28 Years of Presenting The Best Jewish Films From The World Over

28 Years of Presenting The Best Jewish Films From The World Over San Francisco Jewish Film Festival July 24-August 11, 2008 San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and San Rafael and Peter Forg were Honored with the 2008 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award Special Sidebars on Italian Jewish Cinema and Diversity in Israel Celebrate the passionate storytelling, moving images and courageous spirit of independent Jewish cinema at the 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival July 24 – August 11 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco; Kanbar Hall at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco; Roda Theatre (at Berkeley Repertory Theatre) in Berkeley; the mailto:CineArts@Palo”>CineArts@Palo Alto Square in Palo Alto and the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. The first and still the largest of its kind, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival continues to search the globe for the best and brightest cinematic gems-offering a full complement of films, festivities, special discussion programs and international guests-that highlight 5768 years of culture. For ticket information, please contact the box office at (925) 275-9490 or visit the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival online at http://www.sfjff.org . Bigger than Ever The 28th SFJFF sets a record this year with 70 films from 19 countries spread across 114 screenings in five venues. Expanding the program to accommodate the remarkable depth and diversity of Jewish-subject film, festival organizers have added two full weekends (August 2-3 and 9-10) at Kanbar Hall at the JCCSF and moved to a larger theater in Palo Alto (the CineArts @ Palo Alto Square). Helping spread the word about the festival, SFJFF asked local filmmaker Tiffany Shlain, founder of the WEBBY Awards and director of THE TRIBE (SFJFF 2006) to produce its unique 2008 trailer, running in Bay Area theaters and on television screens during the run-up to the festival. This year the festival gets off to a sexy start with the Opening Night presentation of STRANGERS. Adapted from their short of the same name (SFJFF 2004), Israeli filmmakers Guy Nattiv and Erez Tadmor first feature length effortsas arevealing and poignant look at an intimate encounter between Eyal, an Israeli man and Rana, a Palestinian. After a chance encounter on a subway, a passion grips them, fueled as much by desire as by their cultural differences. Set in Berlin during the World Cup finals, when the second Israel-Lebanon war begins, the lovers idyll may be shattered by the intrusion of politics. Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, STRANGERS is a crisply written, steamy love story that crosses international borders and explores the boundaries of nationality, culture and the heart. Director Erez Tadmor and lead actress Lubna Azabal will attend the Opening Night screening on July 24 at the Castro Theatre. For the first time ever the Festival moves out of the Castro Theatre for its yearly Pre-Film Bash on Opening Night. This year before the film unspools at the Castro, join the opening night filmmakers, festival staff and a party hungry crowd at the Swedish American Hall, upstairs from Cafe Du Nord at 2174 Market Street. Mingling, cocktailing and munching will take place from 6:00-7:30 pm leaving time to head to the Castro for the 8:00 pm start time of STRANGERS. And don’t forget your dancing shoes, local fave Gaucho will be bringing the beats. After the film, head back to Cafe Du Nord where your ticket stub keeps the party alive with more live music and a festive atmosphere in which to discuss the film. On the flip side, wrapping the San Francisco portion of the fest is Paolo Barzman’s latest, EMOTIONAL ARITHMETIC, which closed the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival. Melanie Winters (Susan Sarandon) is leading a quiet life in a rustic lakeside farmhouse nestled amid the burnished hills of Eastern Quebec. But judging by the worried looks of her husband David (Christopher Plummer), a gruff retired history professor, and her handsome son (Roy Dupuis), something is amiss with Melanie as she nervously prepares for a reunion. And