Two of my biggest passions–Judaism and cinema–come together this summer like they do every summer for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. (Come to think of it, some of my other big passions–music, history, and sex–turn up here, as well.) The organizers are calling the 28th SFIFF the largest one ever, with “70 films from 19 countries spread across 114 screenings in five venues” in San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto, and San Rafael.
The SFJFF opens at the Castro Thursday, July 24, with Strangers (which will have three other festival
screenings if you can’t make opening night). I give this film a B. A Israeli man and a Palestinian woman, both young, meet in Berlin, fall in love/lust, have great sex, then must figure out the rest of their lives. To make matters more complicated, it’s the summer of 2006, war is raging in Lebanon, and each blames the other side for the resulting carnage. This sort of movie depends on the leads’ chemistry, and stars Liron Levbo and Lubna Azabal have it in Bogart/Bacall levels. Writers/directors Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor deserve praise for avoiding easy political or emotional solutions. But the film’s overly grainy, handheld photography–made worse by the scope aspect ratio and some distracting photographic clichés–hurt the storytelling.
The festival runs through August 11 and closes with Emotional Arithmetic at the Rafael. I have yet to see this film, but I can tell you that despite some big names in the cast– Susan Sarandon, Christopher Plummer, Gabriel Byrne, and Max Von Sydow–it has not yet found distribution.
What about the other 68 films showing? There are four films about Italian Jews During Facism. Documentaries cover everything from heavy metal musicians to the BRCA gene (which increases the chance of breast cancer) and communal living in early 20th century New York. To acknowledge Israel’s 60th anniversary (and recognize that many see this as nothing to celebrate), 
there are 17 films on the subject of Israeli diversity.There are even nine episodes from a popular Israeli sitcom called Arab Labor. The Centerpiece film, Love Comes Lately, is based on three stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Bayflicks 