Adam Hartzell: SF Shorts Festival

After an August with comparatively few film festivals here on Frisco Bay, September is bringing the beginnings of an Autumn onslaught of them. Though the September staple Madcat Women's Film Festival is transitioning from a Frisco Bay-based event to a national touring program this year, a screening on Sept. 16 of festival favorite filmmakers including Kerry Laitala, Samara Halperin & others carries the tradition of El Rio outdoor music & film forward in 2009. The 2nd Annual Iranian Film Festival runs September 19-20 at the SF Art Institute. In San Rafael, the Global Lens Film Series runs September 25th through October 7th, after which the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center becomes one of the venues for the Mill Valley Film Festival. The 32nd annual program for the latter festival will not be fully revealed for another week, but in the meantime the festival has begun teasing us with announced special guest appearances: Clive Owen will be in Marin for the opening night screening of the Boys are Back, and French New Wave icon Anna Karina will be on hand to present her scarcely-seen recent directorial effort, Victoria on October 16th. Jean-Luc Godard's muse will also be represented at the festival by an October 13th showing of one of their most well-known collaborations, Pierrot Le Fou.

But before all this, the Red Vic is just about to play host to the 4th Annual SF Shorts festival, featuring six programs of short films over the next four days. Arya Ponto has a written brief write-up on the program. Here at Hell On Frisco Bay, Adam Hartzell has also previewed a few of the offerings and provides his take:

There’s a wonderful moment of Deaf storytelling that takes place in Cynthia Mitchell and Robert Arnold’s short All Animals. It goes on at length sans subtitles and is mesmerizing. Just a young Deaf woman (actress Sheena McFeely) sitting on the back of a pick-up truck signing with her whole upper body and the space that surrounds it, including the facial expressions so important to all Sign Languages, and the authentic Deaf voice John S. Schuchman has noted is so important to (Hearing) Children of Deaf Adults (aka CoDAs). It truly takes over the film, levitating the viewer trance-like into a completely different film from the larger short film that surrounds it. All Animals involved one of the California Schools for the Deaf. Perhaps the focus on Deaf storytelling germinated from this collaboration or was the very reason for this collaboration.

This subtitle-less scene reminded me of the screening of Deaf director Peter Wolf’s I Love You But... (1994) at the Deaf Film Festival in February of 2003 at the Pacific Film Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, where it was explained that no subtitling or translation via headphones would be provided for Hearing viewers, in order to give Hearing viewers an idea of what it’s like for the Deaf to attend the cinema. Outside of the beauty of signed languages in general, the moment of expressive Deaf storytelling in All Animals is inaccessible to non-ASL fluent viewers just as the dialogue of English-language cinema is inaccessible to Deaf Americans. Rarely are subtitled or close-captioned prints of English-language films available for U.S. theatres and this limits the experience Deaf viewers can have in the cinema. And based on the screener I watched, I’m assuming the spoken dialogue will not be close-captioned at the Red Vic screening, making this film only partially accessible for the Deaf community. Whether or not that’s an oversight or due to limited funding options, I don’t know. But since the Deaf storytelling is so prominent, it appears its inaccessibility to me and other non-ASL fluent viewers is intentional. Yet in spite of that ‘inaccessibility’, I am still deeply affected by it.

Unfortunately All Animals also utilizes what Gallaudet University professor Jane Norman refers to as a ‘gimmick’ of Hearing-centric films where the sound is cut off as a false attempt to lead us into the Deaf character’s experience of the world. As the Hearing character notes when discussing the Opera, Deaf people do not experience the world in total silence, for vibrations are felt through other parts of the body. Such sensation of sound through the vibrations of the body is not the same as through the ear, but such is not total silence either. The sappy (but I love it nonetheless) Japanese Deaf film I Love You (Osawa Yutaka and Yonaiyama Akihiro, 2000) demonstrates this beautifully, but to write how it represents sound as ‘heard’ by Deaf people would be to ruin the tear-jerking moment up to which the film builds, so I’ll leave you to the difficult search to find that film to see how such clichés can be avoided.

