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Friday July 11, 1997

An ever-expanding film festival

The annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival is well into its teens now, and showing the confidence and vision of a young person finding his or her way in the world.

Now celebrating its 17th year, the festival has become so established that this year it will branch out to a fourth venue, the Lark Theatre in Larkspur. Last year, it expanded to Palo Alto's Spangenberg Theatre from its longtime venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. It also added an office in San Francisco and a World Wide Web site http://www.sfjff.org

With directors from Jewish film festivals around the world now attending to scout films and get ideas for their own events, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival has become an institution.

The festival's continued expansion speaks to an abiding hunger among Bay Area Jews not only for cultural expression and exploration but for coming together as a community. Each year the festival is a scene for major shmoozing and networking; movie lines and theater lobbies bustle with chatter.

But socializing is only part of the picture.

Each year thousands of Bay Area residents -- Jews and non-Jews alike -- look forward to the opportunity to consider what it means to be Jewish through the prism of international film.

When the theater lights dim this year, audiences will be able to view 38 films from 13 countries, including Norway, France and Italy. The films -- comedy, tragedy and everything in between -- will offer perspectives on spiritual paths and religious history; Jewish families around the world; and, as always, the complexities of life in Israel.

Guest filmmakers from around the world and local and national historians will be on hand to help audiences through this summer of Semitic cinema. As in years past, it is sure to be an enriching one.

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