Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie in “Sabbath Queen”
A QUEER RABBI WHO BROKE THE MOLD
S.F. Jewish Film Festival, July 18-Aug. 4
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Jo Ellen Green Kaiser PUBLISHER Steve Gellman EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Chanan Tigay MANAGING EDITOR Sue Barnett EDITORIAL DIRECTOR OF
David A.M. Wilensky
Natalie Weinstein
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PHOTOGRAPHER Aaron Levy-Wolins
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COLUMNISTS Howard Freedman, Karen Galatz, Janet Silver Ghent, Faith Kramer, Dr. Jerry Saliman, Micah Siva
ADVERTISING & PROMOTION
ACCOUNT EXECS Nancy Beth Cohen, Meryl Sokoler ART & PRODUCTION
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY DIRECTOR Antonio R. Marquez
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS Michelle Palmer, Steve Romero
BUSINESS
DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Allison Green
DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATE Carrie Rice
ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT Linda Uong
TECHNOLOGY
IT SUPPORT Felipe Barrueto
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
CO-PRESIDENTS Steven Dinkelspiel, Carol Weitz
VICE PRESIDENTS Liz Berman, Alexandra Corvin
SECRETARY Andy Rittenberg
TREASURER Patricia Rosenberg
MEMBERS Fraidy Aber, Alex Bernstein, Mark Bernstein (past president), David Cornfield, Rabbi Joey Felsen, Inna Gartsman, Samantha Grant, Alia Wechsler Gorkin, Howard Fine, Nadine Joseph, Steve Katz, Quentin Kopp, Susan Libitzky, Harmon Shragge, Jane Springwater, Peter Waldman, Jerry Yanowitz
PAST PRESIDENTS Marc Berger, Lou Haas, Jon Kaufman, Dan Leemon, Adam Noily, Lory Pilchik, William I. Schwartz
Festival Schedule
San Francisco: July 18 – 28 East Bay: July 30 – August 4 sfjff.org
Thurs, Jul18 6:30 PM Opening Night: Shari & Lamb Chop 92 PoFA 9:00 PM Opening Night Bash PoFA Fri, Jul 19 1:00 PM Love Machina 97 Vogue 3:15 PM Oys and Joys: Narrative Shorts 10 Vogue 6:00 PM Highway 65 102 Vogue 8:15 PM Mediterranean Fever 108 Vogue Sat, Jul 20
PM The Assembly
PM Work in Progress: All God’s Children
JCCSF
JCCSF
PM Centerpiece Narrative: Between the Temples 111 PoFA
PM Comedy Spotlight: Bad Shabbos 84 PoFA
Jul 21 12:30 PM Three Promises
Vogue 3:00 PM Citizen Weiner 80 Vogue 5:30 PM Sneak Preview: Janis Ian: Breaking Silence 111 PoFA 8:15 PM Take Action Spotlight: Winner 93 PoFA Tues, Jul 23 1:00 PM Torah Tropical
Vogue 3:30 PM Running on Sand
PM Breaking Home Ties
PM Silver’s Uprising
Vogue
Vogue
Vogue Wed, Jul 24 1:00 PM The Return From the Other Planet 81 Vogue 3:30 PM TABOO – Amos Guttman 74 Vogue 6:00 PM All About the Levkoviches
PM Teaches of Peaches
PM The Glory of Life
PM Day Trippers
Thurs, Jul 25 1:00 PM Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round
PM The Monkey House
Vogue
Roxie
Vogue
Roxie
Vogue
Vogue 6:00 PM Nor by Day, Nor by Night 1 05 Vogue 6:30 PM Next Wave Spotlight: The French Italian 92 Roxie
8:15 PM The Vanishing Soldier 98 Vogue
9:00 PM Next Wave Spotlight: WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM
Roxie Fri, Jul 26 1:00 PM Physician: Heal Thyself
Vogue 3:30 PM Mitzvah Series: Jews by Choice
Vogue 6:00 PM My Daughter, My Love
Vogue 8:15 PM The Milky Way 94 Vogue
All film, guest, and schedule information is subject to change. Visit sfjff.org for more information about the full SFJFF44 lineup and to plan your schedule!
DATE TIME TITLE
Sat, Jul 27 12:30 PM The Other 104 JCCSF
3:00 PM Vantage Points: Perspectives from Sapir College 97 JCCSF
6:00 PM Peripheral Visions 79 Urban Adamah
6:00 PM Freedom of Expression Award: Julie Cohen 60 PoFA
8:00 PM Local Spotlight: XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture 39 PoFA
Sun, Jul 28 12:30 PM Lyd 79 Vogue
3:00 PM Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum 104 Vogue
5:30 PM Artist Spotlight: A Photographic Memory 87 PoFA
8:00 PM SF Closing Night: Sabbath Queen 105 PoFA
Tues, Jul 30 1:00 PM Sabbath Queen 105 Piedmont
3:45 PM Lyd 79 Piedmont
6:00 PM Highway 65 102 Piedmont
8:15 PM The Vanishing Soldier 98 Piedmont
Wed, Jul 31 1:00 PM Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round 89 Piedmont
3:30 PM Shari & Lamb Chop 92 Piedmont
6:00 PM Mediterranean Fever 1 08 Piedmont
8:15 PM Running on Sand 104 Piedmont
Thurs, Aug 1 1:00 PM Jews by Choice 70 Piedmont 3:30 PM A Photographic Memory 87 Piedmont 6:00 PM Under the Shadow of the Sun 80 Piedmont
8:00 PM My Daughter, My Love 96 Piedmont Fri, Aug 2 1:00 PM Porcelain War 87 Piedmont 3:30 PM Reality Bites: Documentary Shorts 98 Piedmont
6:00 PM This is My Mother 105 Piedmont 8:15 PM Bad Shabbos 84 Piedmont
Sat, Aug 3 1:30 PM Willem & Frieda 76 Piedmont
3:30 PM Centerpiece Doc: Diane Warren: Relentless 91 Piedmont
6:00 PM Auction 91 Piedmont
8:00 PM Between the Temples 111 Piedmont
Sun, Aug 4 1:00 PM The Return from the Other Planet 81 Piedmont
3:30 PM Unspoken 91 Piedmont
6:00 PM Silver’s Uprising 97 Piedmont
8:15 PM East Bay Big Night: The Ride Ahead 97 Piedmont
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
With Castro Theatre under renovation, film fest finds new venues and voices
ANDREW ESENSTEN | J. STAFF
It’s a summer of “newness” for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, according to Lexi Leban, executive director of the Jewish Film Institute.
