Fever At Dawn

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival – the top picks

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sfjff36 bannerHere’s a preview of the 36th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF36), which opens tomorrow, July 21, and runs through August 7 at five locations throughout the Bay Area. The festival offers a broad range of film experiences:

  • 51 features (33 Documentaries, 18 Narratives) from 13 countries (but mostly from the US and Israel).
  • 2 programs of short films (Jews in Shorts), a web series and first two episodes of the miniseries False Flag.
  • 14 world, North American or US premieres.
  • celebrity appearances by Norman Lear, Robert Klein, Adam (s0n of Leonard) Nimoy and a passel of filmmakers.

Here are my four top recommendations:

  • The documentary The Last Laugh explores humor and the Holocaust. Is there anything funny about Nazis or about the Holocaust itself? When is humor acceptable, therapeutic, transgressive or even taboo? How has the passage of time affected what is funny? And does it matter who tells the joke?  We hear from Mel Brooks, Sarah Silverman, Rob and Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, concentration camp survivor and Hogan’s Heroes star Robert Clary and, most unforgettably, Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone.
  • An addictive taste of the Israeli miniseries False Flag, a character-driven thriller with elements of the whodunit, the paranoid thriller, the perfect crime movie and the espionage procedural.
  • The world premiere of Wrestling Jerusalem, an imaginative examination of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through the perspectives of seventeen distinct characters, both Jew and Arab, in a one-man play.
  • Fever at Dawn – an epic romance with both an exploration of identity and a moral choice.

One of the most appealing features of the SFJFF is that, wherever you live in the Bay Area,  the fest comes to you.  SFJFF will present 27-51 films at each of the main venues – the Castro in San Francisco,  CineArts in Palo Alto and the Roda Theater at the Berkeley Rep.   The festival will also screen at least 14 movies at both the Rafael in San Rafael and the Piedmont in Oakland.

Of my top picks, False Flag and Wrestling Jerusalem will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley, Palo Alto and San Rafael.  The Last Laugh will be playing at the Castro and the Roda.  Fever at Dawn will screen in San Francisco, Berkeley and Palo Alto.

You can peruse the entire program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. The fest also offers a handy iPhone app available from the App Store: sjff36. You can follow the Festival on Twitter at @SFJewish Film; and, of course, you can follow my coverage at @themoviegourmet.

FEVER AT DAWN: romance, identity and a moral choice

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FEVER AT DAWN
FEVER AT DAWN

The Hungarian drama Fever at Dawn is a little movie with an epic romance. Set just after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, Hungarian invalids who survived the camps have been sent to convalesce in hospital camps in Sweden. A young patient, Miklos, gets a dire diagnosis and determines to find love once more before he dies. A half century before internet dating, he concocts a scheme to get himself in front of every sick Hungarian woman in Sweden. When he meets his potential soulmate Lili, a moral question rises to the surface – should he share his diagnosis with the woman he is courting?

Some Holocaust survivors experienced ambivalence about the very Jewish identity that led to yellow stars on their clothes and, essentially, targets on their backs. This ambivalence becomes a significant thread of Fever at Dawn and is addressed more explicitly than is common for Holocaust (or post-Holocaust) movies.

Don’t read too much about this movie before seeing it. There’s an unexpected nugget at the end.

I saw Fever at Dawn earlier this year at its US premiere at Cinequest.  It’s being featured at this years San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF36), where you can see it at San Francisco’s Castro on July 26, at the Berkeley Rep’s Roda Theater on July 28, and at CineArts in Palo Alto on July 29.

Today, March 3 at Cinequest

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FEVER AT DAWN
FEVER AT DAWN

Today’s audience-pleasers: epic romance and epic sexual intrigue.   Cinequest brings us these two sleepers from Hungary:

  • Fever at Dawn: Urgent period romance between Holocaust survivors, with an unexpected nugget at the end.
  • Demimonde: Sex, intrigue and murder in this operatic Hungarian period drama.

Bookmark my Cinequest 2016 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

Today, March 2 at Cinequest

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THE MEMORY OF WATER
THE MEMORY OF WATER

It’s World Cinema day at Cinequest, as the fest rolls out its strongest foreign films. Here are my picks:

  • The Memory of Water: This Chilean drama explores grief, its process and its impact and might just be most masterful filmmaking achievement at Cinequest 2016. Exquisite.
  • Demimonde: Sex, intrigue and murder in this operatic Hungarian period drama. U.S. Premiere.
  • Fever at Dawn: Urgent period romance between Holocaust survivors, with an unexpected nugget at the end.
  • Parabellum: This absurdist and trippy Argentine drama is set in a pre-apocalyptic near future; clearly everyone should be panicking, but no one is.

Bookmark my Cinequest 2016 page, with links to all my coverage. Follow me on Twitter for the latest.

DEMIMONDE
DEMIMONDE

Cinequest: FEVER AT DAWN

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FEVER AT DAWN
FEVER AT DAWN

The Hungarian drama Fever at Dawn is a little movie with an epic romance.  Set just after the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps,  Hungarian invalids who survived the camps have been sent to convalesce in hospital camps in Sweden.  A young patient, Miklos, gets a dire diagnosis and determines to find love once more before he dies.  A half century before internet dating, he concocts a scheme to get himself in front of every sick Hungarian woman in Sweden.  When he meets his potential soulmate Lili, a moral question rises to the surface – should he share his diagnosis?

Some Holocaust survivors experienced ambivalence about the Jewish identity that led to yellow stars on their clothes and, essentially, targets on their backs.   This ambivalence becomes a significant thread of Fever at Dawn and is addressed more explicitly than usual for a Holocaust (or post-Holocaust)  movies.

Don’t read too much about this movie before seeing it.  There’s an unexpected nugget at the end.

Fever at Dawn’s US Premiere will be on March 2 at Cinequest, with additional Cinequest screenings on March 3, 7 and 9.