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The Affaire Blum
East Germany, 1948, 109 minutes, B&W (16mm)
German with English subtitles
Director: Erich Engel
This suspense story based on a 1926 murder trial with Dreyfus-like overtones
represents an early postwar East German reflection on Nazism. Dr. Blum,
a Jewish manufacturer living in Germany, is falsely accused of killing his
bookkeeper. Even when the real killer’s identity becomes evident, the state
prosecutor refuses to accept Blum’s innocence. The film explores German
reaction to the trial and investigates the relationship between the legal
system, antisemitism, and fascism, providing insight into the historical
context that allowed Nazism to flourish.
All Jews Out (Alle Juden Raus!)
Germany, 1990, 82 minutes, color/B&W (16mm/video)
German with English subtitles
Director: Emanuel Rund
This captivating film traces the story of the German-Jewish Auerbacher family
of Goppingen, Germany from 1933 through 1945. The film begins with home
movies of the family in the 1930s and follows Inge Auerbacher from her home
town to her deportation to Theresienstadt, where she suffered for 3 1/2
years and was among the 100 children who survived. The rare footage is accompanied
by on-camera interviews of Inge and her mother on a return visit to their
town, and to Theresienstadt, where an amazing amount of photographs and
documents were saved. All of the movie’s interviews, including those of
former Party members, the former commander of the Goppingen fire brigade,
and a switchboard operator from Theresienstadt are conducted by German high
school students. Like Michael Verhoeven’sThe Nasty Girl, Rund's documentary
exposes Germans who attempt to deny and conceal their involvement in the
Holocaust.
"Do not take this film to be just one more work about Nazis and
Jews. It is in a class by itself.... because of its wealth of extraordinary,
previously-unknown archival materials, its unflinching revelation of evil
and callousness, and most of all, the moral fervor of the filmmaker."
- Amos Vogel, founder, New York Film Festival
"..a compelling documentary... No frame of film is wasted; every camera
angle has been precisely planned... astounding." -Variety
Altalena
Israel, 1994, 53 minutes, color/B&W (video)
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Ilana Tsur
This documentary examines the 1948 episode of the Altalena, a ship whose
fate nearly incited a civil war in the newly-established State of Israel.
Immediately after Israel attained statehood, Prime Minister David Ben Gurion
established a national army into which several independent Jewish defense
forces were supposed to unite. However, on June 20, 1948, the Altalena arrived
in Israel carrying 930 World War II refugees and a stockpile of ammunition
amassed by the Irgun (one of the independent defense forces) in direct violation
of Ben Gurion’s new military chain-of-command. In the midst of the ship’s
landing and the cease-fire of the War of Independence, Ben Gurion gave an
order to shell the ship, forcing Jews to fire on Jews and almost sparking
a civil war. The late Yitzhak Rabin was one of the participants in this
tragic event and is interviewed here along with many other eye witnesses.
The controversy surrounding the Altalena affair continues to reverberate
in current Israeli politics.
"The riveting footage, emotion-wracked recollections by participants
on both sides, the mind-boggling fact of Jew firing on Jew and the power
play between Begin and Ben-Gurion make this extraordinary documentary
a must-see!" - Jewish Forward
"Evocative... well-researched... The viewer is haunted by the faces of
those Tsur interviewed from both sides, themselves still struggling to
find a place to store the piercing memory." - The Jewish Week
Ambulance (Ambulans)
Poland, 1962, 15 minutes, B&W (16mm/video) (study guide)
Music- no narration/dialogue.
Director: Janusz Morgenstern
In this haunting short fiction film, a group of Jewish children and their
teacher are herded into an ambulance by Nazis; the vehicle, ordinarily representing
comfort and safety, becomes the group’s death chamber. Morgenstern’s presentation
of the incident serves as a metaphor for the horror of the Holocaust, and
provides a powerful "trigger" for discussion of the disturbing issues raised
by the film. The character of the teacher may be considered an allusion
to Janusz Korcak (1879-1942), the Jewish educator who ran an orphanage in
the Warsaw ghetto and died with his young charges at Treblinka.
America Condemns Nazi Terrorism
USA, 1938, 4 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Narrator: Lowell Thomas
This Movietone newsreel from the week of November 20, 1938 is the only known
filmed American news story about Kristallnacht. The footage shows President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull at microphones
with voice-over summary statements, followed by very strong on camera statements
by former President Herbert Hoover, Al Smith, and Alf Landon. No actual
footage of the violence is shown, because the Nazi action was ordered to
be executed in secret and at night. As a document of its time, this newsreel
remains a dramatic statement, as much for the omissions as for the specific
content.
An Appeal to the Jews of the World
USSR, 1941, 6 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Russian, Yiddish and English with English subtitles
In 1941, a group of the Soviet Union’s most prominent Jewish writers and
artists appealed to Jews throughout the world, imploring them to join the
Soviet people "in the holy war against Fascism... to destroy the enemy of
humanity and of the Jewish people." The group included actor Solomon Mikhoels,
poet Peretz Markish and film director Sergei Eisenstein. This newsreel footage
captures their eloquent, impassioned appeals. Tragically, Mikhoels and Markish
later fell victim to the Stalinist purges in the 1940s and ‘50s (Eisenstein
died of natural causes in the 1940s.) This film stands as an important record
of how the Soviet government relaxed its ethnic policies in order to appeal
to anyone who could help fight fascism and the Nazis.
Anne Frank’s Diary
France/Ireland/UK/Netherlands/
Luxembourg, 1999, 35mm, 89 minutes
English
Director: Julian Y. Wolff
An animated version of Anne Frank’s famous diaries that makes her story easily accessible for a new generation without losing the power of the original text. We meet Anne on the occasion of her 13th birthday, just prior to going into hiding in the secret annex above her father’s office in Amsterdam. She is in many respects like every other teenage girl, keenly aware of the world around her at times, petulant, selfish and contrary at others.
Once in hiding, the film focuses on the story of the personalities of the eight people who shared the annex, largely as seen through Anne’s eyes. Most moving is Anne’s internal life, her reaction to their persecution and subsequent life of total isolation, silence, boredom, terror and ultimately the positive and humanitarian attitude she is able to maintain. Complemented by cutting edge animation, the film’s most significant success is its ability to use the diary entries to create an Anne Frank who is compelling and endearing without being maudlin. Beyond that, the film’s greatest virtue is that it is certain to encourage anyone who sees it to read the actual diaries of this century’s most famous and tragic memoirist.
Angst
Australia, 1993, 56 minutes, color (video)
Director: Judy Menczel
Examining the lives of three Jewish comedians (Deb Filler, Sandy Gutman,
and Moshe Waldoks) whose parents are concentration camp survivors, this
documentary video shows the effect of the Holocaust as a familial and cultural
legacy. The film includes interviews, glimpses into the subjects' personal
lives and excerpts from stage performances. These elements are interwoven
with commentaries by experts in Jewish humor, as well as psychologists who
specialize in treating the syndromes suffered by some children of survivors.
(See also: Punch Me in the Stomach, Breaking the Silence).
Annie Hall
USA, 1977, 93 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Woody Allen
Winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture
With this semi-autobiographical portrait of the amorous partnership between
Woody Allen and co-star Diane Keaton, Allen finally comes into his own as
an accomplished filmmaker. Allen’s comedic masterpiece chronicles the romantic
Manhattan adventures of successful, twice-married Jewish comedian Alvy Singer
and Midwest girl Annie Hall (Diane Keaton).
The Annotated Alice
Israel, 1998, 51 minutes, color (video)
Produced and Directed by Paula Weiman-Kelman
Made possible by a grant from the Dorot Foundation
In this intimate documentary portrait, Alice Shalvi shares her thoughts
and memories of her public and private life, from her childhood in Essen
to her present-day success as a leading Israeli scholar, feminist and peace
activist. Prof. Shalvi tells the story of her personal odyssey as a daughter,
wife, mother of six, university professor, principal of an experimental
girls' religious school and founding chairwoman of the Israel Women's Network.
The program ends as she begins her present job as Rector of the Schechter
Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. Paula Weiman-Kelman's film is
a richly textured tribute weaving together home movies, archival footage
and Alice's splendidly told tales.
"This is an important film about an important person. It is poignant,
insightful, and genuinely compelling." - Rabbi Joseph Telushkin
"Alice Shalvi's resume is impressive, but seeing and feeling her journey
on this film is overwhelming." - Dianna Friedgut
"A wise and witty portrait of a genuine heroine by a gifted new filmmaker.
Alice Shalvi's journey is an inspiration to women - and men - everywhere."
- Stuart Schoffmann, Jerusalem Report
Arbinka
Israel, 1967, B&W (video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Ephraim Kishon
Following the international success of his classic Sallah Shabbati
, Kishon once again combined his witty brand of social satire with the talents
of Chaim Topol to create a memorably comic Israeli anti-hero. As the title
character, a good-natured but incorrigible layabout, Topol becomes embroiled
in a plot to rob the Israeli lottery, all the while indulging his boundless
zeal for mischief and romance.
"... a brilliant satire of police stupidity and municipal bureaucratic
inefficency." - Amy Kronish, World Cinema: Israel
As If It Were Yesterday
Belgium, 1980, 85 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
French with English subtitles
Directors: Myriam Abramowicz and Esther Hoffenberg
Many Belgian citizens risked their lives in an effort to rescue over 4,000
Jewish children from deportation and extermination during WWII. Composed
of interviews with those who orchestrated the mass rescue and those who
owe their lives to it, this highly intimate film documents an extraordinary
endeavor by caring strangers and testifies to the courage of evcryday people.
"In the wake of films about the Holocaust, invoking ineffable sadness
in the viewer, As If It Were Yesterday is a film that shines with
hope. It is an affirmation of the human spirit in the most trying of times."
- Charles Ryweck, The Hollywood Reporter
"This film suggests the glimmer of hope to be found within horrific circumstances,
and applauds the modest heroes and heroines by whose graces the filmmakers
are alive today."- Annette Insdorf, Newsday
Auschwitz (Oswiecim)
USSR, 1945, 21 minutes, B&W (16mm, video)
English narration/ Produced at the Central Documentary Film Studio
This Soviet Army film of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp
was awarded the Red Banner in 1945. It contains dramatic footage of the
survivors and some of the atrocities perpetrated in this most notorious
of camps, including captured German film of medical experiments performed
on prisoners. Photography by cameramen of the First Ukrainian Front: N.
Bykov, K. Kutub-Zade, A. Pavlov, A. Vorontzov. See also: The Liberation
of Auschwitz 1945
Avodah
Israel, 1935, 50 minutes, B&W (35mm/video)
Director: Helmar Lerski
Preserved and restored by the British Film Institute and the Jerusalem
Cinematheque
A long-lost, landmark documentary celebrating the pioneering labors of
early Jewish settlers in Palestine. With striking visual compositions
and a remarkable soundtrack by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, the film
records the technological and agricultural accomplishments of the pioneers
and extols the idea of a socialist Jewish state. Footage includes shots
taken at the Jaffa port, in Tel Aviv, and on various kibbutzim of the
time; Strasbourg-born director Lerski’s expressive style creates an almost
mythic image of the Jew toiling and triumphing amidst the sweeping desert
landscape of the Holy Land.
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Ben Dov: Images of a Dreamer
France, 199?, 55 mins, color/B&W (16mm, video)
Hebrew & French with English subtitles
Director: Alex Szalat Yakov
Ben Dov came to Jerusalem from the Ukraine with little more than a still
camera to his name. He became one of the most accomplished filmmakers
of his time, capturing the momentous events of his country. This eloquent
portait of an early cinema pioneer mingles astounding documents of early
twentieth century Jersualem with images of contemporary Israel.
