A look at the 43rd San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 2023
(July 19,2023)
By Gary Meyer
One would expect that such an event would offer films with a direct connection to Judaism but that is only a small part of the story with features like Remembering Gene Wilder, Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy, and Food and Country, highlighted in this year’s Festival.
I have been attending the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival almost from the beginning. The Festival’s history page explains that in 1980 Deborah Kaufman saw movies as a way “to spark a new and open discussion of politics and culture inside the Jewish community and to challenge Hollywood stereotypes of Jews in the public at large. The Festival was an immediate hit, featuring movies for a new generation bred on mass media but tired of Hollywood’s limited portrayals of Jewish life. SFJFF sought out films with diverse points of view for those who did not affiliate with-or indeed had become disaffected by-traditional Jewish institutions. Just as importantly, SFJFF provided a safe entryway into Jewish culture for anyone willing to pay the cost of a movie ticket. The Festival made a strong point of including and celebrating films about communities not often heard from in mainstream life as well as quirky and experimental cinema that expanded the notion of Jewish film.”
I was honored to be on the Board for eight years (my maximum on any board) and travel to Moscow in 1990 for a ground-breaking event that almost didn’t happen except for the tenacity of the festival’s directors, Deborah Kaufman and Janis Plotkin. (Read about it here)
Those original directors expanded what was the first Jewish Film Festival in the world, touring films and filmmakers, advising those wanting to start their own festivals, and even writing a book on how to do it. When they moved on to other projects, including making their own much heralded movies, incoming Co-Directors Lexi Leban and Jay Rosenblatt started a new, expanded era. They founded the Jewish Film Institute as the umbrella for the Festival, offering grants and support to filmmakers, JFI On Demand, Next Wave, the Filmmakers in Residence Program, and year round programming.
The 43rd Festival launches on Thursday, July 20, with Remembering Gene Wilder at the Castro Theatre. The documentary tells the life story of the beloved actor, reminding us of how much we laughed seeing him in The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. His co-conspirator on those movies, Mel Brooks, is a major presence in the film, as he was in Wilder’s life. Of course, he h
as many funny and sometimes revealing stories to tell, including how Gene came to be both a screenwriter and director. His friendship and films with Richard Pryor are a focus that is both funny and serious as Pryor struggles with addictions.
From Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to an Emmy-winning guest appearance on the TV sitcom Will and Grace, we get a solid sense of his career; the film also explores his personal life with the untimely death of his wife Gilda Radner, his successful next marriage to Karen, and how they lived through his heartbreaking descent into Alzheimer’s. The film will offer plenty of laughs, fond memories, and a few tears. Interviews with Wilder and many others supplement an abundance of film clips as they offer insights into “who was Gene Wilder?”
Remembering Gene Wilder Website
A very different look at the world of movies comes with Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy. It tells two stories that converge. Initially we expect a film about the making of the John Schlesinger drama about Joe Buck, a naïve sex worker from Texas (Jon Voight) hoping to find success in New York and the characters he meets, befriending “Ratso” Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), an unhealthy con man. But viewers soon realize that the movie will spend an equal amount of time exploring the social and political changes happening during the late 1960s when it was made. The civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the start of a broader gay rights awareness influenced Hollywood subject matter and Midnight Cowboy was part of that nexus. Many interviews and fascinating stories are intercut with scenes from the movie and newsreel footage. There is a helpful retrospective of the films by director Schlesinger, along with those British films that influenced him, and his coming out.
Critic J. Hoberman’s discussion of the shift from old fashioned westerns to parables for the Vietnam war is especially interesting, noting the only Vietnam film at the time was John Wayne’s “patriotic” Green Berets. Ironically, the very non-western (despite its title) Midnight Cowboy won three Oscars®, the first with an X-rating to be awarded Best Picture, but Voight and Hoffman might have split the votes for the Best Actor prize, awarded to John Wayne for True Grit.
