Music Credit: “NY” written and performed by Kosta-T from the cd Soul Sand.

(Short except from RBG)

Jo Reed: That is a clip from the documentary RBG—a film about Ruth Bader Ginsberg that had its DC premier at Washington Jewish Film Festival, and this is Art Works the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed.

The Washington Jewish Film Festival is one of the world’s largest and oldest Jewish festivals. Over the course of ten days, some 70 international films that center on Jewish life are shown in the DC and Maryland—many with talk-backs or panel discussions. Some short films are seen in a pub crawl—as bars turn themselves into theaters and the audience moves from one establishment to another to watch a film, drink some beer and discuss.

Ilya Tovbis has been directing the Washington Jewish Film Festival since 2012, and under his leadership it’s grown in scope and diversity. And the range of films is astonishing—from documentaries like RBG and Remember Baghdad, to evocative narratives like Hungary’s Budapest Noir and The Last Suit, a film from Argentina—and then there was the closing night hybrid of documentary and narrative—The Invisibles, a haunting film from Germany.

In fact it was the diversity of films that started me wondering: what makes a Jewish film a Jewish film? A question I put to Ilya Tovbis.

Ilya Tovbis: Simply it’s content. It has to have something deliberately to do with the Jewish experience, culture, history, which is a malleable concept. I think when you get into the reality of it, it can be a little bit complicated. Some films are very clear and on the nose and they’re clearly about a Jewish period in history, you have entirely Jewish characters. And others it's a little bit more of a diffuse matter of identity. And I think the festival is meant to be a broad tent encompassing all of the above. What I always say is the litmus test for us is if whatever our claim is, the Jewish element is were removed from the film it would be substantially different.

Jo Reed: Well, you kind of spoke to that now, but I'm curious what you're looking for when you look for films for the festival, and where you do the looking?

Ilya Tovbis: The where we do the looking is really as many places that exhibit film as possible. So we look at all sorts of other film festivals. We look at films as they’re in production. We’re talking to filmmakers, distributors, sales agents. And we also get a fair amount of submissions. At this point it's a pretty well-known festival. We just completed our 28th year and so a lot of people that are interested in a showcase in the nation’s capital are interested in showing at the festival, and they get in touch with us and we get several hundred submissions each year of people wanting to show in the festival. So we combined those two. We really try to see as many as we can. We consider something like 1200 submissions for what ends up being 70, 80 films in a given year.

Jo Reed: We already talked about what makes a Jewish film a Jewish film. What else are you looking for in the films that you choose for this festival?

Ilya Tovbis: In terms of, once you get past that first filter of do we consider it to be Jewish content we’re then­ ­­- first and foremost­ - looking for quality. And that's obviously incredibly subjective, maybe even more so than the Jewish element, but we want it to have high production values and originality of voice. And that originality also taps into diversity which is incredibly important for us.

What we’re looking to do is to paint with as broad a brush, to give a sense of Jewish communities throughout the world and Jewish communities from different perspectives. Whether that be younger voices, female voices, minority communities, all of whom have a lot to say about the Jewish community that's either in their backyard or all the way across the world from them. So having as representative a program of quality cinema is really our aim. We really want everything under the sun. We want everything from the first short that might be a student film, to a career filmmaker that's very well-regarded and known, on their fifth effort making a large canvas film.

Jo Reed: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to ask you, that mixture of established voices and emerging voices. You want a mixture of that as much as a mixture of narrative and documentaries and shorts.

Ilya Tovbis: Yeah, absolutely. For us, again, while we consider 1200 films for some 70 slots, if you look at a major international festival like a Sundance, a Toronto, a Berlin, of course, they dwarf those figures. So our biggest filter is the Jewish. And beyond that, I think, the most important is the quality. And so that really gets you down to you know a few hundred films, still. And at that point I think you're really molding the clay to get as diverse possible. You don't want three or four stories that are really cleanly hitting on the same topic. Or that aren't giving any sort of new perspective on that topic. And you're looking to, as you say, its narrative, its documentary, its length. It's who the teller is. It's who they’re telling to. It's from what perspective. Is it visually innovative? Is it innovative from the way it's written if it's a narrative? Or even a documentary, is it scripted in a way that’s perhaps different than its predecessors?

