JFI On Demand | Jewish Film Institute

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Israel in Motion
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Magnes
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JFI On Demand

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Film Type

Animation
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Television Series

Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
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Filtered By: Na Clear All

200 Meters - SFJFF41 Centerpiece Narrative

A Palestinian father embarks on a perilous journey to reach his hospitalized son in this tense yet tender family drama about the human toll of oppression.

306 Hollywood

Brother and sister filmmakers conduct an obsessive archeological dig through their deceased grandmother’s treasured mementos.

500 Dunam on the Moon

About This Film

51 Birch Street

Veteran filmmaker Doug Block had every reason to believe his parents’ 54-year marriage was a good one, so he’s unprepared when, just a few months after his mother’s death, his father Mike announces that he’s moving to Florida to live with his former secretary. Spanning 60 years and three generations, Block’s superbly crafted documentary about his parents’ marriage eloquently shows what can happen when we question our most fundamental assumptions about family.

93Queen

A cohort of bold ultraorthodox Jewish women battle to create their own all-female ambulance corps.

9th Circuit Cowboy: The Long Good Fight of Judge Harry Pregerson

9TH CIRCUIT COWBOY is the story of a true mensch. Judge Harry Pregerson served on California's famously liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for almost half a century and was known for placing his personal scruples over what he discounted as abstract legalities.

A Crime on the Bayou

"A Crime on the Bayou" is the story of Gary Duncan, a Black teenager from Plaquemines Parish, a swampy strip of land south of New Orleans. In 1966, Duncan tries to break up an argument between white and Black teenagers outside a newly integrated school. He gently lays his hand on a white boy’s arm. The boy recoils like a snake. That night, police burst into Duncan’s trailer and arrest him for assault on a minor. A young Jewish attorney, Richard Sobol, leaves his prestigious D.C. firm to volunteer in New Orleans. With his help, Duncan bravely stands up to the District Attorney, challenging his unfair arrest. Their fight goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and their lifelong friendship is forged.

A Fortunate Man

In the late 19th century, Peter Sidenius is an ambitious young man from a devout Christian family in Western Denmark, who travels to the Danish capital of Copenhagen to study engineering, rebelling against his clergyman father. He comes into contact with the intellectual circles of a wealthy, Jewish family and seduces the elder daughter, Jakobe. Per, as he now calls himself, conceives a large-scale engineering project including the construction of a series of canals in his native Jutland, and lobbies for its construction. But just as Per seems to be about to make his dreams come true, his pride stands in the way.

Abe | Film & Feast

The Israeli-Jewish side of his family calls him Avram. The Palestinian-Muslim side Ibrahim. His first-generation American agnostic lawyer parents call him Abraham. But the 12-year-old kid from Brooklyn who loves food and cooking, prefers, well, Abe. Just Abe.

Absolutely No Spitting

"So, you know how I told you to never spit? And that you're not allowed to spit and you shouldn't spit? SO... I need you to spit" And thus begins a very quirky, sometimes self-deprecating, and always heymish spit-driven DNA-journey-turned-love-letter between Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, a fifty-something new old mom, and her much beloved and very spunky four-and-a-half-year-old adopted daughter Theo. And thank G-d they call NYC home - because it's the perfect place to embrace life as a multi-racial, multi-cultural, pan-global family.

Adam

Directed by Transparent producer Rhys Ernst and adapted by Ariel Schrag from her novel of the same name, Adam drops us down in the hipster lesbian and trans culture of Brooklyn, 2006. It’s essentially a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old straight, cisgender male who falls in love with a lesbian after she mistakes him for a transgender man. Adam decides to maintain this Shakespearean deception and a satirical and nuanced exploration of identity ensues.

Adventures of a Mathematician

Based on the autobiography by Polish-Jewish mathematician Stanislaw Ulam, ADVENTURES OF A MATHEMATICIAN follows Ulam’s dramatic journey to the United States in the 1930s where he plays a vital role in The Manhattan Project in the creation of the hydrogen bomb while desperately trying to help his sister flee Nazi occupied Poland.