so arrives Jakob Bronski (Max von Sydow), a heroic figure from Melanie’s childhood spent in Drancy, the French transit camp outside Paris, which the Nazis used as a way station to Auschwitz. David thinks his emotionally fragile wife should let the past stay buried.The storm is coming,he warns, Not that anyone listens to me. Fest followers take note: Paolo Barzman’s name may ring familiar: his mother, screenwriter Norma Barzman, was an inaugural recipient of the SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression Award in 2005. Paolo Barzman studied painting and worked with legendary French director Jean Renoir before turning to directing himself. Freedom of Expression and the Films of Peter Forgs SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression Award honors the unfettered imagination, which is the cornerstone of a free, just and open society. This year’s recipient, internationally celebrated artist Peter Forgs, has preserved the image of European Jewish families of the 1930s and 1940s by retelling their stories through their own home movies. Through these films, Forgs places the historical emphasis on the intimacy of family life, zooming in on rare moments of emotional engagement. Born in Israel and raised by his Hungarian parents in Budapest, he first achieved recognition with his PRIVATE HUNGARY series detailing ordinary lives that were soon to be ruptured by historical trauma. His mesmerizing narratives were first introduced to SFJFF audiences ten years ago with the award-winning FREEFALL (1997), the tenth film in the series. Turning his investigative eye on Europe, Forgs continued this exploration through his next films, THE MAELSTROM (1997), about a Dutch family living a full and joyful life on the cusp of World War II; THE DANUBE EXODUS (SFJFF 1999), a journey into the world of refugees displaced by war, as witnessed by the captain of a Danube cruise ship between 1938 and 1945. His latest, MISS UNIVERSE 1929LISL GOLDARBEITER, A QUEEN IN WIEN tells the story of an attractive Jewish teenage girl living in Vienna in the 1920s who eventually was crowned Austria’s first and only Miss Universe. Her Hungarian cousin and childhood friend, Maritz (Marci) Tenczer, had followed her to Vienna with two equal obsessions: his movie camera and Lisl. Now, with the distance of nearly eight decades, Forgs weaves together Tenczer’s vivid memories and the precious home movies of his gorgeous cousin into a film that says as much about the power of abiding unrequited love as about the dramatic life of Lisl herself. Forgs will be present on July 29 to accept the award and discuss MISS UNIVERSE 1929. SFJFF’s Freedom of Expression Award statuette is the creation of San Francisco-based, Moscow-born sculptor Misha Frid, whose design, made expressly for SFJFF, symbolizes the never extinguished flame of Jewish daring and creativity. Special Program: Italian Jews During Facism This year’s Festival will include a special program on Italian Jews during Fascism, on the 70th anniversary of Italy’s 1938 racial laws, which barred Jews from professional jobs, attending university and even being listed in the phone book. Italy’s Jewish community is over 2000 years old and is notable for its diversity and also for its traditions. From Jews brought to Rome as slaves from Jerusalem in AD 70, to Jews fleeing Spain after the expulsion in 1492, to Jews from Eastern Europe, Libya and Iran, the Italian Jewish community is multi-faceted. More than 8000 Italian Jews died during the Holocaust and the entire community suffered under Fascist repression. Many contemporary Italian directors are re-examining Italy’s WWII history, teasing out narratives and truths from a complicated tangle of ideas and stereotypes: Italians as collaborators with their German allies; Italians as resistors to German occupation, willing to hide Jews and partisans; the Catholic church as protector of all peoples and the Catholic church as silent in the face of crimes against humanity. Filmmaker Mimmo Calopresti brings to the Festival an example with his Cannes-selected documentary, VOLEVO SOLO VIVERE (I Only Wanted to Live). A nominee for Italy’s top film award, I ONLY WANTED TO LIVE (Volevo Solo Vivere) follows nine Italian detainees of the Auschwitz death camps, including