Earlier, when I asked Program Director Nancy Fishman which program out of this year's edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) she was most anticipating, she didn't miss a beat in highlighting the salute to Gertrude Berg; a program consisting of four archival episodes from The Goldbergs television series, followed by Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009). In tandem with SFJFF's presentation of the 2009 Freedom of Expression Award to Kempner, a Q&A session following The Goldbergs program, and a panel discussion following Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the program was leant considerable charm by the participation of Dr. Glenn D. "Pete" Smith, Jr., author of Something On My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007). Perhaps it was his Mississippian drawl, or his enthused (and contagious!) scholasticism, or the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60.
Glenn D. Smith, Jr. is an assistant professor of communication at Mississippi State University located in Starkville, MS. Something On My Own was published by Syracuse University Press in 2007, and nominated for the 2008 Bancroft Prize, given for exceptional work in American history. The book has received notice in the Journal of American History, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Television Quarterly, and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, among other distinguished publications. It also has its detractors: Ben Birnbaum stages his complaints at Tablet Magazine. Professor Smith is currently researching the careers of union activist and blacklisted actor, Philip Loeb, and fellow Mississippian Carolyn Bennett Patterson, the first woman senior editor at National Geographic.
Dr. Smith's salute to Gertrude Berg (in PDF format) supplemented the SFJFF program and his comments during the afternoon tribute added—as mentioned—charming heft to the informational proceedings.
* * *
Professor Smith's Intro to The Goldbergs:
Near the end of her life, Gertrude Berg asked herself, "Have I become the woman I always wanted to be or am I still trying?" If Gertrude was confused about her identity, she had good reason to be. After all, she spent more time as Molly Goldberg than she did as Gertrude Berg. The Goldbergs was produced, written and starred Gertrude but it was more than just a radio or television series; the first of its kind in either medium. It offered a glimpse inside the head of one of our more interesting, complex and prolific women in broadcasting history. If you wanted to know what Gertrude was thinking at any given moment in the day, look no further than that week's episode of The Goldbergs because—let's face it—she thought more about The Goldbergs than she did just about anything. I've often said in my writing that The Goldbergs was Gertrude's mouth piece for her political and social discontent. As you will see in the upcoming episode "Rent Strike", for example, Berg had something to say about the struggles of the common man and woman and she found the right person to say it in labor activist and actor Philip Loeb, who played Jake to her Molly.
So, The Goldbergs provides a glimpse into the world of Gertrude Berg. It offers, for example, bits and pieces of her own childhood in East Harlem, New York. It gives the viewer an idea of the life Gertrude may have lived—had she the inclination to do so—she had enough talent, drive and ambition to do something on her own. But yet The Goldbergs offers more than just a glimpse into the Gertrude Berg experience—as we celebrate her life today, let's look at it as just that experience—it also offers a microcosm of the Jewish American experience. All of this is to say that Gertrude—through The Goldbergs—created a venue through which the Jewish American was celebrated and people from all walks of life, including myself, were welcome.
* * *
After screening the archival episodes of The Goldbergs—which included a heartfelt performance by a young Anne Bancroft in "Mother-in-Law"—Nancy Fishman asked Professor Smith to talk about the history of The Goldbergs on radio and television, bidding wars between studios for the show, and what caused it to eventually go off-air?
He responded: "Okay, some of you may not know that The Goldbergs was first a radio series in 1929, premiered at the start of the Great Depression, and Berg sold the series to NBC as a daily radio 15-minute serial with no sponsors. It took NBC two years to find a sponsor, Pepsodent Toothpaste (who also sponsored Amos n' Andy). She went from making about $75 a week in 1929—from which she had paid off the cast and crew—to $2,000 a week in the early 1930s. By the end of her first decade on radio—The Goldbergs, y'know, was a cottage industry—Berg was making the equivalent of about $7,500 a week and in 1937 she became the first woman in broadcasting to sign a million-dollar contract with a sponsor: Proctor and Gamble.
"So when I'm asked about Berg's legacy, just the fact that as a woman in a male-dominated business—and that's exactly what it was, make no mistake—she was able to write, produce, direct and star in her own radio series every single day for almost 10 years without interruption…! That being said, the show carried itself during the Second World War where Molly sold everything, including war bonds, and in 1945 the show was finally cancelled. In that 15-year period The Goldbergs bounced between CBS and NBC, whoever the highest bidder was at that time. If anything, that shows you how skillful Berg was at negotiations. If NBC, for example, didn't meet her demands, she would go to Paley's network. If Paley, by example, by the end of the next contract didn't meet her demands, she'd go back to NBC….
"In 1949, the show did premiere on CBS—you saw three of the four episodes with Philip Loeb—and it lasted on CBS for 10 years and was ended, unfortunately, by the blacklist. Loeb was blacklisted for his union politics. He was a longtime member of Actors Equity, a champion for Actors Equity, he helped usher in things that I think most actors take for granted today, including rehearsal pay. …In his 20 years of union work, Phil would say that he loved Equity work first, his teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts second, and acting third. It was, though, his union activities that got him blacklisted. Gertrude was asked by CBS and General Foods to fire him, but she refused. From there, she and Loeb were together in their 18-month stance in which they tried to find a new sponsor and a new network after CBS pulled the plug. The Goldbergs suffered from the blacklist itself, as did Berg. She spent the rest of her life piecing together what was left of her career and Loeb, of course, ended up committing suicide."
Asked whether Berg avoided being too Jewish on The Goldbergs, Professor Smith offered, "In the years I've researched Gertrude's career, one thing I've been struck by—in terms of The Goldbergs—is its universal appeal. She straddled that line between bringing the show that would celebrate—as we said earlier—the Jewish American experience, but not making it exclusive to one group of people. For years on radio some of her biggest fans were non-Jewish. Her favorite story, in fact, was when she got a letter from a group of Catholic nuns who had given up The Goldbergs for Lent. They had written to Berg to ask for copies of the scripts for episodes they had missed.
"As the show progressed from 1949-1955, it did get more diluted (if that's a word I can use in this situation); it became more homogenized (I think is the word we use in academia when talking about ethnic shows). The ones in 1949 specifically address more Jewish themes than the ones in 1955, believe it or not. But I think it's just because she wanted to walk that fine line. She was also very aware that Mr. William Paley was watching closely. When you think about Paley and his politics, as much as he gave to Jewish causes, he was also timid about the fact of who he was and where he came from. That played into that as well. In fact, in the beginning of 1949, he didn't even want the series for television. As I've often said, it's one thing to hear an anti-Semitic line on a radio show, or a rock being thrown through a window (for example) during Passover; but, it's another to see it on television. That made William Paley nervous and Gertrude—if anything—was a business woman. She was very sensitive to what sponsors might or might not feel or want her to do, until it came to Philip Loeb when they went a step too far."
