SFJFF30 Special Programs
Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film
Gangster films are an intriguing prism through which to view one of the darker aspects of American Jewish history: Jewish gangsters and Jewish crime. Scratch the bark on your family tree and you may find a Jewish gangster, or at least someone who paid off a Jewish gangster. Tough Guys: Images of Jewish Gangsters in Film includes cinematic images of Jewish gangsters, as well as “ethnic” gangsters played by Jewish actors: Bugsy, King of the Roaring 20's – The Story of Arnold Rothstein, Lepke and Scarface.
Don't miss the special panel discussion after the Castro screening of Lepke.
Spotlight: People of the Book
Writers take center stage in a sidebar of films exploring Jewish and Israeli literary lives.
Filmmakers take on a formidable challenge when they attempt to bring writers to life on the screen. After all, the writer’s craft is essentially non-visual, a writer’s work habits solitary and his or her art intended for audiences as an interior experience. So it is a special delight to showcase this year’s trove of films that not only do justice to the lives and the artistry of the writers they profile, but also enhance our appreciation of the filmmaker’s craft.
Opening Night After-Film Bash
Celebrate the launch of the 30th Anniversary SFJFF with fabulous food, flowing drinks, fun tunes from gypsy jazz sextet Gaucho and the best schmoozing in town at our Opening Night Bash, this year taking place after the Opening Night Film (Saviors in the Night). Also new this year, enjoy desserts, DJs, a festive photo booth with our pals at yelp.com and much more in this year's exciting addition, THE BACKROOM.
Castro Closing Night / Berkeley Opening Night: The Klezmatics
Join members of the band and director Erik Greenberg Anjou for a rousing Closing Night at the Castro Theatre including goodie bags and the Mighty Wurlitzer; Berkeley Opening Night features a delicious post-film reception in the Roda courtyard.
2010 Freedom of Expression Award Presentation: Sayed Kashua
SFJFF's Freedom of Expression Award honors the unfettered imagination, which is the cornerstone of a free, just and open society. Sayed Kashua will accept his award following the San Francisco screening of Arab Labor: Season 2 on July 28.
Centerpiece Film: Anita
Anita, a young Jewish woman with Down syndrome, lives with her devoted mother above the shop her late father started in a commercial district of Buenos Aires. Into their sweetly sedate domestic life the outside world intrudes with unexpected fury. But as Anita wanders the city lost, she finds compassion in unlikely quarters through the simple force of her ingenuous personality and open heart. Wrenching, lovely, suffused with life, Anita is a profoundly hopeful study of human innocence, compassion and resilience in a fragile, troubled world.
Join actor Alejandra Manzo for a post-film Q&A in San Francisco.
Special Live Performances
This don’t-miss event combines a classic Lower East Side silent melodrama with a brand new commissioned score performed live on the Castro stage by the Moab Strangers. Composer Ethan Miller (Howlin Rain, Comets on Fire) and a slew of talented Bay Area psychedelic and folk heroes provide an inspired, cutting-edge soundtrack to the 1922 restored silent Hungry Hearts. The film is adapted from the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, a Jewish writer whose rags-to-riches tales of immigrant hardship led to her nickname, the Sweatshop Cinderella. Produced by Samuel Goldwyn and shot on location in New York, Hungry Hearts is a vividly drawn portrait of a struggling Jewish family, at once tragic and richly comic.
Utopia in Four Movements
Utopia in Four Movements is an epic multimedia performance piece by Academy Award nominee Sam Green (The Weather Underground) and aural mix-master Dave Cerf. Originally conceived as a work-in-progress for a still uncompleted film, Utopia has evolved instead into a one-of-a-kind stage show that threads together a century’s worth of dizzying sounds and images into a deeply moving meditation on our world’s seemingly shrinking idealism.
The "Socalled" Movie
Meet Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin): musician, arranger, rapper, producer, composer, magician, filmmaker and visual artist, to name just a few of his talents! Blasting through boundaries separating different cultures, eras and generations, Socalled creates a wholly unique sound combining klezmer, funk, soul and hip-hop. Not too shabby for a nice Jewish boy from Montreal. This is a dynamic, kaleidoscopic portrait of an iconoclastic artist at the peak of his powers. Followed by live performance.
Free Outdoor Screening: Dirty Dancing
Join us in downtown San Francisco’s Union Square for the beloved 1980s classic Dirty Dancing, featuring the legendary Patrick Swayze as bad boy dance instructor Johnny, and Jennifer Grey (pre nose-job) as Baby, a sheltered, nice-Jewish-girl next-door with a passion for more than just the cha-cha-cha.