This will be the first festival in 15 years without Jay Rosenblatt serving as program director. The Oscar-nominated documentarian left JFI, which organizes the SFJFF, in the spring to focus on his own projects. Ash Hoyle, a programmer at the Sundance Film Festival, was brought aboard as a guest festival director.
Also new: With the festival’s home base of the Castro Theatre undergoing renovations through 2025, the opening and closing night screenings will take place at the Palace of Fine Arts (POFA) before the festival moves on to the East Bay. Other films will screen at the Roxie Theater, Vogue Theater and the JCC of San Francisco, as well at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland and Urban Adamah in Berkeley.
And then there’s the Israel-Hamas war.
The 44th annual festival, which runs July 18 to Aug. 4, will present 67 films from 16 countries, including 20 from Israel. All of them were completed before Oct. 7 and do not address the current war.
“We’re really mindful this year about holding space for multiple perspectives and for having really respectful civil discourse in the theaters,” Leban told J. in a recent interview. “We believe showing films is a way of deepening empathy, expanding understanding and looking at complexity and nuance.”
Asked if she was anticipating protests outside of the theaters, Leban replied, “It’s been an interesting time for
arts organizations. We support freedom of expression and people’s right in a democratic society to protest and engage in all kinds of ways with the content that we’re showing.”
The July 18 opening night film is “Shari & Lamb Chop,” a documentary about the late ventriloquist Shari Lewis and her sheep sock puppet. Lewis’ daughter, Mallory, is expected to attend along with Lamb Chop herself.
“Many people of different generations connect to Shari Lewis and to Lamb Chop, and I think it’s a really celebratory way to kick off this year,” Leban said.
“Sabbath Queen,” a documentary about the New York rabbi and drag queen Amichai Lau-Lavie filmed across 21 years, is the festival’s closing night selection in San Francisco. Lau-Lavie and director Sandi DuBowski are expected to attend the screenings on July 28 at the POFA and July 30 at Oakland’s Piedmont Theatre.
The centerpiece documentary is “Diane Warren: Relentless,” which looks back on the life and career of the songwriter, a perennial Oscar nominee, and screens Aug. 3 at the Piedmont. Jason Schwartzman plays a cantor in the centerpiece narrative, “Between the Temples,” which screens July 20 at the POFA and Aug. 3 at the Piedmont.
“Bad Shabbos” is the comedy spotlight, and Hoyle told J. it will be a crowd pleaser.
“It’s about a Shabbat dinner gone haywire, and it’s absolutely hilarious,” he said. “It features a wonderful cast, including Kyra Sedgwick and Milana Vayntrub.” Rapper Method Man also makes a cameo in the film, which is directed by Daniel Robbins and screens July 20 at the POFA and Aug. 2 at the Piedmont. (Robbins’ mockumentary “Citizen Weiner” is also in the festival lineup.)
In collaboration with Reboot Studios and the National Center for Jewish Film, SFJFF will present a restored version
of the 1922 silent film “Breaking Home Ties” with a live improvised score. The film, which is about a Russian Jewish immigrant living in New York City, will screen on July 24 at the Vogue.
As part of a program of films about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the festival will screen several shorts by students at Sapir College in Israel. In addition, two films by men with Palestinian heritage will be screened: “Lyd” (July 28 at the Vogue and July 30 at the Piedmont), about the history of the Israeli city of Lod, known as Lyd before 1948, and “Three Promises” (July 21 at the Vogue), a portrait of a Palestinian Christian family living in the West Bank during the second intifada.
Two films will make their world premieres at this year’s SFJFF: “Torah Tropical,” a documentary about an Orthodox Jewish family in Colombia and their quest to make aliyah, which screens on July 23 at the Vogue, and the sci-fi drama “WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM,” which screens on July 25 at the Roxie.
In a ceremony on July 27, Julie Cohen will receive JFI’s annual Freedom of Expression Award for “her visionary explorations of gender and justice,” the organization said in a press release. Cohen directed 2023’s “Every Body,” a documentary about three people born intersex, and was nominated for a 2019 Academy Award for “RBG,” a documentary about the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Visit jfi.org/sfjff-2024 to see the full lineup. n
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival July 18–Aug. 4, with screenings in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. $20 general, $15 JFI members, higher for special events. All-festival passes: $395 general, $345 members. Opening night screening and party: $75 general, $65 members. sfjff.org
Opening night’s “Shari & Lamb Chop” will screen at the Palace of Fine Arts instead of the Castro. (SFJFF)
“Bad Shabbos,” the festival’s comedy spotlight, screens on July 20 in S.F. and Aug. 2 in Oakland. (SFJFF)
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
NorCal filmmaker visits the ‘Last Jews of Guantanamo’
LAURA PAULL | CORRESPONDENT
In the rundown streets of Guantanamo in southeastern Cuba, a hardy Jewish grandmother in sneakers makes her way through the neighborhood to pick up rations. Barefoot boys come out to play street soccer. Rusty tractors, old model cars, rat-a-tat motorbikes and trotting horses yield a river of staccato noise. The setting sun behind tropical clouds lights the scene in melancholy silver.
A decade ago, on a family trip to Cuba, documentary filmmaker Yael Bridge saw these scenes and learned that a community of some 45 Jews lived in this unlikely place. Six months later, she returned with a film crew.
Her 13-minute film, “Los Últimos Judíos de Guantánamo (The Last Jews of Guantanamo),” completed during a 2023 Jewish Film Institute residency, will premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 27. It is part of a 79-minute program of short films focusing on Jews of color called “Peripheral Visions.”
In the intervening years, Bridge completed two other full-length productions: “Saving Capitalism” (2017), starring Berkeley economist Robert Reich, and “The Big Scary S-Word” (2020), a documentary about socialism in 21st-century America.
But her short film about the Guantanamo Jewish community has always been a passion project.
“I was curious as to what Jewish life could look like at such a far remove and surprised at how simple their standard of living was,” said Bridge, a resident of Fort Bragg in Mendocino County. “It’s so very low-tech. Donkeys and horses and roads that were hardly paved, like going back in time. But I found it really beautiful.”
Bridge, 41, also was interested in how Judaism functioned in a country that embraced state socialism and suppressed all religions until the latter policy was reversed in 1992.
“I wondered how people defined community in a society that was trying to flatten hierarchies and unite everyone under an inclusive ideology,” she said.
By 2015, the internet had finally arrived for Cubans, but the practices of the Guantanamo Jews to express their
identity remained the same: Shabbat dinners at the informal congregation on the second floor of the home of the group’s lay leader, Rodolfo Mizrahi.
