Prague 1938. A handsome Jewish violinist from the sticks falls in love with a beautiful Jewish pianist from the city. Both have dark secrets, deep passions and hot bodies. As the winds of war begin to blow, how will their joint fates unfold?
You’ll just have to see “Canone Inverso” to find out.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your popcorn makers. The ninth annual Contra Costa Jewish Film Festival is coming, and organizers promise a full line-up of tempting cinematic fare. Leading the pack, “Canone Inverso,” a 1999 Italian film making its Bay Area premiere on opening night, Saturday, March 13, at the CineArts Theater in Pleasant Hill.
“Canone Inverso,” which stars Gabriel Byrne and an attractive young cast, tells a multigenerational love story. With the Holocaust looming, two star-crossed lovers contend with betrayal, family treachery and class distinctions, but in the end, find a kind of redemption.
Assembling the line-up required the persistence of a Dashiell Hammett gumshoe, with “Canone Inverso” providing a textbook case, according to CCJFF director Riva Gambert.
After premiering in California at the Palm Springs Film Festival, the film quickly vanished. “It had never been distributed in the U.S.A.,” says Gambert, “so I called the Italian distributor on a monthly basis, finally getting permission to show the film. It was tedious, getting up early to call Italy, but very rewarding.”
Just as music plays a key role in “Canone Inverso,” so it does in another scheduled film, “Taking Sides,” from Hungarian director Istvan Szabo and writer Ronald Harwood (“The Pianist”).
In “Taking Sides,” Harvey Keitel stars as a tough-as-nails American military lawyer working in occupied postwar Germany. His target: the great German conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler (Stellen Starsgard) who was accused of collaborating with the Nazis during the war years and is now a near-broken man.
In a compelling battle of wits, the two argue over the meaning of art, its functions in a corrupt society and the artist’s obligations to fight evil.
“Was he culpable?” asks Gambert. “If this and other films have a theme at all, it’s the power of choice in our lives.”
If that seems thought-provoking, it should. The goal of the festival, says Gambert, is “to bring to our community films of substance that are also entertaining, that resonate long after the lights go up.”
Finding those films is more than half the fun for Gambert and members of her committee, all of whom haunt regional film festivals in search of the good stuff.
“We watch 50 to 70 films during the selection process,” says Gambert, “and we each go to a movie a week on our own. We’re self-motivated.”
Several films make their local premieres at the festival. Among the highlights is “The Big Tuna,” an Israeli “mockumentary” about fictitious filmmaker Max “Tuna” Schreiber. The storyline follows “Tuna” as he pulls a hoax on David Ben-Gurion, then flies a balloon to Egypt to bring peace to the Middle East.
How nutty is that? Moviegoers can ask the director, Erez Heiman, themselves. He’ll be attending the screening and address the audience afterwards.
Another offering from Israel, “Poker Face,” which originally aired on Israeli TV in 2001, tells the story of a man facing Alzheimer’s disease and his wife who tries to cope with personal tragedy.
Other films include “Shanghai Ghetto,” a documentary about prewar European Jews who fled to China to escape Nazi oppression, and “Shalom Y’all,” a documentary about Jewish life in the American South. “Yossi and Jagger,” the acclaimed 2003 Israeli film about two gay lovers serving in the Israel Defense Forces, returns following screenings at various Bay Area festivals.
Once the lights go down in the theater — this year at CineArts in Pleasant Hill and the Contra Costa JCC — Gambert will be in her element, along with many longtime film festival habitues.
What brings them back? The same kind of communal aesthetic that has marked the Contra Costa Film Festival from the beginning.
“Our goal is to stimulate the imagination,” says Gambert, “and to bring the community closer to the Jewish people around the world. I feel rewarded when people enjoy the films and ask what’s coming next year.”
The Contra Costa Film Festival runs March 13-19. Tickets and information: www.jfed.org.
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