San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 25

th

anniversary

Film

Festival

Festival

www.sfjff.org 925.275.9490

Welcome to the 25th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival!

Board of Directors Doug Okun President

Lenny Lieberman Vice President & Secretary

Sara Newman Treasurer

Michael Bernstein Ron Blatman Susie Coliver Gail Dolgin Michael Ehrenzweig* Shelley Friedman Susan Freundlich Nancy Goldberg Jane Gottesman Frederick Hertz Debbie Hoffmann* Julie Iny Lauraine Jaeger* Valerie Joseph Andra Lichtenstein* Reed Maltzman Shana Penn Shlomi Ravid Seth Safier Lela Sarnat Marian Sofaer Dan Wohlfeiler* Steve Zipperstein *terms ending Spring 2005

Staff Peter L. Stein Executive Director

A quarter century ago there had never been a Jewish film festival anywhere in the world. At the time it was a radical notion: that people could come together in a cinema to explore the full range of images expressing Jewish identity, history, stories and ideas—images that simply were not available in traditional forums, let alone in mainstream media. In hindsight, it seems like a necessary evolution in Jewish culture: the SFJFF is now the first among some one hundred Jewish film festivals worldwide that celebrate and present the diversity of Jewish life.

Freedom of expression is still uniquely at the core of what we do, and it is deeply imbedded in many of this year’s selections, starting with our standout series of films and discussions examining the role of Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist. It is in film tributes to courageous individuals like Sister Rose Thering (Sister Rose’s Passion), Lena Kuchlar Silverman (100 Children), Saul Wellman (Professional Revolutionary) and folk impresario Harold Leventhal (Isn’t This a Time!). And we inaugurate SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression Award at our 25th Anniversary Celebration with tributes to blacklistees Walter Bernstein (The Front) and Norma Barzman (The Locket) and to Bay Area independent filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt (Phantom Limb, I Like It a Lot).

Freedom to laugh—especially at ourselves—is just as necessary, so we open this 25th Festival with Go for Zucker!—An Unorthodox Comedy , the smash-hit, irreverent, contemporary German Jewish comedy (imagine that!).

Other offbeat comedies—The Talent Given Us (U.S.), Metallic Blues (Israel) and The First Time I Was Twenty (France)—show the worldwide appeal of laughter.

The dynamic Israeli film industry has come into its own, with no fewer than 15 films appearing here this year. Accomplished dramatic features like Or and Campfire stand shoulder to shoulder with Israeli documentaries, which impress us with their exploration of even the most painful aspects of the current conflict (Wall, On the Objection Front). Noteworthy too is our special family and youth program about peacemaking (Peace One Day), and, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the shattering film Massacre, from Lebanon, telling a story of collective violence from the standpoint of the perpetrators.

From funny to solemn, traditional to offbeat, and everything in between: yes, we are 25 years old, a venerable institution—but also 25 years young, still restlessly exploring the world and bringing back another take for your enrichment. Enjoy the paradox.

Elizabeth Jouan Greene Administrative Director

Nancy K. Fishman Program Director

Beth Harris Hoenninger Development Director

Leo Wong Program Coordinator

Josie Baltan Development Coordinator

Ian Schneider Administrative Coordinator

Christy Applegate Bookkeeper

Peter L. Stein Executive Director

Nancy K. Fishman Program Director

Doug Okun President, Board of Directors

25

th

Anniversary

American Politics

Commune The Front Isn’t This a Time!

Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman Protocols of Zion

Art/Photography Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc.

Take on the world

Another Dysfunctional Families (and you thought

Interfaith/ Intercultural

you had tsuris!)

100 Children Peace One Day: Kids Can Change the World Rashevski’s Tango West Bank Story Zero Degrees of Separation

Anya (in and out of focus) Arye Go for Zucker!

My Fantasia Or Rashevski’s Tango The Talent Given Us

Faith & Spirituality A Cantor’s Tale Keep Not Silent Phantom Limb Sister Rose’s Passion

Family & Youth

Classics & Revivals The Front Hotel Berlin The Locket The Search

Comedy The First Time I Was Twenty The Front Go for Zucker!

Le Grand Rôle Metallic Blues The Nuclear Physicist Gives His Son a Haircut The Talent Given Us West Bank Story

Drama Arye Campfire Hotel Berlin The Locket Or Rashevski’s Tango The Search

The First Time I Was Twenty Jai Peace One Day: Kids Can Change the World Yelena’s Story

Gay/Lesbian Keep Not Silent Zero Degrees of Separation

History 100 Children The Front Gertrude Berg: America’s Molly Goldberg Loss Massacre My Fantasia Odessa…Odessa!

Poumy Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman Protocols of Zion Sister Rose’s Passion A Victim’s Perspective Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc.

Special Regional Premieres—One Night Only!

Protocols of Zion August 6 in Berkeley (page 19) Le Grand Rôle August 7 in San Rafael (page 12)

Middle East Arna’s Children Campfire A Different War The Football Pitch God On Our Side Jericho’s Echo Massacre Meet Michael Oppenheim My Fantasia On the Objection Front Peace One Day Wall War Game West Bank Story Zero Degrees of Separation

New this year: Discount 10-Flix Card

Buy 10 tickets, save 20% (see page 36)

Music A Cantor’s Tale The First Time I Was Twenty Isn’t This a Time!

Jericho’s Echo West Bank Story

Russia/Former Soviet Union Arye Maidan, Nave of the World Odessa…Odessa!

Yelena’s Story

Young Adult Anya (in and out of focus) Campfire Commune The First Time I Was Twenty Jericho’s Echo The Nuclear Physicist Gives His Son a Haircut On the Objection Front Or The Talent Given Us West Bank Story

Tuesday First Show

Avoid the Lines

is always

Buy a

Free

PASS!

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Opening Night

Go for Zucker! — An Unorthodox Comedy U.S. Premiere Filmmaker invited for opening night

Germany, 2004, 35mm, 90 min., color, German w/Eng. subtitles

Director Dani Levy

Jaeckie Zucker is up to his ears in debt, again. This time it’s worse than usual for the roguish, wisecracking, hard-drinking Berlin pool shark formerly known as Jakob Zuckermann. Jaeckie happily left everything Jewish behind him decades ago, when his mother and brother fled to the West just before the Berlin Wall was built. When word comes that his mother has died and left him a sizeable inheritance, it’s a stroke of luck…but there’s a catch: Jaeckie must first reconcile with his long-estranged brother Samuel, who has become an Orthodox Jew in Frankfurt and is arriving, family in tow, for a traditional funeral and shiva at Jaeckie’s house. The madcap adventure that follows finds Jaeckie and his equally irreligious wife desperately trying to "pass" as observant, while Jaeckie attempts to ditch the family so he can play in a high-stakes pool tournament.

Politically incorrect, ironic and utterly contemporary, what makes Go for Zucker! such a standout is that, while in the irreverent mode of Mel Brooks and Larry David, this is a comedy from Germany—daring to present Jews in a guilt-free context beyond the Holocaust. Berlin-based director Dani Levy (Without Me, SFJFF 1994; Meschugge, SFJFF 1999), himself a Swiss Jew, brings together a brilliant and funny cast including German superstar Hannelore Elsner as the unflappable wife who must bone up on all things Jewish, and Golda Tencer, the doyenne of Polish Jewish theater, as the sister-in-law who sees through the ruse: "This house is as kosher as a pork chop!" And at the center of the whirlwind is Henry Hübchen, who in Jaeckie has created a lovable, infuriating scoundrel who breaks every taboo. And so does the movie.

Opening Night is sponsored by a generous grant from Wells Fargo Additional support provided by the Consulate General of Germany, San Francisco Co-presented by the Goethe Institut and J-Connect at the ALSJCC

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Castro Theatre Opening Night Reception and Film

Thu, Jul 21

6:30 PM

Castro Theatre Opening Night Film only

Thu, Jul 21

8:00 PM

OPEN21C GOFO21C

Mountain View Century

Sun, Jul 31

6:00 PM

GOFO31M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sat, Aug 6

9:00 PM

GOFO06B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Mon, Aug 8

8:45 PM

GOFO08R

Closing Night Rosa Rashevski believed that tango could heal the body better than chicken soup. She is the catalyst for considerable family drama in Rashevski’s Tango, a charming ensemble feature by Belgian director Sam Garbarski. Set in Paris, the film is a portrait of three generations of a Jewish family wrestling with issues of identity, love, interfaith marriage and long-held family secrets.

The story starts with the death of Rosa, a survivor who avoided religion and rabbis, so much so that after the Holocaust she decided not to circumcise her sons—just in case the Nazis returned. To her family’s surprise, she had bought a burial site in a Jewish cemetery. Her death makes her family engage in individual and collective soul searching; their relationships to each other shift in order to fill the empty space left by the formidable Rosa.

They also begin to examine their own bond to Judaism.

West Coast Premiere

Belgium, France, Luxembourg, 2002, 35mm, 100 min., color, English, Hebrew, French w/Eng. subtitles

Filmmaker invited for closing night

Director Sam Garbarski

Rosa’s sons Simon and David, who play chess on the phone together late at night, struggle with their abandonment by their father, who left Rosa decades ago to become Orthodox and make aliyah. Simon and his Christian wife Isabelle fight over whether Simon will be buried in a Jewish cemetery. Their daughter Nina wants a Jewish husband, but is falling in love with Antoine, who isn’t Jewish but at least knows how to tango (along with a few other things!). Rosa’s grandson Ric is involved with Khadija, a beautiful French Muslim woman, who chides him, "In Palestine you want to kill Arabs, but here you want to marry one." And Rosa’s brother-inlaw Dolpho, a wise, fallible and comic man, grapples with his new role as head of the family.

From the generation who lived through the Shoah, to their children and grandchildren—some newly observant, some reaching across cultural boundaries—Rashevski’s Tango delivers laughs, tears and a serving of serious romance with its nuanced script and stellar performances.

Rashevski’s Tango Closing Night is sponsored by a generous donation from the Bonnie and Marty Tenenbaum Foundation Co-sponsored by InterfaithFamily.com and the Consulate General of France, San Francisco Co-presented by Alliance Française de San Francisco, and by Building Jewish Bridges, Interfaith Connection at the JCCSF and Project Welcome of the URJ

Castro Theatre

Thu, Jul 28

8:30 PM

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sun, Jul 31

6:30 PM

RASH28C RASH31B

Mountain View Century

Mon, Aug 1

8:30 PM

RASH01M

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sat, Aug 6

6:45 PM

RASH06R

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Special Programs Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist

There was no doubt in the mind of Mississippi’s John Rankin,

Our retrospective look at Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist, guest curated by the Blacklist scholar Paul Buhle of Brown University and co-curated by program director Nancy K. Fishman, comprises four film classics by Jewish blacklisted screenwriters: The Front (1976, written

by Walter Bernstein*), The Locket (1946, written by Sheridan Gibney and Norma Barzman*), Hotel Berlin (1945, written by Alvah Bessie*) and The Search (1948, written by Richard Schweizer, David Wechsler and Paul Jarrico*). The retrospective will continue in our programming at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in October and November.

We extend special thanks to Paul Buhle for his contagious enthusiasm as well as his historical and artistic insight, and to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which has provided special support for the Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist focus through its film festival grants program.

Since 2001, America’s war on terror has tended to demonize voices of dissent and diminish the rights of private citizens in the interest of national security. The Blacklist years resonate with us at a time when fear of an enemy within—like that of communism in the McCarthy Era—threatens to erode the very constitutional rights and spirit that are the hallmarks of democracy, not to mention the heart of great American art and cinema. * Blacklist victim

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member of the Congressional delegation of the House Committee on Un-American Activities to Hollywood in 1947, about a key source of danger to the American public.

“Russian Jews control too much of Hollywood propaganda,” he told reporters who quizzed him about inviting noted anti-Semitic agitator Gerald L. K. Smith as an expert witness. Hollywood’s subversives were placing "loathsome, lying, immoral anti-Christian filth" in front of innocent children, thus displaying the same hatred for decency that "hounded and persecuted the savior."

Were Hollywood’s Jewish Americans guilty of threatening to subvert white, Christian America? Surely not the Republican-leaning moguls who fought unionization of their own industry bitterly, deployed the worst racial stereotypes in their films and for that matter restrained "Jewishness" on the screen wherever possible. But the charge applies differently to those Hollywood unionists, liberals and radicals who wanted to do their part to create a changed America, one inclusive and generous enough to live up to the nation’s stated ideals. Jewish writers, actors, directors, producers and technicians were no homogeneous bunch. But many of them shared a vision of better films in a better society.

The connection of popular art and politics is decisive. Children of immigrants, usually of lower-class origins, Jewish artists found in film a profession that could earn them a living with a certain degree of pride. The rise of fascism far more than illusions about the Soviet Union influenced their international views, while the effort to mobilize themselves for creating a more democratic climate gave them regular lessons in fighting philistinism.

That many of the writers and directors who were stigmatized and driven from their professions had believed fervently in film art can be seen, again and again, in the produced work of Hollywood’s blacklistees. Whether making women’s films (with strong and sympathetic protagonists), films of social conflict (underscoring the dignity of the poor), film noirs (showing the darker side of American society’s competitive urge) or slapstick comedies (with their metaphorical snowballs aimed at the top hats of the mighty), they did their best within narrowly circumscribed opportunities for creativity.

They left behind a treasure of nearly a thousand films, including Oscar®-winning features and shorts, "B" and "A" movies of every genre, films still unrecovered and others enjoyed by millions worldwide on AMC and TCM. Scholars and critics have only begun to grasp what an astute audience can appreciate from watching a few select movies: here are American artists, Jewish American artists, worth another look.

– Paul Buhle Paul Buhle, Senior Lecturer at Brown University, is co-author of five books on the Hollywood blacklistees among his twentyseven volumes. He also writes for TIKKUN, Jewish Currents, The Chronicle of Higher Education and the San Francisco Chronicle.

His latest book is Wobblies! A Graphic History of the IWW .

Please join us for a special panel, "Jewish? Left? Artist?," on Sunday afternoon, July 24, at the Castro Theatre, following The Front and preceding The Locket (see pages 12 and 15).