Protesting that something was lost when the venue from The Goldbergs was shifted from the city to the suburbs, one gentleman questioned why that decision had been made? Smith answered: "Yeah, The Goldbergs lost a lot in translation—you're absolutely correct about that—and it had lost a lot of air time too. The show had been almost 18 months off the air. Philip Loeb was blacklisted in September of 1950. Berg and Loeb fought the battle often with the studio that entire season with General Foods. CBS and General Foods cancelled the show in the Spring of 1951. And the show didn't reappear until later in 1952. By that point you had a different type of situation where shows like Father Knows Best and Leave It To Beaver and I Love Lucy—which, by the way, was the heir to Gertrude Berg's time slot—were on the air. By the time Gertrude came back to the air minus Philip Loeb, she was having to play catch-up. That's something Gertrude had never had to do in her life because she was the trendsetter for 20 years from radio, and now to play catch-up? Her son Charlie told me that she considered the Guild Film series sort of a step down. That was the last time the show was on the air in 1955. She had gone from CBS to NBC and then on to a syndicated film series, that was sort of her last gasp at a television career. She spent the rest of her life really trying to get back where she was in 1949 and that's, I think, the great tragedy of her career. The highlight was Molly Goldberg and—let's face it—that was the quintessential image that she created. She had a hard time, in many ways, letting go of that image. By 1955, things had simply changed and—you're right—the show as a result lost a lot in the translation."
Asked about what I termed earlier as "the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60", Professor Smith chuckled and said, "That's the $64,000 question. That's always the first question I get. I enjoy that question because—as I tell my students—you know, a good television show and a good writer should transcend difference.
"I became interested when I was in graduate school. I was working on my masters at the university and—like most graduate students—I was looking for a good thesis topic. I ran across her name doing some research and I'm a journalist and a historian by trade—and I've told this story many times—but it was just a damn good story. I mean, point blank, a screenwriter could look for this kind of stuff and never find it. So I stayed with it. Believe it or not, I identify with Gertrude's story. Growing up in the South, we Southerners knew something about trials and tribulations ourselves, and her story speaks to the American Dream. Who doesn't want what Gertrude had in some way? Once I got to the blacklist, and started investigating Phil's life—for some reason I keep calling him Phil, like I knew him—but, once I started investigating that, I knew I had a big story. Then I knew I had a dissertation topic, which became my book. That's the long way around a short answer, I guess."
Fishman pursued this query in the panel discussion after the screening of Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. Along with wanting to know what drew Professor Smith to Gertrude Berg, Fishman wanted to know when he knew he would end up writing about her? Which is unusual because Smith is from Mississippi, "Which," Fishman quipped, "was even farther away from Manhattan than the Bronx."
"Yeah," Smith grinned, "it's a long schlep. First of all, [her children] Cherney and Harriet were very hospitable to me. I was 27 or 28 when I sat down to interview Harriet and she said, 'Can I ask you a question before you start?' I said, 'Absolutely.' She said, 'Are you Jewish?' I said, 'No, ma'am.' She said, 'Do you mind if I ask your religious background?' I said, 'Well, I was raised Southern Baptist.' She said, 'Oh my God, you're a long way from home.'
"To answer your question, I was doing some research for my masters thesis in Auburn back in 1994 and—as I was telling this story earlier—like most grad students I was struggling to find a good topic for my masters thesis and I ran across Gertrude's name in some obscure book on women in comedy, which I found funny later on because Gertrude never considered herself a comedienne; she considered herself a performer first and foremost. But anyway, that reference led to another reference and turned into a class I was doing on broadcasting history and women in the media corps. I took it all in and that parleyed itself into a partial masters thesis and then a dissertation topic at the University of Southern Mississippi. But like most journalists and/or historians, it was just a damn good story. That's the honest-to-God's truth. I do identify with Gertrude's story a little bit—I have a family member who has struggled with mental illness—those kind of little nuggets stick with you. She reminds me—Gertrude, not Molly—of my own mother, a woman who has called me three times in the last four hours. A strong, domineering, Southern woman who did not get to live out her own dreams so she transferred all of those to her two daughters and her son. Part of it's that; but, it's just a good old-fashioned story.
"As far as when I knew that I had something, it was when I got into Syracuse. I had many fits and starts with this project. I had actually fallen asleep one night and had a dream about Gertrude. She was playing in a stage play and my mother was out in the audience with me—I can't figure that one out, to save my life—and she invited me, Gertrude did, to come back stage after the play. I told my mother she needed to stay in the audience and I went back there and Gertrude sat me down and we chit chatted—because Gertrude loved to chit chat—and she said, 'Darling, you're doing a good job. Make sure they don't forget me.' I woke up the next morning and I said, 'You know what? This is my project.' The minute I got to Syracuse and stumbled upon her two children, as my dissertation director told me, 'Goddamn, you've hit the motherlode here.' That's when I knew."
Asked where Gertrude Berg's broadcasting career would have gone had she not defended Philip Loeb, and conceding that morally she really had no choice, Professor Smith added, "It bothered her anyway. Even the fact that she went to the ends of the earth—which most people would agree that she did—the fact that she couldn't do enough really sat next to her. Those are the kinds of things that kept Gertrude up at night. She wasn't worried about the next day's script—because she had those things down pat—but, it was this fundamental belief that her grandfather taught her that in America the principle of fair play should actually mean something. She practiced that to the best of her ability in her career. Was she always fair? I don't know. Did she always make the right decision? I'm not sure. But I do know one thing. She didn't bat an eyelash [deciding] to protect Phil Loeb. That was the great tragedy of her legacy. She always felt like she didn't do enough."
Aware that Berg successfully played NBC and CBS off each other in a bidding war during the height of the show's popularity, Fishman wondered if it was easier for Berg to do so because she was a woman? Did that soften her relationships with Paley and Sarnoff and their minions? "Absolutely not," Dr. Smith objected. "Being a woman just made it twice as hard for her, especially when they found out at the board meetings that she was nothing like Molly Goldberg. I have copies of memos going between one NBC vice president to another and they don't know what to do with her. She learned the business from the ground up and was literally the only woman in a roomful of men, who at first patronized her and considered her to be Molly Goldberg and—once they realized their mistake—she was laughing all the way to the bank, as they say."
As for whether she would have had the same success if her career had started after the advent of television, and if she had not already established herself as a major radio star, Professor Smith mentioned: "Let's give credit to Worthington 'Tony' Miner, who was a young producer from the World Theatre who Paley had hired and entrusted with three charges. He wanted Miner to bring a children's show to the network so Miner helped create Mr. I. Magination. Paley wanted a variety show on CBS so Miner found Ed Sullivan to create Toast of the Town. Paley was looking for a third element, a radio drama, and Gertrude did force the issue on Paley and Paley did give her an audition; but, Miner saw the audition. He probably helped convince Paley that this was the third element in the trifecta, so to speak. To give a more personal answer, Gertrude told Judith Abrams when Judith asked that very question in the early 1960s, 'Do you think you would be successful today knowing what you know?' and Gertrude said, 'No. It's all about timing.' She said, 'I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and in show business it is all about timing.' "
Noting that television shifted towards conformism for reasons having to do with a lot more than McCarthyism and the blacklist, one fellow wondered if popular culture could have been different without those factors? Professor Smith thought not. "I don't think so, simply because Paley and Sarnoff controlled so much of the industry early on and they couldn't help creating the characters as people who didn't resemble them. They helped homogenize these images. You have a gulf from the 1950s to the 1970s. It took someone like Norman Lear to step forward and recreate the narrative, so to speak. Between that there's this gulf, this void, and women like Gertrude were no longer around to help create the narrative. Everyone talks about the creativity in Hollywood but—with all due respect—they recycle the same thing over and over and play it safe. You have to remember it's a business and Paley and Sarnoff were in the business of making money—not that there's anything wrong with that—but, somehow they're afraid that they're going to offend some viewers out there in Kansas somewhere who will take offense to someone like Gertrude Berg. They continue to underestimate our ability to be sensible viewers."
