The 31st SFJFF opens tonight, screening 58 films from 16 countries through August 4 in several venues throughout the Bay Area. It is the largest and longest running Jewish film festival in the world.
Beyond the films and after parties, Kirk Douglas will introduce Spartacus (1960) at a Castro Theatre award ceremony in San Francisco on Sunday, July 24.
Douglas will be honored with the Freedom of Expression award for his support of black-listed screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who Douglas hired to write the screenplay for Spartacus (1960), insisting Dalton’s name appear on the credits.
Trumbo had won two screenwriting Oscars under pseudonyms.
Other SFJFF highlights:
Little Rose – The Centerpiece film of the festival, the story of Little Rose begins in 1967 Poland, where communist totalitarianism has replaced the equally repressive Nazi occupation. Nothing much has changed: Anti-Semitism and intolerance of dissent persist.
Enter Rose (Magdalena Boczarska), the girlfriend of government security operative Roman Rozek (Robert Wieckiewicz). Rozek’s superiors are concerned about the allegiance of Adam Warczewski (Andrzej Seweryn), a very public intellectual who’s a little too cosy with his Western associates. Under pressure to discredit Warczewski, Rozek pimps-out the easygoing, apolitical Rose to get as much unflattering information as she can.
Her relationship with the older, refined Adam sparks personal growth and unexpected plot twists.
100 Voices: A Journey Home – After four billion years of life evolving on Earth, when you get down to the bottom of it all, human DNA has far more in common than the deceptively exaggerated differences that separate us.
Joy, mourning, love, and hunger are universal. Laughter and tears do not need translators. If the planet heats up to uninhabitably high temperatures, we’re all going down on the same Titanic without lifeboats.
That’s the unspoken message of 100 Voices: A Journey Home, a documentary that could have blithely been subtitled, “The Cantors Woodstock,” although it is much more than that. 100 Voices literally and figuratively bursts with operatic passion.
Over 70 cantors from all over the world make a pilgrimage to Poland for performances at the Warsaw Opera House and the Nozyk Synagogue, the only Jewish house of worship in Poland still intact after WWII.
American cantors Alberto Mizrahi and Jacom Mendelson’s jazzy, scat-tinged version of “Chad Gadya” shines. Mizrahi is a remarkable talent who would equally fit in equally well at La Scala and the main stage of the Monterey Jazz Festival.
100 Voices closes the festival and is directed by Danny Gold and Mathew Asner.
Phnom Penh Lullaby – One of the most original, potentially controversial films at this year’s SFJFF. Reportedly a documentary, Polish director Pawel Kloc’s film plays more like Rob Nilsson’s Direct Action Cinema at its best.
Ilan, who cannot find work in his native Israel, winds up in a seedy area of Phnom Penh living in a dilapidated single-room occupancy with his Cambodian girlfriend, Saran and her infant and toddler fathered by two different men. There may be other children and at least one other father.
The camera follows the family navigating Phnom Penh’s mean streets at night: riotous color footage of bicycles and Vespas zipping through traffic and blaring car horns; babies crying, live animal venders arguing and laughing; a seemingly endless parade of young prostitutes soliciting potential customers.
Intercut black-and-white surveillance-style footage catches dealers selling drugs, pimps brazenly offering children for sex – virgins go for a premium.
Amidst the depraved pandemonium, Ilan sets up a makeshift fortune-telling stand, reading Tarot cards to tourists passing by while Saran drinks and keeps an eye on her children.
Saran decides to take her daughter Marie to live with her brother. After a night-long journey on a creaky bus and boat into the night, the family arrives in Kratie. After meeting with her elderly parents, Saran decides to keep her child.
Much of the film’s dialogue is spoken in a pidgin English that sounds like it arose out of the South Asian sex trade. Some of the Khmer-influenced sentence constructions strain comprehensibility (subtitles are included), although “boom-boom” used as a transitive verb won’t require translation to most viewers.
Mabul (The Flood) – Tonight’s opening night film plays it safe, telling a story about a family upended by the unexpected arrival of Tomar (Michael Moshonov), a severely autistic 17 year-old who returns home unexpectedly after the institution he was living in is shut down.
Tomar’s brother, 13 year-old Yoni (Yoav Rotman), is preparing for his upcoming Bar Mitzva and does not welcome his echolalic, pereptually-rocking brother who makes eye contact with no one.
A precocious wheeler-dealer, Yoni is plagued by adolescent self-consciousiousness. He thinks his body is too skinny and his voice too high – the school bullies call him “Helium.”
Parents Miri (Ronit Elkabetz) and Gidi (Tzahi Grad) have their secrets as well. Elkabetz's effortless performance borders on magical. You know she's acting, but you can't see her working. Miri seems so real, you wonder how she did it.
Superb filmmakeng by Philippe Lavalette (cinematography) and Tali Halter-Shenkar (editing) keep Mabul afloat up to the sugar-coated end.
For more information on showtimes and locations, go the the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival website.
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