It’s time for one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 39th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), which opens this Thursday, July 18, and runs through August 4 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. As usual, the fest presents a broad range of feature films from 17 countries (but mostly from the US and Israel), plus 2 programs of short films (Jews in Shorts).
My top recommendation is Rob Garver’s What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael, a remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic and her drive for relevance. It’s illustrated with clips of the movies that she loved and hated. I’ll publish my long form review when What She Said is released in the Bay Area.
Two more SFJFF entries about the movies are Curtiz, a narrative film about the prolific director Michael Curtiz and Carl Laemmle, a documentary about the pioneering movie impresario
SFJFF always presents an excellent slate of docs. This year’s batch includes Golda, with footage from Golda Meir’s last interview.
There are also comedies. The sibling roadtrip comedy Dancing Dogs of Dombrova looks promising. I’ve seen the comedy of manners How About Adolf? – a family provocateur trying to get under his brother-in-law’s skin unintentionally ignites an eruption of family resentments and revelations.
I haven’t seen it, but my favorite SFJFF title this year is the animated film Seder-Masochism.
One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF39 is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area, the fest comes to you. SFJFF39 will present films at the Castro in San Francisco, CIneArts in Palo Alto, the Albany Twin in Albany, the Rafael in San Rafael and the Piedmont in Oakland. You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Jut for fun, here’s the delightful trailer from the 2016 version of SFJFF.