Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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Filtered By: USA Clear All

The Binding of Itzik

A middle aged Hasidic bookbinder searching for binding materials stumbles across an ad offering 'binding lessons for submissive women,' which he answers, becoming entangled in an online BDSM relationship that threatens to unravel his quiet life.

Birth of a Community: Jews and the Gold Rush

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Black Hat

A pious Hasidic man (Adam Silver) living a secret double life misplaces his hat one night, which will cause his two separate lives to collide in a way he never imagined.

Black to the Promised Land

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Blacks and Jews

A groundbreaking documentary about Black/Jewish relations in America produced by a Black/Jewish filmmaking team, Blacks and Jews goes behind explosive headlines to look at how the media shapes and foments conflict. The film features penetrating interviews with Clayborne Carson, Michael Lerner, Salim Muwakkil, Letty Cottin Pogrebin and Cornel West.

Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh

Hannah Senesh was a Hungarian Jewish resistance fighter, an optimist in the face of dire circumstances and a poet. Roberta Grossman’s first-rate documentary Blessed Is the Match, narrated by three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen, is a paean to Hannah Senesh’s courage and creativity. This inspirational film features gorgeous images of parachutes floating gracefully in the air, like Senesh’s poem “Blessed Is the Match,” written days before her capture by the Nazis.

Bloomers

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Blue and White in Red Square

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Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes

The preeminent jazz label was founded by Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany who respected authenticity over profits.

Blue Vinyl

Activist filmmaker Judith Helfand does not look the other way when a potential toxin gets too close to home. When her Jewish parents affix vinyl siding to their suburban abode, she gets suspicious. Taking a personal comedic approach, directors Helfand and Gold uncover the impact of vinyl manufacturing and disposal on the atmosphere, the food chain and humans, not a pretty picture. You will never look at plastic the same way again.

Blues by the Beach

When Jack Baxter and Joshua Faudem chose to make a documentary about Mike’s Place, an Anglo-American blues club on a Tel Aviv beach, they figured the boozy international hangout would show a side of Israel different from the all-too-familiar images of terrorism and conflict. But when Mike’s Place is bombed in a suicide attack, their film turns into an unexpectedly vivid account of coping with daily life in the wake of violence.

Blumenthal

The presence of famed New York playwright Harold Blumenthal looms over everyone in the weeks following his unexpected death, but life goes on for his family. In attempting to distinguish between the forces they do and don’t have control over, the Blumenthals address the feelings that are holding them back from fulfillment. Writer, director and co-star Seth Fisher delivers a charming, low-key dark comedy with endearing, heartfelt performances.

Bobbi Jene

“I want to get to that place where I have no strength to hide anything.” After a decade of stardom in Israel as part of the illustrious Batsheva Dance Company, dancer/choreographer Bobbi Jene Smith at age 30 pursues a solo career in the U.S. Winner of the Best Documentary prize at the Tribeca Film Festival, Bobbi Jene is a portrait of a dancer which is as unflinching, wondrous and embarrassing as life itself.

Bobby Fischer Against the World

Liz Garbus’s outstanding doc takes us on Fischer’s journey from Jewish child prodigy to world chess master to virulent anti-Semite. Centering on his famous 1972 World Championship match with Boris Spassky, the film plays out like a taut Cold War drama. More than a career biography of the man considered by many to be the greatest chess player ever, this is a complex, fascinating study of genius and madness joined at the hip.

Body and Soul

The quintessential boxing classic. Jewish boxer Charlie Davis (John Garfield in an Oscar-nominated performance) has fought his way out of poverty to become middleweight champion. But the corrupt world of professional boxing and his own lust for money and fame have nearly destroyed everything he has worked for. In Abraham Polonsky’s riveting screenplay, Charlie must choose between redemption and self-destruction. —Mike Silver

Body and Soul: An American Bridge

“Body and Soul” is the pinnacle of soulful jazz, the most recorded jazz tune ever. Contrary to expectations, it was composed, not by an African American, but by Johnny Green, a Jew. Filmmaker Robert Philipson uses the example of “Body and Soul” to make a larger case: For decades Jews and Blacks found a “bridge” between their cultures through songs about suffering, and the journey was an inspired collaboration.