The Bene Israel: A Family Portrait
India, 1994, 33 minutes, color (video)
Marathi with English subtitles
Directors: Karen Nathanson and Jean-Francois Fernandez
Honorable Mention, Judah L. Magnes Museum Video Competition, Berkeley
CA
An intimate family portrait and a fascinating ethnographic study of the
Bene Israel, one of three groups of Jews living in India today. Filmmakers
Nathanson and Fernandez spent months living with one family in the Bene
Israel community, documenting the family’s daily lives and recording the
religious and cultural traditions of this unique branch of Judaism. Through
stories, songs, family prayer and community ritual, the film introduces
the viewer to three generations of Indian Jews.
"...an inspiring and endlessly beguiling documentary... as uplifting
as it is informative." - Ken Feil, Jewish Advocate
Benjamin and the Miracle of Chanukah
USA, 1978, 30 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Robert Mitchell
This animated film featuring the voice of Herschel Bernardi traces the story
of Chanukah through the fictional story of a young boy and his faithful
donkey. The boy volunteers for a mission to obtain oil for the rededication
of the temple. He goes off to Caesaria and overcomes one peril after another
and returns successfully to Jerusalem by following the stars. Although the
film takes considerable artistic license with its subject, it remains a
delightful way to present Chanukah and the miracle of the oil.
The Benny Zinger Show
Israel, 1993, 37 minutes, color (video)
Hebrew with English Subtitles
Director: Arnon Goldfinger
Best Short Film, Jerusalem Film Festival
Benny Zinger presents slide shows at weddings, until one day, while preparing
a show for a couple, he falls in love with the bride. Populated with wonderfully
offbeat characters and enlivened by a good-natured sense of humor, this
quirky short presents an appealing and highly entertaining slice of modern
Israeli life.
"A wonderful fantasy... Lively, funny and smart. A local cinematic miracle...
clearly a rising star in Israeli film." - Amalia Hadar, Haifa Weekly
"The Benny Zinger show is a very intelligent, humorous and emotionally
captivating film."- Judd Ne‘eman,Tel Aviv Weekly
Benya Krik
USSR, 1926, 90 minutes, B&W (35mm/video)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: V. Vilner
The seamy Jewish underworld of Odessa is the setting for Isaac Babel’s story
based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik ("Mike the Jap") Vinnitsky.
Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang. They profit from their criminal
activities until the Russian Revolution, when the local commissar assigns
them "emergency revictualing patrol," and makes them a "revolutionary" regiment
complete with tattooed red stars. This new post backfires for Benya as he
finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap.
" [Benya Krik] not only presented its swaggering hero as the victim
of the Bolshevik regime but risked accusations of anti-Semitism by Jews
as criminal profiteers... Opening in Kiev in early 1927, Benya Krik
was almost immediately banned by the Ukrainian office for political education."
- J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Beyond the Walls
Israel, 1984, 103 minutes, color (35mm)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Uri Barbash
Academy Award Nominee, Best Foreign Film; International Critics Prize, 1984
Venice Film Festival; Israeli Oscar, Best Movie of the Year 1984
Beyond the Walls tells the story of an unusual friendship between
two prisoners, a Palestinian Arab and an Israeli Jew, who manage to unite
their respective groups in a revolt against the manipulative prison authorities.
Barbash’s film works both as a brutal, compelling prison story and an
allegorical tale about the power of cooperation between Arabs and Jews.
Hailed as a powerful and controversial milestone of the Israeli cinema,
the film broke box office records in Israel and was the first feature
to be screened before the Knesset.
"Hard-hitting... a harsh, realistic portrayal of the best and worst within
Israeli society." - Amy Kronish, World Cinema: Israel
The Biggest Jewish City in the World
UK, 1976, 60 minutes, color/B&W (16mm)
Produced by Thames Television for the series "Destination: America"
This comprehensive, nostalgic exploration of the Jewish immigrant experience
in New York City includes footage and interviews spanning 1900-1976. Beginning
with footage of the Lower East Side at the turn of the century, the film
progresses from sweatshops and labor strikes, to early American-Jewish institutions
like the Daily Forward newspaper and Yeshiva University, to prosperous
descendants of Jewish immigrants living on Long Island. Featuring commentary
by Irving Howe and Sam Levenson, the hour is filled with wonderful images
and tales; a most enjoyable history lesson for all.
Biloxi Blues
USA, 1988, 106 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Mike Nichols
The further adventures of Eugene Jerome, Neil Simon’s youthful alter ego
introduced in Brighton Beach Memoirs. Here, World War II is winding
down and Eugene (Matthew Broderick) leaves Brooklyn for Biloxi, Mississippi
and ten grueling weeks of army basic training. Also stars Christopher Walken,
Matt Mulhern, and Penelope Ann Miller.
Bitter Herbs and Honey
Australia, 1996, 70 Minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Monique Schwartz
During World War II and the postwar era, thousands of impoverished Jewish
immigrants fled Europe to rebuild their lives in the Australian suburb of
Carlton. There, the refugees found themselves in bitter conflict with a
more assimilated, established Anglo-Jewish community that had lived in the
area for generations. Refusing to join the cultural melting pot, the new
arrivals chose to maintain their own language, religion, and culture, bringing
traditions reminiscent of the Polish-Jewish shtetl life to their
newly-adopted country. Former residents speak candidly about Carlton’s close
communal life, and about the division between different elements of Jewish
society.
"This is a specialized effort, but it’s one that will entrance many with
its tender dissection of traditions and lifestyles that seem to be slowly
disappearing."- David Stratton - Variety
Blaumilch Canal (The Big Dig)
Israel, 1969, 95 minutes, color (video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Ephraim Kishon
Nominee, Golden Globe Award for Outstanding Foreign Film, Hollywood
Press Association
Kishon’s most outrageous feature, a slapstick comedy lampooning bureaucracy
and the madness of everyday life in Israel, centers on an escaped lunatic
(Bomba Tzur) who digs up the streets of Jerusalem with a pneumatic drill.
The madman’s random excavations set off a chain reaction of political pandemonium,
as misguided government agencies rush to assist and claim credit for the
project.
Blind Man’s Bluff
Israel, 1993, 93 Minutes, color (35mm/video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Aner Preminger
Best Israeli Feature, Jerusalem Film Festival; Best Actress, Israeli
Film Academy
Based on a novel by Lilly Perry Amitai, this contemporary feature takes
a bittersweet look at the life of a young Israeli woman. Trying to distance
herself from her survivor parents and ex-boyfriend, pianist Micki Stav moves
out of her parents’ house in search of her own identity. She moves into
a small apartment but remains caught in a lattice of demanding relationships;
tension increases as Micki attempts to achieve success in the classical
music world. Ultimately, Micki finds the courage to confront her problems
and emerges as an independent and mature woman.
Bonjour Shalom
Canada, 1991, 53 minutes, color (16mm/video)
English and French with English subtitles
Director: Garry Beitel
Blue Ribbon, 1993 American Film and Video Festival; Silver Apple, 1993 National
Education Film and Video Festival; Best Documentary, 1993 Gemaux Film Festival
In the small Montreal municipality of Outremont, two very different communities
live side by side: Hassidic Jews and their French-Catholic neighbors.
Intent on preserving their traditional lifestyle, the Hassidim distance
themselves from outsiders. The French Catholics respond to their little-understood
neighbors with a mixture of curiosity, frustration, and mistrust. Evocative
personal interviews and scenes from daily life illustrate the complex
dynamics involved in this clash of cultures.
Born in Berlin
Israel, 1991, 85 minutes, color/B&W (16mm/video)
German, English, Swedish and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directors: Nomi Ben Natan and Leora Kamenetzy
This penetrating documentary produced for Israel Educational Television
looks at the lives of three Jewish women writers: Cordelia Edvardson,
Angelika Schrobsdorff, and Inge Deutschkron. All three grew up in pre-war
Berlin, until Nazi racial laws shattered their lives; uprooted and cut
off from family and friends, the three made their way to Israel, where
they became accomplished journalists and authors. The film, shot in Germany,
Sweden, Bulgaria, and Israel, follows the unique paths taken by each of
these women in their quest for identity and the meaning of life in the
aftermath of their dreadful wartime experiences.
"Wonderful... as soon as the film is over, one wants to meet with the
subjects in person." - Fabiana Chafetz, Ha’ir, November 8, 1991
Both Sides of the Wire
Canada, 1993, 51 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Neal Livingston
Music by Leonard Cohen
This documentary focuses on a group of German and Austrian refugees who
were deported from Britain in the summer of 1940 and sent to a Canadian
prison camp. These civilian refugees, most of them Jews, were ironically
labeled as "dangerous enemy aliens" by the Canadian government, which has
since grudgingly acknowledged that the internment was unnecessary. This
documentary (based on a book by Ted Jones) reunites the prisoners of war
fifty years after their ordeal, detailing the political circumstances which
led to their imprisonment, recalling the atmosphere of the camp, and exploring
the effect the experience had on their lives.
"Excellent." Video Rating Guide for Libraries.
"… a gentle story, full of interesting first-hand accounts of a little-known
episode…" Stephen Pedersen, The Chronicle Herald, 1993
Bound for Nowhere: The St. Louis Episode
USA, 1939, 9 minutes, B&W (16mm/video) (study guide)
Produced by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)
An authentic film document of the JDC effort to save 900 Jews (including
200 children) fleeing Nazi Germany by sailing the refugees to Cuba aboard
a vessel called the St. Louis. The film contains footage of the refugees
on the ship and records the indifference of many nations - including the
U.S.- to their plight. When Cuba refused to allow the passengers to land,
the ship sailed to the Miami area where the US government also barred
the ship's entrance. The St. Louis languished in the waters around Cuba
while the JDC searched for countries to accept the refugees. Finally,
some European countries accepted the refugees and the St. Louis returned
to Europe to, the narrator states with unintended irony, "a new and better
life." Tragically, most of these passengers ended up in countries subsequently
occupied by Germany and lost their lives in the Holocaust.
(See also:Voyage of the St. Louis . )
Braids
Israel, 1991, 90 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Yitzhak Halutzi for Israel Educational TV
Based on a true story, this docudrama tells the tale of So’ad, a fourteen-year-old
Jewish girl imprisoned by the Iraqi government in 1947 for her participation
in the Zionist movement. The film illuminates a complex and sensitive period
of Jewish life in Iraq when Jews felt their security threatened as antisemitism
surfaced with the growth of Zionism. Jailed for three years, So’ad joined
other political prisoners in a campaign of disobedience until Iraq opened
its gates in 1950 and allowed Jews to emigrate to Israel.
Breaking Home Ties
USA, 1922, 86 minutes, B&W silent (16mm/video)
Directors: Frank N. Seltzer and George K. Rowlands
During the 1920s, some American Jews responded to the rise of antisemitic
campaigns by attempting to make motion pictures presenting Judaism in a
positive light. Produced by a "syndicate" of prominent Jews in Philadelphia,
this feature was one of the first such efforts. The stated goal of the film
was to truthfully represent "the every-day life of the Jew, with emphasis
on that human and sympathetic element in his nature too often overlooked...."
The film focuses on David Bergman who, thinking he has killed a friend in
a jealous rage, flees Russia and becomes a successful lawyer in New York.
His penniless family follows him to America, but by now he has lost touch
with them. When David gets married on the premises of a home for the aged
(to which he and his bride have contributed) he is happily reunited with
his family, who also live in the home.
