Local filmmaker documents Jerusalem gay bar

The San Francisco International Film Festival isn’t too far around the corner (April 23 through May 7) -- and here’s an early tip on a film that is expected to generate a good amount of buzz.

“City of Borders” will be making its U.S. premiere at the SFIFF after making its world debut (and playing to five sellouts) in February at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won two awards.

The feature-length documentary is made by Bay Area filmmaker Yun Jong Suh, who was born in South Korea and now lives in Berkeley.

The film offers an inside look at the only gay bar in Jerusalem, called “Sushan,” a destination for people of all kinds of sexual persuasion, regardless of their ethnic and religious background. The film follows the intersecting lives of five bar regulars (Israelis and Palestinians) as they share a common need for belonging and acceptance while also facing extraordinary risks and intolerance. Then there are the bar’s constant clashes with Jerusalem’s conservative administration, which is constantly trying to shut it down.

The Seoul-born Suh, who moved to Connecticut at age 8 and went to U.C. Berkeley, took her first-ever filmmaking class in 2001 through the Queer Women of Color Media Arts Project, a program based in San Francisco that also has its own film festival. The fifth annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival (June 12-14) will also be screening “City of Borders.”

It might also be playing in the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (July 23 to Aug. 10). No screening dates for “City of Borders” have been announced for any of these local festivals, but stay tuned.

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