Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
2020 JFI Completion Grants
2021 Filmmakers in Residence
2021 JFI Completion Grants
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2022 JFI Completion Grants
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2023 JFI Completion Grants
2024 Filmmakers in Residence
2024 JFI Completion Grants
2025 Filmmakers in Residence
2025 JFI Completion Grants
2026 Filmmakers in Residence
2026 JFI Completion Grants
Cinegogue Summer Days
JFI Filmmakers in Residence
JFI/JSP Momentum Awards
Pre-2020 Filmmaker In Residence
SFJFF 1981
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Language

Albanian
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Silent Film w/ English Intertitles
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Film Type

Animation
Documentary
Episodic
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Feature
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Television Series

Filtered By: USA Clear All

Episodic Spotlight: Hal & Harper

Hal, Harper, and their dad trace their family’s evolution, uncovering how their deep bond shapes—and complicates—their relationships with others.

Half-Remembered Stories

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Hand On the Pulse

HAND ON THE PULSE is the inspiring story of Joan Nestle, Co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York; political and sexual renegade; teacher and activist. The film follows Nestle’s development from 1950s Bronx girl to Greenwich Village critical thinker. preceded by MAIDELES WITH ATTITUDE, a program of shorts. Check out THE GREAT YIDDISH LOVE, a fabricated love story with voice over by Molly Picon.

Hava Nagila (The Movie)

What is heard at bar mitzvahs and Jewish weddings, late at night in the bars of Reykjavik, outside the National Museum in Tehran and on the streets of Managua? “Hava Nagila”! Now the song has its own movie—a foot-tapping celebration of 100 years of Jewish culture and spirituality. Together with a brilliant cast of characters that includes Connie Francis, Harry Belafonte, Leonard Nimoy and even Glenn Campbell, we travel with “Hava” around the world. Hava Nagilah (The Movie) peels back the rich history, mystery and meaning of the song which is “kitschy, but oh so profound.” [MINIGUIDE 96/100]

Havana Curveball

What does it mean to become a man on the occasion of your bar mitzvah? Bay Area filmmakers Marcia Jarmel and Ken Schneider (Return of Sarah’s Daughters, SFJFF 1997) follow their thirteen-year-old Mica as he struggles to make good on his commitment to deliver baseball equipment to kids in Cuba. Eventually, he gets to play ball in Cuba as well as experience the satisfactions and disappointments associated with being a benefactor to those less fortunate. preceded by Some vacation.[

Havana Nagila

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A Healthy Baby Girl

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Heart of Stone

Before 1960, predominantly Jewish Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, graduated some of the top students in the country. By 2000, the school had devolved into a breeding ground for gang violence in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. Heart of Stone is a moving portrait of a bold principal who reaches into the school’s successful past to give his students a hopeful future.

Heather Booth: Changing the World

“The most influential person you never heard of” Heather Booth is an organizer who has been at the center of almost every social movement of the past 50 years. From registering Mississippi voters during the 1964 Freedom Summer to joining Elizabeth Warren in the fight against Wall Street banks, Booth has been a formidable force for change. Filmmaker Lilly Rivlin (Grace Paley: Collected Shorts, SFJFF 2010) creates a compelling portrait of an inspiring activist.

The Hedonist

After a nervous breakdown, a young office assistant flees to his parents’ house in Arizona and hires an escort to take care of him.

Take Action Spotlight: Heightened Scrutiny

Amid the surge in anti-trans legislation that Chase Strangio battles in the courtroom, he must also confront media bias, exposing how narratives in the press influence public perception and the fight for transgender rights.

Heir to an Execution

Ivy Meeropol’s compelling debut documentary about her grandparents Julius and Ethel Rosenberg is fascinating. She interviews Rosenberg contemporaries, but the most intimate and raw moments are with the director’s father and uncle. In a family that was ruptured by execution, orphaning of children, and the conspiracy of silence by relatives, Meeropol’s film is a fierce and compassionate reclamation of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as people. Ivy Meeropol and Michael Meeropol in person in San Francisco and Berkeley.

Hello I Must be Going

Celebrated character actress Melanie Lynskey (Heavenly Creatures, television’s Two and Half Men) gives a breakout performance as Amy Minsky, a thirtysomething divorcee, back under the suburban Connecticut roof of her parents (a wonderful Blythe Danner and John Rubenstein). Spending her days in sweatpants watching old Marx Brothers movies, Amy has put her life on hold, waiting for something or someone to ignite the spark lacking in her life.Sundance 2012, Opening Night Film[MINIGUIDE 68/70]

Henri Dauman: Looking Up

As one of the preeminent photographers of the 20th century, self-taught Henri Dauman took the international photojournalism scene by storm with his cinematic images that redefined the methods of capturing historical icons. Leaving behind his past as an orphaned Holocaust survivor, Dauman created a new life for himself in New York City, where his timeless style quickly gained momentum amidst high society and celebrity culture. Exploring both the photographer's traumatic past and the contrasting vibrancy of the city that would define his work, director Peter Jones's film is a testament to the resilience and perseverance of the man behind the camera.