survivor Liliana Segre of Milan. Ms. Segre’s articulation of her experience, and her dignity, are remarkable, and she will be present following the July 27th screening at the Castro Theatre to speak about her extraordinary experience. Rounding out the program are three more titles: FACING WINDOWS, the story sexy work-weary woman (GiovannaMezzogiorno) and her hunky neighbor across the way (Raoul Bova) who befriend an older man with memory problems (veteran Italian actor Massimo Girotti).; PERLASCA, AN ITALIAN HERO, Alberto Negrin’s drama based on the true story of Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian and one-time fascist who found himself so outraged by the Nazi persecution of the Jews that he masqueraded as the Spanish consul in Budapest and saved thousands of Jewish Hungarians from deportation to Auschwitz; and TULIP TIME, a profile by Tonino Boniotti and Marco De Stefanis, of the Trio Lescano, a musical ensemble of three sisters once enormously popular in Italy but forced to flee when their fame no longer trumped their Jewish origins. As a special compliment to the Italian Jews during Fascism program, Millicent Marcus, chair of the Department of Italian at Yale University and author of Italian Film in the Shadow of Auschwitz will introduce and participate in the Berkeley screenings of VOLEVO SOLO VIVERE (I Only Wanted to Live), FACING WINDOWS and PERLASCA, AN ITALIAN HERO. The experience of Italian Jews during Fascism will continue to be explored this fall, when the SFJFF brings three more programs to San Francisco’s Jewish Community Center. Visit http://www.sfjff.org in the fall for more details. Diversity marks Israel’s 60th For many years now, the strength of Israeli film and television production has resulted in excellent annual contributions to the SFJFF, with numerous Israeli filmmakers coming each year. For 2008, the Festival will again bring the best of new Israeli film to San Francisco and will showcase Israel’s 60th anniversary by shining a spotlight on Israel’s multicultural diversity, a sometimes under-recognized aspect of Israeli society. From the lives of Ethiopian musicians, Georgian seamstresses, Palestinian mothers, gay civil rights activists and Bedouin filmmakers, Israeli fiction and documentary films have begun to open our eyes to Israel’s ongoing, unique experiment in creating a multicultural democracy with a Jewish soul. The contemporary challenges and successes of this effort will be highlighted in this year’s Festival. As part of the spotlight on diversity, special focus is given to Israeli queer identity. Nitzan Gilady’s award-winning documentary JERUSALEM IS PROUD TO PRESENT portrays the efforts of Israel’s LGBT community to host the 2006 international World Pride parade in Jerusalem. Filmmaker Nitzan Gilady joins a panel discussion on LGBT rights in Jewish life following the San Francisco screening, July 29. On a more personal level, queer stories are featured in QUEST FOR THE MISSING PIECE, a funny, disconcerting romp that explores the politics of circumcision through the eyes of gay filmmaker Oded Lotan. Itamar Alcalay’s STEFAN BRAUN is a portrait of the charismatic Israeli furrier Stefan Braun. Archival footage immerses us in Braun’s opulent life in the Tel Aviv of the 1950s which included not only wealthy matrons, chic models and numerous lovers but also the man who loved, worshipped and stood by him for 39 years, Eliezer Rath. MOM I DIDN’T KILL YOUR DAUGHTER is Orna Ben Dor’s loving documentary about the emotional path traveled by an Israeli couple, Lior and Yuval, as they help each other transition from the female to male gender. Set in Safed, the site where the mystical texts of the Kabbalah were first received, Avi Nesher’s feature film THE SECRETS recounts the story of two young women fighting to be heard in the patriarchal world of the ultra-orthodox who fall in love with each other Critical activism by documentary filmmakers is an Israeli tradition every bit as contentious as it is cherished. In addition to the films addressing LGBT activism, two documentaries with strong positions on controversial issues are featured in this year’s festival. Winner of the Jerusalem Film Festival’s Best Documentary Award, BILIN MY LOVE, is director Shai Carmeli Pollak’s partisan look at the