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Janis Plotkin

Janis Plotkin was part of the founding of the groundbreaking San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the first and largest film festival of its kind. After twenty-one years at the SFJFF she resigned to pursue other interests in film. For fifteen years she was Senior Film Programmer at the Mill Valley Film Festival. In 2015 Plotkin produced her first documentary: Plastic Man: The Artful Life of Jerry Ross Barrish (plasticmanbarrish.com). Currently she is Program Director at the Berkeley FILM Foundation, which provides support for filmmakers living or working in the East Shore of the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Naomi Gryn and Hugo Gryn in Karlovy Vary, 1989

Filmmakers, Independent European

The substantial success of many European Jewish women filmmakers attests to their abilities to preserve or imagine what was lost as a community. The films of those born in Central Europe are reflective of the Jewish experience of loss, outsider-ness, and memory; others explore courage and individual acts of resistance during World War II. Western European directors re-tell personal stories of friendship and betrayal in a historical context of Europe without its Jews. A strong body of work from North African-born filmmakers reflects the relationship between Arabs and Jews.

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How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Janis Plotkin." (Viewed on December 25, 2024) <https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/author/plotkin-janis>.