Bridge said she hopes viewers of the film will understand how important it is to find community, wherever they live.
elders are treated. The b’nai mitzvah is a multigenerational gathering as well as multiracial (as is the general population of Cuba).
“Judaism is a really old religion and culture, and has a gravitational force,” she said. “People want reasons to gather and eat and dance to the same songs. That spirit is hard to diminish. It will always survive. That’s what I was trying to capture.”
On her third visit to Guantanamo, Bridge was also able to film a b’nai mitzvah ceremony for two octogenarian women. That event is a centerpiece of this poignant peek into a community that has held fast to the meaning they find in Jewish tradition.
One of the two women, Lidia Perez, who prepares for her ceremony with the help of Mizrahi’s Hebrew-speaking son Rodolfo Cesar Mizrahi, brims with emotion when she says that becoming a bat mitzvah is “something I never imagined could happen.”
What Bridge’s direction captures best is the warmth of the community and the tenderness and patience with which
Sadly, the community is also a shrinking one, as many have made aliyah over the past decade due to the seemingly intractable economic decline of the nation at large. The migration included Rodolfo Mizrahi and all or most of his immediate family — an almost unimaginable tragedy for those who, like this reporter, personally witnessed his leadership in Cuba. In 2019, Mizrahi spearheaded a two-day public celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Guantanamo Jewish community, which in hindsight may have been its last hurrah.
“The building where the synagogue is will be maintained for the use of the Jewish community of Guantanamo for as long as there are still Jews there who want to uphold our traditions,” Mizrahi said in a recent email to J. from Israel. “That is my decision, and even though there are few left, due to the exodus that has taken place because of the difficult economic situation in Cuba, those who remain are making a great effort to carry on.”
In a brief on-camera interview in the film, the younger Mizrahi, who at the time looked to be in his 20s, says that when Cuban people find out that he is Jewish, they are mostly curious: “They ask ‘What is Judaism? How do you do it? Who are you? And why are you Jews?’”
As the film suggests, these are existential questions that the remaining Jews answer through their actions every day of their lives in Cuba. n
“Los Últimos Judíos de Guantánamo (The Last Jews of Guantanamo)” (13 minutes, Spanish with English subtitles) screens at 6 p.m. Saturday, July 27, at Urban Adamah, 1151 Sixth St., Berkeley. tinyurl.com/sfjff-ultimos-judios
Shhh! The new festival trailer is starting...
DAVID A.M. WILENSKY | J. STAFF
For the most part, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival shows movies. But it also produces a short film — a very short film — every year: the festival trailer.
Though the annual trailer is primarily used to promote the festival ahead of time, its main audience is the filmgoers sitting down to watch a screening at the festival itself. The trailer plays before each screening and helps set the tone for the festival.
“In recent years, we’ve really been looking at inclusivity and making people feel welcome on opening night and when they come to their first screening,” Lexi Leban, executive director of the Jewish Film Institute, which runs the festival, told J.
This year’s 30-second trailer certainly captures that spirit. In the first of several short scenes, two women chat at Sinai Memorial Chapel. One says, “I saw a new movie
last night.” Says the other, “Yeah? What kind of a movie?” It then cuts to a police officer describing a movie as “kind of action-adventure-ish.” In another scene, an elderly woman in Chinatown describes a movie as “documentary-ish.” A North Beach deli worker hands a salami to a customer while describing a movie as “German expressionist-ish.” And so forth.
At the end, a narrator says, “The 44th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival — this ‘ish’ is for everyone.”
SFJFF has been producing its own trailers since the mid-1980s. This year, for the first time, the new trailer premiered exclusively on J.’s website. Watch it at jweekly. com/sfjff24.
Amani King, creative director of Avocados & Coconuts, the San Francisco ad agency that produced this year’s trailer, explained the concept behind it: “What we wanted to
do is get you into the spirit of what the festival brings to a city. We all love going to movies, or watching them, and part of the joy is watching them with friends — that’s the kind of banter we wanted to depict.”
Though much of the Jewish community is in a more somber mood this year due to the Israel-Hamas war, King said it was important to keep the trailer light.
“The goal was really not to be political, to celebrate film, celebrate the festival, look beyond the prevailing politics right now,” he said. “Let’s just take a moment to exhale and watch a film and engage with the community at a real festival.”
In keeping with tradition, at SFJFF’s opening night celebration at the Palace of Fine Arts on July 18, the new trailer will be preceded by a series of favorites from years past. Don’t be late! n
Lidia Perez (right) celebrates Hanukkah with her daughter in a scene from “Los Últimos Judíos de Guantánamo.” (SFJFF)
‘Sabbath Queen’ invites viewers into queer rabbi’s life
ELI ANDREW RAMER | CORRESPONDENT
As I watched “Sabbath Queen,” I felt wrapped in it like a tallit and filled with it like a prayer.
This remarkable film about rabbi and drag queen Amichai Lau-Lavie — which gets its West Coast premiere July 28 at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival — feels yin-yang to me. Not white on one side and black on the other, but laughter on one side and tears on the other. Jewish on one side and queer on the other. Grounded in tradition on one side, and profoundly innovative on the other.
Lau-Lavie was born into an Orthodox family in Israel in 1969 and has been living in New York City since 1998. A descendant of Holocaust survivors and the heir to 38 generations of Orthodox rabbis, he’s related to two former Israeli Ashkenazi chief rabbis, Yisrael Meir Lau and David Lau.
But Lau-Lavie, 55, chose a different path. In 2016, he was ordained as a rabbi by the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He’s the founder and leader of Lab/Shul, an innovative Jewish spiritual community in Manhattan, and also the founder of Storahtelling, which uses theater and storytelling to expand our understanding of the relevancy of Torah, all of which we learn about in the film.
On top of that, Lau-Lavie has a drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, a wise widow of six — yes six! — Hasidic rabbis. “Sabbath Queen” refers both to the Sabbath Bride we invite in at the beginning of Shabbat and to the rebbetzin/
rabbi who is the heart of the film. Amazingly, documentarian Sandi DuBowski followed Lau-Lavie for 21 years, beginning when the latter was 33. DuBowski is best known for directing “Trembling Before G-d,” which explores the lives of Orthodox Jews working to integrate their queerness and their Jewishness, and for producing “A Jihad for Love,” which explores the lives of queer and trans Muslims.
In “Sabbath Queen,” DuBowski allows us to experience Lau-Lavie’s vulnerability when talking about Orthodoxy and gayness. There
are also interviews with several of Lau-Lavie’s Orthodox relatives who share their thoughts about his queerness and his place and role in our tradition. I laughed and cried, I deepened and expanded, and you will too.
