Featuring Deborah Kaufman (SFJFF founder), Janis Plotkin (former Executive Director), Rachel Leah Jones (filmmaker), Marc Smolowitz (former Filmmaker in Residence), and Maya Cueva (former Filmmaker in Residence).
To celebrate forty-five years, SFJFF presents a special retrospective event honoring four and a half decades of Jewish storytelling through cinema. The program features a curated selection of rarely exhibited clips from the SFJFF archive. These groundbreaking works from the festival’s early years helped establish SFJFF as a preeminent platform for Jewish expression and identity on screen. In addition, key leaders and contributors from the festival’s history—including filmmakers and the festival’s founder—will share personal reflections and highlight the works they believe have made lasting contributions to the canon of Jewish film. This program offers an opportunity to reflect on the cultural impact of Jewish cinema, explore how film has shaped and reshaped Jewish identity, and celebrate SFJFF’s role in the ongoing evolution of the Jewish story.
Deborah Kaufman is an award-winning documentary producer/director whose films include “Post Atlantic,” “ Town Destroyer,” “Company Town,” “Between Two Worlds,” “Thirst”, “Secrets of Silicon Valley”, and “Blacks and Jews.” Her films, made with partner Alan Snitow, have appeared in major film festivals and showcases including Sundance, Full Frame, Hot Docs, and IFC’s “Stranger than Fiction.” Kaufman’s films have been broadcast on PBS and around the world, and continue to be used extensively in classrooms, by clergy and community organizations, and by policy makers from Sacramento to Washington D.C. Prior to her film work, she founded and for 14 years was the Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest independent Jewish film showcase in the world. While helming that Festival, she produced three national tours with the American Film Institute and with Landmark Theaters, as well as producing groundbreaking and high profile Jewish Film Festivals in Moscow in1990 with the Soviet Cinematographers’ Union and Madrid in 1992 with the Filmoteca Espanola. She is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.
Janis Plotkin's early work as a community organizer led her to develop an early interest in film as a tool for communicating values, history and culture. During that time she was invited to a press screening for a new start-up, the first ever Jewish Film Festival. It was a life changing experience. She joined founding director Deborah Kaufman the next year to program and produce the groundbreaking San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. After 21 years at SFJFF she moved on to pursue other interests in film. Soon after, she joined the Mill Valley Film Festival as Senior Film Programmer where she programmed World Cinema and taught cinema classes at Stanford, SFSU & UC Davis. Seeking a third act, she produced the documentary PLASTIC MAN: The Life and Art of Jerry Ross Barrish in 2016 that was screened in film festivals across the US, broadcast in Israel and on KQED-TV.
Marc Smolowitz is a multi-award-winning director, producer, executive producer, and consulting producer who has been significantly involved in over 60 successful independent films. The combined footprint of his works has touched 250+ film festivals & markets on 5 continents, yielding substantial worldwide sales to theatrical, television, and VOD outlets, notable box office receipts, and numerous awards and nominations. His credits include films that have screened at top-tier festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Venice, Tribeca, Locarno, SXSW, Chicago, Palm Springs, SFFILM, AFI DOCS, IDFA, DOC NYC, CPH: DOX, Tokyo, Sydney, Melbourne, Viennale, Jerusalem, among others. In 2009, Marc founded 13th Gen, a San Francisco-based boutique entertainment company that works with a dynamic range of independent film partners globally to oversee the financing, production, post-production, marketing, sales, and distribution efforts of a vibrant portfolio of films and filmmakers. With talent development as its focus, the company is typically involved in some 10-15 projects concurrently and has successfully advanced Marc’s career-long commitment to powerful social issue filmmaking across all genres. In 2016, Marc received one of the prestigious Gotham Fellowships to attend the Cannes Film Festival’s Producers Network, marking him as one of the USA’s most influential independent film producers.
Rachel Leah Jones is an award-winning nonfiction filmmaker whose critically acclaimed work has centered on Israel/Palestine and the interrelated struggles for social and political justice. She is best known for her films ADVOCATE (Sundance FF, 2019), which won an Emmy for Best Documentary and was shortlisted for the Oscars; GYPSY DAVY (Sundance FF, 2012); ASHKENAZ (San Francisco Jewish FF 2007; San Franciso Arab FF 2007); and 500 DUNAM ON THE MOON (Human Rights Watch FF, 2002). A documentary branch member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Rachel, currently based between Tel Aviv and Marseille, is also the writer/producer of COEXISTENCE, MY ASS! (Sundance FF, 2025). All of her films, without exception, have played at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.
Maya Cueva is a Jewish-Latina, award-winning director and producer with a background in documentary, radio, and audio producing. She was a 2023 JFI Filmmaker in Residence and a Netflix Nonfiction Director and Producer Fellow. Her work has been featured on The New Yorker, NPR, The Atlantic, Teen Vogue, and National Geographic. Cueva received a student Emmy for her short filmThe Providerand her feature film,On the Divide, premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. And was broadcast on POV PBS in 2022. Her most recent short documentaryAle Librewas acquired by The New Yorker and has screened at Big Sky Documentary Festival, Hot Docs, AspenFilm Festival, and SFFILM. She lives and works in Berkeley, CA.
Sayed Kashua is a singular presence on Israel’s cultural landscape. One of the country’s foremost writers and intellectuals and the of author of four stellar novels – Dancing Arabs (2002), Let It Be Morning (2006), Second Person Singular (2010), Track Changes (2017), all of them translated into English – he is also the creator of some of Israel’s most popular sitcoms, the brilliantly satirical Arab Labor and then The Writer. Kashua’s greatest renown (especially in the US), however, derives from his celebrated weekly column in Ha’aretz. Its humorous tone has taken on a dark edge in light of the recent tragedies. Kashua was at the University of Illinois first through the Israel Studies Project and then as a Visiting Clinical Professor from 2014-2018.