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The Trials of Muhammad Ali

The Trials of Muhammad Ali

In the 1960s, Muhammad Ali threw off what he called his “slave name,” Cassius Clay, joined the Nation of Islam and refused to serve in the Vietnam War. Boasting archival interviews including Malcolm X, Jackie Robinson and Joe Louis, Bill Siegel’s documentary tackles some of the greatest themes of our times: power, race, faith, identity and freedom from the legacy of slavery. Like its articulate subject, Siegel’s doc “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.”

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Truth to Power: Barbara Lee Speaks for Me | Opening Night at the Concord Drive-In

Throughout the year we search the universe for films that reflect the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam- repairing the world through one’s actions. This year we only had to look in our backyard. Barbara Lee, the US Representative for California’s 13th District, has spent her life fighting inequality and racism, uplifting the stories of those falling through the cracks and speaking truth to power. The current protests and reactions to George Floyd’s death has only elevated her visibility in Congress and the country as she has called for a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission to confront the legacy of slavery and racism in the U.S. and propose ways forward.

Tulip Time--The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano

Tulip Time--The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano

Dutch Jewish sisters Sandra, Giuditta and Caterinetta Lescano, known as Trio Lescano, were the Italian equivalent of the Andrews Sisters. They were immensely popular in the late 1930s and early 1940s until the Italian fascist ideology forced them into silence. Tulip Time is a fascinating profile of the swinging Trio Lescano, who went from being circus performers to darlings of the Fascist elite to pariahs because they were Jews.

Very Semi-Serious

Very Semi-Serious

Famed and would-be cartoonists return to the New Yorker week after week to vie for the approval of the acerbic, egotistical, funny and deeply human cartoon editor Bruce Mankoff. From the neurotic Roz Chast to the offbeat Bruce Eric Kaplan, these humorists draw us into their sometimes eccentric, sometimes morose, always delightful world views. Like binging on a year’s worth of New Yorker cartoons, Very Semi-Serious delights and leaves you wanting more.

The heroine of this documentary, Rebecca Gomperts, embodies tikkun olam, repairing the world through your actions. The founder of Women on Waves, Gomperts builds a floating clinic to offer abortions where the procedure is banned, but her maiden voyage ends in disaster. She changes strategy, exploiting loopholes to teach women a World Health Organization–endorsed protocol to give themselves abortions at home. Her ingeniousness makes for a surprisingly invigorating tale.

The Village of Peace

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.

Voyage of the Damned

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)

Once upon a time (in 1988), in a Palestinian town near Bethlehem, 18 dairy cows were purchased by the people of Beit Sahour from an Israeli kibbutz. This well-crafted, creative documentary, which includes stop-motion animation, explores the strange mixture of political complexities and bovine hijinks that were manifested by the town’s efforts to take dairy production—and fiscal resistance—into their own hands.

Watchers of the Sky

Watchers of the Sky

About This Film

The Wedding Song

The Wedding Song

Karin Albou (La Petite Jerusalem, SFJFF 2006) explores Jewish and Arab culture and female sexuality in her bold and exquisite second feature. In Nazi-occupied Tunis, two teenage girlfriends, Muslim Nour and Jewish Myriam, cling to their lifelong bond. Outside the intimate female quarters of home and hammam, the world shared by Jews and Arabs is split apart by German promises of liberation. When the propaganda seeps through the gender wall, Myriam and her mother are no longer safe, and a hasty wedding must be arranged. But marriage, like friendship, becomes a test of ethics and courage. Karin Albou in person at the Castro.

Welcome to Leith

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

West Bank Story

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.

This masterful drama tells the story of two Jewish Uruguayan brothers. Jacobo lives alone in Montevideo, attached to his antiquated sock factory and the comfort of his routine. When Herman returns to Uruguay for the first time in 20 years, Jacobo asks his long-tenured employee Marta to pretend to be his wife. The three embark on a weekend vacation together, where relationships unfold and jealousies threaten to extinguish any sparks of brotherly love.

A man finds his stolen bicycle and it now belongs to a stranger. In his attempts to retrieve the bicycle, he struggles to remain human.

Who Will Write Our History

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?

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,"

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

The 1960s’ most famous, rabble-rousing and radical defense attorney is put on the witness stand by two of his two daughters in this riveting documentary. For Sarah and Emily Kunstler, it’s an effort to understand and reconcile with a man of contradictions who defended not only civil rights activists, the Chicago 7 and American Indian militants, but also accused rapists, terrorists and assassins. An exciting portrait of every revolutionary’s ideal= lawyer. Followed by social justice discussion at the Castro.

Wrestling Jerusalem

Wrestling Jerusalem

Writer/actor Aaron Davidman takes us on a whirlwind journey that presents competing narratives of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. He gracefully embodies 17 characters, moving deftly from male to female, Palestinian to Israeli, American to European. Davidman’s ability to empathize makes him an excellent tour guide. Masterfully shot backstage during a live performance, and in the desert, the film conjures cafes, buses and settlements as well as the deeply human stories they contain. —Stephanie Rapp

Ydessa,The Bears and Etc.

Ydessa,The Bears and Etc.

Pioneering French New Wave director Agnès Varda’s portrait of an eccentric art collector turns darkly mysterious when her collection of teddy bears photos is displayed in an infamous Munich gallery.

About This Film

The Young Karl Marx

The Young Karl Marx

Director Raoul Peck’s (I Am Not Your Negro) finely crafted period drama vividly brings to life the August, 1844 meeting between Karl Marx, a German philosopher and journalist exiled to Paris, and Friedrich Engels, the rebellious son of a wealthy factory owner. After Marx lobs a few barbs at the dandified Engels, a revolutionary bromance is born. Within a few years Marx and Engels founded the Communist League and created its defining document, the Communist Manifesto.

Zero Motivation

Zero Motivation

However tough the green-uniformed, female Israeli Defense Forces soldiers in Tayla Lavie’s Tribeca award-winning first feature may act, they constantly give themselves away as quite the opposite. Zero Motivation is not punctuated by bullets, but rather by battles over chores, bunk beds and boys. Yet while tenderness may be hard to come by in this acerbic yet humorous film, Lavie nevertheless leaves room to convey her hardboiled characters’ dreams and desires.

Thirteen-year-old Nono is sent on a secret mission by his police inspector father in this winning drama about following one’s best hunches, based on David Grossman’s novel.

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