struggle by the Palestinians of Bilin, in collaboration with international activists and left-wing Israelis, to hold on to their land while Israel’s separation barrier cuts their village in two. Focusing on protests at a very different wall, PRAYING IN HER OWN VOICE is director Yael Katzir’s excellent chronicle of the struggle of Orthodox women to read from the Torahat Jerusalem’s Western Wall. A panel discussion with Yael Katzir addressing Jewish women’s rights follows the film’s Berkeley screening on Sunday, August 3. Two films highlighting stories of Jews emigrating to Israel from the former Soviet Union offer interesting perspectives. A FOOL’S DREAM is Daniel Syrkin and Ido Bahat’s telling of the story of Lev Syrkin, a successful Moscow artist who abandoned his reputable status in Russia to pursue his dream of living free in Israel. But after immigrating with his entire family, what Syrkin found was total indifference toward his mosaic art. In GEORGIA MY LOVE, director Noga Gamlieli playfully captures the beauty, brashness and talent of Maya and Manana, Israeli immigrants whose love for their native Georgia lives on through their music and dance. = Other highlights of the diversity program include A HEBREW LESSON, David Ofek’s documentary about an ulpan (Hebrew immersion class) and the remarkable process of integrating immigrants from all five continents into Israeli society. OPERATION MURAL CASABLANCA 1961, Yehuda Kaveh’s documentary about the remarkable story of how 530 Jewish Moroccan children were smuggled to Israel in the spring of 1961 under the guise of a holiday trip to Switzerland. In Ibtisam Maraana’s THREE TIMES DIVORCED, we are presented the story of Khitam, a Gaza-born mother of six is in the fight of her life for custody of her children in a country where she has practically no rights. Playing with THREE TIMES DIVORCED is THE FILM CLASS, about Black Bedoin women making a documentary about the legacy of slavery in the Bedoin community. ASHKENAZ is Berkeley native and Israeli immigrant Rachel Leah Jone’s examination of Israel’s Ashkenazim or European Jews. Not the Coens, the Wachowskis nor the Maysles, it’s the Heymann Brothers Further illuminating the complex puzzle of Israel’s cultural diversity, the 2008 SFJFF takes a Close Up look at the unique and dynamic documentary filmmaking team of brothers Barak and Tomer Heymann. For a good part of the past decade, the Heymann Brothers have been producing and directing prize-winning documentaries zeroing in on extraordinary Israeli characters and social currents that may have been imperceptible until discovered by their probing lens. The festival is proud to present six of their films this year, and will bring Barak and Tomer Heymann to the Bay Area for this illuminating retrospective. BRIDGE OVER THE WADI captures the struggles and tenacity of the teachers, students and parents during the first year of a bicultural, bilingual Jewish/Arab school located in an Arab village. BLACK OVER WHITE, a documentary that rollicks and rocks, follows Israeli pop/world-beat band The Idan Raichel Project on a concert tour to Ethiopia. OUT OF FOCUS zooms in on Ohad Naharin, the famed Batsheva Dance Company’s artistic director and hailed rock starchoreographer, while DANCING ALFONSO looks at the role flamenco plays in the life of an older man following the death of his wife. STALAGS HOLOCAUST AND PORNOGRAPHY IN ISRAEL (produced by Barak Heymann and directed by Ari Libsker), is a startling account of the wave of cheap, often pornographic pocketbooks that entered popular culture in Israel during the early 1960s. Playing with STALAGS is Tomer Heymann’s breakthrough film, IT KINDA SCARES ME, a personal look at his friendship with a group of delinquent teenage boys intent on staging a play together. The Heymann brothers will be present for Q&A sessions following the Castro Theatre screenings of BLACK OVER WHITE and BRIDGE OVER THE WADI (July 26) and OUT OF FOCUS and DANCING ALFONSO (July 27). Israeli TV: laugh, cry, get therapy Following previous years, successful presentations of the best of Israeli television, the SFJFF ups the ante this time around by presenting selections of two spectacular examples of TV programming, straight from the boob tubes of Israel into Bay Area theatres. Furthering