Asked if Berg was familiar with the Bronx, where The Goldbergs was set, Professor Smith replied: "Gertrude was a meticulous researcher and she spent a long time in the lower east side back in her radio days where she became recognizable. She would join mothers clubs in the lower part of Manhattan just to pick up the accent and the conversations and that sort of thing. But when she went to television, she gave up directing to Walter Hart. CBS wanted to hire a writing staff and she liked that idea but—as Newsweek pointed out in 1949—she owned the whole kit and caboodle so she did go to the Bronx and according to at least one newspaper article I know, she did visit Treemont Avenue.
"She noticed there was a lot of commotion in one apartment—it was a child's birthday party—so she knocked on the door and asked if she could come in? One of the kids from that party ran out the door and ran to a nearby park and shouted, 'Molly's in our house!' A stream of kids came running back. As far as I know, she did visit the Bronx just to get the look and feel of what Molly's world was like. Even though she grew up in East Harlem, Gertrude loved Park Avenue. That's where her roots were as a modern woman.
Prefacing that several scripts on The Goldbergs were quite provocative and inclined towards the Left, another gentleman questioned whether there was ever any concern that they were pushing the envelope at a time when the tide was clearly moving in the other direction? "No," Dr. Smith answered, "because she was selling a buttload of Sanka coffee and that's all William Paley really was concerned with. I have made the stance before—let's make no mistake—Philip Loeb was the reason this show was blacklisted. It had little to do with the social issues in the show. I do grant you they are very progressive scripts; but, if you watched TV in 1949, I don't think Gertrude was the only one doing the unusual. The government had been chasing Philip for two decades. His politics in the union had divided many people within Equity. He'd been running from the Attorney General and later on the Senate Internal Security Committee off and on for years and it just finally caught up with him. But that is the reason the show came to a screeching halt, not because of the scripts. Because once again, as long as the show was selling the product, that's all the sponsor was concerned with. Loeb just got too much publicity and it got just a little too warm in the kitchen for the sponsor."
As for whether Gertrude Berg wrote scripts for others, Smith relayed, "She did other things in the 1930s. She actually had another radio series The House of Glass about a woman who runs a hotel in the Catskills (sound familiar?). She dabbled in that off and on. The integral years, the post-war years rather, between 1945 and 1949, were some dry years, so to speak. She was working on her play Me and Molly and the quote 'she was floundering around looking for something to do' that I used in the movie, that's from Harriet Berg who told me that. She said her mother was 'floundering around.' She said she was unbearable when she wasn't performing. Harriet did tell me this, she said, 'You can always tell when my mother got a new gig because we could stop taking the bus.' Not that Gertrude ever took the bus—she took maybe one trip—but she tried to cut back on the shopping, which she loved to do. It didn't last very long. She loved the work and that's what motivated her as a mother and a wife."
Cross-published on Twitch.
As the 29th edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) draws near to wrapping up at The Castro Theatre—its San Francisco venue—and continues on through August 8 at Berkeley's Roda Theatre and Palo Alto's Cinearts, I felt now would be a good time to present the first in a series of research interviews I'm entitling "Diaspora By the Bay." This research is for a paper I'm writing for the next volume of The Film Festival Yearbook, which hopes to explore issues of disaporic content and constituency within the film festival circuit. SFJFF Program Director Nancy K. Fishman and Program Coordinator Joshua Moore were the first to make themselves available for this research project. Peter Stein, the festival's Executive Director, was hard-pressed to launch the festival and apologized for not being able to participate.
Establishing straight off that SFJFF follows the now-standard non-profit model of film festivals, bolstered by public funding, private donations, and supplementary membership/box office income, Nancy Fishman also advised that SFJFF is the only Jewish Film Festival in the United States that receives money from the National Endowment for the Arts. Locally, they receive funding from the San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund.
* * *
Michael Guillén: There has been some scholastic indication that Jewish film festivals were the first to organize themselves internationally with regard to community outreach and collaboration amongst each other, rather than the more customary competition expected between film festivals. Certainly, as I reviewed this year's program for SFJFF, I was struck by the festival's community involvement.
Lately, when I read festival programs, I find myself less interested in the capsules—whose synoptic purpose I respect but whose promotional incentive I've come to distrust—and more intrigued by who is co-presenting and co-sponsoring the films. In laymen's terms, could you state the distinction between co-sponsorship and co-presentation?
Nancy Fishman: Sponsors give us money. We're very grateful to have their money and—especially with individual donors—it makes them feel more connected to the festival because they will often gather a crowd of their friends to come to the film they've sponsored. Co-presenters are the people who help us spread the world about a particular film. Basically, we try to match up films with groups that are organized, fit well with that film, or will help us reach a particular constituency. There are probably 60-65 co-presenters at this year's festival. They cover a spectrum. We try very hard to work with a variety. We work with both Jewish and non-Jewish groups, several film groups like the San Francisco Film Society and the Mill Valley Film Festival. At this year's festival, the Asian American Film Festival is co-presenting A Matter of Size, a film about sumo wrestling in Israel. We also interact with groups across the political spectrum.
Guillén: I'm intrigued by SFJFF's diversity of co-presentation. Reviewing this year's program line-up, I saw more community organizations than consulates co-presenting programs. What is the nature of your festival's interaction with consulates?
Fishman: It's hard to get money from consulates. Consulates often fall inbetween sponsors and co-presenters because they don't have enough money to offer full sponsorship but they often will give us a little bit more. Last year, for example, we did a program on Italian Jews during the Holocaust and the Italian Cultural Institute gave us $5,000. That allowed us to bring in a 78-year-old Italian survivor from Auschwitz. This year the French Consulate—who has been hit by the same economic crisis as everyone else—gave money to the San Francisco International and to the Seattle International, who are part of their Northwestern purview. They try to give us help, sometimes through diplomatic pouches; but, we're not as big fry as the San Francisco International, so they don't give us the same amount of financial help. The Goethe Institut has always been very helpful to us, and sometimes the British Film Council, so we definitely work with them and have a friendly relationship. In the cases where we do a large program like last year's Italian program, we usually have been successful at getting more substantial funding.
Guillén: Without ongoing consular sponsorship, it's all the more remarkable what SFJFF has achieved through community outreach, addressing diasporic constituencies. For example, a year or so back SFJFF had a program on Ethiopian Jews. Quite honestly, until then, I didn't even know Ethiopian Jews existed. I interviewed Sirak Sabahat, one of the actors in that year's closing night film Radu Mihaileanu's Live and Become. I thoroughly enjoyed that revelatory conversation and have, since, begun monitoring how SFJFF constructs its programs to be inclusive of these disparate diasporic communities, both abroad and in the United States.
Joshua Moore: Speaking of Ethiopian Jews, at this year's festival we have an Ethiopian film called Zrubavel, based out of Israel. It's a wonderful film about a young boy who envisions himself as a Spike Lee film director and documents his family. His father is a street sweeper and the film shows this small Ethiopian community within Israel, thereby showing a diverse Israel.
Fishman: It's the first Ethiopian feature film made by an Ethiopian.
Guillén: The comment made about Jewish Film Festivals leading the pack in collaborative ventures and having an existing network they can rely upon, do you find that to be true?
