The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest of its kind, will feature a vibrant array of screenings from angst-ridden European dramadies to Israeli fare, and moving documentaries.
Running between July 23rd and August 9th, in five venues in four counties, the festival’s offerings are abundant and certain to suit every taste.
Opening the festival is “Dough,” the touching story of an ultra-Orthodox London baker, played by Jonathan Pryce and his young African Muslim assistant, who accidentally discovers a secret ingredient that causes the challah to sell like hotcakes.
“The Muses of Isaac Bashevis Singer” documents the story of the Nobel Prize winning Yiddish writer’s female fans and translators and the impact they made on his work that featured themes of love, loss, sex and mysticism.
“Finsterworld” takes an absurd and allegorical look of Germany seventy years after the Holocaust.
“As I Am, The Life and Times of DJ AM” tells the story of the superstar DJ AM, born Adam Goldstein, who survived a plane crash at nearly impossible odds, but died of a drug overdose at the age of 36.
“My Shortest Love Affair,” directed by Karin Albou, features French fortysomethings and love the second time around. When Louisa gets pregnant after a tryst with a man she had a love affair with 20 years ago, she wonders if she should give marriage another try.
“Labyrinth of Lies” is a German film that deals with a former Auschwitz guard that no one seems interested in pursuing or prosecuting, except for a determined few.
“Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah” is a documentary of a documentary, and takes the viewer through the creation of the Holocaust documentary “Shoah,” filmed in 1985 without archival footage.
“Raise the Roof” shows the process of rebuilding a synagogue that was destroyed during the Holocaust and is now part of the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
On the Israeli/Palestinian theme, “Villa Touma” features three Christian sisters stuck in time since the 1967 war. The love interest of a niece with an Arab brings the past into the present.
“East Jerusalem, West Jerusalem” demonstrates how music can create build bridges of understanding.
“Famous Nathan” takes the viewer on a gastronomic journey through the history of the legendary Coney Island frankfurter.
Art lovers will enjoy “Art Addict,” about the life of collector Peggy Guggenheim and the artists with whom she was acquainted.
“Armour of Light,” directed by Abigail Disney, will be the centerpiece documentary, and will feature the life of Robert Schenck, who was born Jewish but became an evangelical minister speaking out against gun violence.
Lee Grant will be awarded the Freedom of Expression award. She began her career in 1933 as a child ballerina in the Metropolitan Opera House, and was awarded Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952, performing alongside Kirk Douglas in “Detective Story.”
Douglas won the Freedom of Expression Award in 2011.
Born Lyova Haskell Rosenthal, Grant was blacklisted during the McCarthy era, because she refused to name her husband, Arnold Manoff, as a Communist.
In 1964, she won an Obie award for the role of Solange in Jean Genet’s “The Maids.”
Grant was awarded a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for “Shampoo,” in 1975, and won awards for “Peyton Place” and “Neon Ceiling.”
Grant directed August Strindberg’s play “The Stranger.” Her feature film, “Tell Me A Riddle,” will be shown at the festival.
Ruthe Stein shared a number of anecdotes in SFGate from the SFJFF’s rich, 35-year history.
The festival was founded in 1980, a 25-year-old lawyer named Deborah Kaufman, who wanted to show Jewish films that were off the beaten path, preferably without Woody Allen or Barbra Streisand. So she picked instead the film noir “The Silver Crown,” based on a Bernard Malamud story, and little known documentaries about Israeli paratroopers and Polish Jews.