The panel, moderated by Professor Buhle, includes Walter Bernstein, Norma Barzman and Dan Bessie (son of Alvah Bessie, one of the Hollywood Ten).

Festival Focus: Israeli Cinema

th

S FJ F F

25

anniversar y

celebration

July 19 The last five years have seen an unprecedented surge in the number and quality of films made in Israel, both within its fiercely engaged independent documentary tradition and in an increasingly sophisticated feature film industry. This year we take a special survey of Israeli cinema with 16 films—including dramatic features, comedies, documentaries, shorts and animation—produced or co-produced in Israel.

The rising prominence of Israeli film is the result of concerted private and government investment in the local talent pool. Since 2001, when a new cinema law began funneling millions into production, more than 40 features have been greenlighted, while Israeli television, led by Channel 2, has produced hundreds of hours of dramas and, along with several prominent Israeli film schools, is proving a breeding ground for new directors.

Whereas in years past one could expect Israeli features more often than not to wave the blue-and-white flag, today they are as idiosyncratic as their makers. This year’s feature–selections are a case in point: Keren Yedaya’s Or focuses laser-like on the intense interdependency between a Tel Aviv prostitute and her teenage daughter; Joseph Cedar’s Campfire is set in a religious settlement community in the early 1980s; Metallic Blues is a comic buddy movie with darker undertones, following two used-car dealers on an ill-fated trip to Germany.

Documentaries made independently in Israel examine with courage and eloquence some of the thorniest aspects of contemporary life in the Middle East. Among the nonfiction features this year are Keep Not Silent, a brave look inside the lives of Orthodox Jewish lesbians in Jerusalem; and several films emerging out of the last 24 months of escalating violence between Israelis and Palestinians: Wall (on the controversial border barrier being erected), On the Objection Front (profiling the growing cadre of Israeli soldiers who have refused to serve in the occupied territories), and Zero Degrees of Separation (which follows the difficult personal and political paths faced by gay Israeli-Palestinian couples).

Join us for an evening of food, fun, film and festivities celebrating 25 years of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Special Honorees

Deborah Kaufman, Founder of SFJFF Janis Plotkin, Former SFJFF Director

and introducing The SFJFF Freedom of Expression Awards

Honoring Walter Bernstein, screenwriter and former blacklistee

Norma Barzman, screenwriter, author and former blacklistee

Jay Rosenblatt, independent filmmaker Tuesday, July 19 Club NV 525 Howard Street, San Francisco VIP Reception 6 : 3 0–7:30 pm entrance to VIP Lounge cocktails, canapés, conversation

25th Anniversary Celebration 7:30–11:00 pm two drink tickets, hors d’oeuvres dessert and dancing silent auction and raffle

Tickets: $85 (Celebration) —EVENT19N $225 (includes VIP Reception) —EVENT19V Proceeds support SFJFF’s year-round programs and festival See page 35 for more information

We have invited the directors of all of these documentaries to engage with you here in person. In addition, on Saturday, July 23, we will present a special afternoon of documentary screenings and extended filmmaker interviews and Q&A’s, moderated

by KQED-FM’s Michael Krasny. Please join us.

HON ORAR Y C HAIR S

Peter Coyote B. Ruby Rich 9

100 Children

Anya (in and out of focus)

West Coast Premiere Israel, 2004, Beta SP, 68 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Directors Oshra Schwartz, Amalia Margolin

Lena Kuchlar Silverman knew that all you need is love. At the end of World War II, this extraordinary Polish Jewish woman, who had studied psychology, gathered 100 Jewish orphan children in Krakow—some who had been in camps and some who were hidden—and loved them back to life. This inspiring documentary is based on her book My 100 Children and features footage of Kuchlar (who died in 1987) and contemporary interviews with children she saved. Kuchlar’s daughter Shiri and some of the hundred children (including one who was aided as a young girl by the late Pope John Paul II) journey to Warsaw in 2001 to visit the Jewish community archives and then meet for a reunion in Israel. The survivors, now in their sixties and seventies, reveal their real names (Kuchlar’s book used aliases) and share their love for the egalitarian, affectionate woman who welcomed them with open arms to the orphanage in Zakopane, Poland. Kuchlar, who fled with the children to France and then ultimately to Israel in the face of rising post-war anti-Semitism, won over 100 cynical hearts and in the process healed herself.

Preceded by

Sister Rose’s Passion United States, 2004, Beta SP, 39 min., color, English

Director Oren Jacoby

California Premiere United States, 2004, Beta SP, 93 min., color, English

Director Marian Marzynski

How would you like to have an unrelenting documentary filmmaker for a parent? Emmy-award winner Marian Marzynski is a doting father, and he loves his daughter Anya to within an inch of her life with the camera he hasn’t put down for 30 years.

At the outset, cute little Anya is a natural ham—it’s a match seemingly made in heaven, a home movie buff with a hilarious, rambunctious mini-star. But the arrangement sours as Anya matures and becomes aware that there is a life beyond camera range. Marzynski’s dilemma is that such tension makes for good cinema—but for familial tranquility, it’s not so good. Marzynski, a Polish Holocaust survivor, aches to record and give order to an archetypal upbringing he never experienced himself. But as much as he wants it all to come out perfect, to his credit he never blinks.

However desperately Anya may want to draw the curtain, he stubbornly continues the narrative he can’t or won’t stop. And Anya doesn’t blink either. By the time she reaches adolescence, both have learned to use the camera (i.e., the audience) to exact judgment.

Of course, life gets more complicated as time goes on, and despite the tumult of their relationship, their tango continues. Through it all, the film is a test and a testament to love and honesty. But please—don’t try this at home.

Filmmaker will be in person to defend his choices; Anya will be in China.

Preceded by

Sister Rose Thering is a Catholic nun with chutzpah. Since the 1950s she has been asking, "If we love Jesus, who is Jewish, why don’t we love his people?" This Academy Award®-nominated film introduces us to the remarkable Sister Rose, who has made fighting anti-Semitism her life’s work. First challenging church doctrines that blame the Jews for the death of Jesus, she advocated to reform the portrayal of Jews in Catholic teaching materials nationwide.

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I Like It a Lot United States, 2004, Beta SP, 4 min., color, English

Director Jay Rosenblatt

Principal cast: the director’s two-year-old, Ella; a chocolate ice cream cone; and a clean white shirt.

Co-presented by the Holocaust Center of Northern California, the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay, and Interfaith Connection at the JCCSF.

Co-presented by Film Arts Foundation

Castro Theatre

Thu, Jul 28

3:30 PM

Castro Theatre

Wed, Jul 27

12:30 PM

100C27C

Mountain View Century

Sun, Jul 31

3:30 PM

ANYA31M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sun, Jul 31

11:45 AM

100C31B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Mon, Aug 1

3:45 PM

ANYA01B

Mountain View Century

Mon, Aug 1

2:00 PM

100C01M

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sat, Aug 6

12:00 PM

ANYA06R

ANYA28C

Arna’s Children

Arye

Israel, Netherlands, 2003, digital video, 84 min., color, Hebrew, Arabic w/Eng. subtitles

Directors Danniel Danniel, Juliano Mer Khamis

Arna Mer Khamis, a Jewish woman artist, was a force of nature. Arna's Children explores the children’s theater workshop she founded in the West Bank town of Jenin, a place better known for conflict than for dramatic selfexpression. During the first Intifada, Arna established an alternative educational program in Jenin Refugee Camp to compensate for the virtual collapse there of the formal education system. Under her watchful and encouraging eyes, Palestinian kids discovered their inner playwrights and actors, despite (and sometimes because of) the tension in Jenin. With tutoring from Arna and her son Juliano (the director of the film), these young thespians wrote their own plays, made their own costumes and provided entertainment and hope for their community.

Shot over a 13-year period, this film—much like Michael Apted’s 7 Up documentaries—captures with heartbreaking honesty the lives of Arna’s children over time (and as recently as 2002), while drawing the viewer into their emotional, physical and political development.

As resistance to the harsh life in the refugee camps grows, the hope and tolerance learned by Arna's children become harder to maintain.

Arna herself was a feisty, loving activist who came from a prominent Zionist family, joined the Palmakh (an underground group that fought for Israel's independence), became active in the Israeli left, and married a Palestinian Arab, Saliba Khamis. Their son Juliano Mer Khamis (an Israeli actor and theater director) shares his split perspective of Jew and Palestinian with integrity and compassion in this tribute to his mother’s spirit and to the children she loved.

West Coast Premiere Israel, Russia, 2004, 35mm, 92 min., color, Russian w/Eng. subtitles

Director Roman Kachanov

Roman Kachanov’s feature film is an epic story of love lost and found, and spans the globe from Lithuania to Israel to Russia. Israel Isakovich Arye (Polish actor Jerzy Stuhr), a Moscow cardiologist, is successful despite the fact that he sees angels with black wings whenever he operates, and even talks to them. Like many people assessing life toward the end of the journey, Arye frequently returns to his boyhood; he returns to his adolescence spent hidden in Kaunas, Lithuania, during World War II. Gruff and charismatic, he has a sentimental quirk: he speaks to the old photographs of his parents and his first love Sonya. In a lovely touch of magical realism, the photos become animated and speak back.

When Arye discovers that he has cancer, he travels with his young wife to Israel to find Sonya, with whom he shared love as well as the attic hiding place in Lithuania.

Their reunion comes with romance, hijinks and a modern mixing of their families.

Jerzy Stuhr (renowned for his acting in the films of Andrzej Wajda and Krzysztof Kieslowski and for his own directing) steals the show but is bolstered by a strong supporting cast in this tale of a passion that never faded.

Co-presented by the JCCSF Kritzer/Ross Émigré Program and by 79ers, a program of Jewish Family and Children's Services

Co-presented by Cinemayaat, the Arab Film Festival, and Traveling Jewish Theatre

Co-sponsored by Carolyn Cavalier Rosenberg & Sandy Rosenberg, and by the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem Castro Theatre

Mon, Jul 25

4:15 PM

ARNA25C

Castro Theatre

Sun, Jul 24

9:45 PM

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Tue, Aug 2

5 :00 PM

ARNA02B

Mountain View Century

Tue, Aug 2

6:45 PM

ARYE24C ARYE02M

Mountain View Century

Thu, Aug 4

2:30 PM

ARNA04M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Wed, Aug 3

2:00 PM

ARYE03B

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Campfire

A Cantor’s Tale

Israel, 2004, 35mm, 96 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Joseph Cedar

California Premiere United States, 2004, 94 min., color, English

Director Erik Anjou

Winner of five Israeli Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Campfire is a shining example of the nuanced, exquisitely acted dramas that are giving Israel a prominent place on the international cinematic map.

The setting is Jerusalem, 1981. Rachel, a recently widowed mother of two teenage girls, hopes to start a new life with her family by joining a religious settlement in the West Bank. But she must first convince the community’s leader, Motke (the formidable Assi Dayan), that she is a worthy candidate. Despite her ideological passion, Rachel’s independent ways collide with Motke’s authority. He pressures her to marry and lead a more conventional life—a plan her rebellious older daughter immediately sets out to sabotage. Younger daughter Tami is more supportive, but soon experiences a trauma that will test Rachel’s priorities as mother, settler, believer.

Michael Eshet gives a delicately shaded and moving performance as the single mother of an all-female household. Beloved Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy plays her freethinking suitor, Yossi, who quietly introduces the promise of finding love and acceptance outside the "tribe" of settlers.

Director Joseph Cedar (Time of Favor, SFJFF 2001), whose own parents were religious Zionists, lends an insider’s authenticity to the social pressures and ideological zeal of the tight-knit settler community.

Ultimately, though, Campfire is a personal, human-scaled drama about the painful urge to fit in.

Think of how music fans get passionate about the merits of The Beatles vs. Rolling Stones, Callas vs. Tebaldi, Norah Jones vs. Madonna. Once upon a time, in 20th-century American cities, Jews got that fanatical about cantors.

A Cantor’s Tale is a loving tribute to a Golden Age in American Jewish life when chazzanut—the celebrated cantorial art—reached its zenith: when renowned cantors made best-selling recordings and attracted followers who would travel miles to hear their dizzying cantillations spilling from the windows of crowded synagogues.

The film’s spine is the journey of the engaging Jack Mendelson, who as the pudgy, streetwise son of a deli owner was influenced by his mother’s passion for chazzanut. Her regular field trips to hear the great cantors of New York seemed almost to predestine Jack and his brother to become cantors themselves. Today Jack is the president of the Cantors Assembly, demonstrating to young cantors-in-training the vocal nuances, unlearnable on the page, that connect them to the great vocal traditions of Eastern European sacred music.

Mendelson and director Erik Anjou introduce us to such luminaries as Cantors Alberto Mizrahi, Ben-Zion Miller and Joseph Malovany, while the milieu of 1950s Brooklyn is conjured up vividly by the likes of comedian Jackie Mason and attorney Alan Dershowitz. For their generation it was a greater source of pride that down the block lived a brilliant cantor than the family of World Series pitcher Sandy Koufax. Feh! They knew their priorities.

Co-presented by New Israel Fund

Preceded by

The Tale of the Goat United States, 2004, Beta SP, 6 min., black & white, Yiddish w/Eng. subtitles

Director Max Cohen

A deceptively simple animated retelling of S. Y. Agnon’s bleak fable of an elderly father, a feckless son and a wandering goat.