Fishman: It's true to a certain extent, though I would say the Lesbian and Gay film festival circuit is incredibly organized. The Asian film circuit is a little bit smaller. The SFJFF was the first Jewish film festival in the world and now there are about 100 of them; 60 in the U.S. and 40 outside. The Jewish community already existed. If you think about the immigrant status of Jews in this country, Jews have been here for a long time, as opposed to some younger communities. There already was an infrastructure to some degree; but there have also been organizations that have played a role. Our's has been one of them. For a long time on our website we kept a list of other Jewish film festivals around the country and then the Foundation for Jewish Culture—which is based in New York and used to be called the National Foundation for Jewish Culture—has every 2 years over the last 6-8 years convened a meeting a Jewish film festivals from around the country. That really helped Jewish film festivals get organized. But it depends in what context. I go to the Berlin Film Festival every year and programmers from the Jewish film festivals still have to read through every program note and decide: "Could that be Jewish? The name of the director is Jewish or the name of one of the characters is Jewish…." Usually, we all read through the program and meet for lunch and discuss, "What do you think of this one?"
Years ago, I used to work for Frameline, San Francisco's gay and lesbian film festival, and when I went to Berlin for them, it was the same thing. But now in Berlin the Panorama office, which is one of the sections of the Berlinale, they actually do all the work for the gay and lesbian programmers. When they arrive, they're handed a list of every single gay film in the festival so they no longer have to do that "underground" thing of meeting in cafes to determine, "Maybe this is. Maybe this isn't." The same thing is now happening at Sundance. The Sundance press office provides an entire list of GLBT films. Different diasporic film festivals are probably organized in different ways; but, I do think it's true that the Jewish community has an infrastructure in most of the cities where Jewish film festivals are venued. Some Jewish film festivals are part of an institution; the Seattle festival is part of the JCC, for example. And some are independent like our's.
Guillén: It strikes me that SFJFF is commendably concerted in its effort to represent the diversity of the Jewish experience as expressed through diasporic content programmed for the festival. This year, by way of example, you have films addressing—as you mentioned earlier—the Ethiopian Jewish community within Israel, you have another about Argentine Jews, and yet another about the Australian Jewish community. How do you become aware of and acquire films with diasporic content? Do programmers from various Jewish film festivals recommend films to each other? Do you consolidate efforts to bring talent to your festivals?
Fishman: What film festival programmers do is not so different from what acquisition executives do, in that you have a tracking database. You look for films. We don't have very much money so we tend to only go to Sundance and Berlin, maybe one other film festival a year. I obviously wish we had the money to be flying all over; but, we don't. A lot of our programming is accomplished by looking at other film festivals—we keep a tracking list, a chronological calendar of festivals that we're interested in—and then Josh and I (more Josh, actually) go through and look at the websites of different film festivals. Of course, there are the key international film festivals: Cannes, Venice, Toronto, Tribeca, whatever. We also look at Jerusalem, Haifa, and Docaviv—the documentary film festival in Israel—and then we look at the program line-ups at other Jewish film festivals all over the world. We talk to other programmers. We definitely talk to the people at the UK Jewish Film Festival, the Amsterdam Jewish Film Festival, and the Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival. We also talk to programmers from mainstream film festivals and ask for advice. No one wants to do the work for you, but, you develop relationships over a period of time and you can ask about certain things. A lot of it involves maintaining relationships with filmmakers and distributors as well.
Guillén: With regard to interacting with other film festivals in the Bay Area—you've already mentioned a few—how does that collaboration work? Once you've solicited films, recognized their content, and decided to program them in your festival, do you then go through your rolodex to find the organizations or festivals that would best serve co-presentation? I'm trying to get a sense if there is a professional community of festival programmers whose collaboration is distinct to the Bay Area, in contrast to elsewhere. Also, in the process of interacting with other Bay Area film festivals, are you sharing content? Or costs to bring in talent? Or coordinating calendars to maximize the exposure of films and filmmakers in the Bay Area.
Moore: Yeah, there definitely is collaboration between film festivals in the Bay Area. As we mentioned, CAAM is co-presenting a film this year. We're in constant communication with the San Francisco International. If a film has played in another Bay Area film festival, and has already received a lot of press coverage, we will pass on it for our festival because it's already had its moment here. That's a consideration with all the film festivals, knowing what we are programming, so we don't schedule a film that has already played elsewhere.
Guillén: Whereas you do have a notable exception this year with Jenni Olsen's 575 Castro Street, which I believe has already shown at Frameline?
Moore: With shorts we're not so concerned about that. A lot of the shorts do play around. It's mainly feature films I'm talking about.
Guillén: I like how you acknowledge the importance of a film's "moment" within a festival. One of the avenues of film festival studies is an examination of the value of time and space and how it shapes festival experience. Time, and timing with regard to programming any given film for any given festival, speaks to the impact a film can have by being situated in any particular festival at any particular time.
Fishman: Most festivals want premieres.
Guillén: If a film you programmed in the festival is received well by your audiences, do you let other festivals know? Let's say the Seattle Jewish Film Festival was thinking of showing a film you've shown in your festival, would you tell them: "This film really worked for us and, even though it's not a premiere for you, it's worthy content"?
Fishman: I don't know what the San Francisco International's policies are now; but, most festivals want a Bay Area premiere. I don't know if the San Francisco International insists on a U.S. premiere for certain films. For a community-based festival like ours, I just want a Bay Area premiere because—in order to sell tickets—we receive so many films that it doesn't seem fair to give a slot to something that just played, y'know, a month earlier, with the exception of shorts.
There is a lot of communication between festivals. A lot of the programmers from other Jewish film festivals come to our festival; usually every year about 8-10 of them attend. We usually meet with them for bagels and coffee. People call and ask for advice. We don't have a print source list yet on the website so people are calling me and Josh every other day asking us to please send our print sources. The relationship between Bay Area film festivals is collegial. For example, if I go to a festival and I see something but I didn't end up picking it up for my festival, or even if it's not Jewish, I'll call one of my friends at Mill Valley and say, "This is great." I saw this film at Berlin this year about the slow food movement and I phoned Janis Plotkin—who now works at Mill Valley—and I said, "This would be a perfect Mill Valley film. I think people do that all the time.
We can't all show the same films and a lot of it is based on—for especially the more high quality films—that they're more likely to be bought by distributors or are in the middle of being sold. A lot of what films you get is based on the distributors and whether they want to give you the film and whether it fits into their release schedule. It's not that capricious. It's not that they like you or don't like you, or that you have such a great relationship with them or a terrible one. It helps if you've worked with a distributor year after year and also if you've helped them promote a couple of other films during the year; but, a lot of times it's whether it fits into their release schedule.
What distinguishes our festival from a lot of the other Jewish film festivals—not from all of them but a lot of them—is that we adhere to a tradition started by Janis Plotkin and Deborah Kaufmann, continued by Peter Stein who is the head of the organization and also programming, in selecting high quality films. Josh has only been here a year but one of the reasons I enjoy working with him is because he has fabulous taste in film. So we are excited about showing great films. But in terms of competing with other festivals for U.S. premieres, insisting—let's say—that Seattle can't show a film before us, that's not going to help either the film or the filmmaker. And it's not going to help us sell any more tickets.
We love it when we get a U.S. premiere; we're not so kumbaya that we don't care about having some North American or U.S. premiere. It's always nice to tell the press that; but, we're not going to say to a film, "You can't play here because you played in Seattle three months ago."
Guillén: With regard to the spectacular dimension of your festival, how do you negotiate and secure talent?
