Em p t y N e s t Bay Area Premiere Argentina, France, Italy, Spain, 2008, 91 min., color, Spanish Director/Screenwriter: Daniel Burman
T h e G i f t t o S ta l i n Cinematographer: Hugo Colace Editor: Alejandro Brodersohn Principal Cast: Arturo Goetz, Oscar Martinez
California Premiere Israel, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, 2008, 99 min., Kazakh, Russian Director: Rustem Abdrashitov Screenwriter: Pavel Finn
Cinematographer: Khasan Kidiraliev Editor: Sylvain Coutandin Principal Cast: Bakhtiar Khoja, Nurzhuman Ikhtymbayev, Yekaterina Rednikova
In a witty and sophisticated farce, middle-aged play wright Leonardo Vindel (the marvelous Oscar Martínez) descends into a world where fantasy and reality interlace seamlessly. Reality would be his advancing age, his midriff bulge, the departure of his grown-up children, and the unraveling of his marriage to the still-gorgeous and sexy Martha (Pedro Almodóvar star Cecilia Roth). Fantasy is his May-December affair with a beautiful young dental assistant, and his intimate conversations with a secret buddy who not only listens sympathetically to his kvetching but follows him to the shores of the Dead Sea to visit his daughter and machine-gun-toting Israeli son-in-law. This is a confrontation with a reality far different from his comfortable life back home. One of Argentina’s leading directors, Daniel Burman takes a new approach to the intertwined issues of aging and identity following his earlier trilogy of films on Jewish life in Buenos Aires, Waiting for the Messiah (SFJFF 2001), Lost Embrace, and Family Law. In Empty Nest he plays with film’s ability to alter time and reveal the unconscious. His characters struggle to deny the passage of time, but their rich inner lives bring them to the edge of understanding and acceptance. Will they learn in time? —Alan Snitow
Rustem Abdrashev, whose Rebirth Island was the first film from Kazakhstan to win the prestigious FIPRESCI (international critics) prize, sets his new drama in a tiny village in the vast Kazakh steppes. The inhabitants are all considered enemies of the state, but they refuse to allow their outcast status to quash their rebellious acts privileging life and human connectedness. In 1949, railcars holding Jews and other deportees creep eastward into oblivion. Or is it? For young Sasha, salvation comes through a rubric of chance, defiance and love. His enforced rebirth finds him surrounded by a makeshift new clan: his savior and new grandfather, Kasym (veteran actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev), who is Muslim; Verka, the wife of a traitor; Ezhik, a Polish resister; and a gang of orphans—a wilderness family with deep bonds despite habitual harassment from authorities. Rare news comes from Moscow announcing a children’s contest celebrating Stalin’s 70th birthday. If Sasha’s original gift wins, he hopes to achieve his parents’ freedom. Decades pass, and Sasha questions history and his fate: “Who are you in the land of your God if a part of your soul was left behind?” Gift’s allegorical ending will linger long in your heart and mind, likely to raise questions, yet perhaps answer others, such as Kasym’s early query, “Whose flock are you from? —Elsa E’der
Co-presented by Congregation Beth Am, Los Altos Hills and Jewish Family and Children’s Services of the East Bay
Preceded by
M a m a , L’ Ch a im ! ( T o Lif e ! ) Bay Area Premiere United States, 2008, 5 min.
Director: Elkan Spiller
Chaim Lubelski has dedicated three years of his life to being his 95-year-old mother’s caretaker as the two share the confines of a one-bedroom apartment. The mother, a Holocaust survivor, brings out the joyfulness in her son with her gregarious and refreshing optimism for life, as the Jewish toast (and Chaim’s name) reaffirm. —Joshua Moore Co-presented by Kritzer/Ross Émigré Program of the JCCSF, The 79ers, a program of Jewish Family and Children’s Services of San Francisco and Peninsula Jewish Community Center
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