Jo Reed: Who is the audience for your film Festival?

Ilya Tovbis: It's a good question. So we have been around, again, for a while and so we have I think several audiences. If you separate the strands we, of course, have very large and dedicated following amongst the Jewish community. But, for me, very importantly that is not our target audience in any sort of exclusive way. What I would say is we’re a festival of the Jewish community, not for the Jewish community. It's not to say we’re not for the Jewish community, of course. But for me, I think, we consider ourselves one of the premier showcases of international cinema through a Jewish lens in the D.C. region. So we want cinephiles. We want people interested in culture. We want people interested in individual through lines or topics that are covered by a number of films in the festival. So if somebody is interested in Argentinian cinema, I hope they seek out our festival. If somebody is interested in films by female filmmakers, that's about half of what we show in any given year.

But this year we also had a theme called “Starring Wonder Women”, particularly focusing on women that have broken through the mold in whatever industry they were in. We had a couple that were in the legal field. We had artists. We had people in the military. And so I think if you're interested in any of those individual topics what my hope is that you regard our festival as a place that's done that sifting for you. And that what you going to see is high-quality. So if you're interested in high quality film that you can find that at Jewish Film Festival. If you're interested in high quality Argentinian cinema, great. If you're interested in legal heroes of our time whether they be a Supreme Court justice or a major lawyer that's defending what's come to be known as the #MeToo movement and the survivors of sexual abuse, then you come to the festival as well. And for me, I think, we draw our strength from all of those strands. And similar to how we’re looking for diversity in what we put on screen, we’re ideally looking for and quite honestly where we’re seeing the growth in our attendance has been from outside of the Jewish community, a younger demographic and people that are interested in the subjects that are on screen.

Jo Reed: Okay. Not to put you on the spot, I swear, but I’m curious about marketing because Washington is so racially diverse. And in the films, and I only saw for or five, so granted not that many, but the audience was really white. And for especially the last film where it was a packed house for “The Invisibles”, a film that was extraordinary. I mean I liked every film I saw but that film I have not stopped talking about. And it really, it hurt my heart that it was such a white audience because I felt like, oh my God everybody needs to see this film! So I'm just wondering about what you can do to reach out to the people in this very racially diverse city to see something that's part of a Jewish Film Festival.

Ilya Tovbis: Sure. I mean it's definitely a challenge. I don't think you're wrong to point it out. I do think on the bigger nights, I do think we get a slightly different demographic which we track pretty carefully on the bigger evenings. They tend to be higher priced. They’re a little bit hard to get into. And they do tend to be more sort of our core traditional audience. Our core traditional audience is whiter and older than the audience we've been developing. I don't think we’re all the way there, and I think racially it's a good point. I think is the slowest element of developing. I think we've gotten a lot more diverse in terms of economic background. We've gotten a lot more diverse in terms of age. Again, neither of those categories are we there. And we do track ethnic and racial makeup. And you're right, it’s the least diverse elements of the festival. It has, very, very slowly been developing. I think where we’re looking to and I think where we found some success is both in the programming. I think when we concentrate on putting people on screen and stories on screen that aren't necessarily white we’re hoping that we’re attracting minority communities and communities of color that might be interested in that content. And you can find that from our opening night film about an African-American man to films about…

Jo Reed: Which was Sammy Davis Jr…

Ilya Tovbis: …Sammy Davis Jr to films like Shalom Bollywood which dealt with the Indian Jewish community to films that happen in Japan with The Strangest Stranger and so on. So we’re trying to get further out. So we’re hoping that we will, with time, and I do think this is one of those slow developing. I don't think there's a magic bullet solution…

Jo Reed: No, I don't think there is either.