Along with being a calling card for directors, actors, and others film industry folk to garner future projects, short films can also be a space for experimentation, which makes All Animals both compelling in its highlighting of Deaf storytelling, and disappointing in its reliance on an overused Hearing trope of Deaf characters. Of the few films I was able to see for the festival, nothing else jumped out at me as ‘experimental’, but the animated films The Mouse That Soared by Kyle T. Bell and Prayers for Peace by Dustin Grella both kept me transfixed by their drawings, Bell’s through digital rendering and Grella’s through the washing on and off of dreamy charcoal images.

Another film I was able to watch was Molly Snyder-Fink and Kiran Goldman’s Fast As She Can. With Usain Bolt dashing through the headlines as of late for his World Record 100 meter time of 9.58 seconds at the recent World Championships in Berlin, it’s nice to see a short film focusing on the amazing female athletes of Jamaica. Although there is some repetitive narration early on, the short serves its subjects and the topic well by showing the constant training in which these women engage and the encouragement and support many provide for these endeavors. The details of their training regimen offer a counterpoint to the speculative ‘reasons’ that are often given to Jamaican track and field success. In this way, we can see the self-serving claims of the yam seller in the film who claims ‘it’s the yams’ just as we doubted Mars Blackmon when he proclaimed ‘It’s gotta be the shoes!’ More disturbingly, but not mentioned in the film, sometimes the hard work that propels the success of black athletes is downplayed by the Pat Buchanan-esque racist assumptions about their bodies. And now these athletes must also confront the constant suspicion of doping, based, as a San Jose Mercury News reporter admits in the documentary, on little evidence outside of the record-breaking record-breaking. Everyone is looking for the secret to their success as if it were one simple thing proving their prejudices, rather than a complex network of things.

And like that journalist, I will proclaim on the little evidence of these four shorts that it looks as if the Red Vic will have much on offer for those with the heavily-concentrated attention spans and precise mental-compartmentalizing that short film watching requires.

Miyazaki Midnights & Matinees (and more)

One of my favorite films of the year so far is the latest animated feature from Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo on the Cliff By the Sea, also know as just Ponyo. Made by a near-septuagenarian, and perhaps aimed primarily for children just barely old enough to sit still for a movie, this Japanese re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen holds the power to captivate a childless 30-something willing to be awash in Miyazaki's visuals, whether depicting the crashing of furious waves as a Hokusai woodcut come to life, or the simple process of serving a bowl of ramen to a little girl who has never eaten noodles before. Miyazaki's inked lines are more robust than ever, and his gentle-handed ecological message perfectly apropos for his pre-school protagonist Sosuke, who understands the import of the chain of events he has set off less completely than audiences of any age will, yet it better able to make a crucial narrative leap of faith than a more world-weary individual might. He provides an inspirational model for us all.

Some Miyazaki fans seem to be, at least mildly, disappointed in Ponyo in comparison to the master's other animated films. I can't understand almost any of their arguments, and I can't help but wonder if some are registering disagreement less with the film itself than with the Disney Corporation's decision to release the film only in a dubbed version, in contrast to their making Howl's Moving Castle available to theatres both an English-dubbed and a Japanese-language version with English subtitles. Sprited Away, too, was sent on the festival circuit in a Japanese version before its theatrical release with American voice artists providing the soundtrack.

I've watched both versions of Ponyo. First I saw a 35mm print of the Disney-dubbed version; though I was mildly bothered by Liam Neeson's distinctive tones, and Cate Blanchett's essential reprisal of her Galadriel role, their Ponyo characters are relatively minor and I was so overwhelmed by Miyazaki's fluid animation and florid imagination that they couldn't mar the experience in any meaningful way. The other voice actors submerged their star personae and were unrecognizable to me until the end credits. In sum it was a terrific dub job; nothing like the distracting celebrity voice-fest of the Miramax Princess Mononke dub. Watching a friend's Japanese Ponyo DVD import with English subtitles shortly afterward was nearly as wonderful, but I'm glad it was not my first experience with the film. In fact the dub translation was slightly superior in a few instances, as I confirmed with a native Japanese speaker. The only major improvement was the end-title song, which Disney turned from a sweet farewell to the film into a groan-worthy techno remix involving its stable of pop singers.

