The Jewish Film Institute (JFI) evolved from the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which has championed bold films and filmmakers exploring the nuanced and diverse aspects of Jewish life, culture, history, and identity. Founded in 1980 by Deborah Kaufman, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (SFJFF) pioneered the concept of the independent Jewish film festival to challenge stereotypical depictions of Jewish people in Hollywood filmmaking. The festival has become a vital platform for filmmakers at all stages of their careers, showcasing works that delve into global Jewish identity and experience. Marcia Jarmel, director of filmmaker services at the Jewish Film Institute said, “JFI is committed to artistic freedom of expression, experimentation, and innovation. To deepen its support for filmmakers, JFI transitioned to being a film institute in 2015, and brought me on to grow our artist development programs during the pandemic.”

In May 2023, JFI received an Arts Endowment grant to support JFI’s annual, nationwide Filmmaker in Residence program, helping to launch exceptional Jewish-themed films from emerging and established filmmakers across all cinematic forms. The residence program is the only national program of its kind to provide support independent Jewish-themed media projects. Residents meet monthly, participate in bi-monthly virtual workshops with industry experts, and gather in-person at the annual festival. What sets the festival apart from other festivals is that “The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is the only Academy Award-qualifying Jewish film festival in the world, in the Documentary Short Subject category. Shorts filmmakers who win our juried award are eligible to be nominated for an Oscar, which has helped JFI curate truly stellar short film lineups each year, where emerging filmmakers often launch their careers,” Jarmel explained.

Jarmel spoke with us about the history of the annual film festival, the evolution of the Filmmaker in Residence Program, and the importance of film in advancing Jewish storytelling.

NEA: Part of the Jewish Film Institute’s mission is to champion “bold films and filmmakers that expand and evolve the Jewish story for audiences everywhere.” Why do you think film is an effective vehicle for advancing Jewish storytelling and how is JFI playing a role in showcasing these stories?

MARCIA JARMEL: Film is a unique medium that offers the opportunity for a group of people to have a collective emotional, aesthetic, and/or intellectual journey together. It can create community, encourage compassion, and build nuanced understanding in a way few art forms can. For 44 years, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival has been engaging, challenging, and entertaining the Bay Area community, showcasing a full spectrum of Jewish life, culture, history, and identities. As the only U.S. organization incubating these stories in our Filmmakers in Residence Program, JFI plays a unique role in this landscape.

NEA: Could you share more about what your organization does?

JARMEL: The Filmmaker in Residence Program, which hosted local filmmakers since 2014, expanded in 2021 to a national program, providing robust creative, marketing, and production support for emerging and established filmmakers. The year-long residency offers filmmakers workshops, presentations, and peer-to-peer mentorship, networking, and Pitch + Kvell, an annual public forum, where residents present their projects to industry veterans for feedback and advice. Pitch + Kvell is a free virtual event open to anyone. We do meet up in person once each year at our summer festival for a few days of film watching, workshops, networking, and deepening our relationships.

JFI also runs a grants program, giving critical support to Jewish stories headed toward their finish. To date, we’ve given out $325,000 to 29 projects, half of which have premiered already, many at major international festivals such as the Berlinale, Tribeca, and Sundance. As important to these programs is JFI’s work building community among filmmakers working with Jewish content through gatherings held at major film events such as Sundance, Doc NYC and the International Documentary Associations’ Getting Real conference.

NEA: What is the selection process for filmmakers participating in the Filmmakers in Residence program?

JARMEL: It never seeks to amaze me how many remarkable Jewish-themed films are in the works. This year, 120 projects were submitted for the six cohort slots in our residency. Their proposals go through an in-depth evaluation process with a team of veteran filmmakers and curators external to JFI. We conduct hour-long interviews with finalists to arrive at the difficult choice of six filmmakers. In creating the cohort for a specific year, we look for diversity in all of its forms—the experience level of the filmmaker, the phase of the project, the type of storytelling, the type of story, and the community the filmmaker comes from. At this point, all films are documentaries, though some filmmakers are working in the hybrid space.

NEA: Can you more about the history of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival?

JARMEL: Three institutions—the Judah L. Magnes Museum, the American Film Institute in Washington, DC, and the UCLA Film Archives—supported the first Jewish Film Festival in 1981, consisting of ten independently produced documentary and fiction films from around the world. Kaufman was joined in 1982 by Janis Plotkin, who served as associate director, co-director and executive artistic director during her tenure at SFJFF. SFJFF provided a safe entryway into a broad view of Jewish culture for anyone willing to pay the cost of a movie ticket. The programming approach was and continues to be fresh and bold. SFJFF offered a departure from commercial presentations of Holocaust themes—which tended to emphasize Jews' victim status—and led the way in curating a diverse slate of films by Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers to provide a broad range of perspectives on the Middle East and the Jewish disapora’s relationship to Israel, an approach that continues to this day. The festival also made a strong point of including and celebrating films about communities not often heard from in mainstream life, including Sephardic Jewish life, the culture of Mizrahi Jews (Jews from Arab lands), LGBT stories, as well as quirky and experimental cinema that expands the notion of Jewish film.

