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Advice And Dissent
2002, USA, 21 minutes, Color
Directed By Leib Cohen
35mm DVD VHS
A frustrated businessman, Jeffery Goldman (John Pankow) tries to end his hopeless marriage by asking his local Rabbi (Eli Wallach) to place a curse on his wife. More
Restored by NCJF
USA 1940 87 minutes B&W
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD
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. More
Palestine, 1935, 50 min, b&w
Music Only with English subtitles
Director: Helmar Lerski
35mm DVD
This landmark documentary celebrates the pioneering labors of early Jewish settlers in Palestine, recording the technological and agricultural accomplishments of the pioneers and the idea of a socialist Jewish state. More
Israel, 1994, 87 minutes, Color
Directed by Michal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD
Played by filmmaker Michal Bet-Adam, Aya is a woman who, since early childhood, has been driven by her father’s ambition to see her become successful. More
USSR, 1926, 90 minutes, B&W
Directed by V. Vilner
35mm DVD
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. More
Israel, 1984, 103 minutes, color
Directed by Uri Barbash
35mm
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 prison authorities. More
Israel, 1993, 93 Minutes, color
Directed by Aner Preminger
35mm DVD VHS
Based on a novel by Lilly Perry Amitai, Blind Man's Bluff takes a bittersweet look at the life of a young Israeli woman. More
Argentina, 2008, 86 minutes, color/B&W
Spanish & Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed By María Victoria Menis
35mm DVD
A lyrical, inventive new film from award-winning, film festival favorite director María Victoria Menis. At the end of the 19th century, Gertrudis grows into her role as the ugly duckling in a colony of Argentinean Jews until she meets a nomadic photographer whose uncompromising vision allows her to see herself for the first time. More
USA, 1931, 10 min, B&W
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
Cantor Leibele Waldman plays multiple roles in this spoof of a synagogue committee in search of a chazan (cantor). More
USA, 1937, 90 min, b&w
Directed by Ilya Motyleff (Sidney Goldin, uncredited)
35mm DVD
This toe-tapping Yiddish musical drama marks the screen debut of Moishe Oysher in the title role critic J. Hoberman calls the “anti-Jazz Singer.” Leaving behind his Shtetle Belz for the Lower East Side, Sol eventually lands the American dream, becoming a popular radio star. More
Israel, 1998, 90 min, color Feature
Directed by Tzipi Trope
35mm DVD
In this the first Israeli feature film to deal with the subject of battered women, two women victimized by their husbands form a healing bond. More
Switzerland, 1999, 86 minutes 35
Directed byKaspar Kasics
35mm DVD VHS
Many years after World War II, evidence showing a connection between Swiss policy and the deportation and murder of Charles and Sabine Sonabend's parents at Auschwitz fall into Charles' hands. More
USSR, 1919, 18 minutes, B&W
Silent with English Intertitles
Directed by Alexander Razumni
35mm 16mm DVD
This short propaganda film (or agitka) tells the tale of a Jew who survives a pogrom and becomes a leader in the Red Army. More
Israel, 2006, 86 minutes, color
Directed by Hanan Peled
35mm
In Tel Aviv in the 1960s 10-year-old Hilik knows his goal in life is to compensate for the grief his parents suffered in the Holocaust. This fragile equilibrium begins to waver... More
Poland 1937 123 minutes B&W
Directed by Michal Waszynski for Feniks Production Company
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
Boundaries separating the natural from the supernatural dissolve as ill-fated pledges, unfulfilled passions and untimely deaths ensnare two families in a tragic labyrinth of spiritual possession. More
Belgium, 1990, 95 minutes, color (16mm/video - 60 minute video version also available)
Directed by Diane Perelsztejn
35mm DVD VHS
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. More
Israel, 1996, 96 minutes, color
Directed by Igal Bursztyn
35mm
What would happen if philosopher Baruch Spinoza were to live in an apartment house in Hulon? More
Russia, 1992, 27 minutes, B&W
Directed by Arkadiy Yakhnis
35mm DVD
This short documentary chronicles a 90 year old man's emigration to Israel from his native shtetl in Bessabaria. More
USA 1937 95 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Edgar Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
With a cast from the Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters, Peretz Hirschbein's semiautobiographical play and music by Vladimir Heifetz, Edgar Ulmer created a hit. More
Germany, 2000, 102 minutes
German and Swedish with English subtitles, color
Directed by Xavier Koller
35mm DVD
Based on the novel Schloss Gripsholm by Kurt Tucholsky, Gripsholm plunges us into the pleasure-craving, decadent world of Berlin cabaret at the beginning of the 1930s. More
USSR 1928 76 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles (Incomplete: missing one reel)
Directed by Grigori Roshal
35mm 16mm DVD
In the tradition of brilliant Soviet directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin, this film features stylized cinematography and stars Leonid Leonidov, a star of the Moscow Art Theater... More
USA, 1931, 80 minutes, B&W
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
35mm DVD
His Wife’s Lover stars the popular comedian of the Yiddish theatre Ludwig Satz in his only film performance billed as the "first Jewish musical comedy talking picture." More
USA 1937 15 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm 16mm DVD
Rubber-limbed Leo Fuch's song-and-dance highlights this lively short about a husband and wife who seek to reignite their marriage by pretending to be landlady and tenant. More
USA, 1990, 93 minutes, color
Directed by Pamela Berger
35mm 16mm DVD
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. More
GDR/East Germany, 1975, 95 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Director: Frank Beyer
Academy Award Nominee for Best Foreign Language Film; Best Actor, 1975 Berlin Film Festival
35mm 16mm
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.
