SFJFF

SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD: immune from shame

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SPEER GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. Courtesy of Vanessa Lapa.

In her absorbing documentary Speer Goes to Hollywood, filmmaker Vanessa Lapa takes us inside a Nazi war criminal’s brazen attempt to rehabilitate his image into “the Good Nazi”. Previously unheard private audio recordings of Albert Speer himself reveal him to be one of history’s most audacious spin doctors.

Speer, the highest ranking Nazi to escape execution at the Nuremberg Trials, was the master of the Nazis’ wartime production efforts. A trained architect, any ability Speer had to design structures was surpassed by his genius in logistics. In Speer Goes to Hollywood, Speer displays an ever greater gift for dissembling.

After being released from prison in the mid 1960’s, Speer published a bestselling (and self-serving) memoir, Inside the Third Reich, to perpetuate what is known as The Speer Myth. Speer would have us believe that the worst crimes in history occurred – right under his nose and to his benefit – without any participation on his part. Speer’s defense was essentially, “Hey, it was the OTHER Nazis“.

(Note: not even a liar as bald-faced as Speer denied that the Holocaust happened.)

To supply the German war machine, Speer exploited the nearly limitless pool of those conquered, persecuted and to be exterminated by the Nazis. Powering his production with forced labor, Speer enslaved 12.5 million victims and worked many of them to death, all to perpetrate a war of aggression.

In the tapes, we hear Speer collaborating with Andrew Birkin, a Stanley Kubrick protege, on the script for a film to further Speer’s version of history. In the face of damning evidence, Speer never wavered in his deflections, dodges and denials. Speer Goes to Hollywood reveals Albert Speer to stay on message with unmatched relentlessness, discipline and audacity.

Andrew Birkin was trying to cash in on the popularity of Inside the Thrd Reich. The tapes show Birkin to be stunningly enabling in the attempted whitewash. Once Birkin slips and blames a kerfuffle on “the Jewish machine”.

Another Birkin mentor, Carol Reed is the truth teller. Reed, the director of The Third Man, gives Birkin a reality check – this IS a whitewash, pure and simple.

A prime example of the banality of evil, Speer doesn’t seem to be a fanatic hater, but an amoral grasper/climber, willing to swallow even genocide as an acceptable price for getting ahead. He does display an ingrained antisemitism, once tossing off “Of course, we resented the Jews“, as if, who wouldn’t?

Here’s a tantalizing nugget from Speer Goes to Hollywood. We hear Speer claim to have written the top Nuremberg prosecutor, American Robert Jackson, to claim important knowledge of Germany’s neurological warfare research, using it as leverage to avoid being turned over to the Soviets. Speer hints at an implied quid pro quo, but given Speer’s credibility, who knows if any of it is true.

The ever-watchable Speer Going to Hollywood chronicles unashamedness on a mass scale.

SIN LA HABANA: land of opportunity?

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Yonah Acosta Gonzalez in SIN LA HABANA. Photo courtesy of JFI.

The stylish Canadian indie Sin la Habana braids together the yearnings of an Afro-Cuban couple and a Jewish-Iranian woman.

Leonardo (Yonah Acosta Gonzalez) is a Havana ballet dancer frustrated by what he sees as racist favoritism in his company. It doesn’t help that he is an impulsive hothead. His beautiful and canny girlfriend Sara (Evelyn Castroda O’Farrill) is a lawyer. In the socialist paradise of Cuba, their incomes consign them to a cramped, squalid apartment. They want out.

Sara concocts a plan – Leonardo will seduce a foreign tourist who can invite him to leave Cuba; once legally ensconced in the first world, Leonardo will send for Sara.

Evelyn Castroda O’Farrill and Yonah Acosta Gonzalez in SIN LA HABANA. Photo courtesy of JFI.

The cynical scheme begins to work. Leonardo gives salsa lessons (and more) to a Canadian visitor, Nasim (Aki Yaghoubi). Nasim, who is Jewish-Iranian, brings Leonardo back to Montreal.

