Festival Data:

• Established: 1990
• Genre: General

• Competitive

Festival Website:

Festival Description:

The Washington Jewish Film Festival, presented by the Washington DCJCC's Morris Cafritz Center for the Arts, seeks to create multiple dialogues about a variety of issues intersecting the Jewish experience through filmic representations created by Jews and non-Jews with a particular emphasis on debunking stereotypes and seeking unexpected stories. This gives the WJFF’s program an international focus, moving whenever possible beyond the traditional centers of Jewish life in the United States, Israel, and Europe.

To promote the preservation of Jewish culture by providing a forum for films with Jewish themes that would not otherwise find a place in the marketplace 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. In an age of major media consolidation the WJFF remains committed to keeping the public square populated by a diversity of narratives.

To encourage innovation and vitality within Jewish culture by highlighting films that place Jewish themes in new contexts or challenge long-held assumptions: The WJFF has been 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.

To 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.

To provide a forum for filmmakers to receive feedback on uncompleted projects through our Works-in-Progress program: Since 2003 the Festival has provided new and veteran documentary filmmakers the opportunity to screen portions of their films for an audience at a critical point in their creative process.