Sorry we're a little late putting up SFist Mihi's last SFJFF review!

Judith Schaefer's movie, So Long Are You Young, screened at the Roda Theatre in Berkeley on Tuesday and when the lights went back up, the crowd of mostly senior citizens were on their feet wildly applauding the filmmaker. The gray-haired lady sitting in front of us was shouting, "your movie is a gift! It's a poem!"

Shaefer's documentary is itself the story of a prose poem written by a German Jew named Samuel Ullman who lived in the American South during the Civil War. This humble merchant who once fought in the Confederate army went on to become a civic leader who agitated for public education for blacks in Birmingham, Alabama. When he was 68, Ullman wrote a poem called "Youth" that traveled across time and continents to inspire notable people from Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of Korea Kim Dae-jung, Bobby Kennedy and General Douglas MacArthur, who in turn introduced the poem to the whole nation of Japan.

Apparently, "Youth" is not just a poem for the Japanese but a directive for the way one should live life. According to the movie, Japanese tourists make pilgrimages to Birmingham, Alabama to pay tribute to this poet of whom most Americans are unaware.

After the jump: the inspirations of old age and.... Gavin Newsom!

SFist Mihi, contributing,

The movie was full of stories of people like Japanese businessman Konosuke Matsushita who was said to have carried the poem around in his pocket and was inspired at age 70 to start a little company called Panasonic.

The thing we found most inspiring was that filmmaker Judith Schaefer, who had the affect of someone's lovely little granny who accidentally wandered onto the stage, had never made a film before she made "So Long You Are Young." She was a living embodiment of Ullman's poem.

The audience was adamant that this movie be distributed, shown on public television and promoted. Schaefer's response was, "I'm not very good with computers..." We don't know how she did it, but her documentary is a lovely testament to the fact that youth is only a state of mind, that even the most unlikely individuals are capable of amazing things and that sometimes a person's greatest achievements can come in the second half of life.

We noticed when the credits rolled, that Gavin Newsom was listed among the people who were interviewed but not featured in the movie. Durn!