Jewish Film Festival letter of support

JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

March 26, 2007

To members of the press, city officials, and the public:

As the Executive Director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, I write in support of the illustrious group of filmmakers who are tenants at the Saul Zaentz Film Center, also known as the Fantasy Building. Our organization has been closely aligned with the media community at the Fantasy Building for many years, as we were among the original tenants who moved from shared space in Emeryville to the Fantasy Building in 1985.

This community of filmmakers is known throughout the world for making important, groundbreaking documentaries; we have shown many of their films at the Jewish Film Festival and have celebrated their accomplishments with them. The Fantasy tenants have produced 14 Academy Award-nominated documentaries over the past two decades.

But this community is under immediate threat from Wareham Properties, the new owner of the building: if tenants do not immediately sign new leases containing substantial rent increases, they will be evicted in the next few weeks. The result would be a disaster for a community that has been together for the past 22 years. The fragile ecology of the Bay Area independent filmmaking world can ill afford such a blow. We must learn from the painful lessons that San Francisco experienced with the dispersion of its dance community during the dot-com boom: networks of working artists are an irreplaceable urban resource.

While we were tenants in the building, from 1985 to 2002, we greatly benefited from the inter-relationships that arose from being in proximity to other film professionals. It was because of the informal relationships that develop by sharing a hallway, a kitchen or bathroom that ideas are shared and projects bloom. Several filmmakers in the building added specific Jewish content to their films at our urging, opening up a whole new audience for documentary films. For example, while she was making Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter, we urged Deborah Hoffmann to include references to her mother’s Jewish identity. Her film was wildly successful on the Jewish Film Festival circuit, and was eventually nominated for an Academy Award.

Tenants at the Fantasy Building have enriched our work at the festival in a number of ways. Five current tenants have shown their films at the festival over the years, and several past and present board members are tenants in the building, including the Founding Director of the Jewish Film Festival, filmmaker Deborah Kaufman.

This Festival benefits, as do all the local film festivals, from the strength of the community of filmmakers at the Fantasy building. We strongly support their efforts to remain in the building at reasonable terms. It would be a great loss for the film community and the city of Berkeley and the San Francisco Bay Area if this longstanding group of incalculable merit were forced to disperse.

Sincerely.

Peter L. Stein
Executive Director

145 9th Street, #200 | San Francisco, CA | 94103 | 415.621.0566 | jewishfilm@sfjff.org | www.sfjff.org