Ilya Tovbis: … where, you know, overnight we’re going to be able to tap into an audience. And, you're right, D.C. is a very diverse city and our festival is not as reflective of that. And I think it's something we spend a lot of time talking about. A lot of what we’re trying to do, and I think we’ve taken the first step. The first step that we took a few years back and we’ve really committed to is we want the festival like, I said, a few minutes ago to be not exclusively for the Jewish community. Even most of the ways in which we talk about the film, in which we brand film Festival, in which we do the website and we try to target it towards a broad audience, meaning a non-Jewish audience. And a lot of the outreach we do are, you know we have a series of films that are rated LGBTQ. And so we’re looking to the queer community and the queer newspapers and the queer media to cover that. Similarly, for the Latin American films I think we've made some good connections with Latino media. And I think that's really the way you have to do it, piece by piece. But I do think a lot of it goes back to programming. I think it would be easy to constantly concentrate on one story that has sort of been the dominant story of Eastern European Judaism which was one that was covered in large part in the closing night film, The Invisibles, as well. And it's not something that we’re going issue eschew or not cover. But I think we very aggressively are interested in bringing in stories and focusing on stories that are of minority communities. Even within something like Israel a lot of the folks of the festival and one of the ways in which we differentiate ourselves quite clearly from even other Jewish exhibitions and other big Jewish exhibitions is our focus on Arab citizens of Israel.

My hope is that it's sort of slowly chipping away at people's very understanding of what a Jewish festival is. I realize I’m going on a little bit with this answer but, to me, something that I find interesting when you mention you wish, and we have the same exact yearning, that you look around and it was younger, it was less white, it was more diverse. But again, that takes time.

Jo Reed: Let’s talk about the festival part of festivals. What do you think gets enhanced for the audience when they see films within a festival?

Ilya Tovbis: I think there's a lot you get out of it. The first and foremost is the same thing you get when going out to the cinema and I couldn’t put more of a plug for seen films the way they're meant to be seen which is on a big screen communally. And I certainly, on a personal level, understand the temptation of Netflix or of sitting at home with Hulu and I think they have their place.

Jo Reed: When you have the flu they’re fabulous.

Ilya Tovbis: Right, when you have the flu they’re fabulous. If you're binging a TV show I think they’re fabulous. But I think there's something genuine that you get to seeing something communally. And it's the ability to experience to experience a film with a community. To have a conversation with them afterwards, to share your opinions, to hear their gasps, to hear their laughter, depending on what’s in there. And I think that's coupled with seeing something the way it was intended by the artist. So that's first and foremost.

But that doesn't differentiate us from seeing a film in a Regal. I think the other thing that you get in a film festival is a few things. First of all, you get the curators who have put together a strand of films that you may or may not like but there is some serious thought going into how they’re coupled together. And it's what we began talking about, about what makes a film Jewish. So you’re getting that curation. Many times you're getting a conversation for you in the way of having a filmmaker, of having a Q&A, having a panel. Sometimes with us and many other festivals there are other ancillary programs. In our case it could be anything from as silly and fun as a bar crawl, where you're watching short films which I love. Or a tour of a Jewish-American Military History Museum. And so we’re sort of building these experiences for you. Providing you all of those opportunities and really elements that go beyond the screen. And that's actually what we call our programming is “beyond the screen programming” of how can you take this with you? How can you push it one step further? And if it captivates you and it engages you and animates you in some way, you know, what is your next step? And I think that's where the curatorial through line is. If you want to learn more about the Jewish community, great. I have 120 events for you. But if you want to learn more about diaspora Judaism we still have 15. If you want to learn more about Middle East Judaism minus Israel we still have five films for you. And so if you’re interested in the Jews of Baghdad and there are two films for you right there. And, again, I think that's the curatorial, that's the festival voice and that's the sort of full breadth of the Jewish experience that we’d like to bring to the fore.

Jo Reed: The amount of coordination, I mean you have the artistic hat. You have to have the organizational hat because organizing this is monumental. And you need a business hat. What juggling!

