Ever wonder how festivals select the best new, obscure, independent films?
From late May until mid-July, I got a glimpse of at least part of the selection process. I was asked to pre-screen films for the Mill Valley Film Festival. I considered this an honor, and jumped at the opportunity.
Parkway Theater Goes To Pot
by Gary Meyer
There have been a lot of ways old movie theaters have found new life as something else. The newest might be as a medical marijuana dispensary at the old Parkway Theater in Oakland.
Will they show nonstop screenings of REEFER MADNESS and Cheech and Chong’s UP IN SMOKE or the new buzz baker movie DOUGH?
Will the concession stand be renamed the Munchies Bar? They could hire Jeffthe420Chef to design the menu from his new cookbook The 420 Gourmet- The Elevated Art of Cannabis Cuisine.
Will public transportation be via a CannaBus?
A Bear and a Bull and a Restored Movie Palace
By Thomas Downs
I took a walk in the Mission District the other night, on my way to meet up with Al Barna and Randall Homan for a drink at the New Mission Theater. I hadn’t been in the neighborhood for several months, and with things going as they have been, a visit after so long often turns into an appraisal of recent changes – old shops and restaurants shuttered, buildings demolished, construction projects underway, discernible shifts in demographics, and so on. These clinical observations aside, the Mission remains one of the country’s most vital and interesting neighborhoods to just wander around in.
The very top of the New Mission’s neon sign
Wednesday, August 17 at The Berkeley Art Museum•Pacific Film Archive
The Berkeley Art Museum•Pacific Film Archive presents three “Cinema Mon Amour” programs in August where filmmakers, musicians, writers and film curators are asked to present a favorite movie.
Recipes by Joyce Goldstein
For thousands of years, the people of the Jewish Diaspora have carried their culinary traditions and kosher laws throughout the world. In the United States, this has resulted primarily in an Ashkenazi table of matzo ball soup and knishes, brisket and gefilte fish. But Joyce Goldstein is now expanding that menu with this comprehensive collection of over four hundred recipes from the kitchens of three Mediterranean Jewish cultures: the Sephardic, the Maghrebi, and the Mizrahi.
By Gaetano Kazuo Maida
(Film titles provide links to information about their screenings and buying tickets)
Roger Sherman’s film crew eating at El Babor restaurant in the Haifa area of Israel
“Ess, ess, eat!” Even the vaguest scent of homemade chicken soup or flanken or kasha or just sautéed onions brings to me echoes of the bubbes of the Bronx Jewish girls I dated as a teenager (sometimes simply because her grandmother lived with the family!). Despite the richness of the cuisines of my own family (Sicilian and Japanese), and an extended involvement with the restaurant profession, it’s yiddishkeit food that remains one of the comfort foods of my life. It doesn’t hurt that my wife is a Sabra who enjoys cooking and eating with me, and incidentally, grew up with one of her own bubbes at home….
So it’s a delight to report that the upcoming 36th edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is offering a few choice cinematic tastes of food traditions from the Middle East and Mitteleuropa that we’ve come to embrace as American (or will soon!). Be forewarned if you go: you will emerge hungry, so plan accordingly!