the examination of Israeli diversity, ARAB LABOR, is Arab Israeli Sayed Kashua’s groundbreaking sitcom about the attempts of Amjad, an Arab Israeli reporter, to assimilate his family into mainstream Israeli society. Wry and self-effacing, Sayed Kashua has been likened to an Arab Woody Allen. But not everyone has a taste for irony when it comes to racial politics and his ARAB LABOR is the most controversial new show to air on primetime Israeli television. In Amjad’s absurd world, everyone is fair game for parody and scrutinyeven his less-than-honest father, who agrees to honor a Jewish ritual by taking a rabbi’s not-kosher-for-Passover food off his hands, only to sell it on Ebay. The SFJFF is screening nine 30-minute episodes broken up into groups of three over the course of the festival’s run in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto. Groundbreaking in form and so successful as to spawn a highly touted American remake on HBO, IN TREATMENT is Hagai Levy’s inventive homage to psychology. Imagine sitting on the therapist’s sofa as the commitment-phobe, the guilt-ridden bomber pilot, the teen perfectionist, the couple struggling to make a baby, and even the shrink shriveled by self-doubt, unload their neuroses for your own examination. IN TREATMENT invites you into this dynamic, each episode featuring the intimate examination of a patient’s psyche. Screening as five 30-minute episodes bundled together (basically a week’s worth of work for the host therapist), don’t miss this one-time chance to catch the show that’s more than just a cigar. Screenings will take place in San Francisco at the Jewish Community Center and in Palo Alto. Local filmmakers leave a lasting impression Films from the home front are always a delight. The sneak preview of HOLIDAZE is the latest Citizen Film production for the SFJFF’s award-winning New Jewish Filmmaking Project (NJFP). This triptych of stories delivers candid, funny observations of do-it-yourself holiday rituals. Teenage co-directors from a range of backgrounds consider the mysterious relevance of ritual in secular, multicultural lives. Roberta Grossman’s BLESSED IS THE MATCH, produced by Berkeley-based Katahdin Foundation (local doc-maker Deann Borshay Liem’s production company), is about the life of Hannah Senesh, who was part of a rescue team sent to Hungary that was fatally sabotaged by the Hungarian Nazis during World War II. EVERY DAY THE IMPOSSIBLE is Mitch Braff’s documentary recognizing the unique contribution of women partisans during World War II. FOUR QUESTIONS FOR A RABBI is a poignant and thoughtful documentary begun by Bay Area filmmaker Stacey Ross and completed after her death by renowned documentarian and master found-footage alchemist Jay Rosenblatt (2005 SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award). Ross asks profound questions, including: What is the role of Judaism and the Jewish soul? Winner of the best short prize at the 2008 Sundance Film festival, Daniel Robin’s MY OLYMPIC SUMMER is a somber and visually inventive meditation on love, family and the medium of film itself. From Across the Sea Come Dramatic Highlights and the Festival Centerpiece International features provide an entertaining access point into this culturally diverse world. The 2008 SFJFF centerpiece presentation is Jan Schtte’s LOVE COMES LATELY from Germany, shot in the U.S.In LOVE COMES LATELY, septuagenarian Max Kohn (Otto Tausig) is going strong: a boisterous babe-chaser whose amorous pursuits both real and imagined risk alienating a girlfriend he loves but neglects. As he pens his tales of amour, the line between fact and fiction begins to blurr Based on short stories by Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer, LOVES COMES LATELY also features Rhea Perlman and Tovah Feldshuh. Paul Weiland’s British entry SIXTY SIX, starring the always terrific Helena Bonham Carter, is set in 1966 England as the country is in the grasp of World Cup fever. Twelve-year-old Bernie is also on the brink of something: his bar mitzvah. As family crises come to a head, and his fellow Brits are consumed by the World Cup qualifying rounds, Bernie faces the ruination of his big event. Having its world premiere at the Festival is Tiffany Tavernier and Eliette Abecassis docu-fiction hybrid, TEL