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Notorious for a nude scene in the 1933 film Ecstasy, Hedy Lamarr became a sex symbol for the ages and achieved top stardom in Hollywood. But her deeper passion had to do with mechanics and technology. She was obsessed with creating useful inventions to benefit mankind, and her inventions were predecessors of wi-fi, bluetooth and cell phones. Spurned as too beautiful to be smart, she nonetheless upended stereotypes and serves as a role model to this day.

Book of Days

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Bookends

When Nate moves in with his grandparents after a bad breakup with his boyfriend, the two generations' life experiences, values, and philosophies collide in exasperating, funny, and heartbreaking ways.

Born Kicking

Queer photographer Jill Posener’s fearless compulsion to document provides us with intimate views of radical feminist London, Bay Area 90s lesbian culture, and contemporary unhoused East Bay communities. A lifelong rebel, she has always felt “at odds”, and now contemplates where she may fit for her final chapter.

The Boy Downstairs

Zosia Mamet of GIRLS fame stars in this twentysomething romantic comedy that borrows the aesthetic and location of the popular HBO show. Mamet plays Diana, an aspiring writer who moves back to New York City after living in London. Three years ago she left behind mensch and loving boyfriend Ben (Matthew Shear). Now she returns to discover that he lives in the apartment below hers. Things are about to get complicated.

Brave Miss World

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Breaking Home Ties | Live Score

Presented on the big screen with a live score, this restored silent film from 1922 was produced by Jewish filmmakers to counteract antisemitism.

Brian Becker: Meet Me At The Mall

"Meet Me At The Mall" traces the rise, fall, and potential reinvention of the most quintessentially American habitat: the enclosed shopping mall.

A Bridge of Books

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Brighton Beach

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Bring Your Own Brigade

Raging, out-of-control wildfires have become part of the new normal around the globe, leaving heartbreaking devastation and death in their wake. In California, this harsh reality was underscored on November 8, 2018, when several parts of the state were ablaze—the Camp Fire destroying most of the Northern California town of Paradise and the Woolsey Fire roaring through Malibu in the south. In the aftermath, residents face unthinkable loss. As they struggle to rebuild, they debate what could be done to prevent further tragedy.

Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy

From Rodgers and Hammerstein to the Gershwins to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim the roll call of composers who defined a particular American cultural genre known as musical theater might read like a synagogue board of directors list. A highly entertaining and compelling documentary about the Jewish composers who essentially invented a new American art form: the Broadway musical. Narrated by Joel Grey.

Broken Bird

A Bat Mitzvah girl caught in the middle finds a way to enter adulthood.

Brooklyn: Among the Ruins

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Brundibar

Douglas Wolfsperger’s inspiring documentary Brundibár has a wonderfully novelistic texture. Youth educator Uta Plate brings actors for her Berlin production of this Czech children’s opera to Terezin together with Greta Klingsberg, who played the lead role in the Theresienstadt concentration camp as a 13-year-old, before being shipped to Auschwitz. The forthright and spirited Klingsberg, one of the few remaining original actors, inspires today’s cast members, themselves outsiders in German society.

Bubbeh Lee and Me

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Budrus

When Palestinian Ayed Morrar learned the Israeli security barrier would veer from the border separating Israel and the Palestinian territories, and would instead cut through his West Bank village, he decided to organize, galvanizing both Palestinians and Israelis in an effective strategy of nonviolent protest. This groundbreaking documentary neither romanticizes nor demonizes the many viewpoints it reveals, instead capturing with raw intensity the power of ordinary people fighting peaceably for change.

Bugsy

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel has a dream—or is it a mirage?—of a casino named the Flamingo rising out of the Nevada desert. What Siegel doesn’t gamble on are construction delays or falling in love, and he falls hard for actress Virginia Hill (played to perfection by Annette Bening). Warren Beatty’s tour de force performance as the sexy, psychotic New York gangster shines among excellent turns by Ben Kingsley and Harvey Keitel.

Bulldozer

An under-medicated, chronically impassioned young woman lurches from crisis to crisis—of her own making.

Bulletproof Stockings

Perl and Dalia make waves creating Bulletproof Stockings, the first all-female Hasidic rock band. They challenge gender norms as their global attention increases but their diverging visions and ideologies threaten the band's unity and future.

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