S.F. Jewish film fest to wrap up at North Oakland’s Piedmont Theatre

The independent movies "Food and Country" and "Red Herring" are among highlights in the final leg of the 2023 tour Aug. 1-6.

When a selection of independent films migrates across the bay Aug. 1-6 to North Oakland’s Piedmont Theatre — arriving from among the 67 films and 18 countries in this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (jfi.org/sfjff-2023) — the perspectives cast will be anything but micro.

Although representing a curated portion of the films, documentaries and shorts in the 43rd annual festival, the lineup effectively liberates narrow definitions of what constitutes Jewish identity, culture, faith, traditions, history, filmmaking and storytelling.

There is “My Neighbor Adolf,” a satirical film about a Holocaust survivor who suspects his new neighbor is Hitler himself. “Valeria Is Getting Married” is a boiling drama involving arranged marriages; “Madrasa” deals with two adolescents navigating their lives amid serious social conflict; “I Like It Here” is a rollercoaster-style essay about the ups and downs of aging.

Short film “Swipe: NYC” captures the perils and possible pleasures of post-divorce dating; “Catskills” is a nostalgic comedy composed of home movies, photos, postcards, menus and stories told by stand-up comedians that provide an overview of Jewish immigration to New York in the 20th century; and there are more.

Among them is “Red Herring,” a first person documentary featuring a filmmaker diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 23 who turns the camera on himself and his family’s response to the crisis (jfi.org/sfjff-2023/film-guide/red-herring). The film was work-shopped in the Jewish Film Institute’s Filmmakers in Residence program and received a JFI discretionary grant last year.

“We’re proud to include this important film in our library of JFI-supported films,” says Lexi Leban, the JFI’s executive director. “JFI prioritizes funding films that feature unique, innovative representations of Jewish identity. It is an artfully constructed and profoundly moving film.”

Leban says COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns allowed filmmakers time for introspection and that the pandemic’s intensity led to more complex, nuanced narratives filmed and edited with great care. He suggests that being able to view films in-person as they were meant to be experienced is incredibly rewarding.

“We prioritized curating a lineup that makes you laugh, cry, think and reflect because those moments have been hard to come by during this transitional moment as we emerge from the pandemic,” Leban says. “There is an urgent need to support festivals and independent arthouse theaters bringing new works by emerging and established filmmakers to the public.”

A film with strong local ties, “Food and Country” comes from Berkeley-based director Laura Gabbert. The 99-minute documentary (jfi.org/sfjff-2023/film-guide/food-and-country) features heralded chef, memoirist and food critic Ruth Reichl, who narrates the story of America’s food chain and independent restaurateurs, farmers, fishers, ranchers and others who produce the food we eat.

Reichl has focused on food culture for more than 50 years and taps longtime friends such as Bay Area culinary legend Alice Waters and introduces new voices whom she and Gabbert discovered during the filmmaking process. The documentary draws a rich, troubling, fine-tuned, coherent and surprisingly intimate portrait of the food industry and the systemic issues that plague it.

“Ruth and I talked a week or two after everything shut down in March 2020,” says Gabbert, who was introduced to Reichl by an associate. “I was thinking of making a film about Los Angeles restaurants during the pandemic. Ruth was concerned about the food industry, and we got on the phone and just said, ‘Let’s collaborate.’ We started shooting by the end of March 2020, finished in November 2022 and premiered at Sundance in 2023.”

Because the film was shot and edited entirely during the pandemic, Gabbert was forced to work in ways unlike her usual process. Customarily, she is boots-on-the-ground, conducting interviews herself. Instead, Reichl was gaining intimacy in conversations she had with the 170 people interviewed whom the team eventually whittled down to less than a dozen.

“I was sort of one step removed from the subjects until I traveled, which was sometimes helpful, sometimes not,” says Gabbert.

“Food and Country” was also different from her previous films about food, “City of Gold” and “No Impact Man,” in which she knew ahead of time what the cinematography and other components would involve.

“Making ‘Food and Country’ during COVID, we didn’t know how to do that and be safe,” Gabbert says. “I was reluctant in the beginning to use Zoom. I thought it would be a distraction. But when I started listening to Zoom calls, I realized we were freed from that traditional, one-camera setup.

“Ruth was talking to these people every few weeks instead of just once. Later, when I could travel, I already knew the details I needed to get. The Zoom calls gave me a shot list in a way.”

Woven into the fabric of the film organically, the story that emerges is character-driven. Its textures are composed with immediacy, spontaneity and the powerful, vulnerable voices of people worried about their survival, their employees, the land and the environment. Gabbert says delving into each person’s story inevitably led to a wealth of material.

“It was following curiosity and seeing where it takes you,” she says. “Food is a rich prism. It touches every part of society and is unifying.

“During COVID, the story was of empty restaurants and grocery store shelves and the entire food system shutting down. We recorded the early Zoom calls in 2020 thinking we would never use them, that it was research. We had no idea how long the pandemic would last.”

The documentary as a result catches a specific time in contemporary history and illuminates food as a centralizing force in American society; creating unexpected connections across a vast landscape.

“It’s such a wide swath of issues, regions and personalities. But we also loved that, because we were getting a snapshot of the issue across America.”

COVID, Gabbert emphasizes, is the “inciting event,” but the film is ultimately about people who care about their work and how consolidation, oligopolies and algorithms are destroying food production, distribution systems and the land.

“I get huge policy questions at festivals we’ve been in, but I’m a filmmaker; I don’t have all the answers. I just made a film showing people who are trying to find solutions and who are innovative because they work independent of the system.”

The JFI’s Leban says the future will be tough for independent filmmakers but holds hope.

“There are so many worlds to explore. I look forward to our programs continuing to reflect the changing narrative in Jewish communities across the globe, stories we have never seen on screen and unexpected, surprising films that we could not now imagine.”

Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Contact her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.