AVIV BY GIRLS. The tale of two women whose lives are at a pivotal crux, the film follows best friends Tiffany and Eliette (played by the filmmakers) as they cruise Tel Aviv, ignoring the responsibilities that they have abandoned back home. Catching up, rocking out, lazing on the beach, the cinema-verite tyle follows Tiffany and Eliette’ search for meaning in their lives and within themselves. Idit Cebula’ French entry, TWO LIVES PLUS ONE stars the always-engaging Emmanuelle Devos as Eliane, a middle-aged schoolteacher intent on catering to the needs of those around her, including her husband, kids, and neurotic mother. But Eliane’s manner shifts when she begins writing suddenly her attentions are turned: to herself! Ditching the usual routine, Eliane indulges in a laptop, a cigarette and the attentions of her handsome young publisher. Family befuddlement ensues as Eliane’s blossoming redefines her role as a mother, a wife, and a daughter. Israeli filmmaker Raphael Nadjari ponders the meaning of religion within a family in TEHILIM. When Eli, husband and father of two boys, disappears mysteriously from the scene of an accident, the family must cope with their confusion and grief in ways that test their faith and familial bond. Set in modern Berlin, Anne Justice’s MAX MINSKY AND ME is a rare gem in the world of Jewish film gentle, family-orientated comedy about the delicate and unlikely friendship between gawky Nelly and reluctant Max. The film’s glimpses of today’s Jewish Berlin are handled with an easy nonchalance, aided by Holly-Jane Rahlen’s jaunty script, full of sharply observed adolescent angst laced with the occasional cosmic fantasy taking us into the outer corners of Nelly’s wild imagination. Documentaries deliver the goods A popular part of the Festival is the annual selection of documentaries. From the powerful to the poetic, this selection always highlights some of the best work of the year in the nonfiction arena. Slavomir Grnberg and Robert Podgursky’s SAVED BY DEPORTATION looks at the deportation of approximately 200,000 Polish Jews by Joseph Stalin from Russian-occupied Eastern Poland to forced labor settlements in the Soviet interior. As cruel as Stalin’s deportations were, ultimately they largely saved Jewish lives, for the deportees constituted the overwhelming majority of Polish Jews who escaped the Nazi Holocaust. In TO SEE IF I AM SMILING, filmmaker Tamar Yarom profiles six former soldiers, all women, who performed their compulsory army service in the occupied territories, and reveals aftereffects that have lingered for years. The brutality of war is also discussed in Glad Reshef’s FACING THE WIND, which chronicles the life of Oran Almog, a 13-year-old who loses his family and his eyesight in a suicide bombing. With IN THE FAMILY, director Joanna Rudnick turns the camera on herself as she makes the difficult decision whether to preemptively remove her healthy breasts and ovaries or risk a staggeringly high likelihood of developing a deadly cancer after being diagnosed with the genetic mutation BRCA. Joanna Rudnick will be present at the Berkeley, Palo Alto and Marin screenings to answer questions from the audience and talk about the effects on her life after the BRCA diagnosis. Following the Marin screening on August 10, Rudnick will participate in a panel on Hereditary Cancer and Genetic Testing. A number of films continue to explore messages of strength and perseverance: Yoav Gurdinkel’s THE OLD STORES delivers a rare glimpse of old shops tucked between mega-malls in Tel Aviv where old-fashioned service free of commercialism is still the order of the day; AT HOME IN UTOPIA is Michael Goldman’s affectionate documentary showcasing the struggle for worker’s rights in New York; and Julian Shaw’s DARLING! THE PIETER-DIRK UYS STORY, is about a half-Jewish, half-Afrikaaner anti-apartheid activist and entertainer renowned for his drag alter-ego, a dowager named Evita Bezuidenhout who passionately critiques South Africas failure to educate children about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Festival regular Yoav Shamir (CHECKPOINT, SFJFF 2004; 5 DAYS, SFJFF 2006) returns with FLIPPING OUT, an examination of the drug use prevalent among recently discharged Israeli soldiers and the psychiatric care