Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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2024 JFI Completion Grants
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2026 JFI Completion Grants
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Television Series

#ZoomChallahBake with Tiffany Shlain

Emmy-nominated filmmaker Tiffany Shlain has been doing a very popular #ZoomChallahBake every Friday since the pandemic began. Each week she brings on special guests to talk about everything from the pandemic to the protests to technology and art, all while making challah with people around the world. She’ll be doing a very special bake for Cinegogue Summer Days, featuring two special guests: Rabbi (/comedian) Sydney Mintz from the Bay Area and Prince Challah from Berlin. Don't worry if you have never made bread or challah before. She'll teach you. It's easy. It's healing. We all look forward to baking bread together! RSVP required for this free event!

1.2.1

About This Film

10% - What Makes a Hero?

Checkpoint (SFJFF 2004) and Defamation (SFJFF 2009) established Israeli documentarian Yoav Shamir as an unapologetic provocateur. Michael Moore executive produced the filmmaker’s newest film, a globetrotting quest to identify the shared characteristics of heroic individuals. From a bonobo preserve in Congo to the suburban home of a Flemish woman whose family harbored Jews during WWII, Shamir takes viewers on a fascinating journey that is sure to spark thoughtful conversation and passionate debate.

100 Children

Lena Kuchlar Silverman knew that all you need is love. At the end of World War II, this extraordinary Polish Jewish woman gathered 100 Jewish orphans in Krakow and loved them back to life.

100 Voices: A Journey Home

Most American Jews come from Poland, notes Cantor Nathan Lam, who led an assembly of American cantors on a goodwill trip to sing at the Warsaw Opera House. “Jewish life itself was defined in Poland.” Yet the Holocaust, which took place mostly on Polish soil, left Jewish culture there all but eradicated. This fascinating, heartwarming chronicle of the cantors’ 2009 trip combines a surprising history lesson with a stirring message of reconciliation and homecoming.

112 Weddings

For 20 years independent filmmaker Doug Block (51 Birch Street, SFJFF 2006) toiled not only as an acclaimed documentary director and producer but also as a part-time wedding videographer. Block revisits a dozen of the wise and sometimes weathered husbands and wives he captured on their big day to reflect on the complicated reality of “happily ever after.” A funny, frank and fascinating film that explores the secret of what makes a lasting partnership.

116 Cameras

As the Holocaust survivor community ages, the USC Shoah Foundation has embarked on an ambitious new project to transform survivors into 3-D digital projections that will interact with generations to come. 116 Cameras follows Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, as she goes through this unique process and reflects on how her role as a Holocaust speaker has changed over time.

119 Bullets + 3

About This Film

1341 Frames of Love and War

Celebrated war photographer Micha Bar-Am shares his vast archive of 500,000 photos and his reflections on the psychological and personal toll of bearing witness to multiple wars.

1341 Frames of Love and War

With unique access to an extraordinary archive of over half a million negatives and documents spanning from 1930’s Germany to today, 1341 Frames of Love and War tells the story of Israel’s most celebrated war photographer, Micha Bar-Am.

17 Rue Saint Fiacre

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18-J

When a deadly explosion ripped through a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994, it made headlines, but the case was never fully investigated and never solved. More than a decade later, in an effort to reclaim the tragedy from oblivion, 10 noted Argentinean filmmakers offer their personal responses in an anthology of short films, a kaleidoscope of visual and narrative interpretations that is by turns reflective, dramatic, wistful, investigative, beautiful and sad.

1919

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1945

In this astonishingly haunting film, deep undercurrents run beneath the simple surface in a quaint village that's ultimately forced to face up to its "ill-gotten gains" from the Second World War.

1968 Happy New Year

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200 Meters - SFJFF41 Centerpiece Narrative

A Palestinian father embarks on a perilous journey to reach his hospitalized son in this tense yet tender family drama about the human toll of oppression.

200 Meters | Centerpiece Narrative (Castro)

A Palestinian father embarks on a perilous journey to reach his hospitalized son in this tense yet tender family drama about the human toll of oppression.

