Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

2020 Filmmakers in Residence
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The Specialist

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A Specially Wonderful Affair

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The Speed Of The Distance Between Us

Meditations on parenting and the moving distance of memory from parents who have lost a child.

Spell Your Name

Co-produced by Steven Spielberg, this impressionistic documentary explores the fragile legacy of the Holocaust in Ukraine, crafted from survivors’ and rescuers’ testimonies preserved in the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education. Piecing together a history nearly erased, Sergey Bukovksy combines these testimonies with stunning contemporary images and archival footage into a visually poetic mashup of Eastern European Jewish history, personal witness, post-Soviet society and contemporary Ukraine.

The Spies Who Never Were

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Spring Chicken

Anny, a 94-year-old Holocaust survivor, loves dressing up for the Jewish holiday Purim. She is the champion of her Israeli retirement home’s costume contest since she moved in three years ago. Anny survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp and lost her parents in Auschwitz. This year, she decides to dress up as a chicken.

The Stage Is Ours

Nearly 50 Jewish actors, playwrights, and directors gather at Broadway's Lyceum Theatre to reflect on the history and meaning of Jewish theater.

Stalags--Holocaust and Pornography in Israel

In the 1960s, a new form of pulp lit emerged in Israel. With titles like I Was Colonel Schultz’s Private Bitch, the “Stalags” were cheap pocketbooks featuring camp prisoners sexually assaulted by buxom SS officers. Controversial and popular, they were condemned as porn. This documentary asks, what did they really mean?

Stalin Thought of You

A portrait of 105-year-old Russian political cartoonist Boris Efimov, whose pointed caricatures filled the pages of satirical magazines from Lenin’s time to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union, Kevin McNeer’s fascinating documentary relates the riveting tale of Efimov’s relationship with brutal dictator Josef Stalin and the tragic fall of his beloved brother, Mikhail. A dizzying, deeply moving chronicle of two siblings and one dictator whose crossed paths illuminate the story of a nation.

The Stamp Thief

Part mystery story and part comedic heist, “The Stamp Thief” is the surprising tale of how Gary, a risk-averse father of four and an original “Seinfeld” writer/producer, drops everything, enlists the help of a team of adventurous friends and filmmakers, and flies halfway around the world to attempt to find and rescue a priceless stamp collections collection the Nazi stole from concentration camp victims, buried somewhere in Poland.

The Stamp Thief

Part detective story, part heist film, The Stamp Thief investigates the tale of a Nazi who stole priceless stamp collections from Jews, then buried them in Poland—never to return.

Standing Silent

Standing Silent profiles the heroic efforts of Phil Jacobs, a reporter for the Baltimore Jewish Times, as he relentlessly pursues sexual predators, including prominent rabbis and community leaders, in Baltimore’s insular Orthodox Jewish community. However, rather than being celebrated for his efforts, Jacobs, an observant Jew, instead faces ostracism from a community more intent on shielding itself from external scrutiny than on protecting its young people from abuse.

Standing Up, Falling Down

An unlikely, multigenerational friendship between a failed comedian and a charming, alcoholic dermatologist helps both confront long-simmering regrets in this warm-hearted buddy comedy.

The Starfish Throwers

Three inspiring people from different corners of the world (South Carolina, Minneapolis, India) tackle the same global issue: hunger. A nine-year-old gardener, a retired school teacher and a former top chef are The Starfish Throwers, defying the cynicism of those around them while living and breathing the wisdom that we are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.

Starfish, The

The Starfish is the true story of a German-Jewish boy whose life was forever altered at the age of 10, when his parents sent him and his two older sisters to live with non-Jewish families in Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. After living in Sweden for two years, Herb Gildin and his sisters journeyed across Russia and the Pacific to be reunited with their parents as refugees in America. Focused on building his lighting business rather than dwelling on his past, decades went by before Herb told his wife and children about his childhood, resulting in one last journey back to Sweden to reunite with the remaining family members who had taken him in 60 years earlier.

Starring David

David is a 12-year-old highflier. He’s ambitious, witty and Jewish. “Well, almost Jewish,” he admits. His father is Jewish, but his mother is not, so according to Jewish law he’s not Jewish. David will attempt to change all that, of course, before his upcoming bar mitzvah.

