Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

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Filtered By: USA Clear All

The Village of Peace

An engrossing documentary portrait of African Americans who left their home in Chicago in the late 1960s and migrated to the Negev desert where they now refer to themselves as African-Hebrew Israelites, heeding Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to embark upon an exodus to the Promised Land. The thriving utopian community bases itself on teachings from the Torah and practices polygamy, natural birth, veganism and a rigorous adherence to physical and emotional health.

Vilna

About This Film

The Violin Upstairs

A short animated documentary that tells the story of the previous owners of the filmmaker's violin.

Vishneva, Belarus Soviet Union Poland

Silent images from the interview of a Holocaust survivor superimposed with typed memories describe the unspoken pain borne by a father and son through more than half a century.

Vishniac

This breathtaking and exceptionally well-crafted documentary about Russian-Jewish photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) captures his transformation from a free-spirited scientist in Berlin to one of the world’s greatest photographers.

Voices from the Attic

About This Film

Voyage of the Damned

Haunting in its relevance for today’s refugee crisis, this star-studded 1976 film evokes the hopes and fears of a people uprooted from their homes en route to a promised land on the MS St. Louis, the ship that brought 937 Jews escaping Germany on the eve of the Shoah in 1939 to the shores of Cuba, where they are forbidden to disembark (only to then be similarly rejected by the United States and Canada)

Wandering Rabbi

A young, traveling rabbi makes his way through the American South, struggling to breathe life back into dwindling rural Jewish congregations.

Wannabe

About This Film

War Against the Weak

The pseudoscience of eugenics—selective breeding for “improvement” of the human species—infamously fed Nazi state policy up to the genocide. But eugenics has American roots, and this stimulating and engrossing documentary traces this international history with cinematic verve and chilling insight. Complicating the usual accounting of right and left, reactionary and progressive, War Against the Weak deepens our understanding of the underlying motors of change in Western civilization’s fraught social evolution.

Watchers of the Sky

About This Film

The Wax and the Wicks

About This Film

Encore Screening: We Met at Grossinger's

Encore screening added by popular demand. 'We Met at Grossinger's' is an immersive journey through the vibrant history of the Grossinger's Resort Hotel, a landmark of the Catskills—known as the Borscht Belt—that played a pivotal role in shaping Jewish American identity and culture.

We Should Eat

When Agi gathers her family for a school identity project over dinner, they rethink who they are and what they want to eat.

Weapons of the Spirit

About This Film

The Wedding Entertainer (or The Tale of Moishe Badhan)

To get the funds to marry off his own child, a disgraced Hasidic wedding-comedian must fight to reclaim his former glory in Gidi Dar’s hilarious caper.

The Wedding Entertainer: SFJFF46 Audience Award

Winner of the SFJFF46 Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. To get the funds to marry off his own child, a disgraced Hasidic wedding-comedian must fight to reclaim his former glory in Gidi Dar’s hilarious caper.

Wednesdays In Mississippi

Wednesdays in Mississippi is the little-known story of the first-ever all-women national civil rights program, whose multifaith Northern Black and White women citizen activist teams flew into deadly Mississippi during Freedom Summer in 1964, clandestinely supporting integration efforts, and local Black women’s leadership to seed community economic and educational empowerment.

Welcome to Leith

In 2010 the attempted takeover of a tiny rural North Dakota town by notorious anti-Semite Craig Cobb ignited a national media frenzy. Filmmakers Michael Nichols and Christopher Walker captured the rising tension between machine gun–toting racists and pistol-packing residents leading to Cobb’s armed street patrol that took events to their inexorable conclusion. This chilling document powerfully highlights the rise of hate groups and the often questionable methods used to silence them. TL

The Well (Der Brunem)

About This Film

Wendy's Shabbat

A group of Jewish Senior citizens celebrate the weekly Sabbath (Shabbat) at the local Wendy’s fast food restaurant with Hebrew blessings along with burgers and fries.

West Bank Story

Nothing is sacred in this parody of a musical comedy, set in the fast-food world of competing falafel stands in the West Bank. David, an Israeli soldier, falls in love with Fatima, the beautiful Palestinian cashier at the neighboring chickpea purveyor. This Sundance hit would have Shakespeare and Leonard Bernstein either spinning in their graves--or tapping their toes.

West of Hester Street

About This Film

What Cheer?

About This Film

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael | Local Spotlight

Pauline Kael is among the most famous and divisive film critics of all time. Her praise helped uplift the careers of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and others, while her putdowns left lasting wounds. She was a pioneering woman in a male chauvinistic world. This nuanced portrait captures her complexity while revisiting late-twentieth-century cinema through her lens, using ample film clips, never-before-seen archival, wide-ranging interviews and her writings voiced by Sarah Jessica Parker.

What's in a Name

Director Daniel Robin is mistakenly booked for a flight under the name Robinowitz (which was actually his grandfather’s name). This coincidence leads him to examine his Jewish identity.

When Harry Met Sally...

Harry and Sally have known each other for years and are very good friends, but they fear that sex would ruin the friendship. Reprise screening – SFJFF 2011!

When I Live My Life Over Again

Paul Lombard (Christopher Walken) was a successful crooner in the style of Sinatra and is plotting his comeback. His daughter, Jude (Amber Heard), sings jingles for a living. Paul’s ambition appalls her almost as much as her lack of ambition maddens him. When I Live My Life Over Again mines the timeless subjects of fame, chance, success, and the point at which you can no longer blame your parents for the choices you make.

When I Was 14: A Survivor Remembers

About This Film

When You Wish Upon a Weinstein

Peter, wanting to make his son Jewish so he will grow up smart, takes him to Vegas for a quickie bar mitzvah. Highlights include Peter singing “I Need a Jew” and send-ups of Seinfeld, Woody Allen, The Graduate and William Shatner as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof.

White Bird

When famous artist Sara Blum (Helen Mirren) confronts her grandson’s bullying behavior, his unrepentant demeanor provokes her to recount her experience as a Jewish girl in an occupied French village during World War II.

White: A Memoir in Color

Preceded by Kings PointJoel Katz’s (Strange Fruit, SFJFF 2002) insightful personal essay ponders what it means to be white in America. When Katz and his wife are asked to select a race preference for the child they wish to adopt, they begin a quest to understand the difficult notion of identity. After the half-Black, half-white adopted daughter is born, they grapple with the idea of bringing her up in an largely white community. [MINIGUIDE 70/70]

Who Killed Alex Odeh?

The assassination of a beloved Palestinian American activist in Southern California ignites a 40-year quest for justice, revealing the roots of a dangerous political movement that thrives today.

Who Shall Live And Who Shall Die

A documentary on the political battle that took place in the United States. to prevent the extermination of the Jews during World War II. Interviews with policy makers, Jewish leaders, and survivors are combined with archival footage, government documents, and photographs.

Who Will Write Our History

PALO ALTO OPENING NIGHT: A group of Warsaw ghetto activists secretly collected diaries and photographs that told their history.

Who's the Caboose?

This mockumentary (in the tradition of WAITING FOR GUTHMAN, LIVING IN OBLIVION and THIS IS SPINAL TAP) is a delightfully scathing send-up of L.A.’s comedy biz. Susan, a 20-something New Yorker goes out west for "pilot season,"

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