Co-presented by the Jewish Music Festival, a program of the BRJCC

Co-sponsored by the Israel Center of the SFJCF Castro Theatre

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Co-sponsored by Saul's Restaurant and Delicatessen, Berkeley

Wed, Jul 27

8:00 PM

CAMP27C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Mon, Aug 1

6:00 PM

CAMP01B

Castro Theatre

Mon, Jul 25

2:00 PM

CANT25C

Mountain View Century

Wed, Aug 3

6:00 PM

CAMP03M

Mountain View Century

Mon, Aug 1

6:15 PM

CANT01M

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sun, Aug 7

4:00 PM

CAMP07R

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Thu, Aug 4

12:30 PM

CANT04B

Commune

The First Time I Was Twenty

Bay Area Premiere United States, 2005, Beta SP, 78 min., color and black & white, English

Director Jonathan Berman

Northern California Premiere France, 2004, 35mm, 93 min., color, French w/Eng. subtitles

Director Lorraine Levy

What draws Jews to utopian communities? From socialist farms in the early Soviet days to kibbutzim and moshavim, Jews have often dabbled in communal living, sharing work, homes and ideals. Is it the egalitarian nature of a religion unmediated by elevated leaders or intercessors? Director Jonathan Berman (The Shvitz, SFJFF 1993) returns to the Festival with an engaging documentary (featuring a soundtrack by Elliott Sharp) that explores one of the boldest and best-known such experiments: the Black Bear Ranch in Siskiyou County, California, an extant commune that began in the 1970s. Founded on the idea of “Free Land for Free People,” and financed by the largesse of a few good souls in Hollywood, Black Bear was created as an alternative to materialist society. At a time when the Vietnam War was raging and political activists were targeted by police, Black Bear was a refuge as well as a social experiment. Berman delves into the founding of the commune, probing the highs and lows of communal life, from shared clothes and early winters without enough food, to group sex, jealousy, midwifery in the backwoods and group childrearing. The film explores generations of Black Bear residents, including kids who thrived in an open community and those who craved structure. Featuring Black Bear members Harriet Beinfeld, Peter Coyote, Geba Greenberg, Efrem Korngold, Elsa Marley and Osha Neumann, among others, Commune is an elegantly crafted testament to people who dared to dream of a world remade.

Hannah is 16 years old, smarter and spunkier than most of her classmates and her two pretty sisters, and plays a mean upright bass. But in her conventional suburb in mid1960s France, none of that counts. She’s not interested in dating, it seems, and the famous school jazz band that she desperately wants to join is traditionally all-male and refuses to budge. Hannah’s adolescence is turning out to be no pique-nique—especially when pranks aimed at her turn from gentle hazing to being outright anti-Semitic.

Anchored by a witty and wise central performance

by Marilou Berry (recently earning raves for Look at Me), along with a trenchant screenplay and a terrific jazz score, The First Time I Was Twenty takes the traditional story of a likeable misfit and lifts it to an uncommon level of charm, humor and poignancy. Hannah’s family is slightly wacky: her sisters insist that Hannah’s problems will be solved by a nose job (remember that era?); her garage-mechanic father adores her but is clueless about her musical talents; and the only one who seems to understand her yearnings is her gay uncle, who has to hide his own secrets. But Hannah has pluck and determination—and so does this thoroughly delightful film, adapted from Susie Morgenstern’s book for younger readers by Lorraine Levy, whose directorial debut is immensely enjoyable for teens and adults alike.

The Nuclear Physicist Gives His Son a Haircut

Northern California Premiere Mexico, 2004, 35mm, 9 min., color, Spanish w/Eng. subtitles

Preceded by

Northern California Premiere United States, 2003, Beta SP, 7 min., black & white, English

Director Hanan Harchol

Hanan Harchol, a one-man animation machine, provides the story, images and voices that dispense dubious advice and wry commentary on sexual gamesmanship in this animated short. It’s guaranteed that you will leave the theater still hearing the filmmaker’s imitation of his father’s spittled voice imploring, “HANAN!” Co-presented by Film Arts Foundation

Co-sponsored by Carl & Gay Grunfeld

Preceded by

Jai Director Ariel Zylbersztejn

When a young Mexican Jewish girl innocently asks her grandmother about the numbers tattooed on her arm, the answer is a surprise. Zylbersztejn captures the unique and magical relationship between grandparents and grandchildren.

Co-presented by Alliance Française de San Francisco and the JCCSF Club 18 Teen Program

Sponsored by the estate of Gerda Mathan, artist, mother, mentor, Survivor and devoted friend of the Festival Castro Theatre

Mon, Jul 25

6:15 PM

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Wed, Aug 3

12:00 PM

FIRS25C FIRS03B

Castro Theatre

Tue, Jul 26

6:15 PM

COMM26C

Mountain View Century

Thu, Aug 4

6:00 PM

FIRS04M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sat, Aug 6

4:45 PM

COMM06B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sat, Aug 6

4:30 PM

FIRS06R

13

The Front

Le Grand Rôle

United States, 1976, 35mm, 94 min., color, English

Director Martin Ritt

France, 2004, 35mm, 89 min., color, Yiddish, French w/Eng. subtitles

A classic more appreciated decades after its release, The Front offers a remarkable, also curious defense of the Blacklist victims. Its plot features television and New York rather than film and Hollywood, and it is a comedy, one of actor Woody Allen’s best, treating a deadly serious subject.

Walter Bernstein,* in the film’s backstory, had wanted for years to make such a film, and so had director-producer Martin Ritt,* himself earlier blacklisted as an actor and only rehabilitated as a director. Lacking a star, the project was deemed hopeless. But Woody Allen, less famous than he would shortly become, happened to be a personal friend of Bernstein’s, and sympathetic to the blacklistees.

The film, as it opens, offers an almost literal re-enactment of a conversation by the three principal writers of television’s first “quality” show, You Are There—all of them blacklistees, writing behind pseudonyms. In the film as in real life, they are looking for a front, although Woody Allen’s protagonist is rather more naïve than the courageous stand-ins of the time.

Zero Mostel* plays a Blacklist victim who cannot, no matter how much he wants success, betray his Jewishness, and who under duress chooses suicide. It was partly Mostel’s own story, and partly that of Molly Goldberg’s co-star Philip Loeb, who, faced with ruin, ended his own life. Bernstein got a muchdeserved Oscar® nomination for Best Screenplay.

—Paul Buhle *Blacklist victim Walter Bernstein in person at the Castro Followed by a panel at the Castro Theatre on Sunday, July 24.

See also the special program Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist , page 6.

Preceded by

Director Steve Suissa

Maurice and his three pals are all struggling to find work as actors in Paris, where the roles for a motley quartet of Jewish thespians are, to put it mildly, rather limited. In fact, we first discover them scraping by doing foreignlanguage voiceovers. But this charming French comedy springs into action when the friends learn that a famous Hollywood movie director is arriving to film his adaptation of The Merchant of Venice…in Yiddish. Maurice (Stéphane Freiss) first must convince the director that he is the perfect Shylock (his agent coaches him before the audition, "Come dressed as a Jew!"). His buddies are equally intent on landing roles, and their preparations are hilarious.

But what starts as a delightful ensemble farce takes on a new dimension when Maurice’s beloved wife Perla (Bérénice Bejo) suddenly becomes gravely ill. Like the hero of Good Bye, Lenin! (who can’t bear to break bad news to his suffering mother), Maurice decides he must convince his wife, with the collusion of his friends, that he has actually landed the starring role. And that’s when Le Grand Rôle earns its title. For Maurice, pulling off the ruse for the sake of love will be the performance of a lifetime in this comedy with tears. Marin County’s own Peter Coyote plays the deliciously self-important director Rudolph Grichenberg, whose earnest wish to make a high-minded film in an obscure language spoofs at least two current Hollywood grandees. The quartet of friends who collude in the grand deception make a marvelous ensemble.

Co-presented by the Marin Theatre Company

Gertrude Berg: America's Molly Goldberg Sneak Preview United States, work-in-progress, DVD, 5 min. excerpt, color and black & white. English

Director Aviva Kempner

Gertrude Berg: America's Molly Goldberg chronicles the trailblazing career of the creator, prolific writer and star of the popular radio and TV family sitcom, The Goldbergs.

Berg refused to fire her blacklisted co-star Philip Loeb, who resigned to prevent the show’s cancellation.

Co-presented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation

Sponsored by Vera & Harold S. Stein, Jr. 14

Castro Theatre

Sun, Jul 24

4:00 PM

FRON24C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Tue, Aug 2

1:00 PM

FREE

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sun, Aug 7

6:15 PM

GRAN07R

Hotel Berlin

Isn’t This a Time!

United States,1945, 35mm, 98 min., black & white, English

Director Peter Godfrey

This “grand hotel” ensemble drama, adapted by Alvah Bessie* and Jo Pagano from a novel by Vicki Baum, brilliantly treats the end of Nazism in swanky surroundings. Periodic bombing raids drive all but the feckless into shelters. Meanwhile, high members of the Reich, rushing in and out, are making larcenous plans, as one puts it, to “prepare better for the next war.”

Against this background of crisis and intrigue, private life continues, its characters avoiding or coping in various ways with the approaching cataclysm. Thus an agent of the partisans, on the run, is hidden in the hotel, aided by the little bellboy, himself part of the Underground. Peter Lorre, in real life a militant antifascist, has one of his best non-campy roles as an apparently maddened Nazi popularist who secretly writes Allied propaganda. Even the German general (played memorably by Raymond Massey) is part of a late-war plot to kill Hitler.

What Hotel Berlin and a handful of other films by future blacklistees dramatized was the system of privilege and power that had flowed from aristocratic times into Nazism practically undisturbed. The notion that the sources of fascism were deeper than the National Socialist Party and were likely to survive the war in undiminished positions of authority put Bessie and others beyond the acceptable limits of postwar American thought, conservative or liberal. Such artists were soon to be barred from the popular audience that had so eagerly paid to see their movies.

—Paul Buhle *Blacklist victim Dan Bessie (son of screenwriter Alvah Bessie) in person Co-presented by the California Film Institute and Lehrhaus Judaica

West Coast Premiere United States, 2004, 35mm, 90 min., color, English

Director Jim Brown

On November 29, 2003, thousands of people descended on New York’s Carnegie Hall for a Thanksgiving weekend concert billed as "Arlo Guthrie in concert with special guests in a tribute to Harold Leventhal." For the past half century, Leventhal managed the leading icons of folk music. His pivotal role is evidenced by the artists performing, including Pete Seeger, the Weavers (with the Bay Area’s own Ronnie Gilbert), Theodore Bikel, Leon Bibb and Peter, Paul and Mary.

The event sold out before advertising ever hit the press.

Isn’t This a Time! vividly captures the magnitude of this historic moment with the intimate feel of a family reunion. Between songs that have helped define contemporary American culture and testaments of the musicians, Leventhal appears front and center, expressing the vision that motivated him and the artists he represented.

The child of Orthodox Jewish immigrant parents, Leventhal grew up impoverished during the Depression, partly on the Lower East Side. Like many Yiddish-speaking Jews of his generation, he was brought up on the promise of American democracy and developed a passionate commitment to the pursuit of social justice, expressed in the political activism of the American Left. Finding kindred spirits in Pete Seeger, the Weavers and Woody Guthrie, he built an audience hungry for music that reflected progressive, universalist social values—an audience that he nurtured during the most repressive years of the Cold War and Blacklist. During this time, Leventhal also presented Theodore Bikel, who introduced Yiddish and other international folk songs to a mass American audience.

When Leventhal’s mother heard Bikel, she understood the importance of what her son was doing. See this film, and you will too.

—Ellie Shapiro, Jewish Music Festival Ronnie Gilbert in person in San Francisco, Berkeley and San Rafael.

Co-presented by the Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay and the Jewish Music Festival, a program of the BRJCC

Sponsored by the estate of Gerda Mathan, artist, mother, mentor, Survivor and devoted friend of the Festival, honoring the vision and achievements of Janis Plotkin during her leadership of the SFJFF Castro Theatre

Mon, Jul 25

8:45 PM

HOTE25C

Castro Theatre

Thu, Jul 28

6:00 PM

ISNT28C

Mountain View Century

Mon, Aug 1

4:15 PM

ISNT01M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Wed, Aug 3

6:30 PM

HOTE03B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Thu, Aug 4

5:45 PM

ISNT04B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Mon, Aug 8

6:30 PM

HOTE08R

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sat, Aug 6

2:15 PM

ISNT06R

15

Jericho’s Echo

Keep Not Silent

United States Premiere Director Israel, United States, 2005, Beta SP, 75 min., Liz Nord color, English, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Northern California Premiere Israel, 2005, Beta SP, 52 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Punk is political, and as Liz Nord’s first feature documentary deftly shows, Israel’s punk scene takes on politics ferociously. This graphic, dynamic film will inhabit your ears and mind like a bass line that pounds into your consciousness and stays with you for days. The bands featured (all Israeli Jews) cover the political spectrum (the majority lean to the left) with many musical and cultural influences, but they share a struggle for freedom in a country where religious laws, mandatory military service and national conflict hang over their daily lives. From mosh pits in dark clubs to intimate rehearsal sessions, Israeli punks use words and chords to decry the status quo. Some of the punks serve in the military for part of the week (it’s hard to fit a Mohawk under a helmet), and then hit the clubs on weekends. Bands with names like Useless I.D., Lo Kosher (not Kosher), and Va’adat Kishut (Decoration Committee) struggle to define themselves in a country where punk is not as popular as it is in England or the United States, but where the issues to be protested against are far graver. In a society where people often talk around difficult subjects, Israeli punk screams its truth about the occupation, war and young people fed up with living in fear.

Ilil Alexander’s brave new documentary gives us rare access to the clandestine lives of three women in Jerusalem.

All of them are deeply committed Orthodox Jews who lovingly adhere to their community of faith; and all of them are lesbians, forced to make difficult, sometimes impossible decisions as their sexuality clashes with their love of God, scripture and family. The choices and sacrifices they make are hardly uniform, but they gain solidarity from their participation in a secret support group called the “Ortho-dykes.” Yudith, daughter of a rabbi, is vocal about her identity, believing “lies are the worst sin on Earth,” while Miriam-Ester is hidden inside a marriage with children; Ruth attempts to forge an extraordinary bargain with her husband and her lover. When Trembling Before G-d (SFJFF 2001) exposed the secret struggles of Orthodox and Hasidic gays and lesbians, it raised hopes of being the first step on an inevitable journey reconciling the freedom to love honestly with devout Jewish observance. Now Alexander’s compelling documentary shows how long, perilous and painful that road still is. Made with utmost respect, humility and candor, Keep Not Silent poses the urgent question: must faith come at the expense of self-acceptance? Just what sacrifice does God require?

Preceded by

Winner, Israeli Academy Award, Best Documentary Co-presented by Frameline and the National Center for Lesbian Rights

West Bank Story

Preceded by

Northern California Premiere United States, 2004, 35mm, 22 min., color, English

Director Ilil Alexander

Phantom Limb

Director Ari Sandel

Nothing is sacred in this parody of a musical comedy, set in the fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank. David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with Fatima, the beautiful Palestinian cashier at the neighboring chickpea purveyor. This Sundance hit would have Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein either spinning in their graves—or tapping their toes.

