From politics to pop music to sock puppets, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is covering a lot of ground in its 44th annual edition—although that ground has shifted, in that the remodeling of the Castro Theatre has moved San Francisco screenings primarily to the Palace of Fine Arts and Vogue Theatre. After those 10 days come to a close on Sun/27, there will be an additional six days of programming at Landmark’s Piedmont Theatre in Oakland, July 30-August 4.
Things kick off this Thurs/18 with what will be a big childhood flashback for many viewers: Lisa D’Apolito’s documentary Shari & Lamb Chop provides a feature-length appreciation the late Shari Lewis, whose career stretched over half a century. An accomplished singer and dancer, she also developed a remarkable skill for high-speed, multi-character ventriloquism. After getting an initial “big break” on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts in 1951, she made her way from hosting regional TV kids shows to nationally broadcast ones, eventually developing the signature characters of Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse, and Hush Puppy.
Her mix of education, whimsy, and self-affirmation well predated the likes of Sesame Street—and she, too, eventually wound up on PBS. (Though during a slough she had a surprising interlude doing raunchier puppet material in Vegas.) A “queen of overachievers” who at one point learned to perform her entire evening-length stage act in Japanese, she comes off here as a driven showbiz pro who was never “off.” But her impact on generations of children can’t be underestimated. The opening-night show this Thurs/18 will be followed by a party, both at the Palace of Fine Arts; the film repeats Wed/31 at the Piedmont.
Two days later at the same SF venue, JFF will host prolific NYC-based indie director Nathan Silver, whose latest film may prove his most widely seen. It’s certainly the funniest. Between the Temples has Jason Schwartzman as Ben, a synagogue cantor in upstate New York. He’s depressed, and no wonder—his wife died in an accident a year prior. Yet everyone from his lesbian “two mommies” (Caroline Aaron, Dolly de Leon) to his rabbi (SNL veteran Robert Smigel) are pushing him towards any eligible female, on the assumption that a new love will fix his funk.
They do not have in mind anyone like 70-something Carla (Carol Kane), a free-spirited widow who was once Ben’s elementary school music teacher. Meeting again by chance, they find a kinship that is endearing and a little anarchic—apt terms also for this movie, which has an inspired improvisational-comedy feel and a great soundtrack of vintage Hebrew rock pop. Of related interest is Rachel Wolther’s The French Italian, another off-kilter, seemingly improv-fueled comedy in which an obliviously neurotic young couple take bizarre, elaborate revenge on the neighbors who drove them from their Manhattan flat. It plays a “New Wave Spotlight” with Peter Vack’s WWW.RACHELORMONT.COM (yes, that’s the title) at the Roxie on Thurs/25.
Temples is the festival’s Centerpiece Narrative selection, playing Sat/20; its Documentary counterpart (playing the Piedmont on Aug. 3) is Bess Kargman’s Diane Warren: Relentless. The subject is arguably the world’s most commercially successful living songwriter, having penned (or sometimes co-written) hits for a bewildering array of artists including Cher, Aerosmith, Lee Ann Rimes, Celine Dion, En Vogue, Elton John, Selena, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Elton John, Barbara Streisland, Ricky Martin, Meat Loaf, Mariah Carey, Carrie Underwood, Cheap Trick, Bette Midler, Beyonce…the list goes on. This behind-the-scenes portrait reveals a personality as colorful as the stars in her orbit. A more rarefied songwriting talent in the pop arena is profiled in Varda Bar-Kar’s Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, with both director and subject expected at the Sun/21 Palace sneak-preview screening.
The official San Francisco closer on Sun/28 (it also plays two days later in Oakland) is Sabbath Queen from Sandi DuBowski, whose prior Trembling Before G-d looked at the conflicted lives of gay Orthodox Jews. His latest focuses on an activist in that realm: Amichai Lau-Lavie is the scion of a prominent Israeli family who moved to NYC in 1997 after he was outed in his home nation’s press. Radicalized by the gay scene, he began devoting himself to making Jewish religious practices more inclusive, eventually even attending the Jewish Theological Seminary in order to become “a virus within the system”—moves that have invited no little controversy.
Other programs of particular LGBTQ+ interest at JFF this year include celebrations of two singular artists: The Teaches of Peaches (Roxie Wed/24) finds the outrageous expat Canadian musician marking the 20th anniversary of her titular electroclash album triumph; TABOO charts the life of Amos Guttman, who only directed features for a decade before his death from AIDS in 1993, but proved a great, lasting influence on Israeli cinema and gay culture nonetheless.
Winding back the clock considerably further is a true rarity: 1922’s Breaking Home Ties, a silent US drama that was long thought lost before a single surviving print was found in Europe. Now restored, it commerces with latterday onscreen text explaining that the Pennsylvania-shot feature was “produced with the express purpose of countering escalating antisemitism in the US stoked by the Ku Klux Klan and Henry Ford.” (Though he offered some eventual public apologies for promoting bigotry, the auto tycoon would also conduct business with Nazis for many years to come.)
Written and directed by the team of George K. Rolands and Frank N. Seltzer, it’s a tearjerking melodrama in which a prosperous Russian Jewish family living near St. Petersburg ends up divided by the fallout from a love triangle, their son fleeing to America while those left behind fall into poverty. Professionally crafted if without much saving style or verve, this rather ponderous soap opera wends its way towards heavily contrived accidental reunions. But it remains of great historical interest for its highly atyptical-at-the-time portrayal of Jewish life without condescension, caricature, or exoticism. There will be live musical accompaniment at the Vogue screening on Tues/23.
There’s a lot more on tap in SFJFF44, including a Freedom of Expression Award tribute to filmmaker Julie Cohen (RBG) on Sat/27; activist portraits (Winner, Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round, The Ride Ahead, Jews by Choice); hot-button issues (XCLD: The Story of Cancel Culture, Nobody Wants to Talk About Jacob Appelbaum). Of course there’s no lack of material addressing Israeli-Palestinian dynamics, including the documentaries Lyd, The Other, Three Promises and Physician, Heal Thyself, plus narratives Mediterranean Fever and The Vanishing Soldier.
In fact, Dani Rosenberg’s The Vanishing Soldier drama, about an Israeli Army trooper who goes AWOL amidst fighting in Gaza, is one of the strongest among many Israeli features here, alongside Avi Nesher’s twisty, barbed Pygmalion spin The Monkey House. Others of note are Veronica Kedar’s Day Trippers, Maya Dreifuss’ Highway 65,Eitan Green’s My Daughter, My Love, Shalom Hager’s Under the Shadow of the Sun, Maya Kenig’s sci-fi-tinged satire The Milky Way, Adar Shafran’s Running on Sand, and more.
US features run a gamut from Daniel Robbins’ dark comedy Bad Shabbos to Ondi Timoner’s latest, the work-in-progress All God’s Children. Endearing Hungarian seriocomedy All About the Levkoviches is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of wider international presence, which also encompasses France (The Auction, Nor By Day, Nor By Night), Germany (The Glory of Life), Italy (The Assembly), Ukraine (Porcelain War) and Colombia (Torah Tropical). There’s even more geographic and cultural spread among the myriad shorts being shown.
Local filmmakers will be well-represented, as well as projects that got creative support or funding through the festival’s parent organization, the Jewish Film Institute. Those paths will no doubt be among many to cross during the overlapping 2024 Jewish Film Presenters Network Conference, whose gathering of makers, programmers, distributors, industry experts and other personnel takes place this weekend (July 20-21).
The 44th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 18-August 4 at various locations in SF and the East Bay. For full program, schedule and ticket info, go to www.sfjff.org