Ilya Tovbis: It's absolutely juggling. I mean it's certainly-- we have a year-round staff. We have seasonal staff. We have a council. We have many really dedicated donors, supporters, advisors. Like any event, I think, of this scale, scope, and quite honestly ambition there are a lot more people working behind the scenes then, I think, the casual viewer might realize. I think a lot of-- the question that I used to get a lot and I'm actually very happy to get less and less of as time goes on is I would run to people in theaters and say, “Oh great, what are you doing once you're done with this? What are you doing next month? Are you doing another film festival?” We do have a year-round program that we run. But we spend a good portion of the year really immediately once one festival is over, we have four year-round staff. A lot of them are dealing with all of the nuts and bolts that you mentioned. But it is really quite an intensive project. There are a lot of stakeholders. There’s a lot of communication. And there's a lot of planning that goes into everything from the slotting of the films to the technology behind the scenes to make sure everything plays. And then there's a lot of sort of non-glorious behind the scenes churning and administrative activity that we don't want the casual theater goer to be thinking about because you only are thinking about it when it's not working. You're only thinking about the mike is not working or subtitles not looking good or the sound not sounding in full surround when a mistake happens. We don't want you thinking “oh, it's so great, this has surround sound the way it's intended to.” But that all takes doing. And there are a whole host of really dedicated staff that I work with. And there's also a whole host of volunteers…

Jo Reed: I was about to say the unsung heroes of any festival.

Ilya Tovbis: …Yeah. Absolutely. I mean we have hundreds, literally, of volunteer shifts that are filled by people that are giving of their time, of their energy.

Jo Reed: I would have to imagine you've always been a film lover. Is that true?

Ilya Tovbis: That is true.

Jo Reed: Were your parents’ film buffs? Did you grow up going to the movies?

Ilya Tovbis: To a degree. I grew up in an artistic household. My dad is a photographer by trade and passion. So I was always around the arts. They would bring me to museums. My mom is now a computer scientist but had many former lives as an accomplished pianist, as an actress. They met, actually, at an art school. I grew up in the former USSR in Odessa, in what's modern-day Ukraine. They're both great fans of the arts even though my mom is no longer doing it for a career. So I think, I certainly get that from them. Film specific, I came to a little bit later. I was always a fan. I went to school for art history and thought I would work more in the visual art mode in terms of painting, sculpture, that sort of thing. And when I had a job in a museum in San Francisco, it was my first job out of college, I found the art incredible and I found the institution, nothing against that particular museum, but the institution of museums to be a little bit at odds with the way I was hoping art would be experienced. And the way a lot of people interacted with the art was very standoffish. There was this air of I think respect and there was a real distance between art that move. And art that was sort of appreciated but from far away, and without actually moving you, without actually engaging you, without making you question and without tapping into your emotions which I think is with the greatest art does and what those very artists in that museum had intended and I think did beautifully.

And at the same time, I started interning at nights with the San Francisco International Film Festival. And I think that juxtaposition has stayed with me throughout. And the juxtaposition played out, you know, you could disagree with the filmmaker. You could go out to a drink with them afterwards. You could engage with your fellow audience member and say, “You know, I didn't understand why they did this,” or “I loved when they did that.” And there was a genuine conversation and so much more accessible in part because by nature film is a very accessible medium. I actually think for the most part a great film you can appreciate at a level the same as someone that's gone through years and years of schooling. And I think there's something incredibly democratizing about that and incredibly accessible. And I think it's woven into the nature of what film is in a way that is harder to get in institutions like museums. And, again, I could be totally wrong. And I don't want to-- I go to museums and I appreciate them. But I think there's something really special to the way film interacts to the way that we experience it with everything we were talking about earlier on a large screen, letting the image wash over you, with the way that it's both narrative and abstract at the same time. I think there's a lot of beauty to the art form. But I also think there’s a lot to not having to come in with a tremendous amount of knowledge. Knowledge always helps you get a deeper context. But, I think, film is incredibly democratic in that that you can learn so much that you don't necessarily feel intimidated. If you watch a great documentary, you didn't have to know as much about the subject matter beforehand. It will explain that to you. It will contextualize it to you. And the same with a great narrative. And I think that's tougher in other art forms, personally.

Jo Reed: So you worked at night at this film festival. And were you taken with the whole festival concept right away as well?