Co-presented by The Hub at the JCCSF

United States, 2004, Beta SP, 28 min., color and black & white, English

Director Jay Rosenblatt

When San Francisco filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt was a young boy, his little brother Eliot died. The Rosenblatt family never discussed it—a silence that caused decades of displaced pain and postponed grief. Rosenblatt (King of the Jews, SFJFF 2000) reclaims both the death and life of his brother in this profound, haunting and healing meditation on loss.

Co-sponsored by LGBT Alliance: Jewish Community Federation, and by Marilyn Waldman in honor of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture

16

Castro Theatre

Wed, Jul 27

10:30 PM

JERI27C

Castro Theatre

Wed, Jul 27

5:30 PM

KEEP27C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Thu, Aug 4

9:45 PM

JERI04B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sun, Jul 31

4:00 PM

KEEP31B

The Locket

Maidan, Nave of the World

United States,1946, 35mm, 85 min., black & white, English

North American Premiere Georgia, Netherlands, 2004, Beta SP, 50 min., color, Georgian, Armenian, Turkish, Arabic w/Eng. subtitles

Director John Brahm

Initially scripted by Norma Barzman*, who was followed by the better-known Sheridan Gibney and denied credit, The Locket is a compelling noir treating a female protagonist with empathy and understanding. Laraine Day plays a bride facing a crisis hours before her wedding: a former husband suddenly appears and reveals that she has a history of kleptomania. The return of a locket prompts a mental breakdown and her institutionalization.

Over the course of the film, an extended flashback offers a stunningly complex psychological portrait. The “RKO Style” of socially based films with imperfect characters and very real sources of oppression is at its best here, because criminal behavior has a real-life explanation and, presumably, a cure as well.

Unlike Alfred Hitchcock’s treatment of another troubled woman in Marnie, there is little affectation or suggestion of sexual failure here. Locket director John Brahm was both workmanlike and budget limited. But Freudianism was also more likely to be viewed in Hollywood of the 1940s through an understanding of material conditions. Had Barzman worked on the script to completion, it would surely have attained something closer to the synthesis of Marx and Freud that Hollywood’s future blacklistees mulled during the second half of the decade.

We are left, at any rate, with a neglected gem of a film, a marker of what the “woman’s film” might have become nearly a quarter-century before feminism had its delayed and always limited impact on Hollywood. That Barzman was denied credit only compounds our need to recover and reinterpret The Locket.

—Paul Buhle *Blacklist victim Norma Barzman in person at the Castro Preceded by a panel at the Castro Theatre on July 24.

See also the special program Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist , page 6.

Ticket holders for The Locket are welcome at the panel.

Co-presented by the San Francisco Film Society

Sponsored by the Gaia Fund

Director Dato Janelidze

Maidan, Nave of the World is about the love of an Old World place, a forgotten neighborhood in Tbilisi, capital of the Georgian Republic. Dato Janelidze’s painterly camera presents an astonishingly luscious landscape of Maidan’s timeless, careworn streets and alleys. Though frayed and fatigued, Maidan beckons with the allure of a proud dowager who now has more charm than beauty to offer. More importantly, Maidan illustrates the ancient peace it keeps among its eccentric and humble inhabitants. Muslims, Jews, Christians and Orthodox continue to live together as they always have—sharing their rituals, sharing their languages and sharing their love and respect for their obscure corner of the world.

At its heart, Maidan, Nave of the World is about the love of cinema itself and the pure magic of light dancing on a screen.

Followed by

My Fantasia Northern California Premiere Israel, 2001, Beta SP, 54 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Duki Dror

The three Darwish brothers fled Baghdad for Israel in the 1950s and established the Fantasia menorah factory.

Beyond that, nothing is simple in this twisting and turning story of filmmaker Duki Dror’s silent father and quirky uncles. The real story behind his father’s silence? It’s up for grabs as Dror’s family members tell the little bits of the story they each know. Along the way, My Fantasia is filled with large and small revelations about the psychological journey of the Mizrahi Jews who flocked to Israel on the promises of the Zionist dream—dreams that turned into imperfect realities. All the while, Dror (Taqasim, SFJFF 2003) comments with wicked humor as he patiently waits and waits and finally outwaits his father, learning the truth after eight years of asking.

Co-presented by JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa), a project of the JCRC

Castro Theatre

Wed, Jul 27

3:00 PM

MAID27C

Castro Theatre

Sun, Jul 24

7:30 PM

LOCK24C

Mountain View Century

Tue, Aug 2

2:00 PM

FREE

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Tue, Aug 2

3:30 PM

LOCK02B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Thu, Aug 4

2:45 PM

MAID04B

17

Massacre

Metallic Blues

North American Premiere Directors Monika France, Germany, Switzerland, Lebanon, 2004, Borgmann, Lokman Slim, 35mm, 98 min., color, Arabic w/Eng. subtitles Hermann Theissen

California Premiere Canada, Germany, Israel, 2004, 35mm, 90 min., color, English, Hebrew, German w/Eng. subtitles

Even as we mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps, new genocidal horrors emerge in Sudan, and we learn more daily about the atrocities in Rwanda a decade ago. The deeply held Jewish warning “Never again!” too often is drowned out, supplanted by cries of “Who could do such a thing?”

In their shattering documentary Massacre, three intrepid filmmakers go directly to the perpetrators to shed new light on mass violence. Over three days in September 1982, members of Lebanese Christian militias carried out gruesome massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in southern Lebanon, then under Israeli occupation. It is estimated that between one and two thousand Palestinian civilians were killed, most of them women, children and the elderly; the precise number is unknown even today. The degree of the Israeli military’s tacit support of or ability to prevent the massacres has been a matter of intense dispute.

Massacre weaves together the silhouetted testimonies of six perpetrators, members of the Lebanese forces who took part in the atrocities and have never spoken publicly. The film is not an attempt to reconstruct a precise narrative, nor to shift blame onto superiors, but is a psychological portrait of willing war criminals. It asks us to consider the nature of collective violence and the continuing capacity for evil—questions of profound Jewish concern that resonate from Treblinka to My Lai, from Cambodia to Bosnia and Darfur.

When Shmuel and Siso, two hapless used-car dealers in Israel, stumble on the chance to buy a spotless, blue 1985 Lincoln Continental limousine for $5,000, they figure their luck has finally turned. All they need to do is ship the classic beauty to Germany, sell it to a collector and return as heroes with a handsome profit.

So begins this offbeat, funny and touching buddy movie that brings together the irrepressible Avi Kushner (a noted Israeli stand-up comedian) and sad-sack Moshe Ivgy on a road trip from hell. Ivgy plays diminutive Siso, a Moroccan Jew with family obligations, who is suspicious of the scheme and queasy about traveling to the land of the Holocaust. His friend Shmuel, a shmoozer who can bluster his way into (though not always out of) any situation, is the child of Holocaust survivors and long ago turned the page on that history. For him, Germany is the ultimate modern European marketplace, its sleek airports and posh hotels the stuff of consumer dreams. The adventures of these two schlemiels as their plan unravels will test their friendship, and bring up unexpected emotions about the Jewish past in Germany, as well.

The film is written and directed with wit and heart by Danny Verete (Yellow Asphalt, SFJFF 2002), who creates a unique triangular relationship between his marvelous co-stars and their magnificent obsession: that shiny blue car.

Director Danny Verete

Co-presented by the Israel Center of the SFJCF and by Congregation Beth Am of Los Altos Hills

Co-presented by Amnesty International USA

Co-sponsored by Anita & Marc Abramowitz and Marian & Abe Sofaer

18

Castro Theatre

Tue, Jul 26

8:45 PM

MASS26C

Castro Theatre

Sat, Jul 23

10:00 PM

META23C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sun, Jul 31

8:45 PM

MASS31B

Mountain View Century

Sun, Jul 31

8:00 PM

META31M

Mountain View Century

Wed, Aug 3

2:15 PM

MASS03M

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sun, Aug 7

8:30 PM

META07R

Odessa…Odessa!

California Premiere France, Israel, 2004, 35mm, 96 min., color, Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian w/Eng. subtitles

On the Objection Front Director Michale Boganim

For the uprooted, “home” can mean an elusive yearning for a former place and time. Odessa…Odessa! elegantly captures the essence of nostalgia as experienced by elderly Jews born in Odessa, Ukraine. Like a melancholy three-verse song, this documentary is a poetic journey from Odessa to Brighton Beach, New York, to Ashdod, Israel, maneuvering among characters who summon feelings of Odessa through memory and music.

On Odessa’s vacant streets, neglected buildings suggest a glorious past. Here a few very old women reminisce, in a mix of Yiddish and Russian, about World War II, their ideologies and their vibrant youths. With their city nearly emptied of Jewish life, it is as if they live in the Odessa of fantasy. In Brighton Beach, the vibrancy that must once have filled Odessa pulses along the boardwalk.

In sun-bleached Ashdod, the Odessans express disappointment that, while in Russia they were considered Jews, here in the “promised land” they are forever Russians—outsiders. Their supposed homeland has become Diaspora.

Drawing out subtle meanings through stunning, lyrical photography and the metaphor of a timeless traveler who guides us over the sea from continent to continent, Odessa…Odessa! evokes profound truths about the soul of the Jewish people and the wider experience of exile.

West Coast Premiere Israel, 2004, Beta SP, 63 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Shiri Tsur

Israel is a country where military service is not only compulsory but one of the foundations of social cohesion and national pride. This timely documentary interweaves the stories of six soldiers who, after years of loyal reserve duty and annual active combat, find they can no longer countenance serving in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They become “refusniks”— an action that puts them at odds with deeply held national values and has devastating consequences in their own lives.

The notion of refusing duty exploded onto the scene with the 2002 publication of the “Combatants’ Letter,” in which 614 combat soldiers declared their moral objection to participating in military actions beyond the 1967 “Green Line.” In Shiri Tsur’s film, with remarkable candor, signers of the original letter reveal the untenable combat experiences that led to their decision, the public outcry it provoked and the price they continue to pay for refusing to serve—including isolation, family ostracism and imprisonment.

The men are articulate and thoughtful; Tsur has crafted a finely shaded film that exposes the deep ethical questions at the heart of their actions. When does an individual’s conscience require disobedience? At what price, to oneself and one’s country?

—Caroline Libresco, Sundance Film Festival Winner, Ecumenical Jury Prize, Berlin Film Festival Preceded by See also Festival Focus, page 7 Co-presented by Veterans for Peace, Chapter 69

Yelena’s Story Sneak Preview United States, 2005, Beta SP, 12 min., color, English, Russian w/Eng. subtitles

Directors New Jewish Filmmaking Project (see page 29)

Seventeen-year-old Ukrainian émigré Yelena Shuster negotiates two worlds, her own and her grandparents’, in Yelena’s Story, the newest work by and about teenagers in the SFJFF’s New Jewish Filmmaking Project, a production of Citizen Film.

Co-presented by 79ers and Club Noon, programs of the Jewish Family and Children's Services, and by the JCCSF Kritzer/Ross Émigré Program

Sponsored by a friend of the Festival in honor of Gail Dolgin, Academy Award®-nominated filmmaker, whose sensibility and passion for justice inspire

Castro Theatre

Sun, Jul 24

Castro Theatre

Sat, Jul 23

2:30 PM

ONTH23C

11:30 AM

ODES24C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Tue, Aug 2

6:45 PM

ONTH02B

Mountain View Century

Tue, Aug 2

4:15 PM

ODES02M

Mountain View Century

Thu, Aug 4

4:00 PM

ONTH04M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sat, Aug 6

12:00 PM

ODES06B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sun, Aug 7

12:00 PM

ONTH07R

19

Special Youth Program Peace One Day: Kids Can Change the World For young people ages 10 and up and their families

Or Northern California Premiere

Director

France, Israel, 2004, 100 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Keren Yedaya

Dana Ivgy (daughter of the renowned Israeli actor Moshe Ivgy) headlines this powerful drama, which won the Camera d’Or at Cannes for director Keren Yedaya and earned Ivgy the Israeli Oscar for Best Actress. With sometimes graphic intimacy, Or takes us inside the private lives of working-class mother Ruthie (veteran actress Ronit Elkabetz) and her daughter Or, who barely get by in Tel Aviv. Or (whose name means “light” in Hebrew) tries desperately to convince her mother to stop working as a prostitute, but after 20 years in the business, Ruthie finds her options narrowing. She tries to get a cleaning job with a middle-class lady whose condescending attitude might turn even the most chaste woman to hooking.

The film adeptly juxtaposes the mundane moments of a teenage girl—Or goes to high school, flirts with her neighbor Ido, washes dishes in a restaurant—with her poignant attempts to have a quiet family life with her dissipated single mom. Compelling and sad, Ivgy’s portrayal of an Israeli teenage girl down on her luck draws us stealthily into her hopes that her mother just might change. Ruthie, for her part, clearly loves Or, tenderly calling her “ mon tresor” (my treasure), and clings to her dignity by denying her dependence on her daughter. Or is an achingly intense and hard-boiled look at intimacy between a mother and daughter, with topnotch performances by two of Israel’s most dynamic actors.

Come to a special afternoon of short films and animation showing how young people around the world move towards peace, even when confronted with conflict. This program has been created exclusively for SFJFF family audiences by Judy Ironside, Festival Director of the UK Jewish Film Festival, and Leslie Ironside, a noted British child and adolescent psychotherapist, who will lead a youth-focused discussion after the films. Youth 17 and under-$5 only!

Films to be screened: The Football Pitch Israel, Switzerland, 2000, 35mm, 7 min., color, Hebrew,Arabic w/Eng. subtitles

Israeli and Palestinian boys fight over a soccer field and reach a surprising conclusion.

Peace One Day United Kingdom, 2004, 8 min. (excerpt), color, English

Co-presented by the San Francisco Film Society and the Israel Center of the SFJCF

Director Jeremy Gilley

An individual genuinely can make a difference! Jeremy Gilley set out to persuade the United Nations to create an annual global ceasefire day. This excerpt focuses on the Israeli and Palestinian responses to his request.