In 1990, Kaufman and Plotkin took SFJFF to Moscow, Russia, despite enormous logistical and bureaucratic obstacles. Mainstream American Jewish organizations, who were organizing airlifts of Soviet Jews to Israel, at first did not support the SFJFF's work to strengthen Jewish life and culture in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the significance of this event was clear: the first Moscow Jewish Film Festival drew more than 60,000 people, becoming the largest Jewish event in the history of the Soviet Union and Russia.

In an attempt to highlight Jewish-Arab cooperation in medieval Spain, and to put a spotlight on marginalized Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish cultures, the festival traveled to Madrid in 1992 for the 500th anniversary of the Inquisition and Jewish expulsion. There, the festival reached sold-out audiences, mostly students in their 20s and 30s, who participated in electrifying discussions about the meaning of multiculturalism, even as a new European multi-ethnic war raged in the former Yugoslavia.

NEA: Can you provide a snapshot of what the 2023 festival entailed? What were the goals?

JARMEL: Our 43rd festival in 2023 was the first fully in-person festival since 2020 and saw us return to our traditional 18-day run of screenings, which served approximately 30,000 attendees throughout the Bay Area. Each year, we strive to present a wide-ranging and multi-varied program that offers something for everyone, from groundbreaking documentaries to gripping features and stirring short films. Five films in the 2023 program were supported by JFI through our grants and residency programs, so it was amazing to welcome those filmmakers to the festival and connect our Bay Area audiences with their work. That’s really been one of our key goals in recent years—to show how JFI provides a continuum of support for filmmakers from ideation through exhibition.

NEA: Can you share any notable achievements from previous participants of the residency program, and how the experience has influenced their careers or the completion of their projects?

JARMEL: The independent filmmaking process is often a long and lonely process. Now in our third year, the expanded version of the residency is just beginning to see the fruit of the seeds we’ve sown with our former residents premiering their films. The six completed projects to date are having full lives, screening at major festivals, broadcasting, succeeding in their theatrical release, and continuing on to a long and impactful life in community and educational spaces. JFI has hosted their Bay Area premieres, launching these films in the Jewish distribution space. Besides the imprimatur of JFI support, which often leads to other opportunities and, sometimes financial support for filmmakers, JFI continues to support films throughout their lives through our communication platforms, sharing accolades and opportunities. The cohort building aspect of the residency pays off in an ongoing supportive community built from the trust that develops over the course of a year of working together. We’ve been heartened that the last two cohorts have continued to meet on their own after their program year ends.

The films in our completion grants program are further along. Almost half of the films have launched, premiering at such festivals as Sundance, Tribeca, and the Berlinale, winning awards, and reaching millions of viewers worldwide through broadcast, streaming, and community and educational channels.

NEA: What do you hope people walked away with after attending the festival?

JARMEL: We believe firmly in the universal right to freedom of expression and the artist’s ability to help us make sense of our world and imagine a better future, no matter how impossible it may seem. We hope that our attendees learned something new, met someone new, felt a sense of togetherness, discovered their new favorite film or filmmaker, and left with their minds and hearts open to the unique experiences of others different from themselves.

NEA: What are some of the other ways in which JFI engages with the community?

JARMEL: JFI is a fully fledged organization with programs and events all year long. Our Mitzvah Series presents no-cost screenings of festival favorites for communities who otherwise wouldn’t be able to attend our programs, including residential senior facilities and at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. Our annual WinterFest is a two-day film festival in February that showcases hot titles from festivals like TIFF, Sundance, and Telluride. We offer a free monthly online shorts series that has been watched by more than three million people in over 150 countries to date.

NEA: What do you wish you could do more of as an organization?

JARMEL: In support of filmmakers, there is so much that can be done. The fact that we have the resources to support only 12 film projects a year, when we receive over a hundred applications, speaks to the unmet need in this space. And that’s just for documentaries. There is a huge gap in the fiction space. There are no specific programs anywhere in the United States that are nurturing films with a Jewish bent in script development, let alone film production or distribution. In the next few years, I aspire to launch a program to support emerging fiction filmmakers from underrepresented Jewish communities, organize a mentorship system for matching filmmakers with experienced industry professionals, create a series of webinars open to all filmmakers as professional development in a field that is rapidly changing, and to host regular virtual and in-person events to build the community and network for artists working in this space.

NEA: What advice do you have for aspiring filmmakers?

JARMEL: It requires passion, vision, and persistence. It’s never been more difficult to bring a story to fruition. That’s challenging. But the opportunity to affect hearts and minds, and the remarkable people, places, and collaborations one has an opportunity to experience are unparalleled. I think aspiring filmmakers will find many experienced filmmakers willing to offer advice and encouragement. Why not reach out to filmmakers you admire? You never know when someone will respond and a relationship can develop. We were all novices at some point and someone helped us along. 

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