Ilya Tovbis: Yeah, no, I absolutely loved it. I was in the marketing department doing really, the most basic, like you know using the copier a lot. It wasn't that the work I was doing was particularly engaging. But it was exactly what you mentioned. I saw what the festival was. The way it delivered art to people. The way people were able to question and engage. It just felt very alive. I sort of quickly became obsessed with it. I took my entire vacation which was very little at the time, as an entry-level job at a museum, and took it off during the time of the festival. And during the festival I would go in the offices in the morning and I would do whatever work was assigned me. I was an intern. And then every night I would watch the movies. And every night after the movie I would go out with the staff, the filmmakers, whoever I could find and talk about the movies. And I barely slept. And I would get up the next morning and for me it was this incredible euphoric state. And, you know, as a non-drug user myself I get the sense it's that sort of high that people chase; that I felt like I was chasing it afterwards at other festivals. And there was something incredible to seeing film, after film, after film and having these discussions. And perhaps also being sleep deprived. But I really felt immersed in it. And I felt immersed in conversations about what mattered in the world. And that was exciting. And it took me out of kind of everyday routine life. And I think that's one of the great things that art can do when it's working.

Jo Reed: I'm curious about audiences. You've directed film festivals, Jewish film festivals in San Francisco, New York, and now Washington D.C. Do you see differences in the audiences in the three cities?

Ilya Tovbis: I do. I want to make a small correction. I didn't direct the festivals in those other cities. But I worked for them. But yea, there are definitely differences. What I really discovered I think, is exactly unique about D.C. audiences -- first of all, D.C. has incredible cultural institutions, and the Smithsonian and people doing much more grassroots art and the history of the arts. But, additionally, I think the audiences here are incredibly insightful. And incredibly knowledgeable in a way that-- not that an occasional person in New York or San Francisco wouldn’t come up with a great question. But something that has floored me time and time again in D.C. is you can show a film about the smallest possible, most esoteric possible topic and somebody will inevitably raise their hand in the audience and say, “Oh, I've worked on the topic. Or I’ve worked on this village at NGO for 15 years. Or I wrote my thesis on it.” And here's a really well thought out question about it. And even when not, I mean, in part because of how educated the society is and part because of how diverse it is, and I think the caliber of that inquisitiveness, we really get questions about the heart of the films and the heart of the art and the heart of the matter. And to me, that's wonderful.

Jo Reed: Five years down the road where would you like to see this film festival?

Ilya Tovbis: I think, a lot of it’s what we've been talking about. Diversity is front of my mind in every sense. I'd love to see us still be, what I believe we have become which is really, at the vanguard of what original voices are out there. And so it's continuing to be a platform for up and coming filmmakers, filmmakers that are taking a chance visually, that are taking a chance with their narrative style. There are films we booked that we know are going to be challenging for audiences. And I take great pride in that. But it's tough. When you're talking about having the business hat on it's not great for business. There are films we book that are more experimental in nature. We had a film this year called “The Starry Sky” which premiered at Slamdance. There are films we book that are more experimental in nature. And then we were, I think, the second place and definitely the East Coast premier where it played. It didn't get a lot of play because it's a challenging film. And it actually asks the audience to kind of bear with the film. And, I think, for good reason. But, it’s a very different experience. These are tough films. And I think I pride myself and our festival on the ability to show this. And I would like to see us maintain that in the years to come. And I think there's a lot of innovation happening very broadly in the film industry and I'd like to see us be one of the places in D.C. that's at the forefront of providing a space for those films to be shown. In terms of our audiences, it's diversity in terms of what you're saying. I'd like us in every way, shape and form to be representative of the D.C. community and we’re definitely not there. And when I say it's that kind of lengthy process, five years is a pretty lengthy time. So I would hope that looking back in five years, we’re certainly closer to it than we are today.

Jo Reed: Ilya, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And thank you for giving the city this great film festival and keeping it going.

Ilya Tovbis: Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Jo Reed: You're welcome.

That’s Ilya Tovbis—he’s director of the Washington Jewish Film Festival. You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. You can subscribe to Art Works where ever you get your podcasts, so please do. And if you’re so inclined leave us a rating on Apple—it does helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.