Oral Histories and Pulp Fictions

Plays Sunday, July 19, 3:30 p.m., Castro; Sunday, July 26, 6 p.m., Park; Tuesday, July 28, 6:30 p.m., UC; Sunday, Aug. 2, 5 p.m., Lark.

Rothschild's Violin
A rich synthesis of beauty and tragedy, Edgardo Cozarinski's passionate film considers the painful adult education of Dimitri Shostakovich. The heart of the film is the story of the staging of a one-act opera based on a Chekhov story, which is composed by Benjamin Fleischmann, a Jewish student of Shostakovich's. But Fleischmann was killed during the siege of Leningrad (even as the great composer himself fled to safer turf). Inspired and shamed by Fleischmann's contributions of blood and ink, Shostakovich orchestrated Rothschild's Violin only to be rebuffed by anti-Semitic bureaucrats when he sought permission to mount it after the war. (The opera was eventually performed in 1968, but was banned the following day.) Shostakovich contended that music was the only satisfactory memorial to his slain countrymen, and Cozarinski -- by honoring Fleischmann's memory and consecrating his work -- emphatically seconds that emotion.

Plays Saturday, July 18, 7:30 p.m., Castro; Sunday, July 26, 1 p.m., Park; Wednesday, July 29, 5:30 p.m., UC; Monday, Aug. 3, 8 p.m., Lark.

Jewish Film Festical
The 18th annual San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 16 to Aug. 3 at the following venues:

The Castro, 429 Castro (at Market); the UC Theater, 2036 University (at Shattuck), Berkeley; the Park Theater, 1270 El Camino Real (at Valparaiso), Menlo Park; and the Lark Theater, 549 Magnolia (at Dougherty), Larkspur.

For ticket information, call the fest at 824-3378, or BASS at 776-1999. There's information on the Web, at www.sfjff.org.

Admission is $7.50, $6 for shows beginning before 5 p.m. Opening night is $18, closing night is $10. There's a complete fest pass available for $118.

Day-of-show tickets can be purchased at each venue's box office an hour before the first screening.