Fishman: It's usually connected to a film. It's usually hard to bring talent if they're not in a film. It's expensive for community-based festivals to get high-level talent. It usually requires business or first class tickets and I always joke that—when you say the word business or first class—it's like saying "communism" to Senator McCarthy. We have gotten some high profile people here. We had Gila Almagor here and she's the grand dame of Israeli cinema. We've had Amos Gitai who's a major international director. We do try to get high level talent here; but, it's not always easy. Sometimes it involves paying more money for a ticket.
Moore: This year we tried to get Natalie Portman to come because we found her directorial debut, a short film called Eve, which debuted at Venice last year, I believe. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get her.
Guillén: In negotiating for high-level talent, is that where collaboration with regional festivals and local organizations might help?
Fishman: It's very hard to organize. We brought two documentary filmmakers last year—the Heymann brothers—and we collaborated with a museum in Los Angeles. We shared the cost of their air tickets. But it's very hard to coordinate. Most stars want to come for just a day. I used to work in publicity so I've dealt a lot with talent. It can get very expensive and costly. They sometimes want to travel with a spouse or a friend and—though we usually have drivers hired by the festival, driving nice Toyota Priuses loaned to us thankful to Toyota San Francisco—that's not good enough. You have to get a limo to go pick them up at the airport. Some stars require hair and make-up. I've actually encountered stars who only have certain people work on their hair and face so then you have to fly in the hair and make-up person because it's not acceptable to get the best hair and make-up person in the Bay Area. It can get very expensive.
It's hard to collaborate. I think also because our festival is in the Summer, it's more difficult to collaborate with the universities. If we were situated in November, we could call the Jewish Studies Department at Stanford or—not even just Jewish—we could call the Mideastern contemporary, political or film department and say, "Would you like to split the cost?" We are collaborating with the Israel Center and the JCC to bring in Ari Folman in October. That's a case where three organizations said, "Let's split the cost for this." We're going to show Waltz With Bashir and bring him in.
Guillén: Thank you for those examples. I'm glad to hear such collaborations do exist. So once you've shaped your program with its diasporic content, I'm interested in how you then address diasporic constituencies to encourage them to come see the films? How do you get the word out to them, or do you even try?
Fishman: We certainly try. We have an outreach coordinator. We have marketing people. When we did the Ethiopian program, we distributed flyers and I believe we had them translated into Amharic. I live in Oakland and personally went up and down to every Ethiopian restaurant in Oakland and dropped off flyers. With the Russian community, we occasionally translate fliers or emails and send them out. We've made an effort to reach the community. Not everybody is internet-savvy. For a while there some communities were more internet-savvy than others.
Guillén: So hypothetically then, on your rolodex you have listings of local organizations of specific diasporic identities that—when you get a film that has a particular diasporic theme—you're able to readily contact those people and access their mailing lists? And they're cooperative?
Fishman: Yes, they are. We even do co-presentations with the Arab Film Festival.
Guillén: I am much impressed with SFJFF's policy to maintain dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian communities.
Fishman: We enjoy it. They've co-presented films at our festival; we've co-presented films at their festival.
Guillén: I also admire SFJFF's awareness of the social activism potential in film. This year you're even sponsoring a panel "Reel Change: Social Justice Films" wherein social justice is examined as an element of Jewishness.
Fishman: With our help, Peter Stein curated that program. There was a range of high quality documentaries this year that dealt with different issues of social activism. I get a little uncomfortable personally when people talk about Jews having a monopoly on morality or the whole concept of tikkun olam—healing the world—which is something that's deeply engrained in Jewish culture, both secular and religious. I don't believe we have a monopoly on it. I think other communities are also committed to social activism. Perhaps it's more recognized in Jewish culture? It's a tradition that a range of people in the community have been proud of. Peter has done an excellent job of maintaining a commitment to social activism; but, it started with Deborah and Janis. When the festival was founded, it was somewhat exclusive, whereas now we've become a part of the fabric of the Jewish and cinematic communities.
The festival was founded in reaction to the fact that there weren't many positive images of Jews on film, which is so ironic because there are a lot of Jews behind the Hollywood industry. Also because a lot of mainstream Jewish media didn't deal with either the conflict in Israel or Jewish GLBT representation. Both Janis and Deborah were not lesbian but were prescient and forward-looking in terms of actively pursuing gay and lesbian films to share with the Jewish community, which was pretty radical at that time. Twenty-nine years ago no one would imagine that the Jewish Community Federation would have a gay and lesbian section where people paid to go to this work. There have also been environmental films, like the work of Judith Helfand (Blue Vinyl, 2002). Social activism covers a range; but, it is exciting and has always been a part of our festival. It's something we do well.
Guillén: In terms of press tiering, do you have different categories of press for your festival?
Fishman: No.
Guillén: I'm glad to hear that. I'm aware that many festivals have distinct accreditation for red carpet press assigned to handle celebrity journalism and "regular" press covering the films. But when press is accredited for your festival, they're on equal parity?
Fishman: Yes.
Guillén: And you don't play favorites with any local press?
Fishman: No.
Guillén: That's so nice to hear.
Fishman: It is nice. That's part of being a community-based festival. If we had Natalie Portman or Woody Allen, we'd probably get a red carpet—though we ordinarily don't have a red carpet—but, we wouldn't tier the press. We might engage in some more pomp and circumstance, but we wouldn't start tiering.
Guillén: SFJFF is clearly internet-savvy, how about distinctions between print and online press?
Fishman: We don't distinguish, in terms of amount of time we allow for interviews or access to films. Every accredited journalist is on Karen Larsen's press list. The only event where we sometimes don't have room for all of the press is opening night; but we set aside 55-70 tickets. The Castro is huge and it's very rare that press can't get in. All press can come to everything.
Guillén: Why do you use an external publicist rather than handle publicity in-festival?
Fishman: Because Karen Larsen is fabulous!
Guillén: She's the best in the business, isn't she?
Fishman: Also, it's very hard. During a film festival it's like trying to put an elephant through the eye of a needle. We have so much work. There are times when Josh and Peter and I work 70 hours a week just trying to get everything done. I happen to have a PR background, but most programmers are savvy about it but don't develop the year-round relationships; that's another critical reason to hire an outside publicist. I talk to press people at a few festivals a year when I see them or during this crunch period of time, but someone like Karen is on the phone or email with everybody 10 times a day. It makes much more sense to hire a professional.
Guillén: As a festival, what do you expect or hope press will do for you?
Fishman: I hope that they would help us find an audience. I'm a practical person. I like press who are smart and do their homework because we've all worked very hard. Obviously, if you're writing for 7x7 you're writing a paragraph so I don't expect their writers to watch 20 films; but, I love it when press gets something. Occasionally—like when we did a program of Jews on the Hollywood black list—it's clear if a press person has read about the subject, thought about it, watched the films, and they write about them with insights we hadn't even thought about. That's exciting. I love working with press. They're usually smart and interested and excited about what they're working.
Guillén: In the shift towards digital formats—not only in how films are made and projected—but, in how press can access and preview a program line-up, I commend SFJFF for retaining literal press screenings where journalists can watch a film on a screen as it's meant to be seen. These days, however, most festivals are asking journalists to watch films on DVD screener, with which I'm conflicted. Do you ever fear that by asking press to watch films on screener, they're not actually seeing the film? And can't truthfully review it?
Moore: That's always a concern. We sometimes wish we could attach a webcam to journalists checking out screeners to see if they're genuinely sitting down to watch them or if they're doing their laundry and folding their socks while watching them.