After Tiller

Screened to great acclaim at Sundance, this documentary about third-trimester abortion hardly sounds life-affirming on its surface. Yet Martha Shane and Lana Wilson inject a welcome dose of rationality to the incendiary topic. With deliberate pacing and a calming soundtrack, they offer an intimate portrait of the only four doctors in the United States who still perform the procedure, despite the assassination of their mentor Dr. George Tiller by an antiabortionist in 2009.

Afternoon Delight

Rachel is a quick-witted, lovable, yet tightly coiled, thirtysomething steeped in the creative class of Los Angeles’s bohemian Silver Lake neighborhood. Everything looks just right—chic modernist home, successful husband, adorable child and a hipster wardrobe. So why is she going out of her gourd with ennui? Plagued by purposelessness, Rachel visits a strip club to spice up her marriage and meets a stripper whom she becomes obsessed with saving.

Afterward

Ofra Bloch, a New York-based psychoanalyst specializing in trauma, was born in Jerusalem to a Jewish family that emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. Disturbed by the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism around the world, Ofra travels to Germany, Israel, and Palestine to confront her own deep-seated feelings about Germans and Palestinians, and the tensions between the Holocaust and the Nakba. In the process, she explores the nature of resistance and the possibility of hope.

Aida's Secrets

Family secrets and lies are revealed in this documentary detective story which begins with World War II and ends with a 21st-century reunion of long lost brothers. With the help of a genealogical search organization, Izak, an Israeli kibbutznik, finally meets the Canadian blind younger brother he did not know he had, when both are in their mid-60s. Embracing one another, they work hard to try to pry secrets loose from their tight-lipped mother Aida. - Sara L. Rubin

ALINA

As Nazis separate children from their parents in the Warsaw Ghetto, a gang of women risks everything to smuggle their friend's three-month-old baby to safety.

American Commune

American Commune chronicles the Farm, founded in 1971 by hippie holy man Stephen Gaskin and his wife Ina May, godmother of modern midwifery. Filmmaker sisters and former residents Nadine and Rena Mundo return to the Farm for the first time in 20 years. With a critical eye and empathy for the Farm’s efforts to reboot society, the Mundo sisters have created an engaging portrait of an unusual community and its legacy.

American Factory

In 2014, a Chinese billionaire opened a Fuyao factory in a shuttered General Motors plant in Dayton, Ohio. For thousands of locals, the arrival of this multinational car-glass manufacturer meant regaining their jobs - and dignity - after the recession left them high and dry. American Factory takes us inside the facility to observe what happens when workers from profoundly different cultures collide.

An American Tail

This beautifully animated film, which will charm audiences of all ages, tells the story of Fievel Mouskewitz and his family of Jewish mice who escape from Russia in the late 1800s and immigrate to the United States. At the time of its release in 1986, it became the most successful non-Disney animated feature with a theme that is close to every American’s heart: immigrants trying to succeed despite the many hardships and obstacles.

Arthur Miller: Writer

Arthur Miller: Writer is an intimate portrait of one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century told from the unique perspective of his daughter, Rebecca Miller, who filmed interviews with her father over decades. Coupled with a wealth of personal archival material, the film provides new insights into Miller’s life as an artist and explores his character in all its complexity.

Ashkenaz

Ashkenaz, a pithy but panoramic view of Israel’s “white” Jews, undermines any preconceived notions of Jewish ethnicity. Director Rachel Leah Jones, a Berkeley native, flits from experts and scholars to just plain folks to reveal a nonhomogeneous Ashkenazi population seen through the eyes of Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Israelis. It’s a fascinating study in diversity within a single word.

Asia | Stories She Tells

Shira Haas (Unorthodox) delivers an unforgettable performance as a teenager suffering from a deteriorating illness that brings her closer to her single mother in this powerful drama that is Israel’s Foreign Language Oscar Entry for 2020.

The Attack

By all appearances Palestinian-Israeli surgeon Amin Jaafari (Ali Suliman, Lemon Tree, Paradise Now) has it all. As an admired and respected member of his profession he has carved a space for himself and his wife Sihem at the crossroads of two troubled societies. Jaafari’s world is abruptly shattered when Sihem goes missing in a Tel Aviv suicide bombing. As Israeli police evidence mounts, it appears that Sihem could have been responsible.

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