But then stuff happens. Leonardo is not welcomed as the ballet star that he sees himself to be, and it’s unexpectedly more difficult for him to get the job that will bring him legal residence. And Nasim turns out to be far less of a dupe than first apparent.

The ending is well-crafted and authentic.

Sin la Habana is visually arresting from the very first shot, a closeup of a rooster’s red eye soon followed by arty shots of ballet practice. Havana feels steamy and Montreal feels frigid.

Aki Yaghoubi in SIN LA HABANA. Photo courtesy of JFI.

It’s pretty clear that writer-director Kaveh Nabatian, cinematographer Juan Pablo Ramírez and editor Sophie Leblond know how to tell a story with cinema. There are a couple too many flashbacks of Santería rituals, but Sin la Habana is otherwise well-paced.

I screened Sin la Habana for this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which opens on Friday. You can peruse the festival’s program and schedule at SFJFF, and here’s my own SFJFF preview. Here’s where you can stream Sin la Habana.

KINGS OF CAPITOL HILL: evolution of a lobby

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Benjamin Netanyahu in KINGS OF CAPITOL HILL. Photo courtesy of JFI.

The Israeli documentary Kings of Capitol Hill traces the history of an American political institution, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Founded as a lobby group to advocate for the interests of Israel, AIPAC has grown in power and has shifted (and narrowed) its mission.

AIPAC is controversial because the policies of the recent right-wing Israeli governments, supported by AIPAC, and those of most Jewish-Americans have diverged.

Kings of Capitol Hill highlights two pivotal moments. The first came in 1984 when Paul Simon unseated Charles Percy as US Senator from Illinois, and AIPAC was given the credit and the accompanying political fearsomeness. The second came a decade later, when AIPAC abruptly rejected bipartisanship to become a mouthpiece for the Israeli Right and the US Republican Party.

For 60 years, AIPAC leaders have refused to be interviewed about the organization. Israeli filmmaker Mor Loushy has secured the oral histories of many of AIPAC’s top leadership from its founding and fashioned them into a compelling story.

Note: The film was completed before both Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, two of Kings of Capitol Hill’s villains, were unseated in the past nine months.

I screened Kings of Capitol Hill for this year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which opens on Friday. You can peruse the festival’s program and schedule at SFJFF, and here’s my own SFJFF preview. Here’s where you can stream Kings of Capitol Hill.

coming up on TV: WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL – the drive for relevance

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Pauline Kael in WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance. Set your DVRs for it on Turner Classic Movies on December 12.

Documentarian Rob Garver has sourced What She Said is well-sourced with the memories of Kael’s colleagues, rivals and intimates. Garver’s portrait of Kael helps us understand her refusal to conform to social norms as she basically invented the role of a female film critic and what today we might call a national influencer on cinema.

Of course, one of Kael’s defining characteristics was her all-consuming love of movies, a trait shared by many in this film’s target audience. Fittingly, Garver keeps things lively by illustrating Kael’s story with clips from the movies she loved and hated. Garver’s artistry in composing this mosaic of evocative movie moments sets What She Said apart from the standard talking head biodocs.

Kael was astonishingly confident in her taste (which was not as snooty as many film writers). For the record, I think Kael was right to love Mean Streets, Band of Outsiders, Bonnie and Clyde, and, of course, The Godfather. It meant something to American film culture that she championed those films. She was, however, wrong to love Last Tango in Paris. She was also right to hate Limelight, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Sound of Music. But Kael was just being a contrarian and off-base to hate Lawrence of Arabia and Shoah.

Kael was by necessity an intrepid self-promoter and filled with shameless contradictions. She famously dismissed the auteur theory but sponsored the bodies of work of auteurs Scorsese, Peckinpah, Coppola and Altman. She loved – even lived – to discover and support new talent.