Guillén: How did you know I was folding my socks while watching screeners? [Laughter.]
Moore: The hope is that—whether you watch a film on the small screen or the big screen—you can connect to it.
Guillén: I watch films on DVD screener to catch narratives and storylines; but, I often feel I'm not able to comment on the visual elements of a film, for fear that—as James Quandt recently articulated for me—I'm watching a facsimile. In terms of the shift to digital exhibition, roughly how many films in your festival are on celluloid?
Fishman: I would say maybe a third. It could be a little less.
Guillén: Have your audiences noticed or responded to that shift in technology? Do you think they're even aware that they're watching a digital projection?
Fishman: I would say this is where a community-based audience is maybe less savvy than an audience going to, let's say, the San Francisco International. There's HD and Digibeta, and they're looking better all the time, but I think audiences respond to archival prints, especially if the film is not available on DVD. If you actually list the film as an archival print in the program, or that it's a recently-struck new print, audiences are excited. Audiences still recognize the depth of film.
Guillén: That's another thing I've been observing about the spectacular dimension of film festivals: it's not only about scoring talent, but frequently archival prints. The prints themselves have become like movie stars and you half expect cans to come walking up the red carpet.
Fishman: I went to see Gena Rowlands in A Woman Under the Influence when it played at the Castro and they had the guy from the UCLA film and television archive come up to talk about the film for five minutes. Here's a guy who's normally behind a desk who suddenly has his five minutes of glory and he was very articulate. It was exciting to hear him talk about how they restored the print. The audience was rapt and hanging on every word. So I agree with you. People who are veteran cineastes have a taste for knowing what that is and how it's changing.
Guillén: When I recently discussed this with James Quandt, he mentioned that familiarity with DVD commentaries has created a necessity for exhibition "add-ons", either talent, parties, scholars….
Fishman: Value added.
Guillén: Has SFJFF felt a need to satisfy that appetite?
Fishman: Yes, to some extent.
Moore: Within our budget, we try to get as many filmmakers as we can, especially for the discussions afterwards. Q&As are what make a film festival more of an event than just going to a movie.
Guillén: How do you go about structuring what you're going to program? I imagine it's a piecemeal process? You've mentioned you attend festivals and catch films there, or gather recommendations from colleagues?
Fishman: All festivals could do a better job. We could too. Sometimes you end up doing retrospectives or sidebars based on zeitgeist. Suddenly you realize there's a whole bunch of films about Ethiopian Jews. That was actually the case that year with the program on Ethiopian Jews. We did not set out to do that program. We just suddenly realized we had several films on the topic, and they were new and important to showcase. Some years we plan programs in advance. For example, the program on the Jews on the Hollywood black list, the one on Jewish boxers, last year's program of Italian Jews during Fascism, sometimes you realize you have a group of films that fit together in a certain way. For the larger events like the Freedom of Expression Award where we're doing a filmmaker retrospective, we really need to plan in advance. Sometimes it's really the programmer's interest because you're slaving away sending emails back and forth and sometimes you need something that excites you. This year Josh created an animation program. When he hired on he said he wanted to do an animation program and I said, "Go for it."
Moore: "Jewtoons" is the first-ever collection of animated shorts; 15 shorts from Israel and the States. Several of these animators are coming out of Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem and the Minshar School of the Arts in Tel Aviv and they are the future of the animation world. This last year—with Waltz With Bashir being released as the first Israeli animation feature and all the accolades that went along with that—it got me thinking of all the animation in Israel that we don't know about. These young animators coming out of these schools are doing tremendous work and, hopefully, that's indicative of the "Jewtoons" program.
Guillén: Without going film by film, can you state what you are most excited about with this year's festival?
Fishman: I'm excited about Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the documentary by Aviva Kempner. Some filmmakers make tons and tons of film but she hasn't made that many films—maybe four or five—but they've taken 10 years to research. Her documentary on Hank Greenberg was also like that. Aviva's done a great job with Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg. We're actually showing four archival episodes of The Goldbergs, a television series from 1946-51. I watched about 15-20 episodes and narrowed it down to these four.
Guillén: As a curatorial aside, where did you find those television episodes?
Fishman: Some were housed at the Jewish Museum in New York and some at UCLA's Film and Television Archive.
Guillén: And you, Joshua? Other than your animation program, is there something else you're really excited about?
Moore: I'm excited about our music program actually, which is called the Puppet Folk Revival "Rockin' Puppet Mayhem." It's based off of street performers in Tel Aviv who performed folky-rock songs as puppets. It caught on and they developed a TV show about it called Red Band, about a struggling musician who can only play in Israel because he's so burnt out everywhere else—a '60s rocker washed up—and it's kind of South Park humor meets The Muppets, with Spinal Tap elements.
Guillén: This is the live performance?
Moore: Yes.
Guillén: What is the role of a live performance in a film festival?
Moore: That's a good question. Like Nancy said, it's the value added. It's something else to offer people beside a film. Obviously, it has to have a relation to film and Puppet Folk Revival will have media that they'll be showing as part of their performance. It's more than just a music event.
Guillén: Another "add-on" that I'm finding has become popular among Bay Area festival programmers is the token, free-to-the-public open air screenings. I note that SFJFF is co-presenting an open air screening of Manhattan with the San Francisco Neighborhood Theatre Foundation. Have you done open air screenings before?
Fishman: We have not. It's exciting and should be fun. Hopefully it will be warm that night.
Guillén: The only drawback in San Francisco.
Moore: As Nancy was saying, when we start to program all the films, we notice patterns and evolving themes, and one of those this year was coming-of-age stories, films that focused on teens or people in their early 20s discovering their sexuality or overcoming family tragedies, so we've included several of those films, many of which are from first-time directors.
Guillén: Federico Veiroj's Acné is in that group. Which leads me to another question. Acné premiered last year in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes and then touched down on North American soil at the Toronto International where I found myself wondering who would pick it up for the Bay Area. Would it be the San Francisco International? The Jewish Film Festival? The International Latino Film Festival? It could have been programmed in any of those festivals. How is that negotiated between Bay Area festivals? Do you put out an alert: "I have dibs on Acné?"
Fishman: No, no, no. Sometimes there is some conversation between festival programmers about a film; but, it's rare. Mostly, we just all try for it. My guess is that—with the San Francisco International—it wasn't on their radar or they didn't like it, who knows? Sometimes—with some of the larger film festivals where some of the programmers are more conscientious or may have worked in a community-based festival before—I have called and said, "I want this film for my opening night. Would you consider not going after it?" Some programmers have been very responsive.
Guillén: Interesting. I would say that the programmers with the San Francisco International are "personality" programmers who choose films largely based upon their personal likes and dislikes. You can almost bet that if there's a Latin American film in the festival, it will be a slow-moving character-driven narrative because that's what Linda Blackaby likes. That's a generalization for purposes of discussion and, of course, more power to SFFS. However, what I admire about SFJFF is that it appears the programmers are making efforts to cater to your community. You don't program just what you like.
Fishman: That's what's different about programming for a community-based festival. You have an obligation to think about what the community is interested in. If you program a lesbian and gay film festival and you're interested in slow experimental films but never show a transgender film, you will eventually hear from your community that you're not serving them, or serving part of them. With good reason. The community supports us. As a film festival, we're not beholden to them; but, if you're truly part of the community, you need to keep in mind what people are interested in seeing.
