Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

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Emotional Arithmetic

In bucolic Eastern Quebec, Melanie Winters (Susan Sarandon) nervously awaits a reunion with a hero from her traumatic childhood spent in Drancy, a Nazi transit camp outside Paris. Melanie’s husband (Christopher Plummer) thinks the reunion is a bad idea for his emotionally fragile wife: “A storm is coming,” he warns. And storm it does, as the visitor (the peerless Max von Sydow) arrives with an unexpected guest (Gabriel Byrne), forcing all to examine the mysterious scars the past has left behind. Emotional Arithmetic is a lush and poignant drama of love and memory.

Empty Nest

Middle-aged playwright Leonardo Vindel (the marvelous Oscar Martínez) descends into a world where fantasy and reality interlace. Facing the collapse of his marriage to the gorgeous Martha (Pedro Almodóvar star Cecilia Roth), Vindel peoples his world with a stageful of imagined characters and a May-December extramarital affair. Noted Argentine director Daniel Burman takes us on a psychic journey from the bustle of Buenos Aires to the timeless Dead Sea.

An Encounter with Simone Weil

Documentarian Julia Haslett turns her lens on French philosopher Simone Weil, one of the great thinkers of the 20th century, who was raised by a secular Jewish family and lived during the rise of Fascism in Europe. Haslett eloquently traces Weil’s intellectual identity as it shifted over time; Weil was a trade unionist, a Marxist, an anti-Stalinist, a pacifist, a fighter in the Spanish Civil War and a Christian-influenced mystic.

End Of Innocence: June 19th, 1953

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The End of Meat

This provocative documentary asks, “What would the world look like if we didn’t eat meat?”

Enemies: A Love Story

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The Entertainer

Toby Jones is wonderful as a party entertainer and former TV presenter who has an emotional meltdown while working at Charlotte Cohen’s Bat Mitzvah.

Erica Jong - Breaking The Wall

Bestselling Jewish-American author Erica Jong reflects on her life-long career, inspiring advocacy work and role as an international feminist icon.

Escape From Suburbia

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Escape Route to Marseilles

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Escape to the Rising Sun

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Escaping Riga

In the style of Guy Maddin, this playful and imaginative hybrid documentary finds unexpectedly clever parallels between the lives of Riga’s most famous offspring: the revolutionary Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein and historical philosopher Isaiah Berlin. An enchanting mediation on art, history and exile, director Davis Simanis’s handcrafted concoction reimagines the lives of two modern figures who managed to escape his Baltic birthplace while he ponders the circumstances that have kept him there.

Escapism

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Estate

Assaf inherits a house from a father he never knew. When he invites Miriam—a homeless woman living in the backyard—inside, a quiet battle begins that will change both him and the house forever.

Esther Broner - A Weave Of Women

Prolific writer, passionate activist, dedicated scholar and pioneering feminist, Esther Broner indelibly shaped modern Jewish history, and yet, most people have never heard of her. In the mid-1970s, Broner created a radical new Haggadah for a new era, one that shifted the focus onto women, transforming the Passover service into a powerful reclamation of women’s lives, and, as Lilly Rivlin’s inspiring portrait documents, would empower generations of Jewish women.

Esther Kahn

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Etgar Keret: Based on a True Story

A quirky portrait of one of Israel’s most beloved writers and humorists.

Eugene's Valet

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Eva Ilona Brzeski: Daughterland

A father attempts to hide his mysterious past for his whole life. His daughter spends 35 years trying to get him to share his secrets.

Eve (Natalie Portman short)

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An Evening with Tommy Dorfman

Join author, actor, and filmmaker Tommy Dorfman for a reading from her new book Maybe This Will Save Me: A Memoir of Art, Addiction and Transformation.

Every Day The Impossible: Jewish Women in the Partisans

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Every Face Has a Name

This beautiful film ponders identity and survival. Concentration camp survivors watch film footage of their arrival into the port of Malmo, Sweden and relive the euphoria of liberation. Their stories are juxtaposed against the plight of refugees today fleeing violence in North Africa. In the process we’re reminded that war is still with us and that compassion demands we extend aid when we can. The question is, will we?

Every Time We Say Goodbye

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Every Tuesday: A Portrait of The New Yorker Cartoonists

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Everything I Own

As his parents prepare to divorce, filmmaker Andrew Garbus turns the camera on his family and himself, unearthing long buried trauma, unresolved guilt, and the elusive hope of healing over one agonizing, revelatory week.

Everything is Fine

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Evgueni Khaldei: A Photographer Under Stalin

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The Exchange

When a man’s routine and predictable life subtly shift unexpectedly, his newborn sense of wonder and curiosity lead to more and more bizarre social experiments which in turn lead to questions about his marriage, his life and his very existence. Erin Kolorin’s black comedy follow-up to his charming 2007 debut, The Band’s Visit, is completely different but no less impressive and totally original. [MINIGUIDE 63/70]

Exodus Sidebar Panel Discussion

Following the Castro screening of Stranger in Paradise, SFJFF is pleased to present a panel discussion on the refugee and immigration crisis with Mark Hetfield, Executive Director of HIAS; Amy Weiss, Director of Refugee and Immigrant Services, Jewish Family & Community Services East Bay; Subhi Nahas, Syrian refugee and LGBTQ activist and moderated by Michael Krasny, host of KQED's Forum.

Expulsion and Memory: Descendants of the Hidden Jews

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Eyes Wide Open

What does Israel mean to American Jews today? Veteran filmmaker Paula Weiman-Kelman looks beyond Israel’s ubiquitous bus tours to explore the complex relationship between the American Jewish community and the 60-year-old Jewish state.

Ezekiel's Wheels

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The F Word

Nicole Opper (JFI Filmmaker in Residence) and her partner Kristan are an Oakland-based queer couple who want to adopt a kid. This comedic doc web series chronicles their journey into the foster care system to become fost-adopt parents. They bumble through a bizarre and bureaucratic maze in order to learn everything they can about the troubled institution on which they are staking their dreams of parenthood. Screens with The Guys Next Door

Facing Fear

As a 13-year-old, Matthew Boger was thrown out of his home for being gay. While living on the streets of Hollywood, he was savagely beaten in a back alley by a group of neo-Nazis. Twenty-five years later, Boger finds himself in a chance meeting with the same neo-Nazi.

Facing the Wall

Surni, 14, wakes up to the first day without her love, Eli. She is at an Israeli absorption center. She keeps her eyes and ears closed and won’t leave her bed, trying to shut out her new reality and pretending she never left Ethiopia. Screens with Levinsky Park

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