A Different War Israel, 2004, Beta SP, 14 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Nadav Gal

Nuni, a fourth-grade student, has been chosen to play the warrior King David in a school play. But deep down he longs to play a different role….

War Game United Kingdom, 2001, 35mm, 29 min., color, English

Please note: this film contains sexual situations.

Director Lewis Hausler

Director Dave Unwin

Animated retelling of the famous Christmas truce between young British and German soldiers in the trenches of World War I—a powerful story with meaning today.

Discussion follows the screening.

Free Peace One Day badges and DVDs to be given away at the screening Peace One Day: www.peaceoneday.org.

UK Jewish Film Festival: www.ukjewishfilmfestival.org.uk Co-presented by the JCCSF Center for Youth & Family, Interfaith Center at the Presidio, and Women’s Educational Media

Co-sponsored by Orli & Zack Rinat and Randy & David Taran, and by the David R. Stern Fund at the Agape Foundation

Co-sponsored by Barrish Bail Bonds 20

Mountain View Century

Tue, Aug 2

8:45 PM

OR02M

Castro Theatre

Sun, Jul 24

2:00 PM

PEAC24C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Thu, Aug 4

7:45 PM

OR04B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sun, Jul 31

2:00 PM

PEAC31B

20

Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman United States, 2004, Beta SP, 65 min., color and black & white, English

Protocols of Zion

Director Judith Montell

Veteran director Judith Montell (Forever Activists, SFJFF 1991; A Home on the Range, SFJFF 2002) returns with Professional Revolutionary, a testament to the accomplishments that a life spent seeking justice can reap.

Saul Wellman, who was born to Yiddish-speaking socialist émigrés in Brooklyn, went to hear Eugene V. Debs at the age of 14 and spent the next 76 years fighting for passionate causes, from communism to full employment to labor rights.

His fervent desire to fight in the Spanish Civil War wasn’t dampened by his question, “How do you get to Spain? Most of us hadn’t been to the Bronx yet!” The film recounts the dramatic events surrounding Wellman’s arrest and trial during the McCarthy era, one of the many repercussions he faced for tirelessly organizing for the Communist Party in Michigan’s auto industry. Never an ideologue (he took heat for wearing his World War II military uniform to party meetings), Wellman recounts his hurt and disillusionment at the news of Stalin’s repression, a revelation that caused him to leave the party. Wellman’s moral compass unfailingly pointed him towards the most pressing causes of his long life; he mentored several generations of anti-war, civil rights and labor organizers. Montell has given us an unsentimental portrait of a Brooklyn boy who became a mensch.

Preceded by

Poumy West Coast Premiere United States, France, 2004, Beta SP, 30 min., French w/Eng. subtitles

Director Sam Ball

West Coast Premiere United States, 2004, Digital Video, 90 min., color and black & white, English

Director Marc Levin

Noting an alarming upsurge of anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States and around the world after 9/11, veteran documentarian Marc Levin takes to the streets to measure the temperature of what Elie Wiesel calls “the oldest collective bigotry in history.”

Throwing himself into the eye of an existential storm, Levin polls a panoply of folk to explore the notion that Jews are out for world domination—a theory propagated by The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a centuryold tract that, despite being discredited as a libelous forgery, is still available not only via white supremacist mail order but also on mass-market bookshelves. Levin talks with street prophets claiming Jews are accountable for 9/11; with the mastermind behind an Aryan separatist website; with Christian evangelicals, Kabbalist rabbis, rallying Palestinian American kids, Holocaust deniers and survivors and parading peaceniks. With a healthy skepticism, Levin listens open-mindedly to all points of view but isn’t above plunging into raucous debate from his position as a secular humanist Jew. Meanwhile, the U.S. marches on Iraq, Arabic TV stations dramatize the “Zionist plot,” Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir claims the Jews rule the world by proxy, Mel Gibson releases The Passion of the Christ and violence reignites in Palestine/Israel. The impulse to point the finger of blame has never been stronger, and this film has never been more relevant or crucial as a reminder that hate only breeds more hate.

—Caroline Libresco, Sundance Film Festival

What turns a young French-Jewish mother into a fierce Resistance fighter? Andrée “Poumy” Scheuer Moreuil would say she simply “knew how to do the right thing.”

This lyrical portrait of a disarmingly understated, eloquent 91-year-old revisits her extraordinary odyssey outrunning the Nazis and joining the French Resistance.

San Francisco director Sam Ball (Pleasures of Urban Decay, SFJFF 1999) has shaped a poetic testimony to quiet courage.

Co-presented by the Anti-Defamation League, Central Pacific Region

Co-presented by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive, Veterans and Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and Progressive Jewish Alliance Castro Theatre

Tue, Jul 26

3:45 PM

Mountain View Century

Sun, Jul 31

1:00 PM

PROF26C PROF31M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sat, Aug 6

2:30 PM

PROF06B

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Sat, Aug 6

6 :45 PM

PROT06B

21

The Search

The Talent Given Us

Switzerland, United States, 1948, 35mm,105 min., black & white, English

Director Fred Zinnemann

Screenwriter Paul Jarrico* later recalled that he had asked ironically for “subtractive” credit for the screenplay of The Search, and that the joke had cost him dearly.

He had no Hollywood future, although he went on to produce Salt of the Earth and work widely abroad.

But there is no doubt that The Search is an extraordinarily moving film, notable as one of the first triumphs of Jewish immigrant director Fred Zinnemann, and arguably the best early film to treat the Holocaust theme. It could also be described as a crucial cinematic experiment. Drawing upon UN documents, utilizing Swiss children for much of the cast (the children of the refugee camps were themselves too fearful), Zinnemann evoked Italian neorealism. As he went on to become an acclaimed director (High Noon, From Here to Eternity and Julia among others), Zinnemann employed blacklistees along with regretful friendly witnesses among his screenwriters.

In straightforward plot terms, a mother (played by Jarmila Novotna) searches for her son (Ivan Jandl) lost during the war, while a GI (Montgomery Clift) befriends a boy in a UN camp in occupied Germany.

We see the horror of war ruins and the fears of the traumatized children—scenes that Hollywood avoided, newsreels apart.

The Search won Academy Award ® nominations for Best Picture and Best Direction. It could not be expected to break through to what Zinnemann described as Americans protected by an ocean and vibrant economy from the misery that others suffered. But it reached many of those who could understand.

Northern California Premiere United States, 2004, HD, 97 min., color, English

Director Andrew Wagner

“A wonderful movie, one of the most original, daring, intriguing and seemingly honest films of the year. …How Wagner achieved such a feeling of spontaneous realism is a mystery and a triumph.” —Roger Ebert Family road trips should be illegal. But if that were the case, you would miss out on the opportunity to take one of the wackiest, fun-house-mirrored, rollicking rides of your life with Andrew Wagner’s family, their meshugas flapping from their mini-van like so many damp bathing suits. A hit at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, The Talent Given Us is Wagner’s narrative feature film about a New York Jewish family, which happens to star…his New York Jewish family. His dad, Allen, plays the dad; his mom, Judy, plays the mom; and sisters Maggie and Emily play the sisters. In this (perhaps) fictional version of their lives, Mom and Dad’s retirement, spent shopping for good produce at the Fairway and religiously doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, is shaken up when Mom decides they should head to Los Angeles to reconcile with their estranged son Andrew (played by…yes, Andrew). But she’s afraid to fly, so she ropes the whole family into a cross-country odyssey inside a mini-van she dubs a “Hasidic-mobile.” Imagine tipping your mother back in a bucket seat and playing psychoanalyst to her analysand as miles of America go whizzing by. Sibling rivalry and marital dirt fly and then settle in this incredibly funny, poignant and unforgettable film.

Don't miss the after-film party on July 23, sponsored by Heeb Magazine.

Details at www.sfjff.org Co-presented by Film Arts Foundation and Heeb Magazine

—Paul Buhle *Blacklist victim See also the Special Program Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist, page 6 Co-presented by the Holocaust Center of Northern California, the Judah L. Magnes Museum and Temple Sinai of Oakland

Sponsored by Jane Gottesman & Geoffrey Biddle

22

Free Tuesday matinees are generously sponsored by the Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation

Castro Theatre

Sat, Jul 23

7:30 PM

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Wed, Aug 3

9:00 PM

TALE03B

Castro Theatre

Tue, Jul 26

1:30 PM

FREE

Mountain View Century

Thu, Aug 4

8:15 PM

TALE04M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Wed, Aug 3

4:00 PM

SEAR03B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sat, Aug 6

9:00 PM

TALE06R

TALE23C

Wall

Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc.

California Premiere France, Israel, 2004, 35mm, 100 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Simone Bitton

Longtime documentary filmmaker Simone Bitton’s Sundance award-winning Wall explores the physical and psychological dimensions of the barrier being built to divide Israel and the Palestinian territories. Bitton, a Mizrahi Jew who is fluent in Hebrew and Arabic, interviews Israelis and Palestinians who live and work close to this structure. Members of both communities are involved in building the wall, and all are affected by the rupture it creates in the landscape. Bitton’s painterly cinematography and restrained pacing, reminiscent of an Abbas Kiarostami film, allow her subjects to speak for themselves. The film, dubbed “a documentary fresco” by its director, elegantly fixes on the wall both as a symbol and as a mundane, graffiti-covered and pockmarked mass of cement. Bitton’s interviewees include a representative of the Israeli Defense Force who describes the construction, rationale and cost of the wall, and a kibbutz official who eloquently points out the irony of a people who were once crowded into ghettos now intentionally walling themselves in. Even 15 years after the destruction of the Berlin Wall, the images shown in Wall cannot help but reverberate with the archetypal images of what was, until now, the world’s most debated partition.

Preceded by

God On Our Side California Premiere Netherlands, 2005, 35mm, 7 min., color

Director Uri Kranot Michal Pfeffer

Picasso’s monumental anti-war painting Guernica inspired animators Michal Pfeffer and Uri Kranot to create this succinct and despairing portrait of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Graphically searing, it is a powerful statement on this futile, never-ending cycle of violence.

See also Festival Focus, page 7 Co-presented by the American Friends Service Committee and the World Affairs Council of Northern California

France, 2004, 35mm, 44 min., color, French, English

Director ‘ Varda Agnes

Pioneering French New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda seems at first to have created a sweet consideration of the Canadian art collector Ydessa Hendeles and her obsessive collection of antique photographs that feature teddy bears. Nostalgia and sentimentality are the initial themes. But darker questions arise about the raison d’ˆetre of Ydessa’s body of work when it is displayed in the Munich gallery where the Nazis mounted their infamous 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition. Varda’s lively mind ponders and she wonders aloud what it all means.

Something is up here. The film reveals the tipping point that subverts nostalgia—the realization that in the music of the past there are haunting cries and screams.

Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc. is the longest of the three short films that make up Varda’s memory film Cinevardaphoto.

Followed by

Loss West Coast Premiere Germany, 2002, Beta SP, 30 min.

German w/ Eng. subtitles

Director Nurith Aviv

Nurith Aviv quotes Freud’s simple definition of mourning and loss and then plumbs the depth of their real meaning in this elegant, beautifully shot documentary. As a muted modern Berlin rolls by, Hannah Arendt and other German thinkers ruminate about the extinguishing of German Jewish life and culture and the lasting intellectual, moral and spiritual void that loss has meant to their Vaterland.

Aviv, a noted cinematographer whose ancestors came from Berlin, has created a wistful portrait of a homeland that faces its future while trying to look at its past. It is loss in its many dimensions that Aviv mourns, but the emptiness that loss leaves behind is the hardest thing to make right.

Co-presented by the Contemporary Jewish Museum and San Francisco Camerawork

Co-sponsored by the David R. Stern Fund at the Agape Foundation Castro Theatre

Sat, Jul 23

4:45 PM

WALL23C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Tue, Aug 2

8:45 PM

WALL02B

Castro Theatre

Thu, Jul 28

1:45 PM

Mountain View Century

Wed, Aug 3

8:00 PM

WALL03M

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Mon, Aug 1

2:00 PM

YDES01B

Smith Rafael Film Center

Sun, Aug 07

1:45 PM

WALL07R

Mountain View Century

Wed, Aug 3

4:15 PM

YDES03M

YDES28C

23

FILM INSTALLATIONA A Victim’s Perspective

Zero Degrees of Separation Canada, Israel, 2004, Beta SP, 90 min., color, English, Hebrew, Arabic w/Eng. subtitles

Director Elle Flanders

Against the backdrop of her Zionist grandparents’ sundrenched home movies from the early days of Israel’s statehood, Elle Flanders paints a starkly contrasting portrait of two unusual couples caught within the current Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Ezra, a Mizrahi Jew, is Israeli; Selim, his gay lover, is Palestinian. Edit and Samira, a lesbian couple, are also negotiating the intricate dance between Jew and Palestinian in today’s charged climate.

Facing the burden of bringing their respective tribes to the metaphoric marital bed, these couples rise to the challenge with dignity and profound love.

Flanders, whose passionate central characters provide unique insight into the lives of queer Israelis and Palestinians, also cares deeply about the current state of affairs in Israel.

If her interweaving of archival footage evokes an aching nostalgia for a time when Israel represented a place of liberation, it is coupled with Flanders’ awareness that the soil broken by those early immigrants was in dispute. The dissonance between the early family footage, which depicts Jewish American men and women as they optimistically survey the new Jewish State, and the contemporary images of Israeli bulldozers and roadblocks is a beautiful, sad sound that echoes in the mind of the viewer long after the film has ended.

Preceded by

Meet Michael Oppenheim Israel, 2004, Beta SP, 6 min., color, Hebrew w/Eng. subtitles

Director Roni Aboulafia

Michael Oppenheim is one year old. Through a series of fast edits between old and new family photos, the many-branched family tree of this tiny new citizen springs to life, within a concise microcosm of the story of the state of Israel and Jews in the 20th century.