In any language, Ponyo is absolutely something to see on the big screen if you can, and if you live in Frisco that's still possible, at least for another week, as it continues to play at the Balboa Theatre until Thursday. Miyazaki fans holding out for the subtitled DVD, you'll thank yourself for taking the opportunity to see it in a cinema. If you want to display your original-version-purist credentials, take the rare opportunity to watch the Japanese-language version of Miyazaki's Spirited Away this November when it plays four midnight shows and a matinee in Frisco Bay theatres. Both the Clay here in Frisco and the Piedmont in Oakland have included the 45th San Francisco International Film Festival's audience award-winning film in their autumn lineup of cult favorite screenings. The Clay shows it November 6th & 7th, and the Piedmont on November 13th & 14th, with an additional 10 AM screening on the 15th.

Other midnight movies coming to Landmark theatres this season include This is Spinal Tap, the Wiz (featuring Michael Jackson as the scarecrow, of course) the original release cut of Donnie Darko, the Graduate, the Shining, and more. Check the Landmark After Dark website. And though the Bridge will no longer be the site for full summer seasons of Peaches Christ's Midnight Mass series, the horror hostess will present a one-off screening of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 there on October 24th.

Meanwhile, the Red Vic on Haight Street has a midnight hit on its hands as well these days. The Room, Tommy Wiseau's enigmatically awful, but clearly rather expensive passion project, has been packing in viewers and solidifying screen-talkback rituals the last Saturday of every month all summer. The tradition, as revealed in the latest Red Vic calendar, is planned to continue this fall with shows on September 26th and October 31st (come in costume as one of the characters for additional fun.)

Finally, my friend Jesse Ficks has been hard at work putting together his season of MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS shows at the Castro. Tonight he's playing Risky Business, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and the Last American Virgin in a set entitled "Cocky White Guys". October 2 is "Bite Nite", pairing the Santa Cruz-set the Lost Boys with Katheryn Bigelow's Near Dark, which I've never seen (for shame!) And November 6th is called "Love Kills", with True Romance, Natural Born Killers and a midnight MiDNiTE screening to be determined. Looking at the thematic pattern, I bet it'll be something written by Quentin Tarantino. Though Jesse has been known to have unexpected surprises up his sleeve.

Adam Hartzell: Say My Name

Fall is almost upon us. We movie-lovers know it because Johnny Ray Huston's rep film roundup for the SF Bay Guardian's Fall arts Preview is out, with tons of clickable links to most of the major and minor film festivals, repertory series, and special events of the season. But August isn't quite over yet, and this weekend has at least a few Frisco film events worth coming in from out of the heat. Huston's own Beyond ESPN series at the Yerba Buena Center For the Arts wraps up tomorrow with Football as Never Before, a proto-Zidane film featuring the Manchester United legend George Best. The other night I saw there Visions of Eight, a lovely documentary of the 1972 Munich Olympics directed by Kon Ichikawa, Arthur Penn, Milos Forman, and five others. The series was written up by Adam Hartzell for sf360.

More recently, Hartzell wrote up a preview of the focus on Kim Longinotto at this weekend's Women Make Movies Film Festival for that site; he'd also written on the documentary filmmaker here a few years back. And now, I'm very pleased to present his write-up on another documentary playing tomorrow at the Women Make Movies festival:

Sadly, for those outside of the Hip Hop Nation, juxtapositions of women and Hip Hop are more likely to lead towards thoughts of booty-shaking than rhyme-making. Nirit Peled’s documentary Say My Name, (screening at the Roxie Theatre on Sunday August 30th as part of the Women Make Movies Film Festival) should correct that viewpoint for the casual viewer. But it provides an equal service for those heads with full Hip Hop cred. With so many female MCs dropping knowledge and dope lyrics one after the other, even the most diehard fan’s understanding of Hip Hop can’t help but be changed. Hip Hop is not just a man’s world. Like so much else in this world, men just dominate it. Say My Name is a call for recalibration of the control masculine rhetoric has within and around Hip Hop.