Breaking the Silence: The Generation After the Holocaust
USA, 1984, 58 minutes, color (video)
Director, co-producer: Edward A. Mason, M.D.
Writer, co-producer: Eva Fogelman, Ph.D.
CINE Golden Eagle Award; First Prize, Nat'l Council on Family Relations
Film Festival; Finalist, American Film Festival
This PBS documentary tells a moving story of personal growth as the children
of Holocaust survivors find the strength to confront their painful legacy
and overcome the barriers of unasked and unanswered questions that separate
them from their parents. As the young adults connect with their parents,
the second generation discovers its own voice and grapples with the question
of how to bear witness to their own children. Poignant dialogues are interwoven
with commentary by Robert Jay Lifton, Helen Epstein, and Moshe Waldoks
documenting this encounter between the two generations.
"Breaking the Silence is more than a documentary... it is a labor
of love which builds a bridge from one generation to another." - Washington
Post
"... very powerful... superior for curriculum uses in studies of family
relations, psychology and sociology. Highly recommended." - Library Journal
Brighton Beach Memoirs
USA, 1986, 110 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Gene Saks
Screen version of Neil Simon’s autobiographical play about two Jewish
families living under the same roof in 1937 Brooklyn. Starring: Jonathan
Silverman, Blythe Danner, Judith Ivey, Gene Saks.
Bye, Bye America
Germany/Poland, 1993, 35mm,
86 minutes
English, German, Yiddish and Polish with English subtitles
Director: Jan Schütte
After 30 years in Brighton Beach, big Genovefa, her tiny husband Moishe, and his best friend Isaac the plumber embark on an absurdist journey back to Poland in search of "home." Along the way, they find that in America they will always be immigrants; in Berlin they are still Jews; and in Poland they feel like Americans.
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Chariots of Fire
UK, 1981, 124 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Hugh Hudson
Winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture
An absorbing and unusual drama based on the true story of two men-devout
Scottish missionary Eric Liddell and driven Jewish university student Harold
Abrahams-who run in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Abrahams’ Judaism figures significantly
in the film, as he faces elitist anti-Semitism at Cambridge University.
Chasing Shadows
UK, 1990, 52 minutes, color/B&W (16mm/video)
Director: Naomi Gryn
Hugo Gryn was 15 years old when he left his hometown, Berehovo, never believing
he would see it again. Once part of Czechoslovakia, now near the Hungarian
border of the Ukrainian Republic, Berehovo was closed to Western visitors
until 1990, when this film was made by Gryn’s daughter Naomi. Following
Hugo’s first return to the town since 1945, the film is filled with stories
of heritage and tradition, evoking the vibrant time when half the town was
Jewish. Yet the world of Hugo’s childhood has all but vanished, leaving
only ghosts and shadows.
"... an extraordinary bridge between then and now." - The Daily Telegraph
"... a rich evocation of rural life between the wars and a quiet lament
for the later terror." - The Guardian
"... this film could have been a wholly mournful one. Instead, through
Gryn’s superb storytelling and warm and engaging personality, the viewer
comes away with a feeling of loss and hope... highly recommended." - Library
Journal
A Child of the Ghetto
USA, 1910, 15 minutes (35mm/16mm/video)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: D. W. Griffith
This short tale of Lower East Side life captures the hustle and bustle of
Rivington Street through the lens of legendary Hollywood director D.W. Griffith.
The film's melodramatic silent movie plot is distinguished by the fact that
it was one of the earliest motion pictures to treat an interfaith romance
unproblematically.
"Rivington Street was the lively one, eternally jammed with pushcart
peddlers hawking their wares. They had every imaginable commodity, from
a needle to a wedding outfit... Emotional, tempestuous, harrowing Rivington
Street was perpetually a steaming, bubbling pot of human flesh." - D.
W. Griffith
The Children of Izieu
USA, 1992, 28 minutes, color (video)
English and French with English subtitles
Director: Tom Demenkoff
Produced by Sheila Schwartz
In 1944, one month before the end of World War II, the Gestapo in Lyon,
under the command of Klaus Barbie, sent two vans to the French village of
Izieu to remove Jewish children from an orphanage called La Maison d’Izieu.
In a cold and senseless raid, forty-four children and five adult caretakers
were thrown into vans like pieces of cordwood and sent to Auschwitz, where
they were immediately gassed. An emotionally-wrenching journey through a
tragic chapter of the Holocaust.
The Chosen
USA, 1982, 108 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Jeremy Paul Kagan
Adapted from Chaim Potok’s best-selling novel, this film examines the differences
among Orthodox Jews and conflicts between fathers and sons. Set in Brooklyn
in the 1940’s, the story focuses on two sons (Robbie Benson and Barry Miller)
and two fathers (Maximilian Schell and Rod Steiger): Danny, the brilliant
scion of a Hasidic dynasty in training to succeed his formidable father
as Grand Rabbi; and Reuven, the son of a worldly progressive scholar. The
boys develop a strong friendship and find themselves influenced by the other’s
father. When the fathers enter into a bitter, passionate conflict over the
issue of Zionism, their devoted and dutiful sons must part ways-until one
makes the painful choice to oppose his father and claim his own destiny.
Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising According to Marek Edelman
Poland, 1994, 70 minutes, B&W (video)
Director: Jolanta Dylewska
In this documentary, Marek Edelman, a member of the Jewish Labor Bund and
leading participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, gives a daily account
of events from April 19 through May 10, 1942. Edelman's amazingly thorough,
vivid and distinct memories are augmented by Dylewska's mesmerizing, poetic
use of slow-motion and freeze-frame techniques applied to footage taken
by the Nazis of Jews about to be deported to Treblinka. An artful, often
understated portrait of heroism.
"Through leisurely timing and skillful use of archival material, Jolanta
Dylewska infuses the film with an almost hypnotic power, as we follow
Edelman's tale of death and survival... a testament to bravery as well
as an indictment of man's inhumanity to man." - Variety
"... a tale of Jewish resistance and heroism as stirring as it is astonishing
and revelatory... riveting." - New York Press
"A passionate, eloquent reminder that there can never be enough productions
on the Holocaust, at least when they contain as much heart, soul, and
insight as Edelman's 'Chronicle'." - New York Post
Chronicle of Love
Israel, 1998, 35mm, 90 minutes
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Tzipi Trope
Nava and Yoram are Israeli yuppies living the good life with their two kids and a new house in the suburbs. But underneath their veneer of prosperity lurks a secret that threatens to destroy them. Nava is a social worker who helps battered women, most of them poor. The horrible irony is that the affliction of abuse, so often relegated as a disease specific to the poor, also terrorizes Nava and her children. Genia, a recent immigrant, is one of her clients who is also suffering in an abusive relationship and picks up on the clues that Nava is in a similar predicament. Trapped by love, together they attempt to escape their destructive relationships.
Cohen on the Telephone
USA, 1929, 9 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Director: Robert Ross
With the advent of sound, the vaudeville-immigrant genre added comic speech
to its repertoire of physical comedy and funny situations. Here, the Jewish
immigrant is characterized not simply by how he moves and looks, but by
how he speaks. From his office, Cohen telephones his landlord to ask him
to fix a window that was blown out by a storm. Unfamiliar with the telephone
and still uncomfortable with the English language, Cohen embroils himself
in a comic monologue of misunderstanding.
Cohen Saves the Flag
USA, 1913, 10 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
Director: Mack Sennett
Mack Sennett’s Keystone Company was famous for the style of screen farce
which ushered in the work of such famous slapstick comedians as Charlie
Chaplin and Fatty Arbuckle. Ford Sterling, Keystone’s most popular comedian
before Chaplin, plays Cohen, a sergeant in the Union Army who is the bitter
rival of another officer for the attentions of Rebecca (Mable Normand).
Like most burlesque Jewish characters of this period, Sterling’s caricature
borders on antisemitism. Yet Cohen is also the hero of the film and unwittingly
turns the tide of battle. This film also boasts some of the most remarkable
battle scenes of the silent era and a fascinating, unusual portrait of a
female Jewish character.
Cohen’s Advertising Scheme
USA, 1904, 1 minute, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
Director: Edwin S. Porter
This is perhaps the earliest cinematic example of the Jewish stereotype
known as the "scheming merchant," a familiar caricature from theater and
literature. This typical one-shot gag film was produced for the Edison Company
by Edwin S. Porter, who had previously filmed the famous silent movie version
ofThe Great Train Robbery. In this film, Cohen, a grotesquely made-up
Jewish shop owner, hits upon a new advertising scheme: tricking a passerby
to buy a coat on which he hangs a large sign advertising his store on the
back.
Cohen’s Fire Sale
USA, 1907, 10 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
Director: Edwin S. Porter
By 1907, extended stories had become popular over the single gag. As in
Cohen’s Advertising Scheme, Cohen is again portrayed as the "scheming
merchant." This time a new shipment of hats is accidentally picked up by
the trash man. Cohen, made-up in grotesque vaudevillian Jewish style, pursues
the trash wagon throughout New York picking up the hats as they drop off.
When he finds the hats are not selling, Cohen reads his insurance policy,
arranges for an "accidental" fire, and afterwards holds a fire sale. At
the end of the film, Cohen sits happily holding the insurance policy as
he places a large ring on his wife’s finger.
Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood
USA, 1932, 78 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: John Dillon
In this entry in the '30s immigrant/ethnic genre, the Cohens and Kellys
take Hollywood by storm in typically robust slapstick fashion. When Kitty
Kelly becomes the darling of Continental Pictures and the world at large,
her family jumps at the chance to look down their noses at the lowly Cohens.
But fortune is capricious in these matters and the Cohens manage to rise
high on the flood of talking pictures. Before both clans are thrown back
into the gutter, they manage to turn the studios into one big circus tent!
Cohens and Kellys in Trouble
USA, 1933, 69 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: George Stevens
In this, the last in the series of Cohens-and-Kellys films (and one of the
first directorial efforts of Hollywood great Stevens), Nate Cohen joins
his bootlegger friend, Captain Pat Kelly, on his boat for a series of mishaps,
chases, and explosions.
Commissar
USSR, 1967, 111 minutes, B&W (16mm; call for 35mm and video
availability)
Director: Alexander Askoldov
"This innovative and daring work, Askoldov's only film, was completed in
1967 but, due to its anti-militaristic tone and acknowledgement of Russian
persecution of the Jews, was immediately banned. Twenty-one years later,
under glasnost, the ban was lifted and the film heralded as a 'lost' masterpiece.
Set during the 1922 Civil War between the Reds and the Whites, Commissar
is the story of a stern female Red Army officer who finds herself pregnant
and abandoned in a Ukrainian town where she is billeted with a Jewish family.
Her initiation into Jewish culture coincides with her growing humanity until
the return of the war leads her to reinvest her newfound feelings in the
Revolutionary struggle. Askoldov draws on the rich Soviet tradition of innovators
such as Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Dovzhenko and fashions a supercharged
blend of hyperfluid camera movement, startlingly direct symbolism and jarring
transitions in which leisurely glimpses of ghetto life are punctuated by
paroxysmic outbursts of violence and lyrical energy." - New Yorker Films,
1993
Comrade Abram
USSR, 1919, 15 minutes, B&W (35mm/16mm)
Director: Alexander Razumni
This short propaganda film (or agitka) tells the tale of a Jew who
survives a pogrom and becomes a leader in the Red Army. Intended to indoctrinate
Soviet citizens by showing heroic examples of conversion to the Revolutionary
cause, the agitka ('agitation pieces') were originally screened on
Russian 'film trains.' A rare portrait of a Jewish character in early Rusasian
cinema.