See also Festival Focus, page 7 Co-presented by Jewish Voice for Peace and LGBT Alliance: Jewish Community Federation

Co-sponsored by Frederick Hertz & Randolph Langenbach, and by Walter Wohlfeiler, Dan Wohlfeiler, Jane Randolph & Peter Wohlfeiler and Tom Nelson 24

Castro Theatre

Sat, Jul 23

12:00 PM

ZERO23C

Roda Theatre (Berkeley Rep)

Mon, Aug 1

8:30 PM

ZERO01B

Netherlands, Poland, 2005, Digital Video, 660 min., color, silent Director Erik van Loon We expand our festival’s scope this year with renowned Dutch artist Erik van Loon’s ineffably haunting 11-hour film installation A Victim’s Perspective, on view in the lobbies of the Castro and Roda Theatres.

This past January marked the 60th anniversary of the Death March from Auschwitz: as the Russians advanced on the German lines, the 60,000 remaining prisoners at Auschwitz were forced to walk 40 miles in the bitter Polish winter under the most brutal circumstances to an evacuation station, where they would be transported to German camps away from the front. Some 20,000 are thought to have perished along this path. On the anniversary in 2005, van Loon, with a camera mounted to his body, walked this same route…from the gates of Auschwitz through now modern and unremarkable Polish towns and along ordinary streets and highways to the train station at Wodzislaw. The simplicity of the idea belies the enormity of the event it recalls.

The project can never truly recapitulate the experience, nor does it attempt to memorialize it traditionally; for van Loon it is unspeakable to lay any tribute on such horror. It is a silent commentary on all this—and more.

A Victim’s Perspective is a profound reflection on committing the act of remembering and an indictment of the fact of forgetting. Walk with these ghosts a little.

The more time one spends with the film, the more it reveals the questions that it asks.

Please look for the installation in the lobby of the Castro and Roda Theatres, where it will be running continuously. We hope you will find yourself richly rewarded by the experience.

San Fr anci sc o

JEWISH

Calendar Castro Theatre San Francisco DATE

Thursday, July 21

TIME

FILM

July 21-28 PAGE

EVENT CODE

6:30 PM

Opening Night Reception (ticket includes film)

4

OPEN21C

8:00 PM

Go for Zucker! (film only)

4

GOFO21C

An afternoon with documentary filmmakers from Israel (page 7) Saturday, July 23

12:00 PM

Zero Degrees with Meet Michael Oppenheim

22

ZERO23C

2:30 PM

On the Objection Front

17

ONTH23C

4:45 PM

Wall with God On Our Side

21

WALL23C

7:30 PM

The Talent Given Us

20

TALE23C

Metallic Blues

16

META23C

10:00 PM Sunday, July 24

Monday, July 25

Tuesday, July 26

Wednesday, July 27

11:30 AM

Odessa...Odessa! with Yelena's Story

17

ODES24C

2:00 PM

Peace One Day: Youth Program

18

PEAC24C

4:00 PM

The Front with Gertrude Berg followed by panel on the BLACKLIST (page 6)

12

FRON24C

7:30 PM

The Locket

15

LOCK24C

9:45 PM

Arye

9

ARYE24C

2:00 PM

A Cantor's Tale with The Tale of the Goat

10

CANT25C

4:15 PM

Arna's Children

6:15 PM

The First Time I Was Twenty with Jai

11

FIRS25C

8:45 PM

Hotel Berlin

13

HOTE25C

1:30 PM

The Search

20

FREE

3:45 PM

Professional Revolutionary with Poumy

19

PROF26C

6:15 PM

Commune with The Nuclear Physicist

11

COMM26C

8:45 PM

Massacre

16

MASS26C

8

100C27C

12:30 PM 3:00 PM

Maidan, Nave of the World with My Fantasia

15

MAID27C

Keep Not Silent with Phantom Limb

14

KEEP27C

8:00 PM

Campfire

10

CAMP27C

Jericho's Echo with West Bank Story

14

JERI27C

Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc. with Loss

21

YDES28C

8

ANYA28C

13

ISNT28C

1:45 PM 3:30 PM

Anya with I Like It a Lot

6:00 PM

Isn't This a Time!

8:30 PM

Rashevski's Tango Closing Night followed by dessert reception

26

ARNA25C

5:30 PM 10:30 PM Thursday, July 28

100 Children with Sister Rose's Passion

9

5

RASH28C

th

Film Festival

25

Anniversary

Roda Theatre (at Berkeley Repertory Theatre) Berkeley

DATE

Sunday, July 31

Monday, August 1

Tuesday, August 2

TIME

11:45 AM

EVENT CODE

8

100C31B

Peace One Day: Youth Program

18

PEAC31B

4:00 PM

Keep Not Silent with Phantom Limb

14

KEEP31B

6:30 PM

Rashevski's Tango

5

RASH31B

8:45 PM

Massacre

16

MASS31B

2:00 PM

Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc. with Loss

21

YDES01B

3:45 PM

Anya with I Like It a Lot

8

ANYA01B

6:00 PM

Campfire

10

CAMP01B

8:30 PM

Zero Degrees with Meet Michael Oppenheim

22

ZERO01B

1:00 PM

The Front with Gertrude Berg

12

FREE

3:30 PM

The Locket

15

LOCK02B

5:00 PM

Arna's Children

9

ARNA02B

6:45 PM

On the Objection Front

17

ONTH02B

8:45 PM

Wall with God On Our Side

21

WALL02B

The First Time I Was Twenty with Jai

11

FIRS03B

9

ARYE03B

2:00 PM

Arye

4:00 PM

The Search

20

SEAR03B

6:30 PM

Hotel Berlin

13

HOTE03B

9:00 PM

The Talent Given Us

20

TALE03B

12:30 PM 2:45 PM

Saturday, August 6

100 Children with Sister Rose's Passion

PAGE

2:00 PM

Wednesday, August 3 12:00 PM

Thursday, August 4

FILM

July 31-August 6

A Cantor's Tale with The Tale of the Goat

10

CANT04B

Maidan, Nave of the World with My Fantasia

15

MAID04B

5:45 PM

Isn't This a Time!

13

ISNT04B

7:45 PM

Or

18

OR04B

9:45 PM

Jericho's Echo with West Bank Story

14

JERI04B

12:00 PM 2:30 PM

Odessa...Odessa! with Yelena's Story

17

ODES06B

Professional Revolutionary with Poumy

19

PROF06B

4:45 PM

Commune with The Nuclear Physicist

11

COMM06B

6:45 PM

Protocols of Zion

19

PROT06B

9:00 PM

Go for Zucker!

4

GOFO06B

27

Mountain View Century Cinema 16 Mountain View DATE

Sunday, July 31

Monday, August 1

Tuesday, August 2

Wednesday, August 3

Thursday, August 4

TIME

FILM

1:00 PM

Professional Revolutionary with Poumy

3:30 PM

Anya with I Like It a Lot

July 31-August 4 PAGE

19

PROF31M

8

ANYA31M

6:00 PM

Go for Zucker!

4

GOFO31M

8:00 PM

Metallic Blues

16

META31M

2:00 PM

100 Children with Sister Rose's Passion

8

100C01M

4:15 PM

Isn't This a Time!

13

ISNT01M

6:15 PM

A Cantor's Tale with The Tale of the Goat

10

CANT01M

8:30 PM

Rashevski's Tango

5

RASH01M

2:00 PM

Maidan, Nave of the World with My Fantasia

15

FREE

4:15 PM

Odessa...Odessa! with Yelena's Story

17

ODES02M

6:45 PM

Arye

8:45 PM

Or

18

9

OR02M

2:15 PM

Massacre

16

MASS03M

Saturday, August 6

4:15 PM

Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc. with Loss

21

YDES03M

Campfire

10

CAMP03M

8:00 PM

Wall with God On Our Side

21

WALL03M

2:30 PM

Arna's Children

4:00 PM

On the Objection Front

9

ARNA04M

17

ONTH04M

6:00 PM

The First Time I Was Twenty with Jai

11

FIRS04M

8:15 PM

The Talent Given Us

20

TALE04M

TIME

12:00 PM 2:15 PM

Sunday, August 7

Monday, August 8

28

ARYE02M

6:00 PM

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center San Rafael

DATE

EVENT CODE

FILM

Anya with I Like It a Lot

August 6-8

PAGE

8

EVENT CODE

ANYA06R

Isn't This a Time!

13

4:30 PM

The First Time I Was Twenty with Jai

11

FIRS06R

6:45 PM

Rashevski's Tango

5

RASH06R

9:00 PM

The Talent Given Us

20

TALE06R

12:00 PM

ISNT06R

On the Objection Front

17

ONTH07R

1:45 PM

Wall with God On Our Side

21

WALL07R

4:00 PM

Campfire

10

CAMP07R

6:15 PM

Le Grand Rˆole

12

GRAN07R

8:30 PM

Metallic Blues

16

META07R

6:30 PM

Hotel Berlin

13

HOTE08R

8:45 PM

Go for Zucker!

4

GOFO08R

Directions, Parking & Security Castro Theatre 415.621.6120 429 Castro Street @ Market, San Francisco Public Transportation Muni Lines K, L, M, F Market Street Bus Lines 33, 35, 37 and 24 BART riders transfer to Muni Metro at the following stations: Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, Civic Center Public Parking • 18th Street between Castro and Collingwood • Castro Street between 17th & 18th Parking Meters No charge Monday - Saturday after 6:00 PM and on Sunday.

The Roda Theatre (at Berkeley Repertory Theatre) 2025 Addison Street, Berkeley From San Francisco Take I-80 East towards Berkeley/Sacramento to the University Avenue exit. Go east 2 miles to Shattuck Avenue. Turn right on Shattuck, right on Addison Street.

There is a parking garage right across the street.

From East of Berkeley From Highway 24, take the Berkeley Exit: Highway 13, Tunnel Road/Ashby Avenue. Turn right on Shattuck Avenue, left on Addison Street. Go through one traffic light. There is a parking garage right across the street.

From the South Bay Take 880 North to 80 East towards Berkeley. From I-80 take the University Avenue exit. Go east 2 miles to Shattuck Avenue. Turn right on Shattuck, right on Addison Street. There is a parking garage right across the street.

From Marin County Take I-80 to the University Avenue exit. Go east 2 miles to Shattuck Avenue. Turn right on Shattuck, right on Addison Street and turn right. There is a parking garage right across the street.

BART The Berkeley Station on Shattuck Avenue is around the corner from the Theatre. Coming from any station other than Richmond, Del Norte, El Cerrito Plaza or North Berkeley, take a Richmond-bound train and get off at Berkeley Station. (If you are coming from one of those 4 stations, you can take a Fremont or Colma train to Berkeley.) On the upper level of the station look for the "Shattuck/Addison West" exit. At the top of the stairs, turn left on Addison Street, and you will see the Theatre on the right.

Mountain View Century Cinema 16 650.960.0970 1500 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View from San Francisco 101 south to Shoreline Blvd., Exit 399 towards Mountain View.

Left onto North Shoreline Blvd.

Left onto Joaquin Rd. (look for green MOVIES sign). from South Bay 101 north to Shoreline Blvd., exit toward Middlefield Rd. Left onto North Shoreline Blvd.

Left onto Joaquin Rd. (look for green MOVIES sign).

Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center 415.454.1222 1118 4th Street, San Rafael

By Car From 101 take Central San Rafael exit; west on Fourth St. Theatre is between A and B Streets.

Public Transportation Golden Gate Transit: 1, 23, 25, 26, 32, 34, 60, 65, 70, 80, 90 to San Rafael Transit at Third and Weatherton.

Theater is five blocks west and one block north.

SECURITY POLICY - PLEASE READ Large bags not permitted in theaters.

Please arrive early for screenings to allow ample time for security checks.

All purses and bags will be subject to inspection prior to admittance to theaters. Large bags, briefcases, backpacks, shopping bags, etc., will not be permitted in theatres.

PLEASE DO NOT BRING SUCH ITEMS WITH YOU. Photo ID and the exact credit card used for purchase must be presented in order to pick up tickets at Will Call.

Please hold onto ticket stubs, as re-entry into theatre will not be permitted without presenting ticket stubs.

All theaters are wheelchair accessible.

By Bus Major AC Transit routes F, 7, 8, 9, 15, 40, 43, 51, 64, 65, 67 stop nearby.

29

Thanks To Our Supporters The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival extends its appreciation to all our generous donors.

Gifts listed below were received between July 13, 2004, and May 17, 2005. Space limitations prevent us from listing the many other supporters who help make the summer Festival and year-round SFJFF programming possible, but each and every gift is important to us. Gifts listed do not include special event contributions or contributions designated for SFJFF’s Ninth Street Independent Film Center campaign. For information on how you can support SFJFF, please contact Beth Harris Hoenninger, Development Director, at 415.621.0556, extension 308 or beth@sfjff.org SPONSORS Festival Sponsor Philo Television Opening Night Sponsor Wells Fargo Closing Night Sponsor The Bonnie and Marty Tenenbaum Foundation Regional Sponsor Vermeer Dutch Chocolate Cream Liqueur Business and Community Sponsors Adolph Gasser Inc. American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem Barrish Bail Bonds Congregation Emanu-El Consulate General of France, San Francisco Consulate General of Germany, San Francisco Consulate General of Israel Craig Harrison's Expressions of Excellence!