Lau-Lavie’s wisdom and capacity for connection are deep. Again and again he invites us to reach across boundaries — queer and not, Jewish and not, Jews/Israelis and Palestinians. In an interview last month after a screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, where “Sabbath Queen” had its world premiere, he said, “If there’s anything that people take from
the film, I hope it’s the power of ‘and.’ What does it mean to stand with and with — with my people, and with all people. There is a messy middle. Let’s meet there.”
DuBowski’s film captures Lau-Lavie’s yin-yang genius at both standing in that messy middle and in inspiring others to do so as well.
It’s been my good fortune to have spent time with both men in the queer Jewish community and to have studied with Lau-Lavie in one of his Storahtelling trainings. Like him and like the film, I’m yin-yang-ish myself: paternally Orthodox/maternally communist, gay/Jewish.
When I was around 5, my maternal grandmother took me to see a movie at a theater in Brooklyn. I don’t remember what it was, but as the credits began and everyone started to leave, Nanny put a hand on my arm and said, “You think the stars are the people on the screen, but the stars are also all the people who made the movie.” So we sat in that dark 1950s theater, reading all the credits.
I invite you to do the same with “Sabbath Queen.” n
“Sabbath Queen” (105 minutes) is the festival’s closing-night film in San Francisco, screening at 8 p.m. Sunday, July 28, at the Palace of Fine Arts. It opens the East Bay festival run at 1 p.m. Tuesday, July 30, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland. tinyurl.com/sfjff-sabbath-queen
Set in Paris, ‘My Daughter, My Love’ is a quiet family drama
SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT
In “My Daughter, My Love,” fathers spy on children, wives cheat, husbands cry and babies … babies are simply adorable.
In this quiet, tender film filled with long silences and even longer walks through Paris, legendary Israeli actor Sasson Gabay (“The Band’s Visit,” “Shtisel,” “Karaoke”) plays Shimon, a widower who visits the French capital to see Nissim, his childhood friend from Morocco, who is in the hospital with a heart condition. While there, Shimon stays with his only daughter, Alma (Sivan Levy), her husband, Dori (Ido Bartal), and their infant son.
During his visit, Shimon quickly realizes that his daughter’s marriage is in trouble and that she is suffering some kind of breakdown. Always the loving father, he steps into the fray, trying to mediate between Alma and Dori. He begins following Dori around the city, sure he is cheating on Alma, then switches gears and, egged on by Dori, begins spying on Alma. Even as Nissim (Albert Iluz) and his wife counsel Shimon to back off and leave the young couple to figure out their own marriage, Shimon becomes more and more deeply entwined in the ever-worsening situation, trying desperately to understand what is wrong and how he can fix it. Shimon knows that Alma is self-destructing but cannot stop her. The film lurches toward its denouement.
This convoluted plot might suggest a frenetic, energetic movie, but quite the opposite is true. All the action takes place during a few days, and director Eitan Green takes time with his characters, lingering on their faces in exquisite closeups. Gabay and Levy in particular rise to the challenge of close visual inspection, their facial expressions conveying love, anger, confusion, despair and joy, without need for words.
Indeed, long shots and long periods of silence create a mood of soft mystery. And although the plot is ostensibly about Alma and Dori’s marriage, it’s really about the deep love between Shimon and his daughter, a love that sometimes leads to pain, sometimes to shouting, but one that abides.
“Was I a good dad?” he asks Alma at one point, to which she answers, “Yes, you were very gentle. You were hiding in your gentleness.”
The two take care of each other, even amid berating the other for behavior they find untenable. They get to know each other better than when they both lived in Israel.
In one lovely, pivotal scene, Alma and Shimon go to dinner at a fancy restaurant. As they walk home along a softly lit cobblestone alley, Alma says, “This is nice.” Shimon says, “What?” and she responds, “Strolling along quietly.” After a short pause, Shimon says, “Without talking?” to which Alma replies, “Yes.”
That can be said of the entire film. It’s nice sometimes to stroll along quietly, without talking. n
“My Daughter, My Love” (96 minutes, Hebrew and French with English subtitles) screens at 6 p.m. Friday, July 26, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco and 8 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 1, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland. tinyurl.com/sfjff-my-daughter
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie (center) as his drag alter ego, Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross. A documentary about Lau-Lavie traces his unorthodox life path. (SFJFF)
Sivan Levy plays Alma, an Israeli woman living in France whose marriage is falling apart. (SFJFF)
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
When the internet’s darkest memes become a movie
DAVID A.M. WILENSKY | J. STAFF
It’s easy to describe a weird movie as a fever dream. But I think I actually just had one. Or a stroke, maybe?
In the opening scene of “WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM,” which will get its world premiere at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 25, an unemployed, desperate mother sells her 4-month-old baby to an advertising agency for $1,000.
We then jump ahead to see Rachel, the baby, as a woman in her 30s — except she is still very much a baby. She has grown up as a wholly owned employee of the ad agency. She talks like a baby and is so starved of human contact and connection that she can scarcely understand what a human is and what humans do.
At first, this sophomore effort from director Peter Vack seems to be set in a horridly tacky future, though it will eventually become clear that this is not the future but a darkly perceptive vision of the present.
Rachel, played by Betsey Brown in a genuinely brave and often disgusting performance, is an “assessor.” Her sole task is to watch performances of Mommy 6.0, a pop star who is possibly a computer program or maybe a clone of her mom, and then respond to questions from a panel of cold, disinterested market researchers. As a slobbering stan of Mommy 6.0, Rachel responds to every question with an enthusiastic “10!”
At one such performance, the audience chants to Mommy 6.0, “We’re in your womb! We’re in your womb!”
“Mommy loves you so much,” she says, before cheerfully intoning such lyrics as “10 years until extinction,” “I just got cast in three different motion pictures,” and “If you
ever feel scared or poor, just wish upon a star!”
Mommy 6.0 (and variations thereof) are played by Chloe Cherry, a former adult film actress in real life who turns in an unsettling performance. Not that any of the performances are anything other than unsettling, but hers is particularly so.
The film’s themes include contemporary sexuality, parasocial relationships with micro-celebrities, poverty and an entire
generation’s arrested development. (Arrested by whom? Ad agencies, duh.)
It also touches on Jewish identity at times. Rachel is “adopted” by the Ormonts, a painfully fawning older couple who already have a comically apathetic daughter, Darci. Why is the family’s last name Ormont? They changed it from Goldberg, naturally.