Crossing Delancey
USA, 1988, 97 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Joan Micklin Silver
Set in modern-day New York, this romantic comedy highlights the contrasting
values between first and third generation American Jews by focusing on a
33-year-old single Jewish woman (Amy Irving), who works, lives, and loves
in the modern gentile world and repeatedly rejects her grandmother’s efforts
to find her a traditional Jewish suitor. When she meets "the Pickle Man"
(Peter Riegert) she begins reexamining her values as a modern, assimilated
Jew and her prejudices against the "traditional" Jewish world.
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Daniel
USA, 1983, 130 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Sidney Lumet
In this screen adaptation of E. L. Doctorow’s celebrated novel "The Book
of Daniel," the children of a couple patterned after Julius and Ethel Rosenberg
must confront their painful heritage in order to deal with their own lives
in the protest-filled 1960s. Stars Timothy Hutton, Mandy Patinkin, Edward
Asner, Ellen Barkin, and Amanda Plummer. (See also UNKNOWN SECRETS: Art
and the Rosenberg Era )
Danzig 1939
USA, 1980, 30 minutes, color/B&W (video)
Director: Sidney Reichman for the Jewish Museum of New York
This documentary details the struggles of Jews in the German city of Danzig
to survive the brutal assault of the Nazis. All but approximately one hundred
Danzig Jews escaped the Nazi terror because local synagogue leaders made
the unprecedented move of selling their religious artifacts; the money gained
from this sale was used to finance the immigration of the entire community.
The film documents an exhibit exhibit of Danzig’s religious treasures, reclaimed
and stored at the Jewish Museum in New York City. Interviews with the survivors,
along with film footage from 1939 and photographs of the lost community,
paint an unforgettable portrait of a courageous people who managed to save
their lives and part of their history from the murderous Nazi regime.
Davidoff Newsreel
Palestine, 1934, 10 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Hebrew (an English translation sheet accompanies film)
Produced by Davidoff Newsreel Company
This newsreel segment depicts the first voyage of a Polish ocean liner to
Palestine in 1934. The film contains crudely edited footage of the festive
departure from the Black Sea port of Constanta, the passengers enjoying
the pleasures of the open sea, the recitation of Yom Kippur prayers on deck,
and an extended cantorial performance. Other images include passengers dancing
the hora, singing Zionist songs, and the impressive urban vistas of Haifa
and Tel-Aviv which greeted the visitors upon their arrival.
The Day Grandpa Died
USA, 1970, 11 minutes, color (16mm)
A young Jewish boy is plunged into shock and disbelief at the death of
his beloved grandfather. Parental kindness, frankness and family solidarity
at the funeral help him to accept and understand what has happened. The
film depicts Jewish mourning practices and attitudes toward death, and
can serve as a starting point for a discussion of these traditions with
young people.
Dealers Among Dealers
USA, 1997, 67 minutes, color (video)
Director: Gaylen Ross
Gold Hugo Award, Chicago Film Festival; Best of Fest Award, Edinburgh Film
Festival; CINE Golden Eagle
Welcome to the heady world of New York diamond dealers... an amazing
insiders’ look into the heart of America’s jewelry business - New York’s
47th Street. Here you can still buy million dollar gems on
a handshake and a promise, Mazel and Brocha - all on trust - dealers among
dealers. Yarmulke clad gem cutters sing Hebrew songs as they work, and
dealers buy, sell, schmooze and proffer occasional baubles of wisdom in
the diamond in the making, and follow them in pursuit of flawless perfection
and a great deal from New York to the world-famous auction houses of Sotheby’s
and Christie’s in Switzerland. This fascinating film is dripping with
fabulous jewels but the real gems are the dealers themselves, great characters
who still deal in the old fashioned way.
"Sholem Aleichem meets Walt Disney." - The New York Times
"Deft, entertaining... even sparkling..." - J. Hoberman, Village Voice
Death Mills (aka Mills of Death, Die Todesmuhlen)
USA, 1945, 22 minutes, B&W (16mm)
English narration: Rita Karin
Produced by the U.S. Department of War Information
Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany
and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies
found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the
conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts
of the economic aspects of the camps’ operation, the interrogation of captured
camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring
towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity
in the Nazi crimes - one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war
records. Nonetheless, in compliance with U.S. policy, the word 'Jew' is
never used.
The Diary of Anne Frank
USA, 1959, 156 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: George Stevens
This is the true story of teenager Anne Frank, a young Dutch Jew who, along
with her family, were forced to hide in Amsterdam during World War II. She
kept a diary of what happened to her and her family during this time. Discovered
after years of hiding, Anne Frank perished at Auschwitz. Shelley Winters
won an Oscar for her role as Mrs. Van Daan in this meticulously produced
film based on the classic book and Broadway drama of the same name. Starring:
Millie Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Richard Beymer, Lou
Jacobi, Ed Wynn.
Dirty Dancing
USA, 1987, 97 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Emile Ardolino
Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze star in this nostalgic, romantic Hollywood
hit about a Jewish teenage girl who falls for her dance instructor during
a family vacation at a Catskills resort hotel during the 1960s.
Disraeli
USA, 1929, 89 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: Alfred E. Green
George Arliss won an Oscar for his portrayal of the British Prime Minister
as a great (and cunning) statesman and a devoted husband. Also stars Joan
Bennett and Anthony Bushell.
The Distance
Israel, 1994, 85 minutes, color (35mm/video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Dan Wolman
The Distance is a moving contemporary drama about a young architect
torn between his Israeli roots and his new life in America. Reunited with
his aging parents while interviewing for a job in Jerusalem, Oded (Chaim
Hadaya) must weigh his expatriate lifestyle against his emotional ties to
his family and homeland. Award-winning director Wolman (Hide and Seek) sensitively
portrays the complexities of a social dilemma faced by many Israelis while
focusing on poignant emotions which transcend the "distance" created by
cultural differences.
"Haunting... "The Distance" will hold onto filmgoers with its disturbing
implications." - Jewish Advocate
"Sensitively scripted and beautifully shot, "The Distance" is a perceptive
and moving little gem... the best locally-made feature in years." - Calev
Ben-David, The Jerusalem Report
Divorce (Get)
Israel, 1992, 34 minutes, color (video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Ayellet Menachemi
Originally presented as part of the acclaimed anthology film Tel Aviv
Stories, this short satire addresses one of the most difficult and serious
issues facing Israeli women today. When a policewoman (Anat Waxman) suddenly
recognizes her husband who has been AWOL for years, she takes an odd assortment
of local onlookers hostage, threatening to kill them if she is not issued
a divorce immediately. An unusual look at the conflict between religious
law and modern Jewish life.
Dream of My People
USA, 1934, 66 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
English and Yiddish language versions available
Director: A.J. Bloome for Palestine-American Film Co.
An early travelogue on Palestine featuring the last appearance of Cantor
Joseph (Yosselle) Rosenblatt. Locations featured here include Jerusalem
sites (the market, Hebrew University, the King David Hotel, the Jewish Agency);
the Judean Hills, Mikve Israel Agricultural School, pioneers working in
fields; Rishon le Zion, Rehovot, Nes Ziona, citrus picking and packing;
Jezreel valley and settlements; Tiberias and Lak Kinneret; Bedouin dwellings;
Tel Aviv and Jaffa beach and street scenes and the Maccabiah Stadium.
Dreamers and Builders
Israel, 1996, 50 minutes, B&W (video)
Director: Yaakov Gross
This historic document of Palestine during the tumultuous 1920s includes
footage from three rare films by Ya’akov Ben Dov, the father of Hebrew cinema.
Preserved in a joint project by the National Center for Jewish Film and
the Israel Film Archive, these works include Return to Zion (1920-21),The
Rebirth of a Nation (1923), and Romance of Palestine (1926).
Considered lost for more than 70 years, the films depict the early builders
of the Zionist vision who pioneered the Third Aliyah and the Fourth Aliyah
and contain images of settlements and activities in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv,
Rishon le Zion and Old Jaffa. From this rare archival footage, director
and scholar Ya’akov Gross has created a vital and accessible look at a formative
period in Israeli history whose legacy continues to influence Israeli politics
today.
"... A triumph of photographic composition and content." - Amy Kronish,
World Cinema: Israel
Driving Miss Daisy
USA, 1989, 99 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Bruce Beresford
Winner of four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actress
Adapted from Alfred Uhry’s stage play about a simple black man (Morgan Freeman)
hired as chauffeur for a cantankerous old woman (Jessica Tandy), the dowager
of an old Southern Jewish family.
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The Eighty-First Blow
Israel, 1975, 91 minutes (originally 115 minutes), B&W (16mm)
Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: David Bergman
This is the first documentary of a trilogy (see also Flames in the Ashes
and The Last Sea ) produced under the auspices of the Israeli
‘Ghetto Fighters’ House’ (Beit Lohamei Haghetaot), a kibbutz-based organization
of Holocaust survivors dedicated to preserving the history of Jewish resistance
and the memory of those who fell victim to the Nazis. Written by Israeli
soldier, poet and journalist Haim Gouri, the trilogy constitutes one of
the most ambitious attempts at a comprehensive film history of the Holocaust.
This Academy Award-nominated film is drawn mainly from Nazi film footage
and Jewish eyewitness testimony (much of the latter given at the Eichmann
Trial.) The film opens with a montage of scenes of workaday Jewish life
in pre-Hitler Eastern Europe, then describes the rise of Nazism in Germany,
the German occupation of Poland, the various stages of the "Final Solution,"
and instances of Jewish resistance.
"... a rare event... powerful and moving, using art to advance the causes
of humanity and justice... to raise the level of moral judgment among
its viewers." -Wall Street Journal, May 7, 1975
"... a mosaic that cuts deep into the living flesh. This is an authentic
testimony of the Holocaust, of barbarism and the degradation of humanity,
a shattering document that cannot be expressed in words, a metaphysical
experience, an apocalyptic nightmare that leaves the spectator numb and
speechless..." - Ma’ariv, September 10, 1974
Embroidered Canticles
France, 1991, 26 minutes, color (16mm/video)
French, Arabic and Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Izza Genini
The matrux is a unique form of Moroccan-Jewish music which fuses Hebrew
and Arabic texts. The music and the texts are derived from Andalusian traditions
of music and poetry, reflecting the centuries-old link between Jewish and
Muslim societies. While the singer might address secular topics in Arabic,
Hebrew is reserved for sacred matters. This unique film features a live
performance with Rabbi Haim Louk and Abdelsadek Chekara and interviews with
performers and scholars.
Emporte-Moi
Canada/Switzerland/France, 1999, 35mm, 94 minutes
French with English subtitles
Director: Léa Pool
A tender coming-of-age story that features 13-year-old Hannah, a charming, if confused and affection-starved young girl living in the rundown Mile End section of Montreal.
The daughter of a ne’er-do-well Jewish poet (Miki Manojiovic, Black Cat, White Cat) and a Catholic Québécois mother, Hannah is trapped by their destructive marriage and is an outsider at the Catholic school she attends. But in 1963 she finds the role model she is looking for when she sees Anna Karina in the role of Nana in Jean-Luc Godard’s film Vivre se vie. Entranced by the film and relieved by its ability to transport her away from her life, Hannah becomes obsessed with the femme-fatale character of Nana.
During one of her many visits to the theater, she befriends Laura, an adventurous girl from the better side of town. Their friendship, tinged with experimentation, adventure and sensuality is precious to Hannah but it also accelerates her mounting emotional confusion. This semi-autobiographical film from writer/director Léa Pool shows us a young girl awkwardly stumbling towards womanhood with a stellar performance from Karine Vanasse as the endearing Hannah. Through the eyes of a young filmmaker-to-be, we see her negotiate her emotional and physical world with a sense of heightened reality that often extends into the world of dreams.
