19th Annual Washington Jewish Film Festival. December 4-14, 2008

The Washington Jewish Film Festival is presented by the Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts.  Each year, the Festival brings to the nation's capital films that represent the great diversity of the Jewish experiences.  Through these films, made by Jews and non-Jews, we bring to life issues and create dialgoues about issues the Jewish experience, with a particular emphasis on seeking unexpected stories and debunking stereotypes. 

The Washington Jewish Film Festival seeks to:

• Promote the preservation of Jewish culture and a diversity of narratives. The Festival provides a forum for films with Jewish themes that most often do not otherwise find a place for public exhibition in the Washington area.  Many of the films we screen only have a life on the Festival circuit and in specialty DVD-release. 
  
• Encourage innovation and vitality within Jewish culture.  The Festival highlights films that place Jewish themes in new contexts or challenge long-held assumptions, putting the WJFF at the forefront of presenting films that reconsider the place of women and homosexuals in the Jewish tradition; that provide a constructive critique of Jewish identity and reconsider major cultural guideposts such as Zionism, the Holocaust and assimilation. 
  
• Expose the widest possible audience to a low-cost, low-barrier entry to the Jewish culture.  Because the Jewish Diaspora has interacted with numerous host cultures over the course of its long history, films that examine some aspect of the Jewish experience are quite often a prism through which to view multiple cultures. We try to maximize the pluralistic potential of these films to attract a diverse audience.
  
• Provide a forum for filmmakers to receive feedback.   Filmmakers attending the Festival with completed films engage in open and energetic dialogues with our audiences.  Through our Works-in-Progress program for uncompleted projects, since 2003 the Festival has provided new and veteran documentary filmmakers opportunities to screen, works-in-progress portions of their films for an audience at a critical point in their creative process.
  
• Recognize those filmmakers with a body of work that exemplifies the goals and mission of the WJFF.  This year, the recipients of the inaugural WJFF Visionary Award are Charles Guggenheim (z"l) and Grace Guggenheim for their courage, creativity and insight in presenting the diversity of the Jewish experience through the moving image.  In 2006, in celebration of the 10th year of the 16th Street J's return to its current home, the WJFF presented the Decade Award to Eytan Fox for his outstanding contributions to the field of Jewish film between 1994-2006.