“Or like gold and Mont like mountain! It’s prettier and more French-sounding,” Darci shouts before a member of the idiotic internet audience shouts back, “Wow, that is so
‘The Monkey House’ follows wily writer in ’80s Tel Aviv
EMMA GOSS | J. STAFF
“Writers lie a lot. After all, what is literature but one big lie?” states Amitay Kariv, the fictional novelist and main character of the Israeli comedy “The Monkey House.” It’s the most honest thought he expresses in a film filled with main characters who all have something to hide.
Set in 1989 Tel Aviv, the film follows Amitay (Adir Miller), a once-successful Israeli novelist, as he tries to pull off an elaborate con. It’s his desperate attempt to regain the public’s lost interest in his works and win over Tamar (Shani Cohen), the woman he’s pined for his entire life.
“If there’s anything worse than being hated, it’s being ignored,” he explains to his feisty young accomplice, Margo (Suzanna Papian).
Directed by Avi Nesher, one of the most beloved directors in Israel, “The Monkey House” premiered there last
year and was nominated for 11 Ophir awards, Israel’s version of the Oscars, though it didn’t win any.
The movie screens at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival on July 25.
antisemitic how Darci just erases her own Jewish heritage!” Darci screams, “F— you, I identify with my goy half!” Says the mom, with deadpan resignation, “My daughter spends most of her life online, and it turned her into a Catholic.”
This is part of a recurring motif in which an audience of average citizens of the internet sit in a black-box theater shouting or faux-thoughtfully commenting to one another about all the same insane things the citizens of the real internet shout and comment to one another.
When Rachel has a screaming breakdown about her parasocial non-relationship with Mommy 6.0, she is reassigned. No longer an assessor, she is now on the “advertising team” and is asked to use and evaluate a vibrator. It is now her only job to use it during all of her waking hours. She begs for it to end.
A digitally manipulated version of Rachel pleasuring herself is broadcast to the dolts of the internet — as entertainment? As advertising? In this world, is there a difference?
The dolts of the internet are the real stars of the movie. The most successful portion of the film is its middle, during which viewers experience a meme-pilled trip through the most unhinged corners of the internet.
Just like the real internet, this twisted phantasmagoria includes total morons who are improbably confident in their nonsense: a woman dressed like a sexy Nazi dominatrix, and Jews accusing each other of being antisemites.
It’s not always clear which things are real and which are virtual, dreamed or imagined — in much the same way that we sometimes
mistake what we see on our phones as more real than reality.
This portion of the movie is written in meme-speak — and not the kind of memes seen by normal people who don’t have their phone stapled to the inside of their brains. Unless you spend too much time in shitposting Facebook groups and Reddits, this movie will be borderline unintelligible.
“WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM” is darkly, outrageously funny. It is also, for want of a better word, utterly gross. Do not see this with anyone you’re related to of another generation. It will go poorly.
You will see two people have graphic sex on a bed that has the logos of both PornHub and the Biden-Harris campaign on it. You will see a grown woman happily take a jet of breastmilk to the face from the absurdly large prosthetic breast of another woman. You will hear the word “cum” more times than you want to. And you will laugh. Or you’ll walk out in disgust. Hard to say without knowing you personally.
All of the bizarrely social mediadrenched surrealism of the film aside, the most disturbing segment is its brief turn toward unflinching realism. Rachel is, for a time, ejected from the ad agency onto the streets of 2022 New York City. Then we truly see what happens to people in our society who are detached from reality with nowhere to go and no one to love or care for them — and it isn’t funny. n
“WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM” (80 minutes) screens at 9 p.m. Thursday, July 25, at the Roxie Theater, 3117 16th St., San Francisco. tinyurl.com/ sfjff-rachel-ormont
The film’s title is a reference to where Amitay lives: his uncle’s former house, nestled in a lush, remote area outside of Tel Aviv near an abandoned monkey park.
“The Monkey House” is clever, witty and full of surprises and mystery. It’s also a beautiful film with gorgeous sets,
retro wardrobes and a soundtrack replete with 1980s jams. Tamar’s crisp skirt suits and dresses juxtaposed with
Margo (Suzanna Papian) and Amitay (Adir Milller) in “The Monkey House.” (SFJFF) continued on page 10
Betsey Brown as Rachel in “WWW. RACHELORMONT.COM.” (SFJFF)
SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
Documentary revisits first Black-Jewish civil rights protest
ANDREW ESENSTEN | J. STAFF
Before King and Heschel marched together in Selma and before Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner died together in Mississippi, a group of young Black and Jewish activists made a stand against Jim Crow at a segregated amusement park in Maryland.
In the summer of 1960, Howard University students and their white Jewish allies picketed for 10 weeks outside Glen Echo Amusement Park in Montgomery County. Theirs is thought to be the first organized interracial civil rights protest in U.S. history, yet most popular accounts of Black-Jewish collaboration during the Civil Rights Movement fail to mention it.
“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round,” a new documentary screening at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival this month, could fix that. Several of the protesters are still alive and sat for interviews with director Ilana Trachtman, including two Jewish San Franciscans: Nancy Stoller, an emerita sociology professor at UC Santa Cruz, and Vicki Pollack, the founder and director emerita of the Children’s Book Project.
“Glen Echo was the beginning [of] my career as an in-the-street, nonviolent, direct action activist,” Stoller, a Wellesley student whose parents lived near the park, says in the film. “I discovered that your body is the most political instrument you have. You don’t have to wait for other people. You just have to know there’s some injustice right in front of you and stand up and oppose it.”
With its roller coasters, bumper cars and massive swimming pool, Glen Echo Amusement Park was a popular destination for white families in the D.C. area. The children of foreign dignitaries visiting the capital were also welcome inside, including children of color, but security guards kept
Black Americans out. The Jewish owners of the park, brothers Abram and Samuel Baker, claimed that they were simply looking out for their economic interests — allowing Black Americans in would drive away white patrons — and that they were not racist.
Inspired by the February 1960 sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, Howard students formed
“I discovered that your body is the most political instrument you have.”
Nancy Stoller, protester
the Nonviolent Action Group (NAG) and set their sights on Glen Echo. They organized pickets at the entrance, with activists holding signs reading “Segregation Doesn’t Pay … Why Should You?” and “Stay Outside for a Freedom Ride.” On June 30, five Howard students entered with tickets bought by a white volunteer and held a sit-in on the carousel. The police arrested them for trespassing.
Local union organizers recruited white people to join the NAG campaign, including Jews from nearby Bannockburn. It was the first time many participants befriended members of another race. In addition to the picketing, there was much interracial partying and even some dating that summer.