Contemporary interviews with Jon Voight are plentiful but the absence of Dustin Hoffman (except brief vintage interviews as he was not available) throws off the balance. Still there is insightful commentary by family and friends of screenwriter Waldo Salt and producer Jerome Hellman, actors Brenda Vaccaro and Bob Balaban, and cinematographer Adam Holender about shooting the gritty streets of the “deuce” using hidden cameras to create a documentary feel of the real Times Square.(see another film in the festival about New York’s once notorious 42nd Street, Queen of the Deuce).
The film, loosely inspired by Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic by Glenn Frankel, may be too ambitious as it covers a lot of ground and would be terrific if expanded into a mini-series. Still director Nancy Buirski does a fine job with difficult material and it is a memorable follow-up to her other documentaries, especially Directed by Sidney Lumet and The Rape of Recy Taylor.
Listen to a podcast interview with director Burski.
The Catskills is very Jewish (but you don’t have to be Jewish to enjoy it) as it tells the story of the upstate New York playground for East Coast Jews that started in 1909 when land purchased for chicken farms then became home to modest hotels and bungalows providing alternative vacation spots to the “restricted to white Christians” resorts. The idea caught on and eventually there were 500 places for families of all incomes to escape the heat of the city and relax. There were swimming pools, tennis courts, golf courses, dance lessons –we enjoy extensive contemporary interviews with dance instructor Jackie Horner and accompanying vintage footage. Horner started at Kutsher’s in 1954 and taught dancing until her passing in 2020. Dirty Dancing screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein discusses the end of an era in the Catskills.
Elaborate nightclubs featured comedians on their way to stardom: Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Joan Rivers, Danny Kaye, Don Rickles, Mel Brooks, George Burns, Jerry Seinfeld, Jackie Mason, Buddy Hackett, Woody Allen, Henny Youngman, Phil Silvers, and Milton Berle—but not Mrs. Maisel. And the food! Oy. Brisket, pastrami, chopped liver, smoked salmon, bagels, herring, prime rib, and of course, borscht–the menus could be overwhelming. And special events like the hilarious “mock marriage” with gender switching clothing and a fake rabbi—his prayerbook replacement reflects the times. Some resorts were specifically for singles with a matchmaking goal.
Jennie Grossinger, the real boss of one of the largest and most famous resorts, Grossinger’s, was an outgoing hostess and a PR master— luckily wonderful interviews with her survive. Among the many interviews, Stephan M. Silverman author of filmmaker bios and The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America is especially informative (Editor’s note: Silverman passed away this week). Others range from humorous to unsatisfying, where people who went to the Catskills when they were younger aren’t given enough screen time to get to know them. Director Lex Gillespie, who brought his The Mamboniks to the festival in 2019, has sloppily assembled his material that jumps all over the place. But that shouldn’t stop audiences from having a very good time. If you are into nostalgia or just curious, don’t hesitate to see it.
(Editor’s note:See some classic photos of Catskills hotels after the reviews.)
Thinking of eating, Food and Country, a new project by food writer Ruth Reichl and director Laura Gabbert (City of Gold, Ottolenghi and the Cakes of Versailles) take us on a deep dive into the impact on small farmers and independent restaurants brought about by Covid-19. Reichl (author of four books, LA Times and NY Times food critic and editor of Gourmet Magazine) knows the right people and has found an interesting group to introduce viewers to, often required to be via Zoom. She starts with Alice Waters, a friend since Ruth lived in a commune in Berkeley and Alice was starting Chez Panisse where she started the modern movement of “farm to table.” They speculate on what will happen during the pandemic with restaurants closing and the farmers they support suddenly without customers.
Oakland’s Reem Assil was opening her new San Francisco restaurant but had to shut down. We see her discussing with her team what they might do to survive. Minh Phan of Porridge + Puffs in Los Angeles barely stays open by offering take-out. Brothers Lee and Bob Jones Jr., who run Chef’s Garden Farms in Huron, Ohio, lose business from those who they supply fresh produce to, while corn and bean farmers Angela and Kerry Knuth, in the process of converting to organic production, are faced with the lost of revenue needed to keep going.