Enemies: A Love Story
USA, 1989, 119 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Paul Mazursky
Based on the brilliant, enigmatic novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer, this is
a quietly haunting film about an aloof Jewish intellectual (Ron Silver)
who managed to hide from the Nazis during WWII and now, in 1949, leads a
double life in Coney Island, NY. He’s married to his wartime (non-Jewish)
protector (Margaret Sophie Stein) and fooling around with a sexy married
Jewish woman (Lena Olin). Things get even more complicated when his first
wife (Angelica Houston), thought dead in the Holocaust, returns.
Escape to the Rising Sun
Belgium, 1990, 95 minutes, color (16mm/video - 60 minute video version
also available)
English narration and subtitles
Director: Diane Perelsztejn
Prix de la Ville de Strasbourg, 19th Strasbourg Film Festival
1991
In 1939, Jews lucky enough to escape the Nazis’ reach in Europe had only
one place in the world to go that didn’t require an exit visa: Shanghai.
Escape to the Rising Sun tells the little-known and ironic story
of nearly 5,000 Jews who reached Shanghai through the USSR with the help
of the Japanese Consul in Lithuania and the Kobe (Japan) Jewish Committee.
In the slums of Hongkew, they lived in extreme poverty, battling disease
and malnutrition; still, they worked to reconstruct elements of their culture,
organizing literary, artistic, and educational programs. After the Japanese
occupation of Shanghai, conditions worsened until German pressure forced
the issue of a proclamation ordering all refugees into a ghetto covering
an area less than one square mile, where they remained until Shanghai was
liberated by the Americans at the end of the war. This documentary features
rare footage of the former ghetto of Hongkew, archival material, as well
as first-hand accounts from eyewitnesses. Nearly seventy survivors of this
amazing escape were interviewed, and fifteen of them were chosen to reveal
their story.
"... One of cinema’s finer achievements - a rare glimpse of compassion,
courage and survival." - P.G., Sunday Herald Sun, 1991
"In Escape to the Rising Sun , Belgian filmmaker Diane Perelsztejn
has added an authoritative visual essay to the small body of work on the
mid-century Shanghai Jews..." - Peter Kohn, Australian Jewish News, Oct.
4, 1991
Everlasting Joy, or the Life And Adventures of B. Spinoza As Reported
By His Vigilant Neighbors
Israel, 1996, 90 minutes, color (35mm)
Hebrew with English Subtitles
Director: Igal Bursztyn
Best Script, Jerusalem Film Festival; Israeli Academy Award
What would happen if philosopher Baruch Spinoza were to live in an apartment
house in Hulon? Confronting the great rationalist philosopher and excommunicated
Jew with the vicissitudes of modern Jewish life in Israel, Bursztyn’s film
is an inventive, darkly comic and distinctly Israeli exercise in post-modern
cinema.
"Provocative comedy…There is much of the title joy in Bursztyn’s comedy."
- Jules Becker, The Jewish Advocate
Everything’s For You
USA, 1989, 58 minutes, color/B&W (16mm/video)
Yiddish and English
Director: Abraham Ravett
Filmmaker Abraham Ravett attempts to reconcile issues in his life as the
child of a Holocaust survivor in this experimental non-narrative film. Ravett
reflects upon his relationships with his family, from his now-deceased father
(who survived both the Lodz Ghetto and Auschwitz) to his own young children.
He utilizes family photographs and footage, archival footage from the Ghetto
Fighters’ House in Israel, cel animation by Emily Hubley, and computer graphics,
to create a film about memory, death, and what critic Bruce Jenkins calls
"the power of the photographic image and sound to resurrect the past."
Exodus
USA, 1960, 212 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Otto Preminger
Academy Award Winner, Best Original Score
Few motion pictures can approach the grandeur of this classic Hollywood
epic adapted from Leon Uris’ best-selling novel about the rebirth of a people
and a nation. The story takes place during the turbulent year of 1947, when
the British government blocked the way of desperate emigres who sought to
reach the Promised Land, and the Israeli underground battled British and
Arabs alike in their struggle to create the state of Israel. Preminger’s
film, starring Paul Newman, Eva-Marie Saint and Sal Mineo, was shot on location
in Galilee, Haifa, Jerusalem, and other parts of Israel.
Exodus 1947
USA, 1996, 60 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Directors: Elizabeth Rodgers and Robby Henson
Narrator: Morley Safer
CINE Golden Eagle Award; Silver Apple Award, NEMN 1997; Gabriel Award; David
Wolper Award, Best Documentary, Wine Country Film Festival
This documentary examines the history and impact of the Exodus 1947,
the most infamous of the Aliyah Bet ships that tried to run the British
blockade of Palestine. In the summer of 1947, the aging Baltimore steamer,
crewed by former Jewish-American GIs, took on a cargo of Holocaust survivors
in France and headed for Palestine. After a bloody battle on the high
seas with the British, the "illegal" immigrants were sent back to displaced
persons camps in the British Zone of Germany. The newsreel and print media
seized upon the Exodus 1947 as a symbol of the Jewish struggle for statehood.
This aborted voyage galvanized international support for the creation
of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Interviews with scholars and eye-witness
testimonies are incorporated with newsreel footage, photographs and information
from formerly classified documents to examine the tactical evolution of
Ben-Gurion’s Haganah and the clandestine American role in supplying dollars
and manpower for Aliyah Bet ("illegal" immigration to Palestine), although
such involvement was contrary to U.S. Government policy.
"’Exodus 1947’ is the very model of a meticulous yet exciting step-by-step
account of a major historical event.... This splendid, carefully researched
and assembled documentary is chock-full of fascinating details as it recalls
a courageous, complex and dangerous mission with immense consequences."-
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, 11/96
Expulsion and Memory
Canada, 1996, color, 60 minutes (video)
Directors: Simcha Jacobovici and Roger Pyke
Shot on location in Spain, Portugal, Israel, Canada and the United States,
this documentary traces the descendants of Spanish Jews who were forced
to either flee or convert to Catholicism after Queen Isabella's edict of
1492. Many of these Jews had to practice their religion in secret, passing
their furtively-recalled customs down through the generations. Exploring
the history and culture of these 'conversos', the film celebrates an eduring
spiritual legacy which has survived centuries of persecution. Through extensive
interviews with the children of secret believers, the film captures the
modern resurrection of something ethereal: the ghost of a people. Beautifully
photographed and edited, the films features a lyrical Spanish/Sephardic
soundtrack by some of the world's leading artists including Placido Domingo.
"A beautiful-looking film... an original and informative look at a remarkably
rich and universal human story." - John Haslett Cuff, The Globe and Mail
"A vibrant and up-to-date examination of the timeless search cfor religious
identity." - Henry Mietkiewicz, The Toronto Star
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Farewell
Russia, 1992, 27 minutes, B&W (35mm; call for video availability)
Director: Arkadiy Yakhnis
Russian with English subtitles
Jurors’ Choice Award, 1998 Jewish video Competition, Judah L. Magnes Museum
This short documentary chronicles a 90 year old man’s emigration to Israel
from his native shtetl in Bessabaria. Yakhnis’ beautifully photographed
film poetically captures the end of a rich Jewish heritage in Russia.
"... each exquisitely-composed shot creates a world of haunting loss,
unsurpassed faith and human dignity." - San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Fiddler on the Roof
USA, 1971, 181 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Norman Jewison
Winner of two Academy Awards
This classic Hollywood musical is a rousing, colorful adaptation of Joseph
Stein’s hit play based on Sholem Aleichem’s novel, "Tevye the Dairyman."
Topol plays Tevye, ever struggling to preserve Jewish heritage for his five
daughters against growing odds. Starring Chaim Topol, Norma Crane, Molly
Picon, Paul Michael Glaser, Leonard Frey, and Michele Marsh. (See also Tevye,
1939 Yiddish version, in Yiddish section)
The Fifth Horseman is Fear
Czechoslovakia, 1964, 100 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Czech with English subtitles
Director: Zbynek Brynych
In Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia a Jewish doctor, forbidden to practice,
has to remove a bullet from a wounded Resistance fighter. He roams Prague
streets in a desperate search for morphine while hiding his patient from
the Nazis.
Flames in the Ashes
Israel, 1985, 90 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Yiddish and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directors: Haim Gouri and Jacquot Erlich
"Who is more heroic, one who goes in the woods to fight with a gun or one
who decides to go that last road and die with his family?" This film, the
third in a trilogy (The Eighty-First Blow ,The Last Sea )
examines Jewish resistance during World War II. Against a background of
archival film footage and still photographs, the voices of 120 survivors
tell their stories, which include first-hand accounts of Sobibor and the
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
"The film is especially successful in bringing home the human cost of
this unimaginable horror… turning the faceless, numberless victims into
neighbors, relatives and friends." Janet Maslin, New York Times,
September 2, 1987
"The film has a quiet and profound strength, an extraordinary voice that
rises above what we see and hear. It resonates with power and the spirit
of redemption… an enduring legacy of Jewish resistance that will touch
every viewer." F.E. Siegel, New York City Tribune, September 2,
1987
Force of Evil
USA, 1989, 60 minutes, color (video)
Producer: Steven Schlow
Winner, Northeast Regional Emmy Award for Writing
This television documentary traces the rise of Nazism with emphasis on the
career of Adolf Eichmann . The program examines the small incremental
steps the Nazis took to introduce their ideology of antisemitism in Germany
and Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. As his early years are chronicled
and examined, Eichmann becomes the personification of hate and prejudice.
By skillfully interweaving the reminiscences of eyewitnesses (both Jews
and non-Jews) with archival footage, Force of Evil questions how
a nation can slaughter millions of innocent people while the world watches
in silence and indifference.
Forever Activists!: Stories from the Veterans of Abraham Lincoln Brigade
USA, 1991, 60 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Judith Montell
Academy Award Nomination for Best Documentary Feature; Special Jury Award,
San Francisco International Film Festival
The Spanish Civil War and the October 1986 reunion of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade serve as the backdrop to Judith Montell’s documentary on these
heroic veterans and their fifty years of activism. The members, many of
whom are Jewish and now in their seventies and eighties, were filmed and
interviewed as they retraced their steps on the old battlefields of Spain.
The group’s journey through Spain becomes a metaphor for their lives of
ongoing commitment to social justice.
"... a visually powerful film that helps us understand the meaning of
citizenship in 20th century America. Through the prism of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade, by following the lives of these remarkable individuals
through 50 years of struggle, we gain a deep insight into American history,
society and politics." - Robert N. Bellah, Professor of Sociology, University
of California/Berkeley
Freud Leaving Home
Sweden, 1991, 35mm, 100 minutes
Swedish with English subtitles
Director: Susanne Bier
"Freud" is the nickname of Rosha and Ruben Cohen’s youngest daughter, a 25 year-old who still lives with them in Stockholm. Freud is contrary, intellectually precocious and despite feeling smothered by living at home, unable to leave her Holocaust survivor mother. In the summer of 1990 Freud is joined at home by her gay brother from Miami and her Orthodox sister from Israel to celebrate their mother’s 60th birthday. But when Freud falls in love and Rosha falls ill, the family finds itself coping with a crisis everyone is ill-equipped to handle. A bittersweet romantic comedy.