“Sometimes I would picket until really late, go partying and then go straight to work,” Pollack recalls. “It was just what we were doing, because we were 18, 19 years old.”
Despite such camaraderie, the Jewish activists enjoyed a “position of privilege” compared with the Black ones, who were
treated more harshly by the police, according to Bannockburn resident Joanne Delaplaine. Still, some local Jews felt threatened when members of the American Nazi Party started holding counterprotests outside the park.
“The Brownshirts showed up,” Madeline Sigel, another Bannockburn resident and a Holocaust refugee from Vienna, says in the film. “The thought that I would be picketing while there are these people here from whom I fled — it was too much for me.”
Eventually the protest became a cause celebre, and Black union and civil rights leaders including Adam Clayton Powell Jr.,
Roy Wilkins and A. Philip Randolph joined the picket line.
“This was not a minor part of the Civil Rights Movement,” U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was also involved with NAG, testifies in the film.
Did the protest succeed? I’ll let festivalgoers learn what happened from the film. But I’ll note that today, Glen Echo Park is an arts and culture center operated by the National Park Service.
“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” introduces viewers to dozens of people connected to the protest, perhaps too many, and takes some unnecessary narrative detours. But there is much to appreciate in this nuanced account of a little-known chapter of civil rights history, including a remarkable piece of color footage.
In it, NAG leader Laurence Henry calmly speaks with a white security guard outside the park. The guard asks Henry, a serious-looking man in a suit and tie who is obviously Black, if he’s “white or colored.” “Am I white or colored?” Henry responds incredulously. Then the guard asks Henry what his race is, to which he replies, “My race? I belong to the human race.” The guard is unmoved. It’s a tidy encapsulation of the absurdity of racial discrimination.
As for the perfectly chosen title, it comes from a 1942 Langston Hughes poem about life for Black people under Jim Crow: “On the bus we’re put in the back — / But there ain’t no back / To a merry-go-round!” n
“Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” (89 minutes) screens at 1 p.m. Thursday, July 25, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco and at 1 p.m. Wednesday, July 31, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland. tinyurl.com/sfjff-merry-go-round
‘The Monkey House’: an inventive Israeli comedy that exudes ’80s nostalgia
continued from page 9
Margo’s combat boots, dramatic makeup and leg-warmers with shorts add to the nostalgic warmth the film exudes for the ’80s.
There are three storylines that play out in the film, each one adding suspense and complications to the others. The performances, particularly Papian as Margo, inject the humor into the plot.
Amitay hires Margo, a broke, aspiring actress, to work as his assistant for one month as he excitedly prepares for the arrival of Gal, an Israeli graduate student in Colorado who is writing her Ph.D. on Amitay’s novels. He’s enthusiastic that the dissertation will become a book that will cement his legacy in the Israeli literary canon. He is also convinced the fame will impress Tamar, his best friend and love interest since childhood whose husband recently died.
Relatively early in the film, Amitay learns that Gal can no longer visit or complete the interviews, which dooms
her dissertation because her funding will soon run out. In an attempt to help Gal and himself, Amitay decides Margo can impersonate her and conduct the interviews herself.
The scenes showing Margo’s makeover and evolution from ’80s punk to buttoned-up researcher are among the most fun parts of the film, showing a transformation remi-
The movie is clever, witty and full of surprises and mystery.
niscent of Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” and Brittany Murphy in “Clueless.”
When Margo comes down the stairs to show Amitay her new look, she reaches under her skirt to pull a wedgie from the pantyhose she is unaccustomed to wearing.
“What? Pantyhose don’t get stuck in a Ph.D. candidate’s butt crack?” Margo snaps at Amitay, who is disappointed in
her uncouth ways.
The two are able to pull off the con successfully at first, but not everyone is convinced. Amir (Ala Dakka), a documentarian directing a film on 20th-century Palestinian and Israeli authors, can tell something is amiss. He, along with his producer, start to investigate, determined to uncover the truth and, with any luck, make their greatest film yet.
Suspense builds when another, now-impossible love connection begins to take shape.
The complicated plot is thought-provoking and shows compassion toward its flawed, deceitful characters, enabling us to see their deeper motivations and redeeming qualities. n
“The Monkey House” (128 minutes, Hebrew and Italian with English subtitles) screens at 3 p.m. Thursday, July 25, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco. tinyurl.com/sfjff-monkey-house
Black and white activists picket outside Glen Echo Amusement Park in the summer of 1960. (SFJFF)
Doc illustrates politics of conversion in Eastern Europe
SUE FISHKOFF | CORRESPONDENT
“Jews By Choice” is advertised as a documentary about a group of non-Jews in a small Czech city who renovate a destroyed synagogue and decide to convert to Judaism.
But the film, which is screening at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, is really about the complexity of Jewish life in the former Soviet bloc countries, as Jews and non-Jews tussle for control of historic Jewish properties, and for the right to decide who speaks for the Jewish community of a given location. Those decisions have financial as well as social implications, something the protagonists learn over their 20-year journey.
The story begins in 1997 when the historic synagogue in Krvno, a town of some 23,000 in the Czech Republic, is ruined in a massive flood. There have been no Jews living in the city since the Holocaust, but a group of local residents decides to renovate the synagogue and turn it into a Jewish cultural center.
As the years pass, some in the group decide to convert to Judaism. Led by a man named Petr, who takes the Hebrew name Aharon, they employ a Reform rabbi from Poland to lead them, and they want to restore religious worship in the synagogue. A second group, however, does not want to convert, and remains committed to the original goal of making the building a cultural center — a museum of lost Jewish life, you could say. Led by a man named Jirka, this
group leads tour groups through the space, selling yarmulkes and other Jewish ritual objects to the curious visitors.
Not surprisingly, the two groups come to loggerheads. City officials recognize the non-Jewish group as having the rights to the synagogue, further inflaming relations. In a disastrous blow, after more than six years of study and living Jewish lives, the newly minted converts find out that their rabbi, despite being ordained by the Reform move-
Why do these people want to convert? We don’t ever really know.
ment’s Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem, is not recognized by the European Union for Progressive Judaism, and therefore, neither are their conversions.
Anyone who thinks the Orthodox have a monopoly on internal political machinations has never met up with the EUPJ.
So who is a Jew? Who gets to decide? And why does it matter (because it does, a lot)?
This is a fascinating and poignant story. But the film itself, which was awarded a Jewish Film Institute completion
grant, is confusing and often frustrating to watch.