It is heartbreaking to hear their stories, especially the concern for their employees. But they have ideas and there might be an upside, as difficult as it will be to get there. Rise and Root is Karen Washington’s Bronx-based farm. Her focus is on community education and encouraging black farmers to help grow their numbers, once a major part of this country’s agriculture population. Will Harris of White Oak Pastures has an ecologically run farm with free-range livestock. Bren Smith is a Long Island Sound aquaculturist bringing oysters to market and harvesting kelp for plant-based foods, fertilizer, and bioplastics.
Reichl is an expert interviewer, compassionate and able to make her subjects feel comfortable with her conversations despite being on computers. She and Gabbert take on a lot here. It’s almost overwhelming but the innovators trying positive solutions to fix the broken food system give us hope.
Ruth Reichl and Laura Gabbert discuss Food and Country at the Sundance Premiere.
Laura Gabbert Facebook
Ruth Reichl Facebook
There are lot of movies to see at the Jewish Film Festival running in San Francisco and Oakland through Sunday, August 6. Explore the 39 page Program Book or online schedule.This grid helps plan what to see.
EatDrinkFilms is proud to be a Communty Partner with the Festival.
The entire program is intriguing, but I can’t see them all. I will choose many from this (incomplete) list.
1341 Frames of Love and War
A Compassionate Spy
A Gaza Weekend
A Still Small Voice
Alam
Bella!
Delegation
Freedom of Expression Award: Lisa Edelstein
I Like It Here
I Like Movies
Israelism
My Neighbor Adolf
Nathan-ism
Plan C
Queen of the Deuce
Rabbi on the Block
The Artist’s Daughter
The Secret Art of Human Flight
The Story of Annette Zelman
The Two Lives of Rube Goldberg
The Wild One
Vishniac
White Bird
White Bird
And lots of shorts
EPHEMERA FROM THE BORSCHT BELT
We couldn’t resist adding some goodies. Links will take you to various sites and pages of interest.
The Borscht Belt: Its Artifacts, Ephemera, and Memorabilia Facebook
Jackie Robinson and Tony Bennett at Grossinger’s
A mix of nostalgia and today’s sad, decaying remains on the website for the book, The Borscht Belt by Marisa Scheinfeld whose family home movies and photos are also featured.
Danny Kaye and Jennie Grossinger
Director Lex Gillespie interviewed about the Catskills and the Mamboniks, his previous film about the love of Latin music by Jewish people who danced at the Catskills hotels.
The Borscht Belt Museum presents the Borscht Belt Fest on July 29, 2023 in advance of their 2025 physical opening.
For those intrigued by Welcome the Kutsher’s that screened a few years ago, this broadens the scope to a bigger picture. More Catskills history here.
Gary Meyer started his first theater in the family barn when he was twelve years old. He directed a monster movie there and wanted to show it on the set. It became The Above-the-Ground Theatre, where he screened dozens of silent films with music arranged from his parents’ record collection. More than 250 films were screened along with live productions, workshops and the publication of a literary/arts/satire zine, “Nort!” and a film newsletter, “Ciné.” After film school at SFSU he calls his first job as a booker for United Artists Theatres –“grad school” that prepared him for co-founding Landmark Theatres in 1975. It was the first national arthouse chain in the U.S. focused on creative marketing strategies to build loyal audiences for non-Hollywood fare. After selling Landmark, he consulted on many projects including Sundance Cinemas and the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Rose Cinemas, created several film festivals including the Dockers Classically Independent Film Festival and Tube Film Festival for the X Games, and resurrected the 1926 Balboa Theatre in San Francisco. Meyer joined the Telluride Film Festival in 1998, becoming a Festival Co-Director in 2007-2014. He founded the online magazine, EatDrinkFilms.com in April 2014 and consults for festivals while offering pro bono advice to independent filmmakers and cinemas. He started EatDrinkFilms to give a voice to writers wanting to explore food, beverage and the movies from unique perspectives. Meyer, Editor/Publisher, also contributes articles.
eatdrinkfilms.com 