Free Voice of Labor - The Jewish Anarchists
USA, 1980, 60 minutes, color/B&W (16mm)
Directors: Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher
This film dramatically portrays immigrant life in the United States as seen
through the eyes of the sweatshop workers who made up the Jewish anarchist
movement. This movement was dedicated to freedom-freedom for the individual,
freedom from the Church, the State, and economic exploitation-and it reached
its greatest influence between 1880 and World War I. Through interviews
with actual participants in the Jewish anarchist movement, the film documents
their contributions to the fledging US labor movement and developing Yiddish
culture. Also featured are stills, newsreel footage, selections from old
motion pictures, and Yiddish songs of work and struggle.
"Free Voice of Labor - The Jewish Anarchists... is a wonderful
evocation of the radical political past and what has become of its activists
in their old age.... They have aged gracefully, with their sentiments
unchanged, but with their world different in ways they would never have
dreamed of years ago...." - Richard F. Shepard, The New York Times
The Front
USA, 1976, 94 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Woody Allen
A classic Woody Allen comedy with a serious theme. Allen is a nebbishy
guy enlisted by blacklisted writers to put his name on their scripts
during the 1950s McCarthy era, leading to various hilarious complications.
The movie’s original screenplay was written by blacklisted writer Walter
Bernstein and many of the stars (Martin Ritt, Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi,
Joshua Shelley, and Lloyd Gough) were also blacklisted in real life.
The Führer Gives a City to the Jews
Germany, 1944, 23 minutes -incomplete, B&W (16mm/video) (study
guide)
German with English subtitles
Produced by the Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich
This is the only film known to be made by the Nazis inside an operating
concentration camp. This insidious propaganda film was produced in 1944
in Theresienstadt, the "model" ghetto established by the Nazis in 1941 in
Terezin, a town in the former Czechoslovakia. Goebbels intended to use the
film to prove to the International Red Cross and the world that Jews were
being well-treated in the camps. The film is an elaborately staged hoax
presenting a completely false picture of camp life. Upon completion, the
director and most of the cast of prisoners were shipped to Auschwitz. Only
a few survived to attest to the falsity of the film.
Funny Girl
USA, 1968, 155 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: William Wyler
Academy Award for Best Actress
Barbra Streisand made her Oscar-winning film debut in this classic musical
based on the life of Jewish singer-comedienne Fanny Brice, who rose to fame
with New York’s Ziegfeld Follies despite an unhappy private life. Featuring
a fine Bob Merrill-Jule Styne score, including the memorable finale "Don’t
Rain on My Parade," the film co-stars Omar Sharif, Kay Medford, Anne Francis,
and Walter Pidgeon.
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Genocide
England, 1975, 52 minutes, color/B&W (16mm/video)
Produced by Thames Television as part of the "World at War" series
Narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier, this documentary is one of the best comprehensive
overviews of the Holocaust and is an excellent tool for teacher training.
Organized chronologically from the exposition of the "master race" theory
in the early 1930s, through the persecution, ghettoization, deportation
and mass murder of European Jewry, this film is so painfully brutal and
explicit that it is recommended for mature audiences only.
Gentleman’s Agreement
USA, 1947, 118 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: Elia Kazan
Winner of three Academy Awards including Best Director
This classic film adapts Laura Z. Hobson’s novel about a writer (Gregory
Peck) who is assigned to write an article on antisemitism in America and
decides to pretend he is a Jew. He discovers, to his surprise and confusion,
that antisemitism is rampant in postwar America. Stars Gregory Peck, Dorothy
McGuire, Celeste Holm, John Garfield, Jane Wyatt, and Dean Stockwell.
Germany Awake
Germany, 1968, 90 minutes, B&W (16mm)
German with English narration and subtitles
Director: Erwin Leiser
This compilation film examines the use of feature films as a political weapon
in the Third Reich. Among the numerous works excerpted are: Bismark,
Venus on Trial, Victory in the West, Jud Suss, I Accuse!, The Rothchilds,
and The Great King.
Girona: The Mother of Israel, The Jews of Catalonia
USA, 1989, 30 minutes, color (video)
Director: Patricia Giniger Snyder
This video documents Jewish daily life in Girona, a city in the northeastern
Spanish region of Catalonia, from its "Golden Age" in the middle ages through
the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492 and up to the present day. Recognized
as the "Mother of Israel," a name given to just a few sites in the world
considered Jewish spiritual resting places, Girona was once home to an important
school of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) and has a significant place in Jewish
history. In addition to interviews with historians, highlights of the program
include Catalan-Ladino folk music and footage of Girona’s Jewish quarter
as it appears today.
"Captivating... tells a story that needs to be told." - Gabe Levinson,
The Jewish Week
"A moving and insightful program for Sephardim and Ashkenazim everywhere."
- Suri Kaserir, Executive Director, The American Sephardi Foundation
The Giraffe
Germany, 1998, 35mm, 107 minutes
German and English with English subtitles
Director: Dani Levy
From Germany’s X-Filme Creative Pool (Run Lola Run) comes a thriller that brings the ghosts of the past into a mystery of the present. In Germany, an anti-Semitic attack against a Jewish-owned factory makes headlines around the world, as speculation grows about the power of resurgent Nazi nationalism. In New York, David Fish’s mother sees the owner of the factory on television and believes he is her long-lost father whom she was separated from when she was smuggled out of Germany before the war. David hires Charles Kaminski (David Straithairn) to investigate the claim. When a horrible crime brings David and Lena Katz (the daughter of the factory owner) together, the stage is set for even more disturbing revelations which embroil a new generation of Germans and Jews in the traumas of the past. Maria Schrader, one of Germany’s most popular actresses, co-stars with director Dani Levy (Without Me, WJFF ‘94) in a script they co-wrote.
The Giving Tree
USA, 1971, 10 minutes, color (16mm)
From the story by Shel Silverstein
This animated short tells the story of the relationship between a little
boy and the tree which lovingly and unstintingly provides for his needs
at each stage of his life, asking nothing in return. Simple and low-key,
this film raises profound questions about parental and filial love, and
about the need to give and the need to repay.
Golda Meir
UK, 1971, 52 minutes, color/B&W (16mm)
A film report by Alan Hart for the BBC
A close-up portrait of one of the century’s outstanding women and an illustrated
account of the dramatic events in which she has been a leading protagonist.
Narrated mostly by Golda herself, the film utilizes early stills and film
footage of the Yishuv and the State of Israel and conveys Meir’s own special
strength of character and style-that curious combination of grandmotherly
humanity and hard-nosed realism that has made her a legend in her own time.
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Half Sister
USA, 1985, 22 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Abraham Ravett
At 26, Abraham Ravett learned that his mother had previously been married
and lost her family at Auschwitz, including his half-sister, Toncia, who
was killed when she was 6 years old. At 36, Ravett saw a photograph of his
half-sister for the first time. Half Sister is a cinematic amalgam
of memory and imagination, inspired by Ravett’s conception of a life that
would have been.
The Hangman
USA, 1964, 12 minutes, color (16mm)
Directors: Paul Julian and Les Goldman
In this allegorical animated short based on the poem by Maurice Ogden, the
people of a town are condemned to die one by one by a mysterious stranger
who erects a gallows in the town square. The remaining townspeople create
a rationale for each hanging, until only one person is left. But the hangman’s
rope is really intended for "he who serves me best:" the last survivor,
he who has failed all along to raise his voice in protest and now shudders
to find no one left to protest on his behalf. Narrated by Herschel Bernardi.
Harold and Maude
USA, 1972, 90 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Hal Ashby
Classic cult comedy focusing on the loving relationship between a 20-year-old
(Bud Cort) obsessed with death and a 79-year-old swinger and Holocaust survivor
(Ruth Gordon).
Harry Weinberg's Notebook
USA, 1991, 25 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Yariv Kohn
Lawrence Kasdan Award, Best Narrative Film, Ann Arbor Film Festival
Based on Leslea Newman's story "A Letter to Harvey Milk," this award-winning
short examines the sensitive issues that surface when Harry Weinberg, an
older Jewish man, enrolls in a creative writing class taught by a lesbian.
For one assignment, Harry writes a letter to his former customer and friend,
the slain political activist, Harvey Milk. The letter unleashes a series
of events which impel Marvin, Harry's best friend, to painfully recall and
reveal a tragic incident that occurred in a concentration camp forty years
earlier.
"Yariv Kohn's film is quietly powerful... a touching work told with sensitivity,
humanity, and surprises." - Richard Friedman, University of California,
San Diego
Hatikvah: The Hope
Germany, 1936, 48 minutes, B&W (video)
Silent with German and English intertitles
Produced by the German Zionist Union
Created in 1936 in an effort to inspire German Jews under Nazi rule to make
Aliyah, Hatikvah: The Hope is a documentary about the earliest period
of Zionist history and a singular celluloid artifact. The film was made
three years after the Nazi rise to power, at the narrow juncture in history
when flight from Germany was both imperative and still possible. The unique
footage focuses on some major personalities in the Zionist movement, the
constructive work carried out in Palestine by the first waves of immigration,
and the religious life of Jews from a diverse spectrum of backgrounds. Palestine
is portrayed here as a land where ideologies are challenged only by physical
tasks such as land clearing and swamp draining. Omitted, however, are the
political challenges posed by the British Mandate and growing tensions between
Jewish immigrants and the indigenous Arab population.
Himmo, King of Jerusalem
Israel, 1987, 82 Minutes, color (35mm/video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Amos Gutman
Adapted from Yoram Kaniuk’s best-selling novel, this deeply moving love
story takes place during the 1948 siege of Jerusalem in an ancient monastery
which has been temporarily converted into a military hospital. Bereaved
at the loss of her own love in the war, young and beautiful volunteer nurse
Hamutal (Alona Kimhi) is drawn to the enigmatic Himmo, a mortally wounded
and mutilated soldier who cannot speak or move. The doomed relationship
between Hamutal and Himmo becomes a source of bitter conflict among the
struggling, battle-scarred patients. In the tradition of The English
Patient and Johnny Got His Gun, this is a dark and profoundly
tragic study of war, suffering, love and redemption.
"At the center of Gutman’s film is impossible love, forbidden love..."
- Yediot Aharonoth
"Yoram Kaniuk’s best seller of 20 years ago, now in film form, transcending
the bounds of time and place." - Maariv
His Excellency (aka Seeds of Freedom/Yevo Prevoshoditelstvo)
USSR 1928 76 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles (Incomplete:
missing one reel)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: Grigori Roshal
According to director Roshal, the subject matter of this film was so delicate
that the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment oversaw production of this film
personally. The film is based on the life of Hirsch Lekert, a shoemaker
and militant Jewish Labor Bund member, who attempted to assassinate the
Vilna governor in 1902 to avenge the flogging of workers who participated
in a May Day rally. Although the film was intended "as a tract against individualism,...
a greater emphasis is placed on class stuggle within the Jewish community."
Bourgeois Jewish Zionists find themselves pitted against fellow Jewish proletariats
and the government. This was the first Soviet-Jewish film to be produced
after a demand by the Central Committee's Department for Agitprop that fictional
films be made "... in a way that an be appreciated by millions." In the
tradition of brilliant Soviet directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin, His Excellency
features stylized cinematography and stars Leonid Leonidov, a star of the
Moscow Art Theater, and in a small part, Nikolai Cherkasov, who would later
play the lead roles in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Ivan
the Terrible.
His People
USA, 1925, 91 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Director: Edward Sloman
Silent with English intertitles
Restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film with permission
of Universal City Studios, Inc.
