Name/Title
Cypress Golden Gate - Jim Goldner - Up in SmokeDescription
Jameson Goldner (“Jim”), a native Californian from Burbank, was one of the founders of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. Hired in 1963, by 1967 he had helped develop a fledgling film program which grew into one of the top 25 film schools in the country today. Professor Goldner found his calling in teaching, bringing tremendous passion and caring to his work with students for over 50 years. Retiring in 2015, the beloved teacher had achieved a great legacy through all the students he inspired and nurtured. “Filmmaking is a calling, a way of life – something that can really benefit the world,” he once remarked.
The grandson of a rabbi, Jim spent time in the Hollywood studios as a child and knew he wanted to work in movies. He attended UCLA’s masters program in the late ‘50s, together with Francis Ford Coppola. Moving to San Francisco to work with his mentor, a university professor who was cataloging WWII Nazi propaganda films, Jim made the Bay Area his home. He and his wife Geri Rossen of Berkeley have been together for 31 years. His daughter Naomi Goldner and 3 grandchildren live nearby in San Francisco.
Jim’s favorite cartoonist was Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo, because “he was deeply political, very astute, and popular enough to survive the McCarthy era.” At SFSU he taught a class on the blacklisting of the Hollywood Ten, and one on Films of the Holocaust, among many others. His own contribution to that genre, “When I was
14: A Survivor Remembers,” is an award-winning Holocaust documentary about local activist Gloria Hollander Lyon.
“I never know what I’m going to draw. Improvisation is important,” he muses, deeply concentrating as he slowly sketches the same cartoon character, Poochie the dog, at age 81 that he created when he was 7. “This AWE art class is a major thing. I don’t think of anything else.”
