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'Deis Flicks

In collaboration with the National Center for Jewish Film (on the Brandeis campus), the Brandeis National Committee (BNC) has assembled a lending library of DVDs. The 'Deis Flicks collection includes both the work of modern independent filmmakers and archival materials. Together, they represent a visual record of the Jewish people in all of their vibrancy and diversity. 

Purple Lawns

Israel 1998, 56 minutes
Color, Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed bu Doma Zvi-Riklis

Two young women, friends since childhood, share a spacious apartment in the heart of Tel Aviv.  Their high rent foces them to take in a third flatmate, Malka, a mysterious ultra-orthodox woman who becomes part of their lives. Her strange insistence on living with two secular women touches Yael's heart and arouses Shlomit's suspicions. Slowly, with various twists and turns, Malka's secret is discovered. The orthodox woman's wretched fate moves both young women, and they become determined to help her.

The rift between the secular and religious world, the prejudices, the mutual ignorance and the resultant mistrust and suspicion are at the heart of "Purple Lawns." The film tells the story of women who decide to take fate into their own hands. Intitially, the possiblity of any connection between them seems completely impossible; yet, as the plot develops, they undergo changes that enable them to accomplish something and prove that the sisterhood of women is strongest of all.

Travel the World’s Jewish Communities with ‘Deis Flicks

Jewish culture and religion has flourished in parts of the world not frequently associated with the centers of Jewish life, such as Mexico, Libya, and India. In cooperation with the National Center for Jewish Film, BNC has introduced a series of films exploring the diversity and richness of Jewish life from the far corners of the globe. See how Jews have lived, worshipped, played, cooked, loved and survived all across the world by selecting from the following films in our ‘Deis Flicks collection:

Tijuana Jews

Throughout the 20th century, thousands of European Jews sailed to Mexico looking for opportunity. This documentary explores the blending of Jewish and Mexican cultures and customs in an unlikely place.

Imported Bridegroom

A nostalgic Jewish romance about a rich turn-of-the-century Boston widower who returns from the old country with a husband for his thoroughly modern daughter, who is appalled by this pious old-world scholar. She seems appalled, but is she? 

Last Jews of Libya

Some 36,000 Jews lived in Libya at the end of World War II; today, none remain. "The Last Jews of Libya" documents the final decades of a centuries-old North African Sephardic Jewish community through the lives of a remarkable family.

Shalom Ya'll

Traveling in a vintage Cadillac, filmmaker Brian Bain, a third-generation Jew from New Orleans, sets out on a 4,200-mile road trip through the Jewish American South.

Of Stars and Shamrocks

A provocative documentary chronicles the relationship between Boston's Jews and Irish as both groups fought for a foothold in the New World.

Minyan in Kaifeng: A Modern Journey to an Ancient Chinese Jewish Community

The last rabbi of Kaifeng died well over a centruy ago, and today's descendants of the ancient Chinese Jewish community have never celebrated Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. Now, two curious families have invited a modern group of Jewish travelers into their homes, leading to a reunion a thousand years in the making. "Minyan in Kaifeng" shows this unique journey and the unexpected meeting of cultures through the eyes of modern travelers from Australia, China, Israel and the United States. It is a story of ancient Diaspora, of old dangers and newfound wisdom.

Bene Israel

An intimate family portrait and a fascinating ethnographis study of the Bene Israel, one of three groups of Jews living in India today. The film documents one family's religious and cultural traditions representing this unique brand of Judaism. Through stories, songs, family prayer and community ritual, the film introduces the viewer to three generations of Indian Jews.

Love at Second Sight

Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles   
Director: Michal Bat-Adam

Renowned Israeli filmmaker and actress Michal Bat-Adam produced, wrote and directed this intriguing tale of romantic obsession in present-day Tel Aviv. The beautiful Michal Zuaratz stars as Nina, a promising newspaper photographer with a special knack for giving life to her pictures, a gift she inherited from her grandfather Olek. Devoted to her work, Nina’s life takes a sudden turn when she becomes infatuated with a stranger she accidentally captures on film. Though she knows nothing of this man, Nina is convinced she must find him. 

Rosenzweig’s Freedom

Germany, 1998, 89 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Director Liliane Targownik

In this fast-paced thriller, two Jewish brothers, children of Holocaust survivors, confront the ugly, growing wave of extreme right-wing violence in Germany. It’s 1991, and a group of skinheads attacks a foreign-workers’ hostel the same night a neo-Nazi leader is shot dead. Because he was in the hostel with his Vietnamese girlfriend that night, Michael Rosenzweig becomes the main suspect. But Michael can’t recall what happened. His brother Jacob, a young attorney, takes on his defense in this tense courtroom drama, where Germany’s violent past hangs like a shadow over the present. In the end, the film raises the question: Are there ever circumstances where victims should be permitted to kill in revenge?

From Philadelphia to the Front

USA, 2005, 37 minutes, color   
Directors: Judy Gelles and Marianne Bernstein

One of the few documentaries to explore the stories of Jewish-American World War II soldiers, this film focuses on six Philadelphia veterans in their 80s, and their individual experiences during the war. For Jews, the war to defeat Hitler had deeply personal significance. Combined with photographs from the men’s personal collections, the film includes rare archival footage, stills and newsreel, including Jewish soldiers celebrating Shabbat and Passover during wartime and the first Jewish service at Dachau after it was liberated.

The film premiered at the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia as part of "A Soldier's Story: Intimate Artifacts of World War II," an exhibition of still photographs and letters.

Other awards:

• New Filmmakers Award, Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival (2005)
• Audience Favorite, Documentary Short; Second Place, Best Documentary, Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films (2005)
• Second Place, Best Documentary Short, Warsaw Jewish Film Festival (2005)

American Matchmaker (Amerikaner Shadkhn)

USA, 1940, 87 minutes, black and white
Yiddish with English subtitles   
Director/Producer: Edgar G. Ulmer       
Restoration: The National Center for Jewish Film

Leo Fuchs, the "Yiddish Fred Astaire," stars in this musical comedy as Nat Silver, a debonair and fabulously wealthy Jewish-American businessman whose recent engagement (his eighth) goes awry. Edgar G. Ulmer’s last Yiddish movie was also his most modern, an art deco romantic comedy about male ambivalence and Jewish assimilation. With its urbane, neurotic hero, "American Matchmaker" looks ahead to the films of Woody Allen.

Green Fields (Grine Felder)

USA, 1937, 95 minutes, black and white
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directors: Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami
Restoration and New English Subtitles: The National Center for Jewish Film

The most critically acclaimed and beloved of American Yiddish talkies, Edgar Ulmer’s soulful, open-air adaptation of Peretz Hirshbein’s classic play heralded the Golden Age of Yiddish cinema. "Green Fields" celebrates an idyllic world of tribal wholeness and innate piety — no other movie has ever represented the shtetl with such lyricism. Starring Helen Beverly and Michael Goldstein, “Green Fields” was voted the Best Foreign Film in France in 1938.

DVD extras:

• Program notes by J. Hoberman
• Peter Bogdanovitch interview with Ulmer
• Cast interview
• Ulmer biography