Quick Take
The Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival screening of "October 8," a documentary that focuses on rising antisemitism on college campuses, drew protests at the Del Mar Theatre as demonstrators opposed its portrayal of U.S. pro-Palestine movements. Temple Beth El, the sponsor of the festival, defended the screening as “art,” while objectors criticized it as “propaganda.”
The topic of Israel, Palestine and the war in Gaza remains so fraught in Santa Cruz that a one-night showing of a documentary focused on rising antisemitism in the U.S. drew loud protests and attempts by local pro-Palestine groups to shut the film down.
Sponsored by Temple Beth El — the Aptos-based Jewish community center that has provided the loudest counter-voice to local anti-Israel protests over the past 18 months — the annual Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival showed the documentary “October 8” as scheduled at the city-owned Landmark Del Mar Theatre, though plans changed slightly.
The festival, an official special event permitted by the city, brought on private security to screen people entering the cinema. Each of the roughly 90 audience members who attended had to first read a notice alerting them that “signs, noisemakers, loudspeakers, weapons and any other items deemed hazardous by security personnel” were prohibited. They were then subject to bag searches and ID checks and, after signing in, were stamped with a star.
The documentary, originally titled “October H8TE,” tracks the rise of antisemitism, mostly in the U.S., following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people at a music festival in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza — an escalation of the decades-old tensions between Palestine and Israel — that has led to a death toll rising further into the tens of thousands.
The film has received mixed reviews, but has drawn fervent ire from student groups for its portrayal of the pro-Palestine protests on college campuses — such as those seen at UC Santa Cruz — as inherently antisemitic and potentially backed by terrorist groups linked to Iran.
Outside the Del Mar Theatre, as cloudy skies poured onto downtown Santa Cruz on Tuesday evening, Rebecca Gross, a UCSC Ph.D. candidate, was among the dozens protesting and chanting with members of Santa Cruz Jews For a Free Palestine. Holding a hand-drawn sign that read “Another Jew for Palestine,” Gross, who hadn’t seen the film, said “October 8” represents dangerous propaganda against the campus demonstrations at a time when pro-Palestine student protestors are being detained by the federal government.
However, she said the group was not there to censor the documentary but rather to emphasize an alternate view to the one shown in the film.
“What if someone knew nothing about this situation and they walk into this movie and just think this is what Jewish people believe?” Gross said. “We’re not interested in censoring anyone, we’re interested in informing people and spreading this alternate education that Judaism and Zionism are not synonymous.”
In the days leading up to the showing, the Del Mar Theatre’s contact information was posted on Instagram by groups opposing the film, and employees fielded dozens of calls and emails largely demanding the film be canceled, said Mark Mulcahy, head of marketing for Landmark Theatres. Mulcahy said particularly political films — he named 2006’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and 2016’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” as examples — can draw protests and attempts to cancel screenings.
“Our No. 1 priority is the safety of our employees and our community, and we would do anything to protect them, even canceling a showing,” Mulcahy said. Yet, in this case, he said Landmark and the Del Mar Theatre had no power to make that call. “This wasn’t our event at all. This was an obligation.”
The Santa Cruz Jewish Film Festival, which runs through May 14, is technically a special event permitted by the City of Santa Cruz. The Del Mar Theatre is a tenant in a city-owned building, and as part of the lease agreement, the city is allowed to hold a limited number of permitted events at the venue, city spokesperson Erika Smart told Lookout via email.
“The city’s primary role in events at the Del Mar is to support nonprofit and local governmental organizations that may not have access to a suitable venue for film exhibitions and similar uses,” Smart said.
Security measures and protests
David Ginsborg, executive director of Temple Beth El, defended the festival’s decision to show the film, noting that the community center also sponsored a January showing of “No Other Land,” the Oscar-winning documentary about the same conflict, told through the Palestinian perspective. He said a committee chooses the films for the festival each year, and that controversy was not a foremost concern.
“We wanted to show something that would provoke conversation, and whenever you show art, you’re going to run into controversy, it’s hard to avoid,” Ginsborg said. “This film was about antisemitism and what’s going on on college campuses — that’s very relevant to what’s going on here in Santa Cruz.”
Ginsborg called it “disappointing” that people were protesting the film without having seen it, and encouraged people to see it, even if they end up objecting to its message. “We live in a society where people can disagree,” he said.
A narrow, but effective, take
As the largely elderly audience filed into the second-floor theater Tuesday night, Jewish Film Festival director Paul Drescher thanked everyone for their “patience with our security procedures, which have been put in place to keep us all safe.” Drescher acknowledged the film’s topic “as addressing a complicated history,” but emphasized that the audience was not “going to solve a long-running conflict tonight.” He urged the audience to be respectful, and said any disruptive individuals would be asked to leave.
“A failure to cooperate with security personnel will result in intervention by the Santa Cruz police,” Drescher said. “We’re all mature adults … I hope [this film] will inspire your further research. Thank you, and enjoy and learn from the film.”
The film, directed by Wendy Sachs and executive-produced by actor Debra Messing, opens with an Israeli woman walking the camera crew through her neighborhood in the war-torn Nir Oz, a small settlement invaded by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. The woman’s story is intercut with real footage from that day’s attack. The film then focuses on the rise of pro-Palestine and anti-Israel rallies held throughout the U.S. and the world.
The scenes lean heavily on vitriolic social media posts, and an almost entirely Jewish cast of interviewees who share their perspectives on the rising antisemitism following Oct. 7, from actors Messing and Michael Rapaport, to students at UC Santa Barbara, Columbia University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Barnard College. Dan Senor, a former foreign policy advisor to Sen. Mitt Romney, former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg, columnist Bari Weiss and Israeli actor Noa Tishby each get extended screen time.
With this all-Jewish cast talking about antisemitism in the pro-Palestine movement — save for Palestinian defector Mosab Hassan Yousef and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres — the film does not pretend to take a comprehensive view of the conflict or the tensions within the U.S. In some moments, it attempts to draw a line between terrorist groups in Iran and campus protests in the U.S., and how diversity, equity and inclusion programs negatively impact Jewish people.
However, the film is effective in emphasizing the statistical rise in antisemitic incidents in the U.S., and in arguing how social media platforms, particularly the algorithms used on TikTok, have fueled anti-Zionist sentiment. It leaves open the question of just how vulnerable young people are to propaganda, and how social media has become an increasingly useful tool to sow dissent or political division.
After the credits
Two hours later, with the protesters cleared, people filtered out of the theater and took their post-film conversations onto a wet Pacific Avenue. Alice Levine said she and her husband, Rich Harroun, saw the Jewish Film Festival was the only local venue showing the documentary and that they were glad to see it, as it was “full of important information.”
“I expected the demonstrations outside so it didn’t surprise me,” Levine said.
Nearby, Harroun was teary-eyed, and called the film “powerful.” He said he felt the protesters outside the theater, and those depicted in the film, were “caught up in a fever.”
Allan Fisher, who has been involved in pro-Palestine demonstrations in Santa Cruz for years, told Lookout on Tuesday that he didn’t need to see the documentary to know its harm.
“The trailer gives it away: It’s completely focused on slandering the movement for Palestine, it slanders us,” Fisher said. “It gives not one second of attention to why people feel the need to protest. It’s as if they are saying it’s purely 100% about the hatred of Jewish people. That’s the central fallacy of that movie.”
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