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Animation
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Program Type

Cinegogue Sessions
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Filtered By: SFJFF 2009 Clear All

When nice Jewish girl Beth (Rose Byrne) moves into a new apartment, the refreshingly literal, brainy guy next door, Adam (Hugh Dancy), is probably not what her upper-middle-class Jewish mom (Amy Irving) and dad (Peter Gallagher) had in mind for her. But cupid’s arrow strikes these two different denizens of Gotham hard; they have major chemistry and within minutes we find ourselves rooting for them to overcome differences in culture and communication styles.

Israeli director Yoav Shamir (Checkpoint, Five Days) explores the ways contemporary Jews learn and think about anti-Semitism, both real and perceived. Spending time with the Anti-Defamation League’s crusading director Abe Foxman, and with Israeli teens at Auschwitz who assume “everybody hates the Jews,” Shamir worries about the future of the Jewish soul in an atmosphere of persecution. But while he is willing to poke a stick at a sacred cow, he’s too nuanced a filmmaker to let ideology trump thought. A daring documentary.

Before 1960, predominantly Jewish Weequahic High School in Newark, NJ, graduated some of the top students in the country. By 2000, the school had devolved into a breeding ground for gang violence in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities. Heart of Stone is a moving portrait of a bold principal who reaches into the school’s successful past to give his students a hopeful future.

Israel’s 2008 box office hit focuses on the Levis, a large, fun-loving family—at times quirky, but mostly typical. As the naive days of the early 1980s wane, they encounter concurrent tragedies: a car accident that leaves the father wheelchair bound and the uneasy distancing of once-inseparable twins. When one of the sons joins a commando unit fighting in the nationally polarizing war with Lebanon, the Levis’ personal struggles become indelibly intertwined with Israel’s own.

Oscar-winning animator Adam Elliot’s bittersweet comic fable of an unlikely yet extraordinary friendship between a middle-aged, obese New York Jew with Asperger’s syndrome and his eight-year-old pen pal from Australia. Brought to life by the bravura voice work of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette, Mary and Max is a poignant tale of a friendship between oddballs at their wits’ end with the world, but at peace with each other.

A Matter of Size

A Matter of Size

Herzl is a 340-pound chef who lives with his mother, and is immersed in a culture of rigid diet regimes and fitness classes. Just as he and his seriously overweight buddies in the working-class town of Ramle, Israel, seem beaten down by weight-loss failure, Herzl discovers the one place where fat guys can be rock stars: the world of sumo wrestling. An endearing and poignant comic tale, with echoes of The Full Monty, A Matter of Size traces these flawed men’s tender and funny path from body shame to body celebration, and from loneliness to love. A touching movie with a plus-size heart.

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech

Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech

This vital and unexpectedly personal exploration of the right to free speech features prominent voices including the filmmaker’s father, Martin Garbus, who discusses his difficult decision as a young Jewish ACLU attorney to defend the rights of American Nazis in Skokie, Illinois. Coolheaded and utterly engaging, the film traces the embattled history of free expression in the U.S., with instructive emphasis on post-9/11 cases.

The Wedding Song

The Wedding Song

Karin Albou (La Petite Jerusalem, SFJFF 2006) explores Jewish and Arab culture and female sexuality in her bold and exquisite second feature. In Nazi-occupied Tunis, two teenage girlfriends, Muslim Nour and Jewish Myriam, cling to their lifelong bond. Outside the intimate female quarters of home and hammam, the world shared by Jews and Arabs is split apart by German promises of liberation. When the propaganda seeps through the gender wall, Myriam and her mother are no longer safe, and a hasty wedding must be arranged. But marriage, like friendship, becomes a test of ethics and courage. Karin Albou in person at the Castro.

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe

The 1960s’ most famous, rabble-rousing and radical defense attorney is put on the witness stand by two of his two daughters in this riveting documentary. For Sarah and Emily Kunstler, it’s an effort to understand and reconcile with a man of contradictions who defended not only civil rights activists, the Chicago 7 and American Indian militants, but also accused rapists, terrorists and assassins. An exciting portrait of every revolutionary’s ideal= lawyer. Followed by social justice discussion at the Castro.

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