The following describes the themes of a proposed film and conversation program inviting audiences to reflect on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
The holiday celebrates the temporary dwellings Jews built during their exodus from Egypt and invites us to consider the balance between rootedness and transience, permanence and impermanence; and what it means to be a stranger in a strange land.
Community outreach and PR for this program may piggyback on a screening in San Francisco proposed to the CJM and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss strategic partnership with the CJM and Jewish Film Institute.
Click the photos below to view excerpts from works we propose to show.
WENDY MACNAUGHTON DRAWS CASTRO COMMONS
This is one of several visual poems originally produced by Citizen Film for a “digital sukkah” installation in the JCC San Francisco atrium as part of the exhibition, “We are not permanent but we are not temporary”-a collaboration between filmmakers, scholars and visual artists.
Please click the thumbnail image to view a video excerpt.
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EQUIVALENTS
Collaboration between scholar Deborah Dash Moore, filmmaker Sam Ball and the Contemporary Jewish Museum led to a series of creative exercises inspired by pioneering Jewish American photographer Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946.). These videos meditate on the fleeting moments just before Stieglitz transformed transient clouds into permanent works of art.“No two moments are alike,” Stieglitz said. So he photographed clouds as “equivalents” of “profound life experience.”
Click the thumbnail to view a playlist of excerpts from this series.
THE LIBERATING LENS
Jewish photographers who were outsiders to American culture had enormous impact in changing how Americans came to see themselves in the 20th century. This collaboration with scholar Deborah Dash Moore investigates the liberating power of their cameras.
Please click the thumbnail image to view a video excerpt.
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HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT!
This short film was originally displayed as part of a sculptural multimedia installation created collaboratively by Citizen Film, the Contemporary Jewish Museum (CJM), and Stanford University professor Ari Kelman, who invites us to explore the phenomenon of Jewish-themed T-Shirts as a way to understand Jewish migration from the periphery to the mainstream of American culture.
Please click the thumbnail image to view a playlist of excerpts from this series.
REFUGEE ⎢ MEMORY ⎢OBJECT
This short film is part of a collaboration between Citizen Film, the Magnes Collection at UC Berkeley and young refugees who are participants in curator Francesco Spagnolo’s Mapping Diasporas program. Short films tell the stories of how memory inhabits the objects refugees carry with them when they flee.
A video excerpt will be available in June.
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The Strange Afterlife of Sholem Aleichem
In collaboration with the Sholem Aleichem network, Jeremy Dauber and Sebastian Schulman discuss the strange ways the seminal Yiddish writer’s work has been adapted and commented upon on YouTube in recent years, generating millions of views for works ranging from an expected toast delivered to Lin Manuel Miranda at his wedding, to Stephen Colbert’s serenade of a Jewish family from Topeka . All of these works, inspired by the signature rambling monologue of the “Jewish Mark Twain,” comment on the precarious balance between tradition and modernity.
Click the thumbnail to view a playlist of excerpts from this series.
A Virtual Sukkah
Citizen Film designed a teen-created component of a JCC-SF digital sukkah installation in the atrium of 3200 California Street. Citizen Film recruited 100 teen artists to participate. These teens collaborated with Citizen Film, the JCC SF and its Chief Jewish Officer as well as the CJM TAC and Jewish Film Institute to create a series of photos re-interpreting the holiday of Sukkoth. A Virtual Sukkah is a photo project inviting teens & young adults to investigate their surroundings by taking photos that re-imagine the Jewish guidelines for building a sukkah. Participants look for manifestations of rules like this in their immediate environments, then create images and captions to be shared on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms.