Film school students are a precocious bunch — ambitious, intense and imaginative.
Those who aspire to be narrative filmmakers, rather than experimental or documentarians, are obliged to craft pithy, stylish vignettes on limited budgets with tiny casts and crews.
While it’s amazing to view the minor miracles students can achieve, it can be more fascinating to see how they view their society.
Such is the case with “The Joy of Jewish Film,” a rewarding program of five Israeli student shorts that screens June 20 in Frameline 29, the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival.
All of the films were made by attendees of the Sam Spiegel Film & Television School, a breeding ground for Israeli filmmakers created and sustained by the estate of the Academy Award-winning producer of such major films as “On the Waterfront” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”
The festival, which has previously shown lesbian and gay-themed work by Spiegel students, presents this 73-minute program to salute the school’s 15th anniversary.
The opener, Na’ama Zaltzman’s “My Uncle Mario,” is a soulful coming of age tale about Seffi, a Tel Aviv teenager who realizes he’s attracted to men but can’t acknowledge or act on this information.
It would be hard for Seffi to confide in his widowed mother, for she still sees him as a boy without any sexual identity. But the fact that they are Tunisian Jews, and she exudes a conservative point of view, makes his coming out to her even more unlikely.
A visit by Seffi’s beloved uncle from Italy — whom the teenager follows one night to a gay bar — provides the catalyst for the lad to accept and embrace his identity.
The protagonist of Oded Iotan’s droll “Operation YY” is Ron, a young Ashkenazi too shy to meet the guys he chats with online. So he surreptitiously sets them up with each other, arranging nighttime café rendezvous that he watches from a bus stop across the street.
Ron’s well-off parents are oblivious to his activity, so he’ll have to break through on his own. He does finally and bravely show himself, in a manner, by plugging in for a cam-to-cam Internet conversation.
Adi Halfin’s “Whatever It Takes” is a wrenching slice of lesbian angst artfully embellished with flashbacks. Tamar reluctantly breaks up with Maya on the eve of leaving Israel to study abroad. But Maya, a dark-haired waif with the pitiful look of a silent film-era heroine, won’t let go.
An accident lands Maya in a coma in the hospital, and Tamar postpones her trip until her ex wakes up. Ambiguous and open-ended like the other shorts on the bill, “Whatever It Takes” is likely to inspire the strongest audience reaction.
The most explicitly political work in the program, though, and the most memorable, is Nadav Gal’s extraordinary “A Different Kind of War.” Nine-year-old Nuni resists being cast in the plum role of King David in the school play, and considers the role of ordinary soldier too butch. Can’t he be one of the dancers, with the girls?
This potent saga is set in the south Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo, within range of bullets fired from the Palestinian town of Beit Jala. Needless to say, Nuni lacks the moronic bravado of his older brother’s friends, who dare each other to climb the wall and yell at the snipers, “Death to the Arabs!”
A beautifully photographed portrait of adolescent peer pressure in a military society, “A Different Kind of War” is both harrowing and optimistic. Remember Nadav Gal, the latest in a wave of talented young Israeli filmmakers.
“The Joy of Jewish Film” screens at 8:15 p.m. Monday, June 20 at the Roxie Cinema, 3117 16th St. (at Valencia), as part of the S.F. International LGBT Film Festival. Tickets: (925) 866-9559 or www.frameline.org.