Most of the people we like and admire possess at least some bit of selfishness and empathy. Kael’s daughter Gina James says that Kael turned her lack of self awareness into triumph. This observation, of course, cuts both ways.

I screened What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael while covering the 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It’s coming up on Turner Classic Movies this Friday.

WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL – the drive for relevance

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Pauline Kael in WHAT SHE SAID: THE ART OF PAULINE KAEL

What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael is the remarkably thorough and insightful biodoc of the iconic film critic Pauline Kael and her drive for relevance.

Documentarian Rob Garver has sourced What She Said is well-sourced with the memories of Kael’s colleagues, rivals and intimates. Garver’s portrait of Kael helps us understand her refusal to conform to social norms as she basically invented the role of a female film critic and what today we might call a national influencer on cinema.

Of course, one of Kael’s defining characteristics was her all-consuming love of movies, a trait shared by many in this film’s target audience. Fittingly, Garver keeps things lively by illustrating Kael’s story with clips from the movies she loved and hated. Garver’s artistry in composing this mosaic of evocative movie moments sets What She Said apart from the standard talking head biodocs.

Kael was astonishingly confident in her taste (which was not as snooty as many film writers). For the record, I think Kael was right to love Mean Streets, Band of Outsiders, Bonnie and Clyde, and, of course, The Godfather. It meant something to American film culture that she championed those films. She was, however, wrong to love Last Tango in Paris. She was also right to hate Limelight, Hiroshima Mon Amour and The Sound of Music. But Kael was just being a contrarian and off-base to hate Lawrence of Arabia and Shoah.

Kael was by necessity an intrepid self-promoter and filled with shameless contradictions. She famously dismissed the auteur theory but sponsored the bodies of work of auteurs Scorsese, Peckinpah, Coppola and Altman. She loved – even lived – to discover and support new talent.

Most of the people we like and admire possess at least some bit of selflessness and empathy. Kael’s daughter Gina James says that Kael turned her lack of self awareness into triumph,. This observation, of course, cuts both ways.

I saw What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael at the 2019 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. It’s now playing in theaters in San Francisco and Berkeley.

SATAN & ADAM: more than an odd couple

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From L:R – Subjects Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee in a still from SATAN & ADAM. Photo courtesy JFI

In the engaging documentary Satan & Adam, Adam, a young white Ivy Leaguer, takes a stroll through Harlem and encounters an older African-American street guitarist, who calls himself Mr. Satan. Adam, a talented amateur blues harmonica player sits in, and soon the odd couple are a busking team, a popular attraction at their regular sidewalk venue in Harlem.

“Mr. Satan” is an alias for an artist of note.  Mr. Satan’s talent and the odd couple novelty allows the act to soar to totally unexpected heights. But Satan has emotional and medical issues, and Adam might be a better fit for a career in academia, so this is a story with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.  Let’s just say that, over the past 23 years, there have been some significant detours on this journey.

The core of the film is about this unusual relationship and the peculiarities of these two guys, but it also traces the evolving race relations in NYC.

Satan & Adam is told primarily from Adam’s point of view, which is understandable because of Mr. Satan’s periodic unavailability and, when we see him unfiltered, his oft puzzling inscrutability.

I saw Satan & Adam at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF), a fest noted or its especially rich documentaries.  It has finally been released in at least one Bay Area theater.

 

 

 

Movies to See Right Now

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Subject Sammy Davis Jr. in a still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy Menemsha Films/JFI.
This week, Dark Money and Puzzle have opened in Bay Area theaters.  And one of the Bay Area’s top cinema events: the 38th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF38), has opened and runs through August 5 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael, Albany and Oakland.  The SFJFF is the world’s oldest Jewish film festival, and, with a 2017 attendance figure of 40,000, still the largest.  As always, there’s an especially strong slate of documentaries, including my recommended Must See docs; I especially liked the closing night film Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me.

OUT NOW

  • Please make every attempt to see the best movie of the year, now in Bay Area theaters: the emotionally powerful coming of age drama Leave No Trace from Debra Granik (Winter’s Bone). Superbly well-crafted, impeccably acted, thoughtful and emotionally powerful, it’s a Must See.
  • The savagely funny social satire Sorry to Bother You carries the message that humans are more than just their commercial value as consumers and labor to be exploited.
  • The political documentary Dark Money exposes the growing threat of unlimited secret money in political campaigns.
  • Puzzle intelligently and authentically traces one woman’s journey of self discovery.
  • The surprisingly emotional biodoc Won’t You Be My Neighbor? is about Fred Rogers’ fierce devotion to the principle that every child is deserving of love and our protection.
  • First Reformed: Ethan Hawke stars in this bleak, bleak psychological thriller with an intense ending.
  • Three Identical Strangers is an astonishing documentary about triplets separated at birth that ranges from the exhuverance of discovering siblings to disturbing questions of social engineering.
  • American Animals is funny documentary/reenactment of a preposterous heist.
  • RBG is the affectionate and humanizing biodoc about that great stoneface, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

ON VIDEO
In honor of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now underway, my this week’s video pick comes from last year’s festival. Israel was created as a home for refugees. What happens when African refugees overwhelm a neglected Tel Aviv neighborhood is the subject of the topical documentary Levinsky Park. Levinsky Park is available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

ON TV

On July 31, Turner Classic Movies brings us two generationally iconic films – one from The Greatest Generation and one for Baby Boomers.

First there’s the WW II melodrama From Here to Eternity. Sure, it’s a soap opera with that much lampooned Burt Lancaster-Debroah Kerr embrace in the crashing surf. But it’s packed with a great cast, and the story threads are expertly braided together by director Fred Zinneman. Besides Lancaster and Kerr, there’s Montgomery Clift, Jack Warden and – resurrecting his career – Frank Sinatra. One of the best performances is by Ernst Borgnine as the hulking bully named Fatso.

Next, it’s easy to recognize the greatness of The Graduate today, but it’s hard to appreciate how groundbreaking it was – all because of Mike Nichol’s directorial choices. Dustin Hoffman’s performance was central to the success of the film, yet he was a nobody at the time and Nichols had to fight for him – the studio preferred a conventionally handsome leading man. Nichols sure wasn’t copying anybody else when he put the Simon and Garfunkle songs in the soundtrack. And the final shot – where Nichols kept his camera lingering on Hoffman and Katherine Ross until the actors became uncomfortable – is one of cinema’s best.

Dustin Hoffman (and Anne Bancroft’s leg) in THE GRADUATE

SFJFF: the docs

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Still from SAMMY DAVIS JR.: I’VE GOTTA BE ME. Photo courtesy JFI.

You can always count on a rich slate of documentaries at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now running through August 5 in San Francisco, Palo Alto, San Rafael, Albany and Oakland. Here are my recommendations from this year’s crop.

  • Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me: As a Baby Boomer who had dismissed Sammy Davis Jr. from the moment he publicly hugged Richard Nixon, I found this to be the most surprising doc (and my favorite) at the fest. I learned that Sammy’s 61-year career as a professional entertainer began at age three (with his first movie credit at age 7), a working childhood that  left emotional needs  It turns out that Sammy was a very, very talented but needy artist,, an uncomplicated man navigating several very complicated times. BTW there is some unbelievable dancing in Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me. It is the SFJFF’s official Closing Night film at the Castro on July 29, but you can also catch it tomorrow in Palo Alto or August 4 in Oakland.
  • The Oslo Diaries:  The inside story of the secret negotiations that led to the 1993 Oslo Accord as told by the surviving Israeli and Palestinian participants.  It’s a remarkable story of finding trust out of distrust.  Of course, what should have been a diplomatic triumph is now a poignant story of a missed, or at least delayed, opportunity at peace.
  • The Mossad: First-hand accounts of the most legendary operations of Israel’s legendary foreign intelligence service. This is a top-notch cloak-and-dagger doc (and my review suggests a companion film about another Israeli intelligence agency).
  • Satan & Adam: Adam, a young white Ivy Leaguer, takes a stroll through Harlem and encounters an older African-American street guitarist, who calls himself Mr. Satan. Adam, a talented amateur blues harmonica player sits in and soon the odd couple are a busking team. “Mr. Satan” is an alias for an artist of note. The odd couple novelty and Mr. Satan’s talent allows the act to soar. But Satan has emotional and medical issues, and Adam might be a better fit for a career in academia, so this is a story with plenty of unexpected twists and turns.
  • The Twinning Reaction: This startling and moving documentary tells the story of a Mad Men-era research project and its profound human impact. To perform a longitudinal study of nurture vs. nature, researchers INTENTIONALLY separated identical twins and placed them with families that the researchers kept in the dark for decades. My review compares The Twinning Reaction to a film in current release that covers the same facts.

My complete reviews of Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me, The Oslo Diaries and Satan & Adam will appear when they are released in the Bay Area. You can peruse the entire SFJFF program and buy tickets and passes at San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

From L:R – Subjects Adam Gussow and Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee in a still from SATAN & ADAM. Photo courtesy JFI

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY: the world’s most beautiful woman and her secrets

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BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY

Friday, May 18, you can see Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story on PBS’ American Masters. This is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.

In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.

Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.

She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.

At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.

Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?

She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.

I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story last summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s playing tomorrow night on PBS’ American Masters series.

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY: the world’s most beautiful woman and her secrets

by

BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story is the riveting biopic of a glamorous movie star who invented and patented the precursor to wireless technology; that’s amazing enough, but Bombshell delves deeply into how Lamarr’s stunning face, her Jewish heritage, and mid-century gender roles shaped her career, marriages and parenting. Top notch.

In the last few years, one totally unexpected aspect of Lamarr’s life has become more well-known. She was a tinkerer/inventor who co-invented a radio guidance system for submarine torpedos, which she donated to the US military. The US Navy used this technology in WW II. Modern blue tooth technology stems directly from her innovation. Today her patent would be worth billions.

Bombshell adds layer upon layer to this tale of beauty and brains, as it traces Lamarr’s remarkable life. Hedy Lamarr had no control over being born a woman, being born to Jewish parents and being born to be a beauty. These three accidents of birth set the parameters of her journey – granting her access to some professional opportunities and stunting others, even threatening her life.

She burst into celebrity – and notoriety – at age 19, as the star of the film Ecstasy. Not only was Hedy the first actress filmed in full frontal nudity, she was the first screen actress to portray female orgasms. She was soon the young trophy wife of an Austrian industrialist, a formidable and fearsome supplier of munitions to Hitler. Hedy’s life seemed headed along the Bimbo Track, but she realized that her husband was powerful enough to keep her trapped in the marriage, but not powerful enough to protect her from the Nazis. At this point, she orchestrated an international escape that is the stuff of thrillers.

At age 24, often nominated as the most beautiful woman in the world, she launched a Hollywood career. Professional ups and downs, marriages and affairs and children followed, along with her work in technology.

Her beauty was often a blessing and sometimes a curse, but always affected her trajectory. Someone that beautiful is just different – the rest of us can’t help our reactions to her. But how many times can you be a trophy wife?

She was a person who survived troubling times, which left scars on her. How Hedy handled her Jewishness, how she raised her kids and how she was treated by the military are unsettling. Documentarian Alexandra Dean, Bombshell’s writer-director brings us witnesses, including Hedy’s children, to deliver an inside peek at a real life that would not be believable as a work of fiction.

I saw Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story this summer at the 2017 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SJFF). It’s coming to Bay Area theaters this weekend.