Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Film Festival may be over, but the region’s fall movie season is just getting started. Three more film festivals are scheduled to take place over the course of November. Nov. 6-16 The theme of this year’s Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival is “Dreaming of Other Worlds.” Joseph Carranza, the creative director for the Philadelphia Asian American Film Foundation, which puts on the festival, calls the theme “the idea that our dreams can transport us to other places.” “[It’s] Dreaming of other worlds because in today’s climate, we understand that cinema has a profound ability to transport us to places that are even beyond our control, places that are fantastical, places that are fun, places of levity, but also places of depth, despair, and heartache,” Carranza said. The festival’s program reflects “all of the worlds that are encompassed by Asian American, native, Hawaiian, and Pacific-Island storytelling, and our curation has intentionally been one that encompasses dreaming across the Asian diaspora,” he said. The opening night film Third Act, from filmmaker Tadashi Nakamura, is a documentary about his father, Robert A. Nakamura, who has been called “The Godfather of Asian American film.” Carranza calls Third Act It is “a film about family dynamics, about connection, about legacy, and about love and heartache,” Carranza said of the film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. Also included in the festival is the documentary About Face, a film about two ballet dancers, directed by Jennifer Lin, a former Inquirer journalist. Lin previously directed Beethoven in Beijing, a documentary about the Philadelphia Orchestra’s visit to China. On Nov. 16, the closing night film at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is The Rose: Come Back to Me, Eugene Yi’s documentary about the famed South Korean indie band The Rose. The Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Nov. 6-16, various venues. paaff.org Nov. 12-23 Now known as the Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media Festival, the event has been around for more than 40 years — making it the city’s longest-running film festival. This year the festival, under the auspices of Philadelphia Jewish Film and Media, has a new program director, Larry Fried. “Our goal with PJFM is sort of twofold: One, is to create a very broad and diverse image of what Judaism looks like today,” said Fried. Secondly, he said, “My goal is with every single film screening here, and every program here, you walk in and see something you’ve truly never seen before.” The festival will begin on Nov. 12 with the documentary Janis Ian: Breaking Silence, and the famed folk singer herself will be in attendance at the Weitzman Museum. The closing night film on Nov. 22, also at the Weitzman, is The Floaters, a film about a Jewish summer camp that co-stars Philadelphia native Seth Green. The festival’s documentary centerpiece, on Nov. 20, is Brandon Kramer’s Holding Liat, a documentary about the family of a woman held hostage in Gaza, and the different political views held by members of her family. In attendance for the film will be Kramer, Philadelphia-based director of photography Yoni Brook, and Yehuda Beinin, a film participant, who is also an area native. Fried said while he was interviewing for the program director position, he was insistent that he be allowed to program Holding Liat. He considers it “a microcosm” of how he plans to handle the highly fraught subject of Israel and Palestine. “I do think it is ultimately an unavoidable topic for Jews in the United States and also internationally,” he said, adding that other films in the festival touch on Oct. 7 and the subsequent war. “I think that it is incredibly important to spotlight works of art that directly address or ask us to address our capacity for empathy, within this struggle… I’m really looking for films that address empathy and nuance for both sides of the conflict, and ask us, in some cases, uncomfortable questions about how far that empathy goes.” The Jewish Film & Media Festival also features multimedia installations, as well as a master class presented in collaboration with Penn Cinema and Media Studies, featuring writer-director Daniel Robbins and cowriter Zack Weiner of 2024’s Bad Shabbos. The Philadelphia Jewish Film + Media Festival, Nov. 12-23, various venues. phillyjfm.org Nov. 14-16 The other two festivals are mostly dedicated to showing newer films, but Noir City: Philadelphia is all about the old. For the third year in a row, Eddie Muller, the host of Turner Classic Movies’ Noir Alley, is bringing his Noir City program to the Colonial Theatre in Phoenixville. The festival is a celebration of film noir, the genre with its roots in the 1940s and ‘50s, that tended to feature black-and-white photography and intriguing plots centered on crime. The 10-film program, over the course of three days, features such noir classics as The Narrow Margin, Hell’s Half Acre, and Tomorrow is Another Day. This year’s Noir City: Philadelphia program focuses on “actresses who made their mark in film noir,” Muller said. They were all were featured in Muller’s 2022 book, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir, recently reissued in an expanded edition. Last year’s festival focused on international releases, but this year’s is all Hollywood films. Muller added that he really loves bringing the Noir City program to “the right venue,” as he prefers old movie theaters to museums or other nontheater locations. “My attempt to revive the movies goes hand in hand with people’s attempts to revive the movie theaters and the moviegoing experience,’ he said. “So I really appreciate what they’re doing at the Colonial Theatre, and how that venue has become sort of the anchor for the revitalization of Phoenixville. That’s exactly what we’re looking for.”