Years pass, even decades, and we are given no dates, no locations and precious little information about the people involved. Why do these people want to convert? We don’t ever really know, except for Aharon, who suspects he has Jewish ancestry (an unfounded suspicion, it turns out). The rest of the synagogue renovators are indiscernible, voiceless images on the screen, leaving a huge narrative void and a missed opportunity.
The film, which is a Polish production, is subtitled but could have benefited from intertitles, at the very least. They come only in the post-film “what happened to so-and-so” section, which viewers must stay to watch if they want any closure.
“Jews By Choice,” then, is not a polished film. But it touches on an important story. Anyone interested in postCold War Jewish life, who has the patience to sit back and absorb the somewhat chaotic and incomplete narrative arc, will take something away from the experience.
“Jews By Choice” (70 minutes, Czech and Hebrew with English subtitles) screens at 3:30 p.m. Friday, July 26, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco, and at 1 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 1, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland. The screenings are free but require a ticket. tinyurl.com/sfjff-jews-by-choice
‘Lyd’ envisions a Palestinian alt-history of an Israeli city
DAVID A.M. WILENSKY | J. STAFF
American science fiction is largely about taming the frontier or the implications of new technologies. But Israeli sci-fi is often about roads not taken, alternate histories, other Israels that are or once were just around the corner.
“Lyd,” playing this month at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, is far more a Palestinian film than an Israeli one, but it certainly fits that pattern.
The film — equal parts real-world documentary and alt-history reverie — is codirected by Rami Younis, a Palestinian, and Sarah Ema Friedland, an American Jew. It tells the story of the real Lyd, the Arabic name for the city of Lod near Tel Aviv. As a documentary, “Lyd” examines the 20th-century history of the city and its 21st-century present, told primarily from a Palestinian point of view.
During the Ottoman Empire and British Mandate periods, Lyd was a beautiful and bustling Arab town that connected the area to the rest of the world. Trains brought tourists from Egypt and Syria to the town, which was home to a famed Christian festival called Eid Lyd, celebrating St. George, its patron saint best known for slaying a dragon. On the eve of Israeli independence, Lyd even boasted an international airport — later renamed by Israel as Ben Gurion Airport.
But Israel’s War of Independence, or the Nakba as this film prefers, brought suffering to Lyd. It was invaded and conquered by the Palmach, the elite pre-state Jewish fighting force. Thousands of Palestinians fled — either of their own volition or at gunpoint, depending on which of the film’s subjects you believe.
But “Lyd” is not only a documentary. The film’s Arabic narration, by actor Maisa Abd Elhadi, who speaks in the first-person as the personification of the city, asks us, “Have you ever heard of the theory that claims that every event has multiple possible outcomes?” (American moviegoers today would be hard-pressed not to have heard of that theory. We live, after all, in the era of the multiverse blockbuster.) She continues, “These moments of change open doors to new realities. Alternate realities.”
The wrenching trauma of the Nakba and the expulsion of thousands of Arab residents created a rupture in reality, she tells us. Now there are two Lyds: the conquered one now called Lod and the alternative-reality Lyd that is a freer, happier one for its Arab majority.
Suddenly, we are watching the first of many adorably animated scenes about what happened in another timeline: a world in which the post-World War I colonial arrangement that carved the region up among European powers never came to be, a world in which Palestine is home to a multi-ethnic culture, part of a multi-state federation called the Greater Levant.
Beginning in the 1880s, European Jewish refugees are welcomed into the Greater Levant, joining the communities of Jews already living there peacefully. After the Holocaust, even more Jewish refugees are welcomed to Palestine.
The Greater Levant seems to our eyes, here and now, like a wildly utopian idea.
Then again, the Zionist enterprise was a messianic pipe dream — until it wasn’t. But that dream, now realized, has not
resulted in a peaceful utopia, as this film often reminds us. At the same time, the idea that the Greater Levant would be a pluralistic, democratic wonderland is difficult to believe.
The land imagined by Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, in his 1902 novel of speculative fiction “Altneuland” (“The New Old Land”) is an equally impossible, utopian vision of Jewish sovereignty. But the impossibility was beside the point. It helped Zionists imagine their future.
This movie seeks to do the same, by going back and asking
take her young students through a heartbreaking exercise that asks them to consider their own disjointed identities as Palestinians and citizens of Israel. In the other world, we see her take them through an exercise that asks them to consider their “Palestinian privilege” — a jaw-dropping moment.
But the animated portions are always brief. Jarringly, they flicker as they are replaced by stark, sun-drenched cinematography of the real world. It is a highly effective visual.
Imagining the alternate, happier lives of the real-world interviewees is a bold and breathtaking choice.
if everything happening today was always as inevitable as it now seems. The movie’s answer, of course, is no. Something else was possible — is possible.
The movie flits back and forth between the real world and the imaginary one. In the real world, we are witnesses to intense, disturbing interviews with Palestinians who live in Lod today, including an artist, a teacher and a former politician, and a family who fled Lyd in 1948 and now live in Balata, a refugee camp-turned-town in the West Bank where many former Lyd residents now live. They tell us of horrors of past and present Lod — theft of land and homes, “protests” that are little more than antiArab pogroms, the humiliation of driving along Palmach Circle, named for the people who took Lod from them.
In the animated world, each of these real-world interviewees gets a counterpart. In the real world, Eissa Fanous is an elderly, obscure artist who lived through the Nakba in Lyd as a child. He recalls being forced to help Israeli soldiers dispose of the decomposing bodies of Palestinians killed in the fighting. In his home is a small statue he sculpted of St. George. In the other universe, Fanous is a famous artist, recognized on the street by passersby. And his sculpture of St. George is a huge civic statue with pride of place in a public square, a symbol of the city.
In the real world, a metalworker in Balata tells us that he actually wanted to be a lawyer. But the structural barriers to higher education that the occupation places before a third-generation refugee in the West Bank are too great. So of course, in the animated world, he is a lawyer.
In the real world, a Palestinian teacher tells of the inequality of the education system in contemporary Israel. We see her
Jewish Israelis are represented in the film primarily by archival interviews with some of the Palmach members who took part in the capture of the city. They are terse and conflicted. Describing the sight of thousands of Palestinians fleeing the city, one says, “It was an exile — an exile stemming from the need to escape a place where they would have been annihilated without the possibility of fighting back.” (His use of the Hebrew “galut,” the word we Jews use to describe thousands of years of exile and diaspora, is a devastating irony.)
