Film Archive | Jewish Film Institute

Exhibition Series

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Bedouin Sand

About This Film

Before the Revolution

It seems unbelievable now, but before the 1979 revolution Iran and Israel were close allies. Filmmaker Dan Shadur was only a baby when his family lived in Tehran with a view of the revolution unfolding below their balcony. Here he follows a group of Israeli transplants who witnessed the good life spiral into chaos with the approach of the Islamic revolution in this real life Argo doc thriller.

Before You Know It

Stage manager Rachel Gurner still lives in her childhood apartment - along with her off-kilter actress sister, Jackie; eccentric playwright father Mel; and deadpan preteen niece Dodge - above the tiny theatre they own and operate. Level-headed and turtleneck-wearing Rachel is the only thing standing between her family and utter chaos. Then, in the wake of a sudden family tragedy, Rachel and Jackie learn their presumed-deceased mother is actually alive and thriving as a soap-opera star. Now the sisters' already-precarious balance turns upside down, and Rachel must figure out how to liberate herself from this surreal imbroglio. Co-writer/director/star Hannah Pearl Utt is a triple threat with an impeccable sense of timing and a flair for juxtaposing unpredictable elements. Just as pragmatic Rachel and off-the-wall Jackie seem to hail from different planets while inhabiting the same universe, so too do the film's over-the-top moments and characters coexist alongside subtle, grounded ones. Equal parts madcap comedy, adult coming-of-age story, and poignant drama, Before You Know It gleefully defies categorization, and that is its genius.

Beginning With The End

For 10 years, English teacher Bob Kane has offered Hospice Care as an elective for Harley High School seniors wishing to help people at the end of their lives. What might an iPhone-toting teenager have in common with an 85-year-old too weak to lift up a hand? Emmy-winning director Dave Marshall provides plenty of answers in this moving film that bridges the gap between generations and is a testament to human connection.

Behind Enemy Lines

Behind Enemy Lines reunites an Israeli police officer and a Palestinian journalist --once friends -- for an emotional journey through Jerusalem and the landscape of the Intifada.

Behind Me Olive Trees

About This Film

Being Jewish in France

Yves Jeuland’s extraordinary documentary captures two centuries of Jewish life in France. French Jews have always had a complex relationship to their Frenchness and their Judaism. But from revolutionary cries of “Vive la France!” in Yiddish through Vichy’s betrayal of Jewish citizens to the absorption of Mizrahi Jews in the 1960s, French Jews have remained staunchly French. Anti-Semitic violence has caused some French Jews to reexamine living in France, while others view France as their homeland.

Bella! (Closing Night)

As women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Stacey Abrams, and Katie Porter battle on the front line of an increasingly bifurcated democracy, they tread on the footpath laid by Bella Abzug.

Belzec

This is a significant new Holocaust documentary about one of the first camps built to exterminate Poland’s Jews. Belzec saw more than 600,000 perish in gas chambers and mass graves, but in 1943 the camp was razed in an effort to hide what had happened. The film’s focus is on one of Belzec’s few survivors, Braha Rauffmann, who as a child had been secreted away in a woodpile by a Polish woman.

Ben Berkowitz: Vagrant Viking

Peter Freuchen may have looked upon himself as a vagrant, but the world will once again know him for what he really was: an indomitable Viking, who spoke his mind and fought for the betterment of humanity.

Ben Lee: Catch My Disease

At the age of 14 a nice Jewish boy from Sydney, Australia, became a rock star, and at 16, an international pop star. His name is Ben Lee and like his music, he's still evolving. Featuring interviews with his former girlfriend Claire Danes and friends Winona Ryder, Jason Schwartzman and Michelle Williams, Ben Lee: Catch My Disease is a profoundly moving portrait of an artist’s evolution. [MINIGUIDE 67/70]

Bena

This is the gripping story of three fragile souls whose lives intersect at the precarious border between loneliness and desperation. Amos, a widower, hires Bena, an undocumented Thai immigrant, to care for his schizophrenic son Yurik. When both Amos and Yurik begin to fall for her, Bena is caught in a disturbing love triangle between the overbearing father and unstable son. Will she risk imprisonment in Israel to escape their emotional trap?

Bending the Arc

Thirty years ago, a group of young, enthusiastic, and caring friends came together with a goal that was both simple and complex: to provide health care for all, particularly the poor in the developing world. This inspiring documentary charts the success of Partners in Health, an NGO which builds hospitals and delivers health care throughout the world as they work to bend the arc toward justice.

