the 37th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF37), opens this Thursday. The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2016 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest. It’s one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events and here are my top picks:
- Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch. Bombshell plays Wednesday July 26 in Palo Alto, Sunday July 30 in San Francisco and Saturday August 5 in Albany.
- A Classy Broad: This delightful bio-doc chronicles the amazingly resilient life of Marcia Nasatir, the first woman production vice-president at a major Hollywood studio. We all owe a debt to Nasatir for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Carrie and Apocalypse Now.
- Subte Polska: An Argentine gem about a nonagenarian chess master addressing his own memory, vitality and the need to find closure with his past. A promising first feature for writer-director Alejandro Magnone, Subte Polska is the sleeper Must See at this year’s SFJFF.
- Levinsky Park: Israel was created as a home for refugees. What happens when African refugees overwhelm a neglected Tel Aviv neighborhood is the subject of this topical documentary.
- Fritz Lang: What better protagonist for a crime drama than the creator of the masterpiece M and pioneering master of film noir, the director Fritz Lang? Fritz Lang imagines Fritz Lang gathering research for M by tracking and interviewing a real serial killer, all while under police suspicion for his own past.
- Ben-Gurion, Epilogue: Footage from a recently discovered video interview allows us to hear from Israel’s founding leader in his own words.
- A pre-release screening of the environmental documentary An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power with an appearance by former Vice-President Al Gore. It plays the SFJFF on Monday evening, July 24 at the Castro in San Francisco, but the the screening is currently at rush.
The SFJFF runs from July 20 through August 6 at theaters in San Francisco, Palo Alto, Albany, San Rafael and Oakland. You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. Here’s the trailer for Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story.