The next Palmach soldier on screen tells us they “cleansed” the area, chilling language. He tells us that soldiers looted Palestinian belongings left behind and supposes that others later stole valuables from Palestinians on the road as they fled. Later on, a woman in Balata who lived through this exile confirms that soldiers stole their money and other valuables as they left. We watch her wistfully tell her granddaughters what Lyd was like in the old days, remembering the Eid Lyd festivities. In the animated world, she never leaves Lyd and we see her cheerfully take her granddaughters to the celebration.
After the “siege of Lyd,” the film tells us, “around a thousand Palestinians were allowed to stay in Lyd, but were forced to live in a ghetto and work jobs that maintained the city’s infrastructure.”
Lyd the narrator tells us that most of her people, living now in exile, do not see her as she was and certainly cannot imagine her as she is. So much of what they remember is gone now. To them, she is “a promised land,” as hyperbolically perfect as the Israel I was so often taught about as a kid.
One place the film falters is in its too-brief mention of the Jewish refugees who came to the Greater Levant. We hear about them only in the early part of the alternate history. Each real-world Palestinian in the film has a counterpart in the other world. But the Israelis do not. What has become of the Jews of the Greater Levant today?
If you are uncomfortable with a narrative that defaults to calling that land Palestine and calling the events of 1948 the Nakba, this film will challenge you immensely. But I daresay it’s a good time to be challenged by art from Israel, from Palestine — from the Greater Levant. n
“Lyd” (79 minutes, Arabic with English subtitles) screens at 12:30 p.m. Sunday, July 28, at the Vogue Theater in San Francisco and 3:45 p.m. Tuesday, July 30, at the Piedmont Theatre in Oakland. tinyurl.com/sfjff-lyd
Before 1948, the Israeli city Lod was a thriving Palestinian city known as Lyd.
Rami Younis
Sarah Ema Friedland
FESTIVAL VENUE INFORMATION
SAN FRANCISCO
Palace of Fine Arts
3601 Lyon St., San Francisco
Public Transportation
Muni: 30, 43, 28, 29, 22, and 45.
Transfer to the 30 Stockton Muni line at Montgomery BART. Parking. Onsite parking lot.
Accessibility. For all patrons with accessibility or mobility needs, the loading zone in front of the Palace of Fine Arts is available for a close drop-off. SFJFF can provide early entry/access for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Please arrive one hour prior to screening start time and check in with festival venue staff. Wheelchair spaces and reserved aisle seats are available for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Spaces are limited. Assisted listening devices are available at concessions.
Vogue Theater
3290 Sacramento St., San Francisco
Public Transportation
Muni: 1, 2, 43
BART: From East Bay, exit at Montgomery Street Station. Transfer to Muni. Line 2 originates at the intersection of Sutter & Sansome, directly above Montgomery Street BART. Parking. Street parking around the Vogue Theater is metered. The JCCSF’s parking garage is at 3200 California St. (0.1 mile from the Vogue Theater). Limited parking available. Entrance is on California Street between Presidio Ave. and Walnut Ave. Enter from westbound lanes only.
JCCSF GARAGE HOURS and RATES: Each 1/2 hour: $2.75 • Daily Maximum: $35.00
Monday–Friday: 5:30am–9pm, Saturday–Sunday: 7a–5pm
Biking. Free bicycle parking is available on level P2 of the parking garage at 3200 California St. (0.1 mile away)
Accessibility. For all patrons with accessibility or mobility needs, the loading zone in front of the Vogue Theater is available for a close drop-off. SFJFF can provide early entry/access for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Please arrive one hour prior to screening start time and check in with festival venue staff. Wheelchair spaces and reserved aisle seats are available for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Spaces are limited. Accessible restroom stalls. Assisted listening devices are available at concessions.
Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California St, San Francisco
Public Transportation
Muni: 1, 2, and 43
BART: From East Bay, exit at Montgomery Street Station. Transfer to Muni. Line 2 originates at the intersection of Sutter & Sansome, directly above Montgomery Street BART.
Parking. JCCSF’s parking garage is at 3200 California St. Limited parking available. Entrance is on California Street between Presidio and Walnut Aves. Enter from westbound lanes only.
JCCSF GARAGE HOURS and RATES:
Each 1/2 hour: $2.75 • Daily Maximum: $35.00
Monday–Friday: 5:30am–9pm, Saturday–Sunday: 7a–5pm
Biking. Free bicycle parking is available on level P2 of the parking garage
Accessibility. Lobbies and restrooms in both theaters are
wheelchair accessible. Wheelchair spaces are limited. Assistive listening and closed captioning devices are not available at JCCSF screenings. Please ask for the Box Office Manager or email ada@roxie.com for further assistance.
Roxie Theater
3117 16th St., San Francisco
Public Transportation
Muni Lines:14, 22, 33, 49, and 55
BART: 16th Street BART
Parking. Street parking is limited. SFMTA parking garage at 16th and Hoff sts., one block up from Mission.
Biking Two bike racks located in front of the theater (one in front of the Big Roxie and one in front of the Little Roxie).
Accessibility. For all patrons with accessibility or mobility needs, the loading zone in front of the Vogue Theater is available for a close drop-off. SFJFF can provide early entry/access for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Please arrive one hour prior to screening start time and check in with festival venue staff. Wheelchair spaces and reserved aisle seats are available for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Accessible restroom stalls. Assisted listening devices are available at concessions.
EAST BAY
Landmark's Piedmont Theater
4186 Piedmont Ave., Oakland
Public Transportation
BART to the 12th Street Station in downtown Oakland. Then catch the #12 AC Transit bus on Broadway. It will take you to the front of the theater at the corner of Piedmont and Linda. Parking. Available on surrounding neighborhood streets where meters run from 8am to 6pm Monday to Saturday.
Accessibility. For all patrons with accessibility or mobility needs, the loading zone in front of the Piedmont Theatre is available for a close drop-off. SFJFF can provide early entry/access for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Please arrive one hour prior to screening start time and check in with festival venue staff. Wheelchair spaces and reserved aisle seats are available for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Spaces are limited. Accessible restroom stalls.
Urban Adamah
1151 Sixth St., Berkeley
Public Transportation
AC Transit: Take the 72/72R/72M along San Pablo Avenue. Use the Harrison Street/Gilman Street stop. Continue west five blocks to Sixth Street.
BART: The farm is a 1.5-mile walk or car service ride from the North Berkeley station.
Parking. Small onsite parking lot; street parking is available on surrounding neighborhood streets.
Accessibility. All program spaces and agricultural production facilities are wheelchair accessible.
Wheelchair spaces are available to be reserved for those with accessibility or mobility concerns. Spaces are limited. To reserve wheelchair space, contact the venue. Four fully accessible public restrooms.
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