As Tricia Rose has noted in her latest book The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop ...And Why It Matters, Hip Hop does need to reroute where it has been headed. The misogyny (which walks intimately hand-in-hand with homophobia) is one of the areas on which Hip Hop needs to come correct. The most infamous incident of this is the image of the credit card being swiped through a dancer’s thronged buttocks in the video for “Tip Drill” by Nelly. (A clip of which makes a brief appearance in Peled’s documentary.) This video sparked a protest at the historically black Spelman College where Nelly was coming to support a bone marrow registry drive as part of his charity work to help leukemia patients. Nelly cancelled his appearance rather than accept a meeting with campus leaders to face the music of the critiques of his music. Beyond such visuals as in “Tip Drill”, there are lyrics of equal disrespect. Rose advocates for a redirection away from the nihilistic lyrics while also asking us to keep in mind that Hip Hop is not alone in purveying such societal ills. As Michael Jeffries notes in his contribution to Home Girls Make Some Noise: Hip Hop Feminism Anthology (HHFA), the mainstream shorthand of Hip Hop as “...the prime criminal in the business of pop cultural female misogyny, all but excus[es] other musical genres and cultural products.” And in spite of the misogyny easily found in the videos late at night on BET, there are women MCs trying to reframe the game so that women have entry points into Hip Hop other than ass first. Through the likes of female MCs speaking for themselves in Peled’s documentary, “ ...Young women fans”, according to Eric Darnell Pritchard and Maria L. Bibbs in HHFA, “are finding that there is a place for them in Hip Hop culture, and they do not have to settle for the role of a male rapper’s sex object or helpmate in order to have a presence.” We need to be “turning up the noise”, as Jeffries says, on the women Hip Hop artists being dampened by the nihilistic, which is exactly what is accomplished in the documentary Say My Name.

The reach in this documentary is impressive considering Peled is from Holland. Although interviews with certain luminaries are missing, (Queen Latifah and Missy Elliot being the major lacunae), Peled was able to provide ample time for elder stateswomen such as MC Lyte and Monie Love. These are women whose lyrical skill was matched with a tonal texture that made an imprint on this writer’s young mind growing up. Particularly intriguing is the section on Roxanne Shanté, the rapper brought in to recite the lyrics to the infamous response record to UTFO’s single “Roxanne, Roxanne” entitled “Roxanne’s Revenge”. (This was the ‘unofficial’ response record. UTFO produced their own response called ‘The Real Roxanne’.) The ethical disagreements over reciting lyrics written by others, the place of verbal battling in Hip Hop, and the disposability of some players in the industry all are underscored by the saga of this Roxanne. Erykah Badu is one of the more recent Hip Hop luminaries whose commentary serves the documentary very well. She has some poignant things to say about motherhood and the female beauty ideal. As if hearing Marlo David Asikwe (in HHFA) when she laments that black women Hip Hop artists do not attend to “the mothering body” with the same level of attention as the sexual body, Peled brings attention to the mothering Hip Hop body. This segment is quite significant regarding how motherhood can inspire (as well as disrupt) the careers of these female MCs.

Regional Hip Hop genres are also represented, from the rapid fire lyrics of British Grime to the socially conscious creed of Detroit’s Invincible. (The presence of Invincible also allows for a lesbian voice, although whispered at those familiar with Invincible rather than shouted out explicitly in the documentary.) When Peled represents the ‘Dirty South’ with the Georgia Girls, her footage of them performing in a high school gymnasium touches on the significance of high schools to the Atlanta variant Hip Hop. “...The high school”, notes Jocyelyn A. Wilson in HHFA, “works as a key environment for developing relationships that contribute to the strong network ties of the southern hip-hop community of practice.”

So much is touched on in a short 73 minutes. Aspects I haven’t mentioned include how the ghetto environment is a point of inspiration, but also something that can hold some artists back. And being held back is part of the overarching theme of Rose’s powerful critique The Hip Hop Wars. The harmful trends in Hip Hop, the misogyny and other forms of violence and nihilism, are holding back those who most need to be propelled forward. One way to propel forward is through documentaries such as Peled’s where women are launched into the discourses of Hip Hop rhetoric, negotiating their own terms. As Pritchard and Dibbs explain, “...As for many youth hip-hop is a clear way of making meaning and receiving/imparting knowledge in a way that is relevant to their cultural, economic, social and political realities.” To turn away from the enticing beat is to also turn away from the most vital means youth have presently to express themselves. Say My Name is a desperately needed call and response to reclaim a female space for Hip Hop. Bring the noise, indeed.