many will require. Cultural identity is explored in three unique documentary offerings. BEING JEWISH IN FRANCE, Yves Jeuland’s ambitious undertaking, capturing centuries of Jewish life in France in two episodes broadcast on French television to critical acclaim. Both episodes will be shown together at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center and in Palo Alto. MY FATHER’S PALESTINIAN SLAVE is a look at veteran Israeli peace activist, Moshe Amirav and the friendship he builds with his landscaper: an undocumented Palestinian who sneaks across the border to come to work every day. That the film is shot by Amirav’s son, Nathaniel Goldman Amirav, only heightens the moral ambiguities of the dynamic. The American Jewish perception of Israel is the focus of Paula Weiman-Kelmans EYES WIDE OPEN. Featuring interviews of tourists and transplants from a wide variety of backgrounds, the film is an exploration of the complex relationship between the American Jewish community and the 60-year-old Jewish state. ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL, Sacha Gervasi’s documentary on the obscure Canadian heavy metal band, whose early 80s album, Metal on Metal influenced bands such as Metallica and Anthrax, appears at times like THIS IS SPINAL TAP only it isn’t. It’s real! At its core, a heartwarming story of survival and the unadulterated passion it takes to follow your dream, ANVIL! THE STORY OF ANVIL will make you want to rip your jeans and grow a mullet. After the Berkeley screening, come on down for a drink special at the Acme Bar on Shattuck. Be there or be square, man! Wear Your Party Pants A Festival without parties and events is like a bagel without lox. In addition to the Opening Night party, the SFJFF keeps things raucous with more good times and special treats. With short film screenings, drinks and music, the Festival’s Warehouse Pre-Party on July 19 at The Space Gallery (1141 Polk Street in San Francisco) is a great way to preview the Festival. After the July 29 screening of JERUSALEM IS PROUD TO PRESENT, join the Festival for drinks across the street at The Bar (456 Castro Street in San Francisco) where your first round is 2-1 with a ticket stub. On closing night, enjoy pre-film goodies, a festive atmosphere, live music on the Mighty Wurlitzer and an on-stage conversation with EMOTIONAL ARITHMETIC director Paolo Barzman at the Castro Theatre. Or have your own party when you present your film ticket at great local eateriesall conveniently located within walking distance of Festival screening theatresand save a pretty penny while satisfying that sweet tooth before or after a film. Deals are available at Gelateria Naia, 451 Castro Street in San Francisco; Gelateria Naia, 2106 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley; the concession counter at the mailto:CineArts@Palo”>CineArts@Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real, Palo Alto; and Double Rainbow, 860 Fourth Street in San Rafael. New digs in Palo Alto This summer, fans of the SFJFF on the Peninsula will enjoy the spacious state-of-the-art cinema at mailto:CineArts@Palo”>CineArts@Palo Alto Square on El Camino Real. SFJFF first screened at the CineArts in 2003 and it was a crowd favorite, but it has been unavailable in subsequent years.We’re so pleased that the cinema’s new owners, Cinemark, have invited us to come back in 2008 remarked Executive Director Peter L. Stein. It’s an ideal theater for our Peninsula screenings and we’re happy to return. About the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), the world’s oldest and largest Jewish film festival is proudly celebrating its 28th anniversary. SFJFF’s mission is to promote awareness and appreciation of the diversity of the Jewish people, provide a dynamic and inclusive forum for exploration of and dialogue about the Jewish experience, and encourage independent filmmakers working with Jewish themes. The SFJFF’s signature summer Film Festival, monthly screenings, youth mentorship program (New Jewish Filmmaking Project), publications, and online resources have made SFJFF a leader in the use of media arts to foster cultural understanding. Annually attracting more than 33,000 filmgoers, the SFJFF is world-renowned for the diversity and breadth of its audiences and films.