Crane Pest Control Goethe Institut InterfaithFamily.com The Israel Center of SFJCF Kletter & Peretz LGBT Alliance: Jewish Community Federation Margolin and Biatch San Francisco Chronicle Saul's Restaurant & Delicatessen, Berkeley Temple Isaiah The Consulate General of the Netherlands in Los Angeles ADVERTISING PARTNER Publicis & Hal Riney MEDIA SPONSORS BriteVision Media Heeb Magazine J Weekly KDFC Classical 102.1 KQED Public Broadcasting 960 The Quake (KQKE) San Francisco Bay Guardian San Francisco Magazine HOTEL SPONSOR Westin St. Francis Hotel

28

IN-KIND SUPPORT AND CONTRIBUTED SERVICES Alternative Telecom Arch Architectural Supplies Budget Car Rental Claude Shade DHL Dolby Labs Galleria Park Hotel Jane Gottesman Hiroshi/Artistuntied.com Beth Harris Hoenninger Jaron Embroidery Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, LLC Kodak Caroline Libresco Marketing by Storm Metro PCS Monaco Labs and Video Janis Plotkin Pacific Digital Image Rental Express Video, San Francisco Susan Drell Creative Design Tenazas Design Tiffany & Co. TSG Networks Dan Wohlfeiler

Ingeborg Jacobson Custom Cakes Inka Banana Organic Bananas Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels Jeremiah's Pick Coffee Company Joseph Schmidt Confections Judy's Breadsticks Krispy Kreme Doughnuts La Mediteranee La Tempesta Bakery Leo Catella, Inc. Nabalom Bakery Naked Juice Co. New World Market Oakland Kosher Food & Bagel Peet's Coffee and Tea Rainbow Grocery Reel Café Bakery Robert Meyer See's Candies, Inc. Semifreddi's Skyy Vodka Starbucks Coffee Trader Joe's Tully's Coffee Ultimate Cookie Vermeer Dutch Chocolate Cream Liqueur Winewise

HOSPITALITY SPONSORS Bar Ristorante Raphael Catch Restaurant Lawrence Helman Public Relations Left Coast Catering Mezzé Restaurant & Bar, Oakland Rebecca Broder Catering SF Clubs/Club NV The Cove On Castro Tosca Triptych Restaurant, Catering, and Gallery

INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT Benefactor Kanbar Charitable Trust, administered by the Jewish Community Endowment Fund Lela and Gerry Sarnat Bonnie and Marty Tenenbaum

HOSPITALITY CONTRIBUTORS Abbey Party Rentals ACME Bread Co. A.G. Ferrari Foods Arizmendi Bakery Cala Foods Inc. Cha Cha Cha The Cheese Board Ciao Bella Gelato Co. Drambuie East Coast West Delicatessen Espresso Subito Good & Plenty Catering Grand Bakery Hagafen Cellars Have Your Cake He'Brew-The Chosen Beer Holey Espresso Hot Cookie Hypnotique Il Fornaio

Premier Sponsor Anonymous Jane Gottesman and Geoffrey Biddle Abraham D. and Marian Scheuer Sofaer Program Sponsor Anonymous Denis P. Bouvier Susie Coliver Sally Gottesman Victor and Lorraine Honig Estate of Gerda Mathan Vera and Harold S. Stein, Jr. Program Co-sponsor Archie Gottesman Carl and Gay Grunfeld Frederick Hertz Greta Livingston Jonathan Logan Sara Newman Mark Reisman Orli and Zack Rinat Randy and David Taran

Producer’s Circle Anita and Marc Abramowitz Robert and Judy Aptekar Ronald Blatman and Emerald Yeh Robert Feirman Amy and Morton Friedkin Shelley Friedman Linda and Sanford Gallanter Aaron M. Roland and Annelise Goldberg Lauraine and Richard Jaeger Valerie Joseph Jack and Deborah Kaiser Virginia King Wendy and Howard Kleckner Mark and Adele Lieberman Helene and Charles Linker Moses Libitzky and Susan Solomon Greg Minshall Richard and Sheila Nagler Dr. Raquel H. Newman John and Lisa Pritzker Alan Ramo and Leslie Rose Paul and Sheri Robbins Tobey Roland Susan and Alan Rothenberg Alice Russell Shapiro Seth Safier Joan Sarnat and David A. Hoffman Veronica Selver and Catherine Coates Leonard Shustek Roselyne C. Swig L. Jay and Gretchen Tenenbaum Preeva and Leonard Tramiel Barry and Marjorie Traub Janet Traub Marilyn and Murry Waldman Dan Wohlfeiler Walter Wohlfeiler Reel Friend Anonymous Alvin Baum Arthur Berliner Allan and Muriel Brotsky Pamela Burdman Bonnie Burt and Mark Liss Joseph and Marilyn Caston Julie and Scott Chaiken Eva Chernov Lokey Diana and Bill Cohen Sandy and Jean Colen Rick and Roberta Cummings Genevieve and Norman Dishotsky Jan Goodman Rebecca Bruck Harris Howard and Claudia Herman Deborah Hoffmann and Frances Reid Ora Holter Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow Donna A. Korones David and Julie Levine Andra Lichtenstein and William Glover Sherry Morse and John Maccabee Leslie Murphy-Chutorian Jim Newman Peter Newman Alec Pauluck Gerald Rosenstein Rob and Eileen Ruby Peter Samis Judith Schaefer Albert and Janet Schultz Joel Spolin and Margot Parker Anne and David Steirman Lisa Szer Lauri Tanner

Monte and Ruthellen Toole Laura Tow Robert Weston Diane Jordan Wexler Richard and Sue Wollack Fan Sy Aal Linda Boonshoft Harry Chotiner Norman Coliver Sandra Coliver Sandra Curtis Susan Freundlich and Elizabeth Seja-Min Frances Green Ralph and Marsha Guggenheim Alan Kates Barbara Meislin Ron Merk Laura Murra Tom Nelson Doug Okun and Eric Ethington Sam Salkin and Frankie Whitman Michael Schwarz Ruth and Alan Stein Irvin Ungar Peter Wohlfeiler and Jane Randolph Ronald and Anita Wornick FOUNDATION SUPPORT Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Bernard Osher Jewish Philanthropies Foundation Cavalier Family Philanthropic Fund The David R. Stern Fund at the Agape Foundation Funding Exchange Gaia Fund Harold and Libby Ziff Foundation Isaac and Georgia Grossberg Abrams Foundation Jewish Community Endowment Fund of San Francisco Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties Koret Foundation Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund Sidney Stern Memorial Trust Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund Walter and Elise Haas Fund William and Flora Hewlett Foundation PUBLIC SUPPORT Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund National Endowment for the Arts San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Fund NEW JEWISH FILMMAKING PROJECT SUPPORT Covenant Foundation Chris Holter-Ron Merk Family Foundation The Natan Fund Richard & Rhoda Goldman Fund Righteous Persons Foundation Walter and Elise Haas Fund

The New Jewish Filmmaking Project

Guided by a team of professional filmmakers, talented young storytellers present their own resonant visions of American Jewish life in fully accomplished documentary films. Teenagers turn the camera on their homes, schools and hangouts. They interview one another and their elders and challenge all of us to take stock of the relevance of Jewish culture and identity.

Since 2002, the NJFP has been building a body of work that authentically reflects the perspectives of a new generation, including immigrants from Eastern Europe, Jews of color, Jews of North African heritage and Jews with multiple ethnic and/or national identities.

Called "inspiring" by the SF Bay Guardian and celebrated with a 2004 Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco International Film Festival, NJFP films have reached hundreds of thousands of viewers through public television broadcasts and film festival and educational screenings.

Yelena’s Story (see page 17) is the second installment in the NJFP’s As Old As Our Eyes, a cycle of films about and by young immigrants.

Co-directors: Edward Baraona, Tyler Colyer, Lauren Brown Cornell, Hallie Forman, Adam Liss, Klaira Markenzon, Rachel Roller, Yelena Shuster, Sophie Topolsky.

This program of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is produced by Citizen Film.

NJFP STAFF

THANKS

Director/Producer Sam Ball

Debbie Findling Judith Ginsberg Sharna Goldseker Felicia Herman Rachel Levin Robyn Lieberman Aliza Mazor Jonathan Woocher

Director/Director of Photography Sophie Constantinou Director/Supervising Editor Kate Stilley Associate Producer Katrina Drabkin Assistant Brooke Sebold Dalan McNadola

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Acknowledgments and Credits

Academy Foundation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences: Greg Beal Advertising Partners: Publicis & Hal Riney, Pacific Digital Image, Claude Shade, Hiroshi/Artistuntied.com Alliance Française de San Francisco Alternative Telecom Jeffrey Appell Armstrong & Armstrong: Todd Armstrong Aspen FilmFest: Laura Thielen Sonia Azar Bartel Audio Visual: John Kim Gina Batelli Berkeley Repertory Theatre: Susie Medak, Madelyn Mackie Berlin International Film Festival: Wieland Speck, Manuela Kay Berlin Jewish Film Festival: Nicola Galliner Dan Bessie Big Star Printing and Design: Carrie Baum Eli Bishop Blowback Productions: Jennifer Tuft Boston Jewish Film Festival: Sara Rubin and Kaj Wilson British Consulate General San Francisco: Emma Stevenson British Film Institute: Fleur Buckley Rebecca Broder Paul Buhle California Film Institute: Mark Fishkin, Zoe Elton, Richard Peterson, Dan Zastrow Castro Theatre: Richard Blacklock, Ted Nasser, Bill Longen, Mark Gantor, Gary Oliver, the Candy Kidz Century Theatres: Nancy Klasky, Jacque Clark, Robert Lenihan Larry Ceplair Channel 4: Tim Highsted Cinemayaat, Arab Film Festival: Bashir Anastas, Sonia El Feki Cinephil: Philippa Kowarsky Cine-Sud Promotion: Thierry Lenouvel Cine Tamaris: Cecilia Rose Citizen Film: Sam Ball, Katrina Drabkin David Cohen Sandy Coliver Elizabeth Colton Consulate General of France: Cherif Castel, Gregory Douet-Lasne Consulate General of Germany: Thomas Lenferding Consulate General of Israel: David Akov, Tamar Akov Consulate General of Switzerland: Max Grob Costello Jeremy Cowan Crimson Forest Films: Jessy Vega Ninfa Dawson Direct Mail Center: Rey Leung Stephen Dobbs 32

Dolby Labs: Ioan Allen, Tom Bruchs, Julie Morgan Suzy Drell Ergo Media: Eric Goldman Jeannette Etheredge Excalibur Graphix: Kevin Chappell Festival of Jewish Cinema (Australia): Les Rabinowicz Film Arts Foundation: Fidelma McGinn, Gail Silva, Dan Gomes, Eric Henry, Danny Plotnick, K.C. Smith Film Movement: Josh Levin Fineline: Jennifer Stott First Run Features: Ted Weinbaum Fiske Video Productions: Fiske Smith Frameline: Michael Lumpkin, Jennifer Morris, Steve Jenkins, Ming Lee Sonja Franeta Brian Freeman Alison Geballe Ginger Group Productions: Sarah Cullen Goethe Institut: Ingrid Eggers, Ulrich Everding Gary Goldstein Keith Goldstein Jae Goodman Nina Haft Claudia Hazeleur Keith Heller Lawrence Helman Don Heon Rob Hillman IFP Los Angeles: Doug Jones, Rachel Rosen Inka Organic Bananas: Diego Erausquin InterfaithFamily.com: Ed Case Israel Center: Shlomi Ravid, Yarden Schneider Israel Film Festival: Meir Fenigstein Israel Film Fund: Katriel Schory ITVS: Cathy Fischer Peter Jacobson Lauraine Jaeger Bob Jaffe Ingeborg Jakobson Stephen Jaycox Jerusalem Cinematheque: Lia van Leer, Gilli Mendel, Ruso Meir Jewish Community Center of San Francisco: Nate Levine, Lenore Naxon, Shelley Friedman, Rhys Mason Jewish Community Endowment Fund: Phyllis Cook, Mark Reisbaum Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco Jewish Community Federation of the Greater East Bay: Roberta Bear Jewish Community Relations Council: Rabbi Doug Kahn Jewish Music Festival: Ellie Shapiro Jewish Vocational Services: Rebecca Bassin Jeff Jones Deborah Kaufman and Alan Snitow

John Killacky Kimpton Hotel & Restaurant Group, LLC: Lydia Rubalcaba Kino International: Don Krim, Jessica Rosner, Gary Pollard Koret Foundation: Sandy Edwards, Sheila Baumgarten Hannah Kranzberg Michael Krasny Karen Kushner Larsen Associates: Karen Larsen, Tim Buckwalter, Chris Wiggum Lichtblick Film: Mareike Lucker, Erik Winker Andra Lichtenstein Robyn Lieberman LGBT Alliance: Bonnie Feinberg Kathy MacDonald Tim Maleeny Yoga Mandala Stacey Marbrey Karl Mason Kevin McCulloch Mike and Linda McInerney McNulty & Saacke: John B. McDonald Media Luna Entertainment: Francesca Breccia Menemsha Entertainment: Neil Friedman Ron Merk Robert Meyer Phred Ming Giovanni Minerba MoMA: Laurence Kardish Anita Monga Peter Moore NAATA: Eddie Wong, Chi-hui Yang, Erni Tayabas-Kim Lynda Najarian Nashville International Film Festival: Brian Gordon National Center for Jewish Film: Mimi Krant, Sharon P. Rivo National Foundation for Jewish Culture: Richard Siegel Catherine Neely New Israel Fund: Steve Rothman, Larissa Siegel New York Jewish Film Festival: Aviva Weintraub, Richard Peña Ninth Street Independent Film Center: KC Price, Phil Lane Onoma International: Cecile Penavayre Pacific Film Archive: Edith Kramer, Judy Bloch, Kathy Geritz, Nancy Goldman, Susan Wester David Pagano Palm Beach Jewish Film Festival: Karen Davis George Pappas Participant Productions: Amanda Garrison Pathé Distribution: Elodie Henneton Jeremiah Pick Janis Plotkin Lori Powell PS Pictures: Pieter Jan Smit

Festival Production Staff FESTIVAL STAFF

Stephanie Rapp Reel CafĂŠ Bakery: Sharon Dinkin Dan Roddenburg Michael Rose Roxie Theatre: Bill Banning Ruth Diskin Films: Ruth Diskin Audrey Ryan Sam Spiegel Film & Television School: Renen Schorr, Noa Ron San Francisco Black Film Festival: Ave Montague San Francisco International Film Festival: Linda Blackaby Laura Saponara Joseph Schmidt Screen 360: Katy Kavanaugh SF Art and Film SFClubs: Rafael Chavez Tiffany Shlain Hiram Simon Sony Pictures Repertory: Susanne Jacobson, Michael Schlesinger Susan Stanfield Josh Stein Judy Stone Sundance Channel: Sarah Eaton Sundance Film Festival: John Cooper, Shari Frilot, Geoffrey Gilmore, Caroline Libresco Lori Suzuki Maralyn Tabatsky Lucille Tenazas THINK Film: David Fenkel Thomas Geyer Filmproduktion: Thomas Geyer Tiffany & Co.: Giles Marsden, Rachel Levin Toronto Jewish Film Festival: Ellie Skrow Transfax: Karine Benzur, Marek Rozenbaum TSG Networks: Herb Burt, Teryl Burt, Gloria Burt UCLA Film and Television Archive: Todd Wiener Velvet Productions: Avi Banon Warner Bros.: Linda Evans-Smith, Merilee Womack Washington Jewish Film Festival: Josh Ford Phil Weglarz Ernie Weir Westin St. Francis Hotel: Gina Egelston Cara White Dan Wohlfeiler Women Make Movies: Marta Sanchez, Debra Zimmerman Women's Educational Media Jonathan Wornick X Filme Creative Pool: Bruno Niederprum; Edda Reiser, Elektra Kara Yerba Buena Center for the Arts: Ken Foster, Joel Shepard, Kara Herold Your Daily Staple

