Wanda's Picks Radio Show

Scott Rosenfelt, director, joins us to speak about his first documentary film, "Standing Silent," currently screening at the 31st Annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Aug. 8, 4:30 PM, at the Rafael Cinema. Known for his commercially successful works: "Smoke Signals," "Home Alone," "Mystic Pizza," "Teen Wolf" and "Extremities," "Gospel Hill" (producer),  says this film which looks at the incidence of child molestation in the Jewish community by rabbis and the silence that greets these accusations, "changed the way he looks at the world and the work he does."  His subject, Phil Jacobs, publishes a series of articles in The Jewish Voice, and it is these stories that are entre for the director into the story of abuse, neglect, forgiveness, and healing. Rosenfelt goes on to say of the three years spent filming with a small crew, that "Standing Silent"does the work documentaries are supposed to accomplish: "illuminate a relatively un-heard of subject, expose it and give people hope that although they will never get over what happened, they can (at least) feel a little bit less despair." The film which has many twists and turns raises the point of why famous criminals receive sympathy while their victims don't, why a lesser known person's life less valued and not worthy of safety, why closed communities can often be both a blessing and a curse. We close with Max Good, director and Nathan Wollan, producer of "Vigilante Vigilante" opening at the Roxie, August 12, in San Francisco. More recently with the advent of 9/11 and subsequent fiddling with First Amendment rights like Freedom of Speech, people have begun to look more closely at political and social ideological policing. Good & Wollen's film takes this notion to an unprecedented level in "Vigilante." Music: Malaika Sowethu Gospel Choir