SLO Jewish Film & Learning Festival March 9-12

This year the SLO Jewish Film Festival partnered this year with the SLO International Film Festival in their festival screening a selection of our films virtually.

Complimentary events start on campus with a Jewish Learning Exhibit at the Kennedy Library and conclude with film screenings at the Palm Theatre and a reception at Luna Red. Keynote speaker and guest of honor this year is Rain Pryor - yes, the Richard Pryor's daughter - who brings with her the message to embrace ourselves and varying backgrounds. She identifies as Jewish and black; as an artist she brings this alive in a one-woman show "Fried Chicken & Latkes," which is featured in her film, "That Daughter is Crazy." Preceding Rain's talk and screening, on Thursday and Friday, we will host an opening reception on campus that features our exhibit with pieces from Hebrew Union College's Heller Museum in NYC on the diversity of Jewish ritual, panels from the recent History Center of SLO County's Ldor Vdor exhibit on local Jewish history, and an installation of the diversity of local Jewish community members and students. The festival also includes a student panel on antisemitism, and a talk from an 74-yr old activist (and former actor), Phillip Goldberg, who flew to Poland to assist Ukrainian refugees at their Jewish Community Center. Finally, we have our Sunday programs with a selection of poignant short films, an in-person filmmaker interview, Bagels &. A Movie in North County, and our feature film, Jews of the Wild West, which has hit the film festival circuit by storm and we just found out will be picked up by PBS a few months after our festival. It is at the SLO Jewish Film Festival that you get the sneak-peek of films and events that you get nowhere else.