Here One Day

Nina Williams Leichter, the brilliant wife of a New York state senator, committed suicide by jumping from her apartment window. Years later, her daughter, filmmaker Kathy Leichter, returns to her parent’s home and discovers audiocassettes in which her mother reveals the extent of her mental anguish. This powerful personal statement threads together the disparate strands of Williams’ sorrow, ultimately becoming a moving evocation of life itself.

Herskovits At the Heart of Blackness

Three different narratives of Israel’s 1948 war of independence unfold side by side through the images of a British photojournalist, a Zionist movie producer and a Palestinian photographer. Preceded by Herskovits At the Heart of Blackness, a fascinating, visually innovative biography revealing the pioneering work and controversial legacy of American Jewish anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, a towering scholar often credited with inventing the field of African studies in the 1920s through the 50s.

Hester Street

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Hey Workers!

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Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust

This astute and masterful documentary explores post-Holocaust questions of faith and a father’s hope for a more tolerant world. Daum and his wife Rivka undertake a journey to Poland with their sons, both of whom are married Orthodox yeshiva students living in Jerusalem. The Daums are seeking traces of their families’ history, including the Polish family who hid Rivka’s father during WWII.

High Five

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High Street

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Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School

Shulamit Izen knew she was a lesbian in ninth grade. Her sexuality put her at odds with the administration of her Boston-area Jewish high school and her interpretation of her religion. Rather than give up her Judaism, Shulamit questions it. Thus begins a dramatic clash between this confident young woman, other students and the religious policy commission of the school.

His People

Silent classic with jazz score performed live! Join us for a one-time-only musical event: a silent Jewish boxing classic, accompanied by Paul Shapiro’s New York-based jazz sextet performing his new film score. HIS PEOPLE is a nostalgic and entertaining tale of life on the Lower East Side of New York, circa 1925. Two sons of poor immigrant parents take very different paths in their efforts to achieve the American dream. One becomes a lawyer and the other a professional boxer. Themes of love, loyalty, tradition and assimilation permeate this silent gem. Paul Shapiro’s Yiddish-inflected jazz score performed at the Castro makes this a special musical evening.

Hitmakers: The Teens Who Stole Pop Music

A bunch of Jewish kids from Brooklyn jump-started the music business in the 1960s, and it’s never been the same. Hitmakers is a fabulously entertaining look at the amazing convergence of talent at Manhattan’s Brill Building, including songwriters Carole King, Gerry Goffin, Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, and Neil Sedaka. These were magical years, when smart kids from Brooklyn hopped the subway into Manhattan with crumpled song sheets, swept along by the passion and raw energy of rock ‘n roll.

Holden Kepecs: Star in the Ring

Documentary film that tells the story of the time when Jews dominated the sport of boxing.

Centerpiece Documentary: Holding Liat

After Liat Beinin Atzili is kidnapped on October 7, 2023, her Israeli American family faces their own conflicting perspectives as they fight for her release.

Holidaze

This triptych of stories from SFJFF’s New Jewish Filmmaking Project, produced by Citizen Film (see page xx), 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.

Take Action Spotlight: Hollywood Does Abortion

Since the 1970s, depictions of abortion in film and television have both impacted and reflected shifting attitudes towards the procedure and those who choose it. This incisive documentary examines the undeniable impact that the American entertainment industry has had on that fight.

Holy Land

Gripping from start to finish, Holy Land documents the lives of those who call the West Bank home as you’ve never seen them before. Following three Israelis and three Palestinians, from an ultra-orthodox Jewish settler to a left-wing Israeli activist to a young Palestinian protestor, over the course of a year, this fascinating documentary paints a complex portrait of the people who live, fight and sometimes die for the land they consider holy.

Homage By Assassination

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A Home on the Range

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Hot Bagels

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Hot Sugar's Cold World

Using a sound recorder he never leaves home without, modern-day Mozart Nick Koenig (aka Hot Sugar) creates one-of-a-kind music made entirely out of sounds from the world around him. Director Adam Bhala Lough (Bomb the System) masterfully uses Hot Sugar’s recorded sounds in his own sound design for the film to fully orchestrate the cold world heard through Hot Sugar’s ears.

Hotel Berlin

This “grand hotel” ensemble drama brilliantly treats the end of Nazism in swanky surroundings. While bombs fall, high members of the Reich rush through the hotel plotting to "prepare better for the next war." Peter Lorre and Raymond Massey are memorable as Germans with treasonous secrets. Co-screenwriter Alvah Bessie dared to depict fascism as likely to survive the war--the kind of thinking that would later find him and others blacklisted.

Hotel Terminus: The Life and Time of Klaus Barbie

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The House I Live In

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