San Diego Jewish Film Festival offers 51 movies from 14 countries
February 6th, 2010 by Scott Marks
“A Matter of Size” is one of the hefty offerings at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of Menemsha Films)
San Diego’s longest-running film festival turns 20 this year. And what better way to celebrate than by showing more movies than ever before?
Slated for February 10-21, the San Diego Jewish Film Festival (SDJFF) promises films from 14 different countries. The combined number of shorts, documentaries and features totals an impressive 51.
“We started with four films,” Joyce Axelrod, the fest’s founder and former chairperson, laughingly recalls. “Even after the festival was well underway (co-founder) Lynette Allen and I never showed more than twenty or thirty films.”
It began as a modest series of film screenings held in a gymnasium and curated by Axelrod and Allen. At the time, there were only a handful of Jewish film festivals sprinkled across the country. If Axelrod’s tabulations are correct, there are currently 81 Jewish festivals in the U.S. and 130 worldwide.
San Diego’s fest found an early home at La Jolla’s Sherwood Auditorium in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. For the past several years, SDJFF’s flagship theater has been the AMC La Jolla 12.
This year’s venues also include the UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas at Hazard Center and UltraStar Poway Creekside Plaza 10, the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, and on the campus of San Diego State University at the “Not Quite Kosher Film Festival.”
For 13 years, running the festival was Axelrod’s all-consuming passion. Seven years ago, she handed the reigns over to Judy Friedel, who now acts as festival chairperson. Joyce still maintains a spot on the festival lineup. The Joyce Forum has become one of SDJFF’s most popular components.
It began as a birthday gift from her husband, Joe Fish.
Joyce Axelrod
“Joe made a gift to the Center for Jewish Culture, “Axelrod remembers. “He and (former festival director) Jacqueline Siegel knew of my interest in emerging filmmakers. They decided to establish the Joyce Forum, a festival-within-the-festival to show films created by budding talent. It was also a way for the industry to recognize them as up-and-coming filmmakers.”
Finding festival-worthy shorts was the first hurdle to overcome. Joyce chose the most logical place to find untapped cinematic talent. She took out ads at film schools “asking students to please give us their films. We eventually formed a relationship with USC film school. For a couple of years we only showed student films before eventually establishing a broader mission. We were going to show films by what we loosely define as emerging filmmakers. The general guideline is that they haven’t done a feature length film.”
Axelrod first met San Diego-born documentary filmmaker Nicole Opper in 2003, when Opper’s debut film, “Song of Hannah,” screened as part of the Joyce Forum. She and the now-29-year-old director formed a close friendship over the years.
Opper’s latest film, “Off and Running,” tells the story of an adopted African American teenager being raised as a Jew by lesbian parents. It screens on February 15 at 8 p.m.
“I was smitten with her as a filmmaker and as a person,” Axelrod says of the San Diego native who now resides in Pennsylvania. “Any time Nicole would come to town she would call me and we’d walk in Balboa Park or meet for coffee. I saw her ‘Off and Running’ before it was finished and it’s easy to see that her capabilities as a filmmaker have tripled over the years. It’s a gorgeous film to look at, with exceptional production values. She spent four years filming it and I am so proud to include it in this year’s Joyce Forum.”
Nowadays Axelrod puts all her effort into the Forum. Much of the research that once demanded Joyce’s attention now falls on the shoulders of Sandra Kraus.
Kraus, 46, has spent the last four of her seven years with SDJFF acting as festival producer.
‘We have a committee of 12 people that narrows 250 screeners down to about 80 for serious consideration,” Kraus says of the festival’s selection process. “There are four people that ultimately decide what plays at the festival and I am one of them.”
When the 2010 selection process began, the first film of the year to catch her eye turned out to be the opening night selection. She adores “A Matter of Size” — a film about a group of overweight Israeli friends who discover sumo wrestling. Describing it as “hysterically funny,” Kraus believes it’s “extremely well made” and has a topic (the struggle to lose weight) that “a lot of people can relate to.”
Last year’s festival drew a record 20,000 ticket holders and there are no signs of slowing down. Kraus credits a change in marketing strategies that allow SDJFF to reach beyond the Jewish community. This is the first year the festival could afford radio advertising.
“We started in a gymnasium with a three night program,” Kraus says of the festival’s humble beginnings, adding that the film projector was perched precariously on a ladder. “Now here we are with five venues and 51 films and we’re the third largest festival of our kind in the country.”
Nothing precarious about that. It’s a solid achievement.
Event info
What: The San Diego Jewish Film Festival
When: February 10 - 21
Where: AMC La Jolla 12. UltraStar Mission Valley Cinemas at Hazard Center, UltraStar Poway Creekside Plaza 10 and the David & Dorothea Garfield Theatre at the Lawrence Family JCC
Tickets: (858) 362-1330; http://tickets.lfjcc.org
Complete festival schedule: http://sdcjc.lfjcc.org/sdjff/2010/
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This article originally appeared on SDNN.com.
Tags: A Matter of Size, Joe Fish, Joyce Axelrod, Joyce Forum, Judy Friedel, Lawrence Family JCC, Lynette Allen, Nicole Opper, Not Quite Kosher Film Festival, Off and Running, San Diego film festivals, San Diego Jewish Film Festival, San Diego State University, Sandra Kraus, SDJFF, SDNN, Sherwood Auditorium, Sherwood Auditorium Museum of Contemporary Art San Dieg, Song of Hannah, sumo wrestling, UltraStar Mission Valley CinemasShare: 
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