24 City

Rejoice! The new Pacific Film Archive calendar for September & October is available online. Included are series focusing on undershown auteurs William Klein, Ermanno Olmi, and Julian Duvivier (I've seen one film apiece from these gentlemen, each quite solid). The Alternative Visions series starts back up again on Tuesdays, and is joined by tributes to avant-garde heavyweights Bill Viola and Robert Beavers, both of whom will appear in person, the latter in conversation with the legendary critic P. Adams Sitney. There's also a massive set of British crime films, a few titles overlapping with the ones being brought to the Castro Sep. 11-16, but you'll have to attend both venues to see them all.

Those may be the most high-profile series of the season, but the upcoming months will also be dotted by smaller series, one-shot events, and the reliable "non-series" A Theatre Near You, which returns director Jia Zhang-Ke's film 24 City to the site of his extensive retrospective one year ago. 24 City is also playing the Camera 3 in San Jose this week, inspiring me to dust off an unpublished capsule I wrote earlier this year after seeing the film at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (well before the director's controversial decision to pull out of the Melbourne Film Festival this summer). Here it is:

* * * * *
As Chinese director Jia Zhang Ke's stature on the international film festival circuit has increased with each release, his films have blurred the line between fiction and documentary in ever more intriguing ways. Perhaps because, as his auteur status has attracted attention from a censorious government that once officially disapproved of films like Xiao Wu and Unknown Pleasures, it's these frictions that provide Jia's best outlet for critique.

Jia's latest film 24 City takes the form of a documentary about the dismantling of a munitions factory code-named "420" in pre-earthquake Chengdu, to make way for a ritzy condominium complex. Interviews with former workers, conducted mostly in long, static shots, join together in an oral history going back generations. The clanging and hammering sounds of the factory's final, self-destructive task are often heard in the background. Sequences are bridged together by brief skits or by city-poems. Songs re-appropriated from films such as John Woo's 1989 The Killer and Peter Chan's 2005 Perhaps Love underscore the connection between recent Chinese history and its pop culture mirror.

But documentary conventions are questioned by the director's decision to have actors play interview subjects. Is the factory saleswoman who recalls how workplace gossip quashed her first love affair a Joan Chen look-alike, as she says she is? Or is she actually Joan Chen? (answer: yes.) By crossing the imaginary boundary between "real" and "constructed" cinema, Jia turns nostalgia into barely-veiled dissent, and creates a testimony filled with contradictions appropriate for our modern age.

Adam Hartzell: SF Jewish Film Festival Preview

Adam Hartzell writes on the 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

There's an oft-repeated story that Bret McKenzie and Jermaine Clement (otherwise known as Flight of the Conchords) were turned down for funding by New Zealand public television because their humor was "Too Wellington". That is, their humor would be missed by everyone outside of the nation's capital. (I've heard this story most often on Radio National New Zealand, their NPR equivalent, but here's a citation of someone else who cites the rumor.) Ironically, it took the U.S., a country that many argue enforces mediocrity by requiring entertainment to be constrained within the confines of what 'Middle America' would find interesting, to see that the world was way more Wellington than New Zealand public television ever realized.

The mistake made by that rumor of an ill-fated bureaucratic choice is that people will have trouble relating to difference. In this way, a mundane mainstream must be reached because too much fringe causes too much confusion. This is why we ended up with so many TV shows and films based in San Francisco where everyone is white and nobody is Gay. J Lo had to be a white wedding planner because everyone knows there ain't no Latinas in San Francisco. But there are media that show the lie to that argument, TV shows and films that demonstrate that people from diverse backgrounds can appreciate stories from experiences other than a white Protestant lens. TV shows from the very beginning of TV like The Goldbergs show the window-sized holes in these arguments.

If you are not now yelling inside your head 'Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg!' after reading that reference, you are like me before seeing Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Kempner's documentary is screening at this year's San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (the 29th edition, held from July 23rd through August 10th this year) along with a special screening of a collection of episodes from The Goldbergs TV show. This is all part of Kempner receiving the festival's Freedom of Expression Award for her contribution to Jewish Cinema. I was unaware of Gertrude Berg's pioneering radio, TV, and stage-work and that The Goldbergs was considered the progenitor of the TV sitcom.

Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg challenges the belief that people can't relate to backgrounds different from their own by bringing past fans of the show, an African American and a Greek Orthodox American, who found the aspects of Jewish culture portrayed on The Goldbergs transferable to their own lives, their own families. As much as I enjoy this documentary, I do have peccadilloes about the use of stock images in the documentary that are disjointed enough from the narration that they throw me off it. For example, during one narration of a young adult Berg driving in a car with her father, the generic stock footage is of a man driving without a young female passenger in the seat next to him. Perhaps we are supposed to impose an image of Berg into the seat, but without any person in the actual seat, it distracted more than complemented the narration for me. A few seconds later we are meant to impose Berg walking alongside the car with images of no one walking along the side of the car (and too fast for someone to 'walk' along side at that). I know this can be seen as poetic license, asking the viewer to enter the film by filling up the stock image with an image of Berg, but it didn't work for me. Regardless of these moments where the documentary lost me, Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg is an otherwise engaging doc that reveals much for both those familiar with Berg's work and those previously ignorant like me.

Victoria Day (David Bezmozgis, Canada, 2009) may pose a similar challenge to folk theories espousing limitations on how much difference audiences, particularly U.S. audiences, can accept. English Canadian films are often discouraged from emphasizing their Canadian locality because such is believed to prohibit opportunities for distribution below the 49th parallel. To even name a film "Victoria Day" implies you've given up on your neighbors to the South. (Although intended to celebrate Queen Victoria's birthday in English-speaking Canada, Victoria Day has been appropriated in cultural practice to note the beginning of summer and, like many holidays, as an excuse to drink. Both appropriations are will utilized in this film.) But there is absolutely no reason why the trials of 16-year-old Ben Spektor can't resonate here in the U.S. Ben is played expertly by Mark Rendell, who will also be a lead character in Year of the Carnivore, the upcoming directorial debut of Sook-yin Lee from the CBC's Definitely Not the Opera. A begrudging effort to assist someone he despises leads him down a road of ambiguous responsibilities. Along the way, we are witness to thankfully non-clichéd portrayals of triads between Ben and his two friends and Ben and his Russian-émigré parents. This is a wonderfully subtle, impactful film.

Let me end where the SFJFF begins, with their opening film Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger (Cathy Randall, Australia, 2008). I missed an opportunity to see this film during my last trip to Melbourne when it was playing in the Camberwell suburb where I was staying.. And after watching (on DVD) this wonderful film in my apartment in the Richmond District (appropriately enough, a district of San Francisco believed to have been given its name from an Australian who felt it reminded him of his former Melbourne neighborhood of Richmond), I'm so grateful to SFJFF for giving me another chance to see it. The film follows an awkward teenage year of Esther Blueburger. Shunned for her odd behavior by the privileged pack at her private school, she finds herself embraced for such by the rebels at a public school she secretively attends. Interspersed with surreal moments of imagination, this is not an Améliesque romanticism of fantastic whimsy. (Mind you, I love Amélie. But too much romanticism, especially when imposed on youth, can pose problems. For a strong argument against emo-overshare, checkout Craig Shuftan's wonderful new book, and wonderfully titled, Hey Nietzche, Leave Them Kids Alone!, published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's publishing house. Tricia Rose's The Hip Hop Wars is a powerful companion book to Shuftan's since she presents an equally strong critique of romanticism's doppelganger, nihilism.) Esther, played strikingly well for a young debut by Danielle Catanzariti, battles against the cliques and confinements of teenage life. She eventually makes choices that result in her becoming that which she previously fought against, providing her an opportunity to take the very responsibilities she wished others would take. A slightly atypical coming-of-age film, I found myself embracing this gem from a country whose national cinema has been lacking in the eyes of my Australian friends. (Although everyone is raving about Aboriginal director Warwick Thornton's debut Samson and Delilah, so things could indeed be looking up down under.)

In fact, I found myself tremendously engaged with all three selections I screened prior to the beginning of SFJFF this Thursday. So if these three are any sign of what's on offer for the rest of the selections, this year's SFJFF should be the best I've ever attended.

Thanks Adam! The 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival opens at the Castro Theatre this Thursday, July 23rd and stays at that venue for a week. On August 1st, screenings move to the CinéArts theatre in Palo Alto, and to the Roda Theatre in Berkeley. Finally, the festival wraps up at the Jewish Community Center back here in Frisco August 8th and 9th, and at the Rafael in San Rafael August 8-10.