Moore: That being said, we're still looking for the best quality of films that are out there and available. We might not program a film on orthodox Jews simply because there's not one we feel is strong enough. We don't want to throw one in just because we don't have an orthodox Jew film.
Guillén: In terms of new digital platforms, can you talk about SFJFF's New Media Initiative?
Fishman: Yeah, we launched the New Media Initiative when we received some funding from the Righteous Persons Foundation. The New Media Initiative has several components. We are now streaming a short film every month online.
Moore: We debuted with two shorts, which will be up until the end of July. After that there will be a new short every month. The first two are also showing in the festival but it's a chance for people to watch the full version on our website and, hopefully, that will get them excited about the other shorts that we've programmed in the festival this year. One of them is an Israeli animated short called Escapism and the other is a Hungarian short called With A Little Patience.
Guillén: What prompted or motivated the New Media Initiative?
Fishman: The whole world is going in the direction of digital media. It was forward-thinking of Peter Stein.
Guillén: He's pretty smart, isn't he?
Fishman: He's very smart. He didn't want to miss the boat. Over a year ago, he convened a group of new media/new technology people for a visioning session and then he applied for the funding from the Righteous Persons Foundation and received it. It's a phased project. Years ago you could browse our archive, but now it's been updated so that you can browse the entire archive of 1,200-1,400 films that we've shown in the festival over all 29 years. You can look at photos and eventually what we would like to do—though we're not going to go into distribution—we'd like to point people to print sources or advise if the film is available on Amazon, Netflix, or whatever. But it's an exciting resource to be able to search the films by country, language or a specific actor. With most film festival websites, when you want to look up a film that's been programmed in a previous festival, you have to play the shell game and figure out first what year it was in, etc.
Guillén: Does this resource include program capsules?
Fishman: Yes, it does. If someone's doing research 50 years from now, it will be great to look at a film—whether it's Acné or a more political film like Rachel—and compare the program notes from 50 different film festivals, some that were Jewish, some that weren't, to see what people say about it.
Guillén: My final question concerns volunteers. How do volunteers help you run this community-based film festival?
Fishman: We couldn't do it without them. We have more than 200-250 volunteers. We screen at four different venues so we do volunteer solicitation in each community. We gather in our volunteers and do volunteer training. They help us before the festival with office administrative work. They help us by distributing catalogs and the whole marketing effort. And then they help us during the festival taking tickets, showing people their seats, everything. We absolutely couldn't do SFJFF—it couldn't function—without volunteers.
Guillén: Does SFJFF offer internships to young people wanting to break into film festival management?
Fishman: We do. In fact, right now we have probably five or six interns. Sometimes it's for college credit. We have one PR intern right now who goes to Hampton University in Virginia and she's getting college credit by working with us. Some people intern as a way to understand how the festival works. I did some internships when I was younger and the worst thing is to show up and have nothing to do so it's important for a festival to structure its internships so that their interns have something interesting to do.
Guillén: Do you consider SFJFF the mothership of all Jewish film festivals?
Fishman: I'd call it the grandmother of all Jewish film festivals.
Cross-published on Twitch.
The 29th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) begins this Thursday, July 23 and continues through August 10 at various Bay Area venues. You'll find me at the Castro Theater much of this coming weekend, catching some of the festival's most highly-anticipated titles like Defamation, The Yes Men Fix the World and Acné. Meanwhile, here are capsule write-ups of eight films I previewed on screener, roughly in order of most favorite to least.
Zion and His Brother—Director Eran Merav makes an assured feature film debut with this gritty, affecting family drama set in working-class Haifa. Fourteen-year-old Zion both worships and despises his older brother Meir, a hot-headed miscreant who makes life miserable for their divorced mother and her older boyfriend. When tragedy erupts over mistaken identity and a stolen pair of shoes, Zion is forced to reevaluate his allegiances and life direction. The performances are first-rate, particularly the never-less-than-amazing Ronit Elkabetz (The Band's Visit, Late Marriage, Or) as the mother, and a remarkably intense Ofer Hayan, making his screen debut as the older brother. I'm still pondering the film's abrupt ending.
Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg—Chances are you've never heard of broadcasting pioneer Gertrude Berg, a writing-acting-producing powerhouse who was once the highest paid woman in America. That's an embarrassment Aviva Kempner handily sets right in this breezy, informative documentary. Debuting on radio one month after the 1929 crash, her family sit-com The Goldbergs gave comfort to Americans throughout the Great Depression and WWII, with her character Molly Goldberg yoo-hoo-ing to neighbors from across her Bronx apartment airshaft window. The program brought Jewish family life into millions of homes, and was second in popularity only to Amos and Andy. In 1949 the show made the switch to TV, which resulted in Berg winning the first ever Emmy Award for acting (she'd also win a Tony Award in 1959 for A Majority of One). Kempner's film does a winning job of profiling Berg, from her youth in the family's Catskills resort hotel, to her fierce defense of blacklisted actor and union activist Philip Loeb, the actor who played her husband Jake Goldberg. At the July 28 screening at the Castro, Kempner will receive this year's SFJFF Freedom of Expression Award. And if you want to see more of The Goldbergs, there's a separate festival program comprised of four back-to-back episodes of the TV show.
The Wedding Song (Closing Night Film)—A Jewish girl and Muslim girl, best friends and both of marriageable age, are the protagonists in Karin Albou's powerful new film set in 1942 Nazi-occupied Tunis. Nour desperately wants to wed her finance Khaled, but until he finds employment they must settle for clandestine rooftop trysts arranged by her Jewish friend Myriam. Myriam, on the other hand, is being forced by her increasingly desperate mother (played by the director) into an arranged marriage with the arrogant, wealthy Jewish doctor Raoul (a reliably terrific Simon Abkarian). Meanwhile, the radio blasts anti-Semitic propaganda, Khaled gets a job helping Nazis round up Tunisian Jews and Raoul is sent to a labor camp—all of which tests the girls' loyalties and courage. With one brief exception, Albou sets her film exclusively within the claustrophobic confines of the Tunis medina, effectively mirroring her characters' constricted circumstances. She also takes pain to ensure that her male characters are not one-dimensional monsters—except for the Nazis of course. Finally, I was delighted to hear, of all things, Nina Hagen's Naturträne being used as a musical leitmotif throughout.
A History of Israeli Cinema—At 210 minutes long, this documentary won't appeal to anyone with a mere casual interest in its subject matter. But if you've spent the past 10 years watching Israeli cinema develop into one of the most vital in the world (my own starting point was Amos Gitai's 1999 Kadosh), this doc will provide you with an essential, evolutionary roadmap. From early Zionist works to the "New Sensitivity Cinema" of the 60's to the art films of today, director Raphaël Nadjari skillfully demonstrates how the nation's psyche has been continually reflected in its cinema. Broken into two parts (1933-1977 and 1978-2007), the film never strays from its staid film-clips-and-talking-heads format—and that's OK. My only complaint is that the ample clips are not identified by year of release, making it somewhat difficult to envision a timeline.
