Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Israel News

Jewtoons Take San Francisco

Remember the days of cartoon movies? A time when classics like “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” ruled the big screen, and before Buzz Lightyear and his “Toy Story” pals came in and crashed the party? While CGI (computer-generated imagery) movies like “Toy Story” paved the way for a new generation of films, the 2009 San Francisco Jewish Film Festival has rediscovered the lost art of classic cartoons with Jewtoons, the festival’s first animated shorts screening.

The Demon Bridegroom: A puppet?s mystical matrimony. Image by COURTESY OF SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

Taking place August 6 and 8, Jewtoons includes 15 animated short films that explore a wide variety of topics. In the silent film “The Heart of Amos Klein,” the main character, Amos, is scheduled for a heart transplant. He pauses to reflect on memorable moments during his life, moments that happen to coincide with important events in Israel’s history.

The deeply moving “My Memories Are Entwined With You” features an Israeli girl in the throes of young love with a boy who doesn’t seem to care for her.

But perhaps the most intriguing short is Andrea Dezso’s stop-motion animated film, “The Demon Bridegroom,” based on mystical Jewish folk stories. Besides exploring elements of Jewish mysticism and humor, Dezso uses puppets as the films’ stars, which begs the question: Who needs Pixar and its fancy CGI animation anyway?

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.