By Mal Karman
If we can get Israeli premier Benjamin Netenyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to a few of the movies at the 36th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (through Aug. 7), we just might solve some of the problems in the Middle East.
No joke. While we may never live to see a Palestinian film about Israel’s views on any of the myriad issues that separate the two sides, what is striking about a number of entries from Israeli directors is the consideration paid to the struggle of Palestinians, Arabs and Arab citizens of Israel whose loyalties and crises of identity are in constant conflict.
In The Writer, an Israeli-Arab scribe, lacking the fire he once had in creating a hit TV show, envisions greater goals for himself. But as an alien in his own neighborhood and in a society where he is a second-class citizen, is it even a possibility? The drama, from a riveting television series, is the largely autobiographical work of screenwriter Sayed Kashua.
Aaron Davidman of Berkeley— a man of many faces — bends, twists, stretches and flexes his puss to give birth to Israeli and Palestinian men and women with clashing views on Mideast woes, each with an observation or a solution for realizing their dreams of peace and security. Wrestling Jerusalem is more than a movie of talking heads, as scenes unfold in the desert, at a Tel Aviv café, in the settlements and at one of Davidman’s live performances. The actor, who is also a playwright, director and producer, carves out an astounding 17 characters here, skirting the trap of caricaturing, so that we meet real people with real feelings, people with whom we can identify on both sides of the Middle East headache.
Marin gets its own film festival exclusive on Aug. 5 at 6:30pm with writer-producer-director James Schamus’ adaptation of Philip Roth’s novel, Indignation. In this tale of a kosher butcher’s son who escapes his family by enrolling in an Ohio college in the 1950s, Roth drew on his own experiences as a freshman startled to find himself surrounded by Christian culture in way-too-conservative Middle America. Schamus, former CEO of Focus Films and screenwriter or producer of nine Ang Lee motion pictures including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Ice Storm and Brokeback Mountain, will be on stage following the screening to discuss his work and answer questions from the audience.
In Search of Israeli Cuisine, the probing question that immediately bubbles to the surface of the frying pan is why we have to search for it the way we hunt in Marin for a true New York bagel. One opinion offered in the film is that the country hasn’t been in existence long enough to develop its own distinct flavors. In Search of Israeli Cuisine follows Michael Solomonov (winner of the 2016 James Beard Award for Cookbook of the Year) as he explores the kitchens, farms, fishing boats and wine cellars throughout the country to find a definitive answer. Visually gorge yourself with boreka, shakshuka, kibbe el babour, couscous and maqluba—that is, if you can learn to pronounce them.
Israel’s motion picture academy tagged Baba Joon its best picture of the year and was its entry into the 2015 Oscars for Best Foreign Language film. That’s quite a Jewish star for first-time writer-director Yuval Delshad, who immigrated to Israel with his parents from Iran and who, in the writing of the script, evoked searing memories from his childhood. The family struggled to make a basic living as turkey farmers, something in which the young hero of the film, Moti (Asher Avrahami), has absolutely no interest.This puts him perpetually at odds with his steely-eyed father Yitzhak (Navid Negahban) in a contest of wills like you’ve never seen before.
Also battling their elders are two disaffected teens in Jewish Canadian writer David Bezmozgis’ adaptation of his own semi-autobiographical short story, Natasha, the centerpiece narrative of the festival. An introverted 16-year-old boy (Alex Ozerov) in need of interests and motivation—other than peddling dope—is thrown together with a promiscuous 14-year-old Russian girl, a cousin by marriage (Sasha Gordon). Inevitably the fireworks explode, which is not exactly what the parents had in mind. It’s a coming-of-age drama, with an ending that would never get off the ground in Hollywood.
Those who have circumnavigated the sun enough times to recall American television’s All in the Family, ought to catch Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You. The doc underscores superstar mogul Lear’s path to becoming the hottest producer in TV in the ’70s. The man who also created The Jeffersons; Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman; Maude; and Fernwood 2 Night, among others, walked away from it all to become an activist who founded the advocacy organization People for the American Way in 1981. The now-94-year-old Lear was awarded the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival’s Freedom of Expression Award on July 24.
In False Flag, five young Israelis leading seemingly normal lives are suddenly wanted as suspects in the kidnapping of Iran’s minister of defense. While they deny complicity, no one believes them, including friends and family, because there is visual evidence of sorts. This edge-of-your-seat thriller and smash-hit series on Israeli TV is The Fugitive five times over.
Yet another blockbuster on the small screen is Shtisel: Season 2, a series that could almost classify as a soap opera were it not for the nuances in the writing and the subtleties in the acting. Follow the Shtisel family and their endeavors as one young woman searches for a hubby, another fears that she’ll give birth to a Rosemary’s Baby and a young man wants to follow his art but lives under daddy’s thumb. There is romance, religion and neurotic behavior. What more could you want?
While the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is acknowledged as the Cannes of Jewish film festivals, the Atlanta version wants to challenge that. “We got this frantic email from them,” San Francisco program director Jay Rosenblatt says. “‘How many people you got?’ they want to know. ‘What’s your admissions? Send us your numbers.’ We are the first and we were the largest. We may still be. Atlanta is claiming that, but no one is auditing attendance. But anyway you look at it, we’re the mother of Jewish film festivals.”
The Jewish mother, of course.
The 36th Jewish Film Festival, through Aug. 7; sfjff36.jfi.org; rafaelfilm.cafilm.org.
