By Joel Magalnick, JTNews Correspondent
With the announcement of this year’s Seattle Jewish Film Festival lineup comes a project undertaken by the festival’s organizers, which viewers will see before the popcorn even gets cold: visual vignettes of local faces on-screen, talking about what it means to be Jewish in American and in Seattle.
The trailer project, which is in part sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Washington, will eventually become a part of the UW’s archives. This project celebrates the 350th anniversary of Jewish history in the United States, but they should not overshadow the films — 23 in all — which make for a dynamic lineup.
The festival, hosted by the American Jewish Committee Seattle Chapter, runs from Sat., March 13–Sun., March 21.
Two themes will run throughout the festival: the first, the Jewish experience throughout the world, will travel as close as Seattle and as far away as Uganda, where the Jewish community of the Abuyudaya are documented in Moving Heaven and Earth.
Stops in between include a Swedish modern take on The Jazz Singer with Bit by Bit, where the conflict between popular music and Jewish tradition has turned into a young slacker’s obligation to choose between the Passover seder and the Nintendo World Cup video game competition.
The second theme addresses the threat to Jewish survival, and as such will show films that encourage dialogue to addressing these threats. One of the films, Forget Baghdad, a controversial documentary about four Jewish Iraqi Communists who are forced to leave their homes and move to Israel, is being co-presented with the Arab and Iranian Film Festival. Forget Baghdad examines the new lives of these four men while looking at stereotypes of both Jew and Arab in the context of their adopted homeland.
The French-made Decryptage had Jews in that country lined up around the block for the documentary that made a case for how French media continually portrayed Israel as the aggressor and instigator of the current intifada.
Other controversial films include Yossi & Jagger, a love story between two male soldiers in the Israeli Defense Forces, and Prisoner of Paradise, the story of Jewish movie director Kurt Gerron, who was ordered by the Nazis to create a propaganda film. Gerron, though aware of the atrocities happening inside the concentration camps, threw himself into his work. Eventually he and everyone associated with the film was eventually sent to Auschwitz. Prisoner of Paradise was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary last year.
On the lighter side, some new films will be interspersed with a few classics that adults and families alike can enjoy. The short film (at 13 minutes) A Good Uplift looks into a lingerie shop on New York’s Lower East Side, where the proprietor Magda can size up a woman’s breasts and find the right fit, all in a matter of moments.
James’ Journey to Jerusalem, which was hugely popular in Israel and nominated for seven Israel Academy Awards, tells of a young man who decides to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem — only to find that the holy city of his family’s imagination is far different from the reality. Though taking on a serious topic, the movie comes off as humorous and poetic.
Classics at this year’s festival definitely stray toward the comedic, with Woody Allen’s black-and-white Broadway Danny Rose, the story of Woody Allen doing what he does best: playing a nebbishy Broadway agent trying to revive his clients’ careers.
The Producers, one of the most popular (and hilarious) shows in Broadway history, of course premiered as a Mel Brooks feature film in 1968. The story of two corrupt Broadway producers who try to make a killing on creating a flop of a show and lose their shirts when the production becomes a blockbuster hit will close out this year’s festival.
Other highlights: A free senior’s screening of The First Israeli in Space (which also kicks off the festival) will be shown at 2 p.m. on Wed., Mar. 17 at Pacific Place Theaters. The closing Sunday is family day, with My Four Children, Welcome to the Waks Family, and — what would the Seattle Jewish Film Festival be without it? — a matinee singalong of Fiddler on the Roof.
This year’s SJFF will be split between two theaters: Cinerama and Pacific Place Theaters, both in downtown Seattle. Tickets can be purchased at the theater, or passes or packages can be purchased from the AJCommittee. Visit www.ajcseattle.org for further details.