Ben-Gurion: Epilogue

Featuring never-before-aired footage from a 1968 interview with Israel’s founding prime minister, filmmaker Yariv Mozer (Snails in the Rain, SFJFF 2014) pays homage to one of the icons of Israel’s first generation of political leaders. The resulting film begs the question, what would Ben-Gurion do?, given the current political climate in the Middle East. Viewers can hazard a guess when Ben-Gurion discusses trading land for an enduring peace.

BENITA

The life and legacy of experimental filmmaker Benita Raphan are honored in this deeply felt new work by her friend and mentor, Alan Berliner, who pieces together her archive in a collaborative piece that captures Raphan’s boundless creative energy.

The Bent Tree

About This Film

The Bentwich Syndrome

Humorously examining Anglo-Jewish life of the 19th and 20th centuries, directors Gur Bentwich and Maya Kenig embark on a road trip to dissect the origins of their family. An array of aunts and cousins hold court, as well as long-departed Bentwiches, who come to life through zany Monty Python-esque animation. In the end, we become Bentwiches-by-proxy, crammed into the back seat of the family car, enjoying the ride. —Alexis WhitmanPreceded by Spring Chicken, Dir. Tamir Elterman.

About This Film

About This Film

About This Film

Preceded by 55 SocksDuring World War II, the Balkan kingdom of Albania offered unconditional asylum to European Jews. After Germany overran the small country, Albanian families, most of them Muslim, made a sacred oath to offer protection to the refugees. Decades later, an Albanian Muslim makes an emotional journey to Israel to fulfill a promise made by his father to the Jewish family he sheltered. [MINIGUIDE 62/70]

Best Man: Best Boy and All of Us Twenty Years Later

About This Film

The Best of Tel Aviv University

Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Tel Aviv University’s film school, the oldest and largest in Israel, comes the next wave of Israeli filmmakers in this impressive lineup of narrative and documentary shorts. Featuring a confrontation in a Bedouin family, the dangerous flirtations of a curious teenage girl, the evolution of a famed photography studio, the blurred lines of a racially based casting call and the mixed feelings of a lesbian couple facing motherhood. [MINIGUIDE 73/70]

Beton

About This Film

Between the Lines

About This Film

Between The Temples | Centerpiece Narrative

A cantor (Jason Schwartzman) in a crisis of faith finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher (Carol Kane) re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student.

Between Two Notes

Cairo, Aleppo, Damascus, Beirut, Tel Aviv: in a bitterly divided Middle East, what binds these places together in this lyrical road movie is their deep-rooted connection to classical Arabic music. Paris-based filmmaker Florence Strauss sets out to trace the origins of Arabic music and in the process makes discoveries about her own family’s hidden Jewish heritage. Ancient rhythms and melodies pour forth in passages of musical joy connecting artists across borders.

Between Two Worlds

Who speaks for Jews today? In this personal essay, Snitow and Kaufman embark on an intimate, far-ranging exploration of the ideological fissures running through contemporary Jewish life. They turn their camera on recent flashpoints in American Jewish identity, including campus debates over divestment from Israel and the 2009 controversy stemming from SFJFF’s screening of Rachel. The filmmakers ask how each generation reshapes, reclaims or rejects its parents’ definition of community values. Followed by panel in S.F.

Beyond the Bolex

The Bolex camera has been a trusty tool for filmmakers since its introduction in the 1920s. In this personal film, Alyssa Bolsey delves into her family's history to uncover the story of the camera's inventor, her great-grandfather, Jacques Bolsey. A Russian refugee living in neutral Switzerland during WWI, Bolsey developed the iconic Bolex as a way to democratize image-making. Archival footage and interviews with renowned filmmakers who still swear by Bolsey's invention offer an ode to the man and his movie camera.

Beyond The Duplex Planet

Artist David Greenberger, whose quirky publication The Duplex Planet shared the insights of nursing home seniors, is now a senior himself and has much to say about art and conversation.

Beyond the Fear

In 2005, Israeli scholar and divorced mother of four Larisa Trembovler married Yigal Amir, the infamous assassin of much-loved Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. In 2007, after a series of conjugal visits, she gave birth to her fifth child, Amir’s son. It’s their son that documentarians Herz Frank and Maria Kravchenko skillfully build the film around as they reexamine the years of moral complexities surrounding his parents’ union.

Beyond the Walls

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Brownsville Black and White

About This Film

The Bicycle

About This Film

Big Sonia

When you first catch sight of the light in her eyes, it is hard to imagine that Sonia Warshawski lived through one of the darkest periods of human history. Yet this 92-year-old, who drives herself to her tailoring business six days a week with a set of brightly painted fingernails and an equally vibrant smile, was forced to come of age in Auschwitz and now shares her story with school children and prisoners alike.

The Big Story

About This Film

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