Introduction
by Janis Plotkin
from 4th Edition
In 1981, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival pioneered the screening
of independent films on Jewish subjects to national audiences. Since then,
we have become the largest, oldest and most prestigious festival of this
kind in the world. In addition to discovering important new films and
filmmakers, the Festival provides a forum for dynamic and provocative
community gatherings that have grown larger and more culturally diverse
each year.
The Festival experience helps us to reclaim our identities from commercial media that often reduces us to tedious and damaging stereotypes. By presenting the work of independent filmmakers from different cultures, we can explore visions of being Jewish beyond categories of victimization and religiosity. While breaking down walls between entertainment and education, we demonstrate our underlying belief that film viewing can be a transformative experience.
Requests from individuals, community groups, and national organizations have helped transform us from a local film festival into an internationally renowned resource center for information about a significant body of work. We now consult regularly with over 40 other Jewish film festivals in cities such as New York, Boston, Washington DC, Barcelona, Sydney and Rio de Janeiro. At the conclusion of each Festival our office is flooded with questions about where to find a film or video, who distributes these films, how to put together a film program, and for answers to the troublesome question: what is a Jewish film? We share our own growing understanding of the subject through consultations; program notes; our website, sfjff.org, the largest online library and archive of independent Jewish film; Atara Releasing (our distribution service) and speaking engagements across the country and around the world.
In 1990, our Tenth Anniversary year, to test the limits of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost, we produced the Jewish Film Festival in Moscow and presented thirty international films and twenty-two filmmakers to Soviet audiences. At that historic moment we wanted to see whether the "spirit of openness" would be extended to Soviet Jews. The Moscow Festival drew a record-breaking 50,000 people, making it the largest Jewish cultural event in Soviet history. The incredible response we received from the Soviet Jews and their friends reaffirmed our organizational goals and once again underscored the importance of these independent films. As one Soviet viewer put it, "A week ago you were afraid to even pronounce the word 'Jewish' but now its unbelievable -- you can shout it with pride." The Moscow Festival was a turning point for the Soviet Jewish community. It opened people's hearts and minds to the richness, complexity and vitality of the Jewish experience in public for the first time.
Having added a global dimension to the Jewish Film Festival's operations in 1992 we went on to stage a Madrid Jewish Film Festival. In the midst of Spain's Columbus Quincentennial celebration, we brought public attention to the country's expulsion of Jews and Arabs in 1492. Many of the films shown in Madrid examined shared cultural traditions between Arabs and Jews and drew parallels between the racist expulsion that occurred 500 years ago and "ethnic cleansing" in post-Cold War Europe today. Presented at the prestigious government-sponsored Filmoteca Espanola in central Madrid, the standing-room-only festival drew large, mostly non-Jewish audiences, and became an historic event in its own right.
INDEPENDENT JEWISH FILM and the Online Guide to Independent Jewish Cinema compile 20 years of on-going work. They comprise an introductory guide to the vast and growing field of Jewish subject film. As we participate in the development of this field we see the growth of a new body of criticism and scholarship. We have included the theories and ideas of some of those scholars and critics to help deepen the readers understanding.
As we expand our Festival to include more representations of Jews from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East, we discover that "Jewish film" has little to do with the ethnicity or background of the artist and everything to do with a film's content. The range of style and subject reflects an exciting diversity of approaches and underlines the vitality of Jewish people everywhere. Though intermarriage and disaffection from organized Jewish religion are facts, assimilation is not inevitable. The presentation of Jewish culture through film is proof.
The body of work represented in this guide and the film artists who created it deserve critical attention and further support -- especially financial support. We hope this web site is another step toward those ends.
Articles:
Producing
Your Own Film Festival
Independent Jewish Film in America
Sephardic Cinema
Israeli Cinema
Film & The Holocaust
The SFJFF In Moscow