This restored early American feature starring Rudolph Schildraut is a nostalgic
melodrama centered on two sons of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family: Morris,
a lawyer, and Sammy, a prizefighter. As Morris and Sammy stray from traditions
cherished by their parents, each generation learns to accept change in order
to preserve the family as a source of love and respect. Director Sloman’s
images of New York’s Lower East Side are so evocative that the viewer can
almost hear the hustle and bustle of that thriving neighborhood during the
1920s.
"... Few silent films give so thorough a picture of Jewish home life
in the American ghetto." - Tom Gunning, Outisders as Insiders: Jews
and the History of the American Silent Film
"Sloman's compelling vision of the painful depths and joyous heights
of immigrant life endow the film with an exuberant vitality that captivates
modern filmgoers and enlightens film historians." - Lester B. Friedman,
Hollywood's Image of the Jew
Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American
Dream(video title: "Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own")
USA, 1997, 100 minutes, color/B&W (16mm, video)
Director: Simcha Jacobovici
Best Jewish Experience Documentary, 1998 Jerusalem Film Festival
Based on Neal Gabler’s best-selling book An Empire of Their Own, this
feature-length documentary tells the story of the men who founded Hollywood.
Adolph Zukor, founder of Paramount; Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal;
the Warner brothers; Louis B. Mayer, founder of MGM; William Fox of 20th
Century Fox; and Harry Cohn, head of Columbia-all were immigrants, or children
of immigrants, who wanted to reinvent themselves as Americans. In the process,
they reinvented America. First hand accounts of the movie moguls’ lives
are told through a series of original interviews with their children and
grandchildren, and with comments by film historians, critics, actors and
producers.
"From Neal Gabler’s brilliant and bristling best-seller... Simcha Jacobovici
has made an equally impressive documentary... guaranteed to raise both
consciousness and hackles... provocative and engaging... "- John Leonard,
New York Magazine
"Stunning... a lucid, inviting work of social history... shrewdly on
target." - Caryn James, The New York Times
Holy For Me
Israel, 1995, 34 minutes, color (video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Assaf Bernstein
Best Short Film, Jerusalem Film Festival, 1995
This spoof on tours, guides, and the "holy" sites of Israel concerns thirty
year old Jonah Sidas, who had a typical Jewish-Israeli upbringing; he was
born and raised in Jaffa, graduated from high school and served as a paratrooper
in the army. One day, Jonah donned the cross and black gown of the priesthood;
now he guides pilgrims around Tel Aviv, which he believes is a holy city
for the Christian faith. Join Jonah and his unwitting group of tourists
on an insane two-day tour of Tel Aviv.
Homicide
USA, 1991, 102 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: David Mamet
Tough homicide detective Bobby Gold (Joe Mantegna) is torn between his loyalty
to the police force and his rediscovered Jewish identity in writer-director
David Mamet’s tense and gritty police thriller. Gold is caught between two
dangerous worlds when he’s pulled off a drug case and assigned to the murder
of an elderly Jewish woman who runs a pawn shop in the ghetto. Was her death
a simple homicide, or was it related to an antisemitic plot? Suddenly, what
appeared to be a routine investigation becomes Gold’s line to the conspiracy
of death and destruction that has plagued the Jewish people for centuries.
Horodok
Poland, 1930, 11 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
While visiting relatives in Horodok, a Polish shtetl located between
Minsk and Vilna, American Joseph Shapiro recorded his impressions with a
16mm hand-held camera. This home movie of relatives and friends provides
a rare glimpse into a destroyed world. Scenes of the market place, horse-drawn
carts, wooden houses with thatched roofs, and farm animals depict a poor
but pious way of life in this Jewish village.
House of Rothschild
USA, 1934, 88 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: Alfred L. Werker
George Arliss stars as Nathan Rothschild in this chronicle of the famed
banking family at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. Loretta Young plays his
daughter and Robert Young as her suitor. Boris Karloff also stars as the
villain. The finale was originally shot in color.
The House on Chelouche Street
Israel, 1973, 115 minutes, color (16mm)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Moshe Mizrahi
Academy Award Nominee, Best Foreign Film
This award-winning feature from one of Israel’s leading directors presents
a vivid picture of family and community during a period of political oppression
and national struggle for independence. The film focuses on Sami, a teenager
from a newly-arrived and poor Sephardic family growing up in the slums during
the turbulent last days of the British Mandate in Palestine, from the summer
of 1946 to the War of Independence in 1948.
How Moshe Came Back
USA, 1914, 10 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm)
Produced by Crystal Films
This short provides an interesting early example of a Jewish screen character:
the nebbish who dreams of physical prowess. The character, Moshe, is sad
about not winning the heavyweight championship and decides on a rematch.
Introduced at the fight as weighing 98 pounds, Moshe is afraid when the
"champ" is introduced at 240 pounds. When his "second" administers dope
via a syringe, Moshe, who had been losing up to that point, defeats the
champ and is the hero. Then, he wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
Hungry Hearts
USA, 1922, 80 minutes, B&W (16mm/video)
Silent with English intertitles
Director: E. Mason Hopper
Restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film with the cooperation
of Samuel Goldwyn Pictures and the British Film Institute
Based on the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, the first writer to bring
stories of American Jewish women to a mainstream audience, Hungry Hearts
focuses on the members of the Levin family who emigrate from Eastern Europe
to New York City’s Lower East Side. Abraham, the pious father learned in
religion but uninterested in business, has difficulty making a living and
adjusting to life in America. The daughter Sara scrubs floors in the tenement
in order to earn money and "become a somebody." The mother Hannah, a noble
matriarch, scrimps and saves to paint her dingy kitchen white only to have
her landlord raise the rent because of the improvements. Filmed on location
on the Lower East Side, this bittersweet classic captures the hopes and
hardships of Jewish immigrants in the New World.
"Hungry Hearts may be more of an entertainment than a social film,
but its slice-of-life approach gives it unusual value. The picture of
downtrodden Jews may border on the sentimental, but the feeling is right."
- Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence
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I Accuse!
USA, 1958, 99 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Jose Ferrer
Gore Vidal wrote the screenplay for this Hollywood version of the 1894 treason
trial of Alfred Dreyfus in France. Dreyfus, a captain on the French general
staff, was accused-partly from motives of antisemitism-of having sold secret
documents to Germany, and was condemned to life imprisonment. Dreyfus was
finally exonerated, but not before his case caused a furor in France that
contributed to the separation of the Church and the State of France, the
rise of the Socialist Party, and-by its influence on Herzl-to the development
of Zionism. Jose Ferrer plays Dreyfus and Emlyn Williams plays his defender,
Emile Zola. (See also The Life of Emile Zola)
I Love You, Rosa
Israel, 1972, 84 minutes, color (16mm)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Moshe Mizrachi
Academy Award nominee, Best Foreign Film
Jerusalem’s Orthodox community at the turn of the century is the setting
for this now-classic film about the life of a young Sephardic widow. Levirate
law, as delineated in the Book of Deuteronomy, requires Rosa to marry her
late husband’s only brother, Nissim-but Nissim is only eleven years old.
Having no children of her own, Rosa becomes Nissim’s guardian, and over
the years the pair’s relationship matures from affection to desire. Based
on the life of director Mizrachi’s mother, the film addresses the implications
of ancient religious tradition on modern life, particularly for women’s
rights.
"I highly recommend this tender, exquisitely sensitive love fable, the
best Israeli film I have ever seen... Mizrahi achieves a rare purity."
- Donald Mayerson, Cue
" ... Mr. Mizrahi's polished handling of his cast and subject
makes them come alive in a simple, subdued, and knowledgeable portrait."
- A.H. Weiler, New York Times
I Miss the Sun
USA, 1984, 20 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Mary Halawani
Best Documentary Short, Sinking Creek Film Festival 1984
In I Miss the Sun , filmmaker Mary Halawani profiles her grandmother,
Rosette Hakim, who left Egypt for the United States in 1962. The Halawanis,
a prominent Egyptian-Jewish family, fled their homeland in 1959 when Egyptian
anti-Zionist sentiments increased and hundreds of Jews, suspected of pro-Communist
activities, were interned in detention camps. Rosette, the family matriarch,
chose to remain in Egypt until every member of the large family was free
to leave. Using the Passover seder as a backdrop, Rosette (who now lives
in Brooklyn) discusses life in Egypt and the contrasts between the values
and textures of life there and in America.
"I Miss the Sun is a unique and important contribution to the
profile of contemporary Jewish life, exploring an area where there is
so little known about the community."- Julius Schatz, former President,
National Council on Art in Jewish Life
"The Passover Seder is important to the family... the family reenacts
the Exodus in a visual way, with ritual movements and demonstrative Arab
hand gestures." - Hadassah Magazine, 1984
If You Make it Possible: Documentary Portraits of Middle East Peacemakers
USA, 1996, 75 minutes, color (video)
Director: Lynn Feinerman
Cert. of Merit, 1996 Chicago Int'l Film Festival; Lindheim Prize, 1997 Jewish
Video Competition, San Francisco
Profiling Israelis and Palestinians who have devoted their lives to achieving
non-violence and coexistence in the Middle East, this film presents a
perspective not seen in television news. The title of the program derives
from an aphorism in the Koran: "If you make it possible, it is possible."
Many Israelis who have seen the documentary suggest a companion title
drawn from the words of 20th century Zionist Theodor Herzl:
"If you will it, it is no dream." Examining the unique lives, viewpoints,
and character traits of these Middle East peacemakers, the film is a study
of heroism and strength.
I’m Alive and I Love You
France/Belgium/Hungary, 1998, 35mm, 95 minutes
French with English subtitles
Director: Roger Kahane
In Nazi-occupied France, Julien (Jerome Deschamps), a French railroad worker finds a scrap of paper bearing the words, "I’m alive and I love you" underneath a sealed boxcar filled with Jews being deported to a concentration camp. He follows the vaguely worded address on the back of the paper to discover the elderly parents of Sarah, who wrote the note, and her 4-year-old son Thibaut, who have been hiding from the Nazis. Julien, who has up to this point avoided getting himself involved with the Resistance, finds himself feeling responsible for the family. He returns again to find the grandparents gone and the child alone. He takes responsibility for the boy in a heartwarming story about moral responsibility and the power of love during war.
The Imported Bridegroom
USA, 1990, 93 minutes, color (35mm)
Director: Pamela Berger
Based on a story by Jewish Daily Forward editor Abraham Cahan, The Imported
Bridegroom is a nostalgic Jewish romance about Asriel, a turn-of-the-century
rich Boston widower who returns to the old country looking for spiritual
nourishment. Instead, he "bags" who he thinks is the perfect son-in-law
for his daughter. But when the two meet, his thoroughly modern daughter
is appalled by this pious old world scholar-or is she? A sentimental comedy
of assimilation ensues, with some surprising twists along the way.
The Impossible Spy
UK, 1987, 96 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Jim Goddard
This riveting film tells the incredible but true story of Elie Cohen, an
Egyptian-born Jew and top Israeli intelligence recruit whose obsession with
his mission as a double agent drove him to his death. Cohen, an accountant
with a photographic memory, left his pregnant wife to join the Mossad’s
Syrian section in 1959 and quickly infiltrated the highest ranks of the
ruling Syrian Baath party. On the eve of his nomination as Syria’s Deputy
Minister of Defense, Cohen was uncovered and executed in Damascus in 1965.
Two years later, Israel achieved victory in the Six Day War, defeating the
Syrian Army as a direct result of the information Cohen provided.
"A marvelous film told in the grand tradition of a John Le Carré
novel. Shea is simply terrific in the role of Elie Cohen... a top-notch
thriller made all the more so by its factual basis." - Chicago Sun-Times
"A portrait of spies and spying that is as chilling as it is compelling."