I Am Von Höfler—Hungarian documentarian Péter Forgács is a SFJFF regular, which culminated in his receiving last year's Freedom of Expression Award. In his singular style, he tells stories of 20th century European Jews using only narration, sound effects, photos, letters, home movies and ephemera. His remarkable subject this time out is one Tibor Von Höfler—heir to a Pécs leather tanning dynasty who was also a motorcycle enthusiast, erotic photographer, womanizer and pianist—and whose long life bore witness to the Great Depression, WWII (he was half-Jewish on his mother's side) and the rise and fall of communism. Forgács' engrossing new film pieces together a seamless biography, giving the viewer a vivid sense of time and place, customs and mores. It has been hypothesized that an 18th century relative of Von Höfler's served as the inspiration for Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther. In the film's only misstep, Forgács inserts clips from a dated, hippie-ish 1976 short called Werther and His Life, directed by his Balázs Béla Film Studio cohort, Janos Xantus. These clips pop-up throughout, adding incongruity and bloat to the 160-minute running time.
Lost Islands—This was Israel's biggest box office hit of 2008 and it's easy to see why. It's a big, rambunctious family dramedy set in the early '80s with a catchy pop soundtrack. The first half is almost cartoonish in its depiction of family squabbles and teen antics, the latter perpetuated by a pair of unlikely twin brothers who lust after the same classmate. The film takes on emotional weight, however, after a tragic accident causes dreams to be deferred, and the First Lebanon War threatens to destabilize the family and a nation. This is no art film, but it is broad, populist filmmaking at its most enjoyable—with terrific performances, offbeat humor and a genuine love for its characters.
A Matter of Size (Centerpiece Film)—Four overweight Israeli men find self-acceptance in sumo wrestling. That's the unique premise of this agreeable, but strictly formulaic comedy which is unsurprisingly on track for a Hollywood remake. Due to his weight, hulking Herzl has lost his job and been 86-ed from his dieting club. Inspired by a televised sumo match at a Japanese restaurant (where he now works as a dishwasher, and whose owner is conveniently a former sumo trainer), he convinces his friends to take wrap themselves in a mawashi and start rasslin'. In the conflicted process, life lessons are learned and romance blooms for all involved. If you've enjoyed plucky British arthouse comedies of recent years (think The Full Monty, Calendar Girls, Waking Ned Devine), you'll probably like this. If not, you probably won't.
Hello Goodbye—Last and least comes this strained, unconvincing farce about a non-observant Parisian gynecologist (Gerard Depardieu) and his convert wife (Fanny Ardant) starting life anew in Israel. With the deck stacked against them from the get-go (his job vanishes, their condo remains unbuilt and their shipping container falls into the Mediterranean), the film bludgeons drama and yuks out of Israeli bureaucracy, his circumcision and her infatuation with a studly, pot-smoking young Rabbi (a wasted Lior Ashkenazi). A jarringly erratic and inappropriate pop music soundtrack (Peter Bjorn and John's Young Folks plays against a praying scene at the Wailing Wall) compliments the narrative like a berserk iPod shuffle. In contrast, the SF Chronicle's Mick LaSalle found the film to be "funny," "perceptive" and "illuminating." Perhaps you will, too.
Cross-published on film-415 and Twitch.
Earlier, when I asked Program Director Nancy Fishman which program out of this year's edition of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) she was most anticipating, she didn't miss a beat in highlighting the salute to Gertrude Berg; a program consisting of four archival episodes from The Goldbergs television series, followed by Aviva Kempner's documentary Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg (2009). In tandem with SFJFF's presentation of the 2009 Freedom of Expression Award to Kempner, a Q&A session following The Goldbergs program, and a panel discussion following Yoo Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg, the program was leant considerable charm by the participation of Dr. Glenn D. "Pete" Smith, Jr., author of Something On My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting, 1929-1956 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007). Perhaps it was his Mississippian drawl, or his enthused (and contagious!) scholasticism, or the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60.
Glenn D. Smith, Jr. is an assistant professor of communication at Mississippi State University located in Starkville, MS. Something On My Own was published by Syracuse University Press in 2007, and nominated for the 2008 Bancroft Prize, given for exceptional work in American history. The book has received notice in the Journal of American History, the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Television Quarterly, and Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies, among other distinguished publications. It also has its detractors: Ben Birnbaum stages his complaints at Tablet Magazine. Professor Smith is currently researching the careers of union activist and blacklisted actor, Philip Loeb, and fellow Mississippian Carolyn Bennett Patterson, the first woman senior editor at National Geographic.
Professor Smith's Intro to The Goldbergs:
After screening the archival episodes of The Goldbergs—which included a heartfelt performance by a young Anne Bancroft in "Mother-in-Law"—Nancy Fishman asked Professor Smith to talk about the history of The Goldbergs on radio and television, bidding wars between studios for the show, and what caused it to eventually go off-air?
"In 1949, the show did premiere on CBS—you saw three of the four episodes with Philip Loeb—and it lasted on CBS for 10 years and was ended, unfortunately, by the blacklist. Loeb was blacklisted for his union politics. He was a longtime member of Actors Equity, a champion for Actors Equity, he helped usher in things that I think most actors take for granted today, including rehearsal pay. …In his 20 years of union work, Phil would say that he loved Equity work first, his teaching at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts second, and acting third. It was, though, his union activities that got him blacklisted. Gertrude was asked by CBS and General Foods to fire him, but she refused. From there, she and Loeb were together in their 18-month stance in which they tried to find a new sponsor and a new network after CBS pulled the plug. The Goldbergs suffered from the blacklist itself, as did Berg. She spent the rest of her life piecing together what was left of her career and Loeb, of course, ended up committing suicide."
"As the show progressed from 1949-1955, it did get more diluted (if that's a word I can use in this situation); it became more homogenized (I think is the word we use in academia when talking about ethnic shows). The ones in 1949 specifically address more Jewish themes than the ones in 1955, believe it or not. But I think it's just because she wanted to walk that fine line. She was also very aware that Mr. William Paley was watching closely. When you think about Paley and his politics, as much as he gave to Jewish causes, he was also timid about the fact of who he was and where he came from. That played into that as well. In fact, in the beginning of 1949, he didn't even want the series for television. As I've often said, it's one thing to hear an anti-Semitic line on a radio show, or a rock being thrown through a window (for example) during Passover; but, it's another to see it on television. That made William Paley nervous and Gertrude—if anything—was a business woman. She was very sensitive to what sponsors might or might not feel or want her to do, until it came to Philip Loeb when they went a step too far."
Asked about what I termed earlier as "the intriguing disconnect between his youthful interest in a subject matter mostly unknown by Americans under 60", Professor Smith chuckled and said, "That's the $64,000 question. That's always the first question I get. I enjoy that question because—as I tell my students—you know, a good television show and a good writer should transcend difference.
"To answer your question, I was doing some research for my masters thesis in Auburn back in 1994 and—as I was telling this story earlier—like most grad students I was struggling to find a good topic for my masters thesis and I ran across Gertrude's name in some obscure book on women in comedy, which I found funny later on because Gertrude never considered herself a comedienne; she considered herself a performer first and foremost. But anyway, that reference led to another reference and turned into a class I was doing on broadcasting history and women in the media corps. I took it all in and that parleyed itself into a partial masters thesis and then a dissertation topic at the University of Southern Mississippi. But like most journalists and/or historians, it was just a damn good story. That's the honest-to-God's truth. I do identify with Gertrude's story a little bit—I have a family member who has struggled with mental illness—those kind of little nuggets stick with you. She reminds me—Gertrude, not Molly—of my own mother, a woman who has called me three times in the last four hours. A strong, domineering, Southern woman who did not get to live out her own dreams so she transferred all of those to her two daughters and her son. Part of it's that; but, it's just a good old-fashioned story.