21 Portraits

Photographer Jeff Cohen uncovers 21 portraits shot in San Francisco 50 years ago and embarks on a poignant journey to reconnect with, and re-photograph, his aging subjects.

212

An almost ordinary winter day in the life of 62-year-old Doron, director of a municipal elderly citizens’ home in Jerusalem – rain; someone takes his reserved parking spot, and Bela Schorr, the occupant of room 212, passed away this morning.

24 Days

The 1986 kidnapping of 24-year-old Ilan Halimi by a suburban Parisian gang of thugs became a cause célèbre because of the anti-Semitic nature of the crime. This thriller based on the true events is expertly helmed by Alexandre Arcady and focuses on the police team and the ransom calls that are the detectives’ only clue to the kidnappers’ psychology. Ilan’s mother has another clue, one that the authorities are regretfully too slow to recognize.

306 Hollywood

Brother and sister filmmakers conduct an obsessive archeological dig through their deceased grandmother’s treasured mementos.

31 Candles

At 31, Leo Kadner begins studying for his bar mitzvah when he learns his former camp crush, Eva Shapiro, is in Manhattan working as a Torah tutor for kids.

32 Pills: My Sister's Suicide

In this heartfelt documentary director Hope Litoff struggles with her own demons as she explores the life and death of her sister, Ruth Litoff. A gifted photographer, Ruth was as lovely as the artwork she created, but she struggled with mental illness throughout her life. The film charts Hope’s excavation of the belongings that Ruth left behind and Hope’s journey of exploration to learn more about her older sister.

38 Vienna After The Fall

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400 Miles to Freedom

Preceded by Panta RheiAvishai Mekonen’s documentary celebrates the diversity of the Jewish diaspora as the director recounts his own extraordinary story. An Ethiopian Jew who suffered terrible childhood trauma while fleeing his homeland, Mekonen grew up in Israel only to be questioned about his faith. As he talks to rabbis of Ugandan, Korean, and Latin American descent on a similar quest for acceptance, his dogged curiosity makes for a refreshing meditation on identity and religion. [MINIGUIDE 72/70]

45th Anniversary Town Hall

Gather in community to discuss and contribute to the Jewish Film Institute’s vision for the future directly with organizational leaders.

5 Days

On August 15, 2005, Israeli defense forces were about to forcibly remove some 8,000 remaining Jewish settlers from their homes, schools, farms and synagogues in Gaza. This documentary gives us a front-row seat to the unfolding drama that many feared would cause catastrophic violence. Deploying eight camera crews simultaneously, Shamir gains unprecedented access to all sides of the confrontation as it happens.Followed in Berkeley by panel discussion.

50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. & Mrs. Kraus

Leaving their own young children behind, Jewish Americans Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus took it upon themselves to get 50 Jewish children out of Austria during WWII. This tense and compelling story, narrated by Alan Alda, is brought to life by detailed private journals and a trove of previously unseen color home movies.

500 Dunam on the Moon

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51 Birch Street

Veteran filmmaker Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents’ 54-year marriage was a good one, so he’s unprepared when, just a few months after his mother’s death, his father Mike announces that he’s moving to Florida to live with his former secretary. Spanning 60 years and three generations, Block’s superbly crafted documentary about his parents’ marriage eloquently shows what can happen when we question our most fundamental assumptions about family.

55 Socks

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575 Castro St.

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66 Was a Good Year for Tourism

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7 Day Gig

A punk, an old man and a chicken gather round for a makeshift shivah after Jay (a Romanian/Guamanian/Catholic/Jew) puts an ad on Craigslist looking for mourners to join him.

70 Hester Street

SNEAK PREVIEWFilmmaker Casimir Nozkowski creates an elegy to his childhood home, a 140-year-old building that was formerly a synagogue, a distillery and a factory. The director casts a whimsical eye on the past, present and future of the structure and inquires into the nature of memory and urban development.[plays with Dealing with the Devil]

72 Virgins

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