Executive Director Peter L. Stein

Technical Director Hal Rowland

Program Director Nancy K. Fishman

Box Office Trilogy Productions Pamela & Joe Lawrence

Production Manager Elizabeth Jouan Greene Development Director Beth Harris Hoenninger Marketing Consultant Cara Storm/ Marketing by Storm Advertising Partner Publicis & Hal Riney Website Perimetre Design Marketing & Communications Coordinator Dafna Kory Marketing & Community Outreach Myra Feiger Program & Hospitality Coordinator Leo Wong Development & Comps Coordinator Josie Baltan Administrative Coordinator Ian Schneider Production Coordinator Grace Liu Publicist Larsen Associates Publicity Coordinator Betsy Abendroth Volunteer Coordinators Katy Kavanaugh Molli Simon Ninfa Dawson Events Coordinators Lawrence Helman Susan Drell Creative Design Bookkeeper Christy Applegate Print Traffic Alex Cantin Katherine Case Community Outreach Intern Max Siva Hospitality Assistants Jill Johnson David Gutierez House Managers Brad Robinson Karin Shaw

Catering Rebecca Broder Catering Photographers Allen Stross Paul Felder Richard Bermack Window Display Katy Kavanaugh Copy Editor Judy Bloch Printing Dome Printing Mastercolor Printing Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist Guest Curator Paul Buhle Co-Curator Nancy K. Fishman Peace One Day Guest Curator Judy Ironside Screening Committee Judy Bank Bonnie Burt Michael Ehrenzweig Joan Gibson Larry Golob Debbie Hoffmann Marcia Jarmel Deborah Kaufman Vivian Kleiman Donna Korones Phil Lane Andrea Michaels Natasha Perlis Danny Plotnick Arlene Reiff Ken Schneider Jennifer Schwartz Veronica Selver Maddy Shapiro Alan Snitow Leah Wolchok Diane Wolf Program Advisors Michael Ehrenzweig Jim Hoberman Debbie Hoffmann Annette Insdorf Deborah Kaufman Gary Meyer Janis Plotkin Ella Shohat Alan Snitow Program Catalog Editors Nancy K. Fishman Peter L. Stein Program Design Tenazas Design

33

36

THE SHOW GOES ON YEAR ROUND! Join SFJFF throughout the year for screenings, sneak previews, special events, education programs and online activities.

SFJFF@YBCA

SFJFF@9th Street

Monthly screenings at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts resume in October with rare film classics in our continuing series Jews and the Hollywood Blacklist. Stay tuned for detailed program and ticket information at www.sfjff.org or 415-978-ARTS.

Our permanent home, the Ninth Street Independent Film Center, is abuzz with classes, screenings, open houses and more. Check us out at www.ninthstreet.org

WWW.SFJFF.ORG Our newly launched website is your one-stop resource for independent Jewish film. Check out SFJFF’s latest news, read festival blogs and browse the online archive of Jewish film and video.

New Jewish Filmmaking Project This project of SFJFF, produced by Citizen Film, gives talented young storytellers a framework, training and resources to become the next generation of Jewish filmmakers.

Help support the work of SFJFF – become a donor!

Special Screenings of New Films SFJFF offers our supporters and friends occasional sneak previews and special screenings throughout the year. Already in 2005 we have held sneak preview screenings of Walk on Water and Lost Embrace.

E-Newsletter Special offers for sneak previews, word-of-mouth screenings, Jewish film news from all over, and early notification of SFJFF events.

Sign up at www.sfjff.org F R E E !

(We never share e-mail addresses)

Ticket sales account for barely 20% of the cost of our annual Festival and year-round programs and events. Your tax-deductible donation makes a crucial difference. Please take a moment to support our mission by making a contribution on the ticket order form or with a secure donation at www.sfjff.org. For further information on supporting SFJFF through contributions, sponsorship and planned giving, please contact Beth Harris Hoenninger, Development Director, at 415-621-0556 ext. 308, or beth@sfjff.org. Thank you!

Still Hungry?

Contemporary Jewish Museum Jewish Community Center of San Francisco Jewish Music Festival

SFJFF is one of many Bay Area Jewish cultural institutions connecting the best of Jewish life with the best of contemporary arts and culture.

www.thecjm.org www.jccsf.org

www.brjcc.org/jewishmusicfestival

Judah L. Magnes Museum

www.magnes.org

KlezCalifornia

www.klezcalifornia.org

National Foundation for Jewish Culture

www.jewishculture.org

Join these organizations in 2005-6 for

The Osher Marin Jewish Community Center

www.marinjcc.org

world-class performances in film, music,

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

www.sfjff.org

dance, theater, literature and fine art.

Traveling Jewish Theater

www.atjt.com

37

Ticket Information Rush Line Even when advance tickets to a screening are sold out, tickets may be available through “Rush.” Some seats at every show are held for pass holders until 20 minutes prior to show time.

If these seats are not used, they are released for sale to persons standing in the rush line. This line may form up to one hour prior to show time. Discount10 Pack tickets cannot be used in the rush line. Rush tickets are Regular Admission price, cash only, no discounts.

How To Buy Tickets BOX OFFICE OPENS JUNE 21, 2005

Online Fax Mail

Phone

Access our website at www.sfjff.org Completed order form to: 925.866.9597 Completed order form to: SF Jewish Film Festival Box Office PO Box 2229, Danville, CA 94526 925.275.9490 Monday - Friday, 9AM - 5PM

Please Note To ease congestion at each theater, advance tickets will be sold only by fax, mail, phone or online, not at theaters. A processing fee of $1.50 per ticket up to $5 per order will be charged.

Passes represent multiple tickets so processing fee is $5.

Day of show tickets only will be sold at each theater, one hour prior to the first film of the day. Cash only.

Ticket Delivery Tickets will automatically be mailed to the billing address unless an alternate option is chosen. Orders received 10 days or less prior to each screening will be placed at Will Call. Photo ID will be required when picking up tickets at theater Will Call table. Only those persons listed on the order will be allowed to pick up that order.

Arrival Time Ticket and Pass Holders must arrive and be in line 20 minutes prior to show time. Anyone arriving after that may not be admitted, even with a purchased ticket or pass.

Ticket Prices Purchase tickets by July 15 to take advantage of prefestival discount prices and receive your tickets in the mail.

Beginning on July 16 all ticket orders will be placed at Will Call REG ULAR PRO GRAM S

Regular Admission Advance: up to 5PM, July 15 Beginning on July 16

Advance: up to 5PM, July 15 Beginning on July 16

$7.00 $9.00

(No discounted tickets for Opening & Closing Nights and special events)

Groups are 10 or more tickets purchased in advance for the same film on a single order.

Advance only: up to 5PM, July 15 $8.00 MATINEES

$8.00 $9.00

(Tickets not required for FREE matinees)

38

$17.00 $20.00

$5.00

All Festival Pass $180.00 One pass good for all shows at all theaters—including Opening and Closing Night films and events. Early-entrance line reserved for pass holders. One name per pass. MUST ARRIVE and be in line 20 minutes prior to show time. Pass does not guarantee seating if late arrival.

Reel Pass $40.00 A reel deal if you’re 25 or younger! One pass good for all shows at all theaters—including Opening and Closing Night films and events.

Early-entrance line reserved for pass holders. Proof of age required.

One name per pass. MUST ARRIVE and be in line 20 minutes prior to show time. Pass does not guarantee seating if late arrival.

NEW

Discount 10-Flix Card ($20 discount) Advance up to 5 PM July 15 Beginning July 16

$80.00 $90.00

Not available for purchase at theatre box office. Advance sales only. Good for 10 regular-priced tickets. Not good for special programs. Each card has a 16-digit number, similar to a credit card, that can be used to redeem tickets at any time throughout festival on-line, by phone, mail, fax or at box office. Fully transferable; share with family and friends. Great for gifts.

Become a Festival supporter - get a tax deduction, All Festival Pass, and more! For information call SFJFF at 415.621.0556.

SPE CIA L PR OGRAM S

25th Anniversary Celebration July 19 @ Club NV Celebration Admission VIP Reception Pass and Celebration SF Opening Night Film & Before Film Reception Cocktail Reception and reserved theatre seating SF Opening Night Film Only Reserved theatre seating

SF Closing Night Film & After Film Dessert Advance: up to 5 PM, July 15 Beginning July 16 Youth Program: Peace One Day (7/24 & 7/31 @ 2 PM only) Youth/Children 17 and under SP E C I A L T I CK E T P A C K A G E S

$10.00 $11.00

Seniors are 65 or older Students must be full-time and present a current valid photo student ID at time of ticket purchase. Mail or fax a copy of your ID with ticket order form. Student discounts not accepted online or by phone.

Monday - Thursday, up to and including 4PM Advance: up to 5PM, July 15 Beginning July 16

Additional Information • All programs are subject to change. Sometimes for reasons beyond our control, screenings must be changed, substituted, rescheduled or canceled. If a screening is canceled, simply return your ticket to the box office within 48 hours of the canceled screening date to exchange for a different screening or for a refund. The processing fee is non-refundable.

• Every person, regardless of age, must have a ticket except for free matinees.

• A patron purchasing tickets for friends may submit only one form of payment per order.

• Each order received is charged a non-refundable processing fee.

• There will be a $25 charge for returned checks.

• SFJFF is not responsible for lost, stolen, forgotten or damaged tickets, or tickets misdirected by the post office.

• All seats are general seating, except for Opening Night at the Castro Theatre, which will be reserved seating.

$85.00 $225.00 $40.00 $18.00

Please choose carefully and check dates against your calendar.

All orders are final.

We are unable to refund, exchange or substitute tickets.

Please arrive and be in line 20 minutes prior to showtime. Ticket or pass does not guarantee seating.

2005 Ticket Order Form Name (as it appears on credit card) Billing Address City

State

Zip

Home Phone

Daytime Phone

Country

I require wheelchair seating Number of person(s) using wheelchairs

E-Mail

SFJFF 25th Anniversary Celebration

Reel Pass

July 19th @ Club NV

(25 or under — proof of age required)

tickets @ $85 ea. = $

All Festival Pass

passes @ $40 ea. = $

passes @ $180 ea. = $

(Celebration) ($30 per ticket is tax deductible)

tickets @ $225 ea. = $ (includes VIPreception) ($150 per ticket is tax deductible)

Passholder’s name

Passholder’s name

Passholder’s name

Passholder’s name

Passholder’s name

Passholder’s name

San Francisco Closing Night & After Film Dessert Until 5 PM July 15

Discount 10-Flix Card Until 5 PM July 15

All reservations will be held at the door.

San Francisco Cocktail Reception & Opening Night Reserved Theatre Seating tickets @$40 ea. = $

San Francisco Opening Night FILM ONLYReserved Theatre Seating tickets @$18 ea. = $

Event Code

tickets @$17 ea. = $

10-Flix @$80ea.= $

Beginning July 16

Beginning July 16

tickets @$20 ea. = $

Film Title

Date

10-Flix @$90ea.= $

No. of Tix

Discount Types S= G= STU =

Seniors are 65 or older Groups are for 10 or more tickets purchased in advance for the same film on a single order.

Students must be full time and present a current valid photo ID at time of purchase. Mail or fax a copy of your current ID with ticket order form. No student discounts accepted online or by phone.

Please let me know about year-round screenings.

I want to volunteer for the 2005 SFJFF; please contact me.

Form of Payment Check or money order enclosed. Please make payable to SFJFF Ticket Office, PO Box 2229, Danville, CA 94526 Credit card (Visa/MasterCard accepted) fax 925.866.9597

Authorized Signature Account No.

Price/Ticket

Discount Type*

Total Price

Passes/Special Programs Total Subtotal Processing fee ($1.50/ticket, up to $5; $5/passes) Donation (Thank You!) Grand Total Alternate Delivery Instructions Tickets are automatically mailed to the billing address up until July 14 unless indicated below. Orders received a day or less prior to screening will be placed at will call.

I want my tickets held at Will Call and will pick them up at the theatre on the day of the first show I attend. Photo ID will be required to pick up tickets at Will Call.

Expiration Date 10-Flix Card16-digit account #

Fax to : 925.866.9597 or Mail to: PO Box 2229, Danville, CA 94526

Another

Take on the world

Title 100 Children Anya (in and out of focus) Arna's Children Arye Campfire Cantor's Tale, A Commune Different War, A First Time I Was Twenty, The Football Pitch, The Front, The Gertrude Berg: America’s Molly Goldberg Go for Zucker!

God On Our Side Grand Rôle, Le Hotel Berlin I Like It a Lot Isn't This a Time!

Jai Jericho's Echo Keep Not Silent Locket, The Loss Maidan, Nave of the World Massacre Meet Michael Oppenheim

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 145 Ninth Street, Suite 200 San Francisco CA 94103

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Metallic Blues My Fantasia Nuclear Physicist Gives His Son a Haircut, The Odessa...Odessa!

On the Objection Front Or Peace One Day Phantom Limb Poumy Professional Revolutionary: The Life of Saul Wellman Protocols of Zion Rashevski's Tango Search, The Sister Rose's Passion Tale of the Goat, The Talent Given Us, The Victim’s Perspective, A Wall War Game West Bank Story Ydessa, The Bears, and Etc. Yelena's Story Zero Degrees of Separation

16 15 11 17 17 18 18 14 19 19 19 5 20 8 10 20 22 21 18 14 21 17 22

www.sfjff.org 925.275.9490 NonProfit Org USPostage P A I D Permit No. 333 Sacramento CA