The 34th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival prides itself on being the first and largest Jewish film festival in the world. Featuring more than 70 films screened in various locations across the Bay Area, the festival is a continuation of the organization’s celebration of community, independence, culture and expression. The films explore themes of Jewish identity, history and global experiences. While the artistic contributions came from around the world, The Daily Californian took a look at a few East Bay-made films screening at the festival.
“The Village of Peace”
“The Village of Peace” opens with a rather uninspiring quote from Marcus Garvey, orator and key figure of the Back-to-Africa movement in the United States: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” The documentary, directed by Niko Philipides and Ben Schuder, uses Garvey’s words as a narrative window into the story of the physical and spiritual sojourn of the African Hebrew Israelites, a fascinating group of Chicagoans who started life anew in the desert of Israel.
Commentary from four village members begins in the 1960s, when black Hebrew congregations began emerging in American cities. In a revitalization of Garvey’s movement, some made their new homes in Liberia, while others eventually settled in Israel, occupying renovated immigrant laborer housing that would come to be known as the Village of Peace.
The film offers an intimate look into the lifestyle of the African Hebrew Israelites, who are both vegan and polygamous. The village members provide thoughtful rationale for all their practices, which border on convincing until they reveal that even in their loving and highly-functioning society, women are still second to men. The lack of critical voices in the film gives it a recruitment-video feel that seems incomplete in its positivity.
Despite its one-dimensionality, “The Village of Peace” succeeds as a gripping and in-depth look at the untold story of a community of expatriates who have found their true home at last in the Holy Land.
—Grace Lovio
“112 Weddings”
It’s not every day one gets married. But for director Doug Block, marriage might feel like an everyday occurrence, considering he works part-time as a wedding videographer in order to supplement his work as a documentary filmmaker. In his 19 years of filming weddings, Block has shot 112 weddings — and later wondered how the couples he watched commit to each other have fared.
“112 Weddings” is a beautiful, emotional and wonderfully real look at marriage, time and love that features interviews with couples of many faiths and beliefs. Block also interviews Rabbi Jonathan Blake, a married man and wedding officiator himself, bringing a different perspective to the institution of marriage.
It is interesting, watching a documentary with such a private, inward focus. There is no social message here and no environmental phenomenon. Block explores the “divorce trend,” if it can be called that, but he does it with tenderness. Although 56 of the couples he’s watched make the commitment later went back on their promises, it ultimately feels hopeful. Two of the couples have since divorced, and those who have stayed together have had their challenges too.
The film doesn’t shy away from the fact that the wedding is really the easy part — it’s the years later that get challenging. But for Block, it seems that it’s the challenges that make it real, and its the challenges that have made the couples realize how important what they’re fighting for in the first place. As one husband says to his wife, looking back on it all, “I still think that I wouldn’t want to do this with anybody else, you know?”
—Tyler Allen
“The Bulletproof Stockings”
At a mere nine minutes and 39 seconds, the documentary “The Bulletproof Stockings,” directed by Sarah Berkovich, offers viewers a very brief glimpse into the life of a Brooklyn-based alternative rock band. Far from the flashing lights of paparazzi, groupies and tour buses, the band, Bulletproof Stockings, is unique in that it is composed of two (sometimes three or four) women who perform Jewish music and who will only play in the presence of women.
The group’s founding members, Perl Wolfe and Dalia Shusterman, decided to create a band that adheres to the rabbinic law kol isha, which prohibits men from hearing women sing, though at least one of the members has performed with and in front of men as well. The story behind the formation of the band is intriguing on multiple levels. Unfortunately, the brevity of the film doesn’t allow for the exploration of all of the possibilities of such a unique partnership.
Those topics it does touch on — who the band members are, why they decided to create such a group and what their sound is like — seem only to open up the discussion to more in-depth questions that are left unanswered. For instance, how do Wolfe and Shusterman view music’s role within Judaism? And because they only allow other women to see and hear them perform, what is the religious and personal relationship of music to their own bodies? Do they produce music differently because they target an entirely female audience? This film is successful in producing an intriguing premise. It’s only a shame that it wasn’t able to flush out a fuller picture of the music and work of the Bulletproof Stockings.
—Anne Ferguson
“Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the new South Africa”
Director Abby Ginzberg attacks the still-recent memories of the South African apartheid in her biographical film “Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa.” The documentary traces the career of Jewish-born Albie Sachs, a white South African lawyer/activist/constitution writer and later one of the first Constitutional Court judges under the apartheid-free government.
The film begins in the 1960s when Sachs fought for the rights of those who opposed the apartheid government until he also landed in jail. After his release, Sachs left the continent, but he believed in the efforts and changes that were occurring in Africa and moved to Mozambique to continue fighting for equality. At apartheid’s end, he returned to his home in South Africa, helped draft South Africa’s new constitution and later served on the Constitutional Court.
The primary sources utilized in this film provide great depth to the story, especially the oral histories and video material tracing Sachs’ work and the intimate details of his life. These sources are integrated into a broader narrative that begins in the early anti-apartheid movement and extends into our present moment, ignoring the “happily ever after” arc of most inspirational stories. Just as Sachs continued his work after Apartheid ended, so the story of his career onscreen needed to reflect the continuation of his life, his nation’s continued struggles and his ongoing belief and pride in the South African people. As he says in one of the film’s interviews, South Africa is “exceptional in the extent to which the ugly is ugly and the beautiful is beautiful.”
—Anne Ferguson
“In the Image: Palestinian Women Capture the Occupation”
Judith Montell and Emmy Scharlatt created an incredibly interesting and highly contentious film to bring to the Jewish Film Festival this year. “In The Image: Palestinian Women Capture the Occupation” documents the human rights violations happening to Palestinian civilians. Although similar to the story told by the media, “In The Image” demonstrates a slightly different perspective of the cruelty imposed upon the Palestinians through the camera lenses of the female photographers.
The documentary features several cases of violence experienced by Palestinian civilians and should be a welcomed, controversial addition to the many pictures shown during the festival. The film itself doesn’t stand as a strong final project and lacks editing, as evidenced by misspelled subtitles. But the creators of the film focus so heavily on providing such evidence of what these civilians experience that they overlook sufficient editing to end with a well-done product. The idea of presenting Palestine’s dire situation becomes more important than the movie as a final package.
Toward the end of the film, one of the photographers presents a horrific situation of utter violence against her brother. How she describes her abhorrence against her brother’s attackers in a few words depicts the film’s main message: “If I kill him, I would cause another mother and sister to cry. I don’t want to see anyone cry.” Those words describe the ultimate idea behind a film like this. The directors show the world the cruelty seen firsthand by the Palestinian victims of the conflict in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but “In the Image” lacks a polished depiction of an important subject.
—Melanie Jimenez
The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs until Aug. 10. For a full list of screenings, please click here.