- New York Times
In Memory
USA, 1993, 13 minutes, B&W (video)
Director: Abraham Ravett
In this non-narrative short, footage of life from the Lodz Ghetto is juxtaposed
against the chanting of "Kel Maleh Rachamim," a plea to God to let the souls
of those "slaughtered and burned" find peace. Images include winter street
scenes, women drawing water from a well, men breaking up ice, a Nazi roundup
and a mass hanging. The message of this tribute to members of Ravett’s family
(and to all those who perished under Nazi occupation) is "may their memory
endure."
In Search of Jewish Amsterdam
Denmark, 1975, 70 minutes, color (16mm/video)
Director: Philo Bregstein
Historian and filmmaker Bregstein set out to discover what Jewish life was
like in Amsterdam before the virtual annihilation of the city’s Jewish population
during the war. Through interviews with survivors, Bregstein traces the
development of socialism and the cultural life of Amsterdam; the film creates
a continuous interplay between past and present, following the destruction
of the Jewish Quarter and exploring the few remnants of what had been an
intense, unique collaboration in all fields between Jews and Gentiles.
Inside Out
South Africa, 1998, 35mm, 104 minutes
English
Director: Neal Sundström
This South African Waiting for Guffman features comedian Gilda Blacher as Hazel Levin, a young Jewish comic from Johannesburg who gets stranded in a small, conservative town where circumstance conspires to place her in charge of directing the annual Christmas nativity pageant.
More than a "fish out of water" story, the film is also a heartfelt satire of the quirks of small towns and the eccentrics who often thrive there despite expectations to the contrary. While Hazel is welcomed by many of the townspeople, and even begins a tentative love affair with the rugged Boer farmer Tertius, others are suspicious of her, not only because she is Jewish, but also because she wants to involve the black community in the Christmas pageant. Filmed on location in the Mpumlanga Province, Inside Out is a lighthearted look at the new South Africa.
The Inheritance
USA, 1964, 58 minutes, B&W (video)
Producer: Harold Mayer
A portrait of 20th century America as seen through the eyes of
its working people. Opening with the flood of immigrants that poured through
Ellis Island in the early 1900s, the film goes on to unveil dim Lower East
Side sweatshops, coal mines and textile mills filled with children, the
battlefields of World War I, and the anxious years of the Depression. In
this setting we see the immigrants struggle to become part of their new
country and labor’s brutal battle to organize into a united movement during
the 1930s. Actual footage of the Memorial Day Massacre at Republic Steel
brings the power of authenticity to these scenes. The film moves through
World War II and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, as each generation
fights to preserve and expand its freedom.
Is There Poetry After Auschwitz?
USA, 1992, 60 minutes, color (video)
Producers: Vivienne Hermann and Dale Sonnenberg
At the age of nine, artist Vivienne Hermann was caught in a mass arrest
on the streets of Prague and subsequently spent five years in forced labor
camps in Czechoslovakia and Poland before being liberated by the Russians
in 1945. "The Holocaust didn’t stop when I was liberated," says Hermann,
whose art aims to show the "longevity of the Holocaust." Through interviews
with Hermann and her son, family photographs and letters, and images of
Hermann’s work, the film responds to its eponymous question with a resounding
"Yes!" As Hermann says in one scene: "I am the poem. I may be a tragic poem.
I may be an irritating poem. But I am the poem."
"A revealing look at a woman who has come to terms with her tormentors..."
- Rick Nathanson, The Albequerque Journal, April 26, 1992
Island of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles
USA, 1995, 55 minutes, color (video)
English, Italian, French & Ladino with English subtitles
Director: Gregori Viens
1995 Silver Screen Award, US International Film and Video Festival
This film visits Los Angeles community of "Rhodeslis," Jews who lived on
the Mediterranean island of Rhodes from 1492 to World War II. It shows how
the immigrants settled in Los Angeles during World War II and passed down
their traditions, food, songs, rituals, and their medieval Ladino Spanish
dialect to their American-born children and grandchildren. Informative and
entertaining, this program is an excellent opportunity to experience
a little-known area of Jewish culture and history. Interviews with some
of the last surviving Rhodeslis, footage of traditional food preparation
and ceremonies (including a faith healing), and the impressions of second
and third generation Rhodesli descendants are included in this charming
documentary exploring how a transplanted culture is both preserved and transformed
in a new land.
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Jack Levine: Feast of Pure Reason
USA, 1986, 58 minutes, color (video)
Director: David Sutherland
CINE Golden Eagle; Gold Plaque, Chicago International Film Festival
This bold and unconventional cinematic portrait reveals America’s foremost
Social Realist painter doing what he does best: skewering corrupt politicians
and police, raging over social injustices, and satirizing petty human foibles.
Jack Levine got his professional start during the Federal Art Projects of
the WPA, and quickly became world famous for his brilliantly painted, brutally
ironic vision of America and the world. Levine stands as the only American
artist who never stopped painting as a Social Realist, even after the style
went out of vogue during the 1950s and ‘60s. Director Sutherland’s innovative
approach to documentary filmmaking-making the artist both subject and host
without the intervention of a narrator/interviewer-is eminently suited to
this articulate, iconoclastic individual who speaks with a charming mix
of erudition and the street lingo picked up during his childhood on the
streets of Boston’s South End.
Jakob the Liar (Jakob der Lügner)
GDR/East Germany, 1975, 95 minutes, color (35mm/16mm)
German with English subtitles
Director: Frank Beyer
Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film; Best Actor, 1975
Berlin Film Festival
Jakob Heym, a Jew trapped in a Polish ghetto, overhears news of a nearby
Russian victory on a Gestapo radio. Pretending to have heard the good news
on his own clandestine radio, Jakob passes the word on to his neighbors.
Clinging to this newfound hope of deliverance, Jakob’s friends anxiously
ask him for regular reports of the Red Army’s advance. A reluctant Jakob
feels obligated to invent more "good news" in order to provide his doomed
community with the courage to endure. This story was adapted for the screen
by Holocaust survivor Jurek Becker from his novel.
"... forceful, funny, and poignant... a heartwarming saga ..." - A.H.
Weiler, New York Times
The Jazz Singer
USA, 1927, 90 minutes, B&W (16mm)
silent with some sound
Director: Alan Crosland
This landmark of modern cinema, the first ‘talking picture,’ is also a pro-assimilationist
story focusing on the conflicts between generations and between the old
and new worlds. Al Jolson plays Jakie, a cantor’s son who rejects his family’s
tradition and wish for him to follow in his father’s footsteps by heading
for Jazz and Broadway. The film emphasizes Jakie’s new world rebellion against
the loss of his father’s old world values, a topic no less relevant for
today’s audiences than it was for moviegoers in the 1920s. Cast: Al Jolson,
May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer, Myrna Loy.
Jew Boy Levi
Germany, 1998, 35mm, 97 minutes
German with English subtitles
Director: Didi Danquart
In a small town in Germany’s Black Forest, little has changed for centuries. Levi, a tradesman and cattle dealer, has been coming to the town for years to buy and sell with the local farmers, just as his father and grandfather before him. Levi feels such a part of the town that he plans to propose to Lisbeth Horger, the Catholic daughter of one of his clients. But in 1935 disturbing changes begin to take place with the arrival in town of a Nazi bureaucrat Fabian Kohler (Ulrich Noethen, The Harmonists). Slowly, the townspeople begin to change their attitudes toward Levi. Director Didi Danquart has constructed a film with a complicated moral terrain set against the pristine Black Forest, where an ominous and seemingly unstoppable railroad is being constructed.
Jews of the Spanish Homeland (Los Judios de Patria Espana)
Spain, 1929, 13 minutes, B&W, silent (16mm/video)
Produced by Ernesto Giménez Caballero
This short, unusual film addresses the expulsion of the Jews from Spain
in 1492. The documentary provides a rare glimpse of Sephardic communities
in Salonika, Constantinople, Yugoslavia, and Romania as well as former centers
of Jewish life in Spain.
Jews Under the Red Star - Birobidzhan
USSR/West Germany, 1989, 56 minutes, color/B&W (16mm)
Russian with English narration
Director: Irmgard von zur Mühlen
This documentary tells the astonishing story of Jewish life in Birobidzhan,
a region located in the far eastern region of Siberia, near the Manchurian
border. Birobidzhan was the capital of the "Jewish Autonomous Region," an
area so designated by Stalin in 1928 in an attempt to oppose Zionism and
as a point of military strategy. In the early 1930s, Jews from the US, South
America, and Palestine joined the community, which was centered in Birobidzhan.
Many of the pioneers could not adapt to the harsh climate and rural life
and quickly departed; the Stalinist purges of the 1930s and 1940s devastated
the community. This documentary, which was filmed during 1988-89, examines
the problems facing the Jews of this region, including the questioning of
their religious activities under a communist regime. Footage from American
and Russian sources, from 1928 to the present, appears here for the first
time.
Joshua Then and Now
Canada, 1985, 127 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Ted Kotcheff
James Woods stars in this feature based on Mordecai Richler’s semi-autobiographical
novel about the unorthodox life and times of a Jewish writer in Canada.
Also stars Alan Arkin, Gabrielle Lazure and Michael Sarazin.
Journey Into Life: Aftermath of a Childhood in Auschwitz
Germany, 1996, 130 minutes, color (16mm/video)
German with English subtitles
Director: Thomas Mitscherlich
Premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival, 1996
Journey into Life follows the struggles of three concentration camp
survivors (Yehuda Bacon of Israel, Gerhard Durlacher of the Netherlands,
and Ruth Kluger of the United States) to rebuild their lives after World
War II. In on-camera interviews, these extraordinary individuals discuss
their childhood memories of Auschwitz, internment in Displaced Persons camps,
and their search for a new homeland after World War II. Using U.S. Army
archival footage to illustrate these powerful stories, Mitscherlich’s film
focuses on the subjects’ attempts to cope with the psychological trauma
of their experiences and to comprehend the meaning of the Holocaust.
Judgment at Nuremberg
USA, 1961, 186 minutes, B&W (16mm)
Director: Stanley Kramer
Winner of two Academy Awards
In this epic Hollywood dramatization of the Nuremberg trials, director
Kramer assembled one of the most powerful casts of any day, including
Spencer Tracy, Richard Widmark, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich, Montgomery
Clift, Judy Garland, and Maximilian Schell (who won an Oscar for his performance
as a defense attorney.)
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Kazablan
Israel, 1973, 95 minutes, color (16mm)
Director: Menahem Golan
This IsraeliWest Side Story unfolds when Kazablan, a dark Sephardic
Jew, takes time out from hassling the poverty-stricken tenants of the Jaffa
ghetto to court the fair-skinned Rachel, an Ashkenazic Jew. As their cultures
clash, Kazablan’s passion gives way to pride when Rachel’s father reveals
his prejudice against the Sephardim. Enhanced by enthusiastic dancing and
singing, this colorful, exuberant modern-day Romeo and Juliet remains
Israel’s best and most beloved musical.
A Kiss To This Land (Una Beso A Esta Tiera)
Mexico, 1995, 93 minutes, color (35mm/16mm/video)
Spanish with English subtitles (also available in Spanish and French
versions)
Director: Daniel Goldberg
Golden Gate Award,1995 San Francisco International Film Festival; Gold
Award 1995 Worldfest Houston; Prize of the Austrian Public 1995 American
Film Festival, Innsbruck
This fascinating documentary recounts the unique experiences of Jews
who immigrated to Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Director Goldberg
interviewed seven of these iconoclastic immigrants, who share their memories
and observations on leaving their homes and adapting |