State Against Mandela and the Others, The

2018 marks the centenary of Nelson Mandela's birth. He seized center stage during a historic trial in 1963 and 1964. But there were eight others who, like him, faced the death sentence. They too were subjected to pitiless cross-examinations. To a man they stood firm and turned the tables on the state: South Africa's apartheid regime was in the dock. Recently recovered archival recordings of those hearings transport us back into the thick of the courtroom battles.

Stay with Us

Acclaimed comedian Gad Elmaleh writes, directs, and stars in this gentle family comedy that puts him at odds with his loving but overbearing parents when he decides to convert to Catholicism.

Steal This Story, Please!

In an era of corporate news media consolidation, where divisive voices incite racial violence and entertainment trumps facts, Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! take us to the frontlines in the battle for truth and independence in journalism in this feature documentary.

Stefan Braun

Stefan Braun features fabulous archival footage of 1950s Tel Aviv gay life, immersing us in the world of charismatic furrier Stefan Braun and his longtime lover and employee Eliezer Rath.

Sterne (Stars)

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Steve Pressman: Holy Silence

HOLY SILENCE, a documentary film from Emmy-nominated director Steven Pressman, takes a fresh look at a topic that has sparked controversy for decades. During the years leading up to World War II, what was the Vatican's reaction to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany? And after the war began, how did the pope respond to the horrors of the Holocaust?

Still (Stille)

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A Still Small Voice

This documentary that centers on an aspiring chaplain in a New York hospital is a meditation on faith, loss and professional sustainability that finds hope and meaning in seemingly hopeless situations.

A Still Small Voice

An aspiring hospital chaplain begins a yearlong residency in spiritual care, only to discover that to successfully tend to her patients, she must look deep within herself.

Stitches

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The Story of Annette Zelman

In Nazi-occupied Paris, feisty Jewish artist Annette is engaged to an idealistic Catholic boy. His parents’ disapproval will have grave consequences in this drama based on actual events.

The Story of Chaim Rumkowski and The Jews of Lodz

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The Story of Esther

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The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich

Oscar winner Klaus Maria Brandauer (Mephisto, Out of Africa) is the eerily spot-on casting choice to play the controversial Jewish psychoanalyst and experimental scientist Wilhelm Reich. Austrian writer and director Antonin Svoboda focuses his moving biopic on the visionary doctor’s embattled later years, the paranoid Cold War era when Reich was hounded to death by the US government for his radical theories regarding sexual and ideological repression.

Strange Fruit

This film explores the history and legacy of the song of the same name- written in the 1930's by a Jewish Bronx schoolteacher and recorded by Billie Holiday- as a vehicle for a deeper look at black-Jewish relations.

Stranger in Paradise

This timely fiction/documentary hybrid plays with our minds as a European lectures, then interrogates refugees from Africa and the Middle East who are seeking asylum. He tells them they are not wanted, then that they deserve refugee status, then asks specific questions to weed out those who do not qualify. First-time helmer Guido Hendrikx uses innovative and provocative techniques to make us share in the emotions of the most powerless people in the world.

Strangers [2003]

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Strangers [2007]

When handsome Eyal (Liron Levo) and knockout Rana (Lubna Azabel) are seated across from each other on the subway in Berlin, their backpacks are mixed up, leading to a chance meeting. He’s Israeli and she’s Palestinian, but they both came to Berlin for the World Cup and are immediately swept up in the dual frenzies of soccer mania and desire. After the tealights have burned out in their rented Berlin love nest, they realize that the fact that she is from Ramallah and he is from the north of Israel means they have different views of the world. Strangers is a crisply written, top- notch love story that crosses international borders and explores the boundaries of nationality, culture and the heart.

Strangers No More

It’s impossible not to be profoundly moved by this Academy Award–winning documentary about Tel Aviv’s Bialik-Rogozin School, a K-12 public school that has opened its doors to students from 48 different countries, including many refugees escaping nightmarish pasts. The film is a tribute to the school’s bighearted teachers and heroic principal who work small miracles transforming vulnerable, traumatized youth into happy and confident individuals.

Street Scenes

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