San Francisco Jewish Film Festival 2018

With 67 films from 23 countries, this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival–the 38th–remains the world’s largest, and, of course, still the oldest.
And, by the way, 53% of the films are directed by women.
The festival opens July 19th at San Francisco’s historic Castro Theater with “Love, Gilda,” a portrait of former “Saturday Night Live” performer and beloved comedian Gilda Radner; and it ends its Castro run on July 29th with a tribute to another comedian, Jew-by-choice Sammy Davis, Jr. (“Sammy Davis, Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me”). The festival will also be held at Palo Alto’s Cinéarts theater (July 21 to 26th); the East Bay’s Albany (July 27 to 29th) and Piedmont Theaters (August 3rd to 5th); and San Rafael’s Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center (August 3rd to 5th).
This year’s two sidebars will be on Black/Jewish relations, and on Austria. The first, entitled black.ish / jew.ish, include the Sammy Davis film as well as two films about music (“Blue Note Records: Beyond the Blues,” and “Satan and Adam,” about the partnership of an African-American busker and a white, Jewish harmonica player).
The second sidebar, entitled “Bless My Homeland Forever,” starts with a collaboration with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival: “The City Without Jews,” the international premiere of a newly-restored 1924 Hungarian film, with live music accompaniment; and continues with “The Waldheim Waltz,” a documentary about the 1986 election of former Nazi Kurt Waldheim to the Austrian presidency.
Here, in no particular order, are some other films that caught my eye:
“Baby Face” is a 1933 film starring Barbara Stanwyck as an ambitious small-town girl who “sleeps her way to the top,” as they used to say, of the executive suite. Aside from its having been “based on a treatment” by Darryl F. Zanuck, I’m not sure of the film’s Jewish connection. Still–who can resist?
“The Oslo Diaries” is a documentary about the 1992 peace negotiations between Israel and the PLO. Doesn’t that seem long ago and far away?
“Budapest Noir,” co-sponsored by the Film Noir Foundation, is set in–of course–Budapest in 1936. Its hero is a crime reporter investigating the sudden death of a pro-Hitler prime minister. The cinematographer is Elemer Gagalyi, cinematographer of last year’s hit, “1945.”
“The Invisibles,” from Germany, is a “documentary/narrative”–part doc, part enactment–about some 7,000 Jews who continued to live secretly in Berlin after the Nazis had decreed the city “Judenfrei” (free of Jews) in 1943.
“Shalom Bollywood: The Untold History of Indian Cinema” is the story of “how four Jewish/Indian actresses came to dominate the Indian movie industry for nearly forty years.”
Another intriguing-sounding documentary is “The Twinning Reaction,” which explores what happened when families discovered that a Jewish adoption agency had secretly separated and studied identical twins.
The festival’s ticket policy is intricate and based on whether ticket-buyers are members of the Jewish Film Institute or not.
For complete information, visit sfjff.org. Detailed ticket information is available at sfjff.org/tickets. The festival box office’s phone number is (415) 621-0523.