NEWS: SFJFF shows "Rachel"

Booing and hissing between spastic applause like children at a carnival, the Castro Theatre turned into a peanut gallery. The festival's executive director Peter Stein more than once asked the audience to listen to one another respectfully, to which the overwhelming majority of attendees hurled back a deafening bedlam of approval, drowning out the director's voice.

As Rachel's mother, Cindy Corrie, put it during the Q & A, the battle raging in the theater had less to do with herself, her daughter or the film than with pre-existing differences of opinion within the Jewish community. Forget whether the film was any good. This audience had already made up its mind some time between 1948 and when the curtains opened.