radical feminist theorist Andrea Dworkin. Dworkin’s a controversial figure and has been reduced to a cartoon character over the years so revisting her work is a revelation, and the film showcases her charismatic presence and her unrelenting examinations of misogyny in contemporary US culture. Parmar re-enacts key moments in Dworkin’s life as played by several different actors including Ashley Judd and Christine Lahti, interspersed with archival footage of Dworkin herself in all her astute, well-spoken, and passionate glory. The film is visceral, gripping and ultimately brilliant and makes a strong case for the continued relevance of Dworkin’s perspective and theories on violence against women—she ain’t wrong, people.
A more conventional documentary, Bernstein’s Wall (dir. Douglas Tirola) looks at the life of legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein as told almost exclusively in Bernstein’s own words. The film is archival archival archival, with Tirola taking a trove of footage and shaping it into a cohesive, engaging narrative. Although Bernstein himself never spoke publicly about his queerness, the film also includes excerpts from private missives between various intimates including mentor Aaron Copeland, Bernstein’s siblings, and his depressed wife, who describes herself as “the governess.” Nicely done and eminently watchable, the movie paints a respectful picture of Bernstein as a driven, ambitious, and somewhat frustrated artist whose consuming career may not have been very kind to some of the people closest to him.
In A Reel War: Shalal, director Karnit Mandel describes her experience trying to track down the whereabouts of the lost film archives of the Palestinian Liberation Organization that were seized by Israel during the 1982 Lebanon war. This incisive essay film emphasizes the importance of images in cultural memory and the way that cultural erasure and forced amnesia act as a forms of imperialism.
Babi Yar: Context, focuses on the genocide of the Jews in Ukraine during World War II. Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa (winner of the JFF Freedom of Expression Award) makes the case that residents of Ukraine were complicit in one of the most infamous Nazi atrocities, the 1941 massacre of nearly 34,000 Jews who over the course of two days were shot and buried in the Babi Yar ravine near the city of Kyev. The film, which is completely without narration, tells its story exclusively through archival footage and a reconstructed sound design. Although the evidence is circumstantial, Loznitsa deftly makes the argument for Ukranian complicity through footage such as the hero’s welcome that Nazi officials recieved in Ukraine and cheerful Ukranian women and children digging mysterious trenches. These are later followed by chilling testimony of both Jewish survivors and German perpetrators of the executions who described the massive scale of death. Although the film skirts toward atrocity porn, it nonetheless makes a cogent argument for the Ukranian collaboration in the “holocaust by bullets” that occurred at Babi Yar.
Hey You: San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 38
Sammy being Sammy, Sammy Davis, Jr: I Gotta Be Me, 2018
The film festival cavalcade rolls on with the arrival of the 38th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this week at theaters around the Bay. This year’s lineup includes a plethora of great films about Jewishness in all its incarnations.
Valentine, Love, Gilda, 2018
The opening night film, LOVE, GILDA, is a valentine to famed Saturday Night Live comedian Gilda Radner, tracing her life from childhood until her untimely death at age 43 from ovarian cancer. It’s a fond tribute to the hilarious comedian who earned fame on SNL as an original cast member back in the 1970s. The film exhaustively covers Gilda’s life from her comfortable upbringing in Detroit through her years as a member of seminal comedy troupes such as Second City and the National Lampoon Radio Hour, and into her years as a star following her television debut on SNL.
Laraine & G, Love, Gilda, 2018
Using lots and lots of archival footage and photos, plus audio of Gilda’s own voice supplemented by readings of her journal by comedy folks such as Amy Poehler, the movie also includes interviews with co-stars including Martin Short, Laraine Newman, and Chevy Chase. Interestingly, there is no interview specifically done for the film with actor Gene Wilder, her widower, although he appears in archival footage. The film most vividly comes alive during clips of Radner’s brilliant and charming comedy routines on SNL and elsewhere, which demonstrate her spot-on comic timing and her genius in improvisational and physical comedy. Yet despite the poignancy of Radner’s life, including a struggle with eating disorders and her losing battle with cancer, my heartstrings were not quite plucked.
Baby Sammy, Sammy Davis, Jr: I Gotta Be Me, 2018
The closing night film, SAMMY DAVIS JR: I GOTTA BE ME, is a bit more successful in capturing the essence of its famous subject. Growing up in the 1970s my main memory of Davis was as a Vegas-style entertainer who was not at all hip compared to, say, Blue Oyster Cult, Prince, or Thin Lizzy, so my appreciation of Davis’s great gifts didn’t come until later in life. This fast-paced doc goes a long way toward rectifying any ignorance about Davis’s awesomeness as a supremely talented poly-hyphenate trailblazer who broke social and cultural barriers long before it was easy or trendy to do so. Davis was a brilliant tap dancer, an accomplished song stylist, a talented actor, and a celebrity living large with some of the biggest stars in midcentury America.
The pack, Sammy Davis, Jr: I Gotta Be Me, 2018
From his beginning as a child vaudeville performer, Davis’s career spanned much of the 20th century and included movies, television, theater, and concerts. The film expertly tells the tale of his larger-than-life life, with copious clips, recordings and photos and interviews with A-listers such as Whoopi Goldberg, Jerry Lewis, Dionne Warwick, and many more whose lives Davis touched. The film also discusses the racial barriers that Davis faced and in many cases confronted head-on and broke through, including bullying in the military in World War II, his presence as a member of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack, and his then-controversial marriage to Swedish actress May Britt. The film is fast-paced and expertly constructed and hardly seems able to keep up with the sheer breadth of achievement of its titular subject as he demonstrates everything from mad impersonation skilz to steezy sartorial choices, along with his singing, dancing, performing, and otherwise embodying legendariness.
Boosted, The Man Who Stole Banksy, 2018
Other highlights from the festival include a screening of BUDAPEST NOIR, co-sponsored by the Film Noir Foundation; THE MAN WHO STOLE BANKSY, a doc about an intrepid West Bank cabbie in who beat the infamous street artist at his own game; THE CITY WITHOUT JEWS, a restoration of a long-lost silent film that was recently found in flea market in Paris; THE WALDHEIM WALTZ, a documentary about Austria’s former president and Nazi-in-chief Kurt Waldheim; and SATAN & ADAM, a film many years in the making that explores the relationship between two very different musicians. I’m also looking forward to a screening of the 1933 pre-code classic BABY FACE, since I try to take advantage of every opportunity to see Barbara Stanwyck on the big screen. Once again, San Francisco proves that it’s a great town for film-watching, with the SF Jewish Film Festival one of the best places this summer to see movies beyond your run-of-the-mill multiplex blockbuster.
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 38
July 19-August 5, 2018
various locations throughout the Bay Area
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