Poland 1937 90 minutes B&W with sepia tone and blue tone
Directors: Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski
35mm DVD
A parade of costume, buffoonery and music, The Jester highlights both a shoemaker's scheme to marry his daughter into a prominent family as well as the festival of Purim. More
USSR 1925 100 minutes B&W Silent wiht English intertitles (Russian intertitles also available)
Directed by Alexander Granovsky
35mm 16mm DVD
Jewish Luck was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. More
Spain, 1929, 13 minutes, B&W, silent
Produced by Ernesto Giménez Caballero
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
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. More
Poland 1937 62 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Leon Jeannot/ Z. Turkow
35mm 16mm DVD
In this musical comedy, the famous comic duo Dzigan and Shumacher play two small town "entrepreneurs" who believe they have struck oil in a local field. More
Mexico, 1995, 93 minutes, color
Spanish with English subtitles (also available in Spanish and French versions)
Directed by Daniel Goldberg
35mm 16mm DVD
This fascinating documentary recounts the unique experiences of Jews who immigrated to Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. More
Czechoslovakia, 1991, 90 Minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Jaromil Jires
Critics' Choice, AFI International Film Festival 1992
35mm
Labyrinth is an intellectually-bracing investigation of the connection between the fictional world of Franz Kafka and the historical persecution of the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Framing his intense drama with recitations of the human rights denied to Jews under the Third Reich, veteran Czech director Jires creates his alter ego in Maximilian Schell, who plays a director taking up residence in Prague to prepare a film about Kafka. Christopher Chaplin, son of Charlie Chaplin, plays Kafka.
USSR, 1990, 92 minutes, color
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Leonid Gorovets
35mm DVD
This powerful Holocaust drama takes place in Kiev, Russia on September 29, 1941. Chronicling the last twenty-four hours in the lives of a Jewish tailor... More
USSR 1928 92 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
Like Sholem Aleichem, on whose "Motl Peysi, the Cantor's Son" and "The Enchanted Tailor" stories Laughter Through Tears is based, director Gricher leavens pathos with humor in his earthy portrait of prerevolutionary shtetl life. More
Germany, 1996, 3 minutes, color
Directed byMichael Verhoeven
35mm VHS
A short comic parable related on camera by writer George Tabori, this gem provides an ideal introduction for the Verhoeven-Tabori feature My Mother's Courage.
UK, 1992, 98 minutes, color
Directors: Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor
International Critics' Prize, 1992 Venice Film Festival; Best Film, 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival
35mm VHS
An irreverent comedy from the production company of Monty Python's Eric Idle, Leon the Pig Farmer is considered a cult classic in Europe. The movie's zany story is set in motion when Leon Geller ( Mark Frankel), a sensitive Jewish boy from London, accidentally learns that he is the product of artificial insemination. Leon's search for his biological parents leads him to the still more startling discovery of a sperm bank mix-up proving that he is the son of a Yorkshire pig farmer! The inevitable confusion results in a comic Jewish identity crisis.
Poland 1939 106 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Leon Trystand
35mm 16mm DVD
A tale of family disintegration and poverty that serves as a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. More
Germany, 1985, 55 minutes, B&W
English and German with English subtitles
Directed by Irmgard von zur Muhlen
35mm 16mm VHS
This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the fortieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously-unavailable footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage. The horrifying images include: survivors; camp visit by Soviet investigation commission; criminal experiments; forced laborers; evacuation of ill and weak prisoners with the aid of Russian and Polish volunteers; aerial photos of the IG Farben Works in Monowitz; and pictures of local people cleaning up the camp under Soviet supervision."a stark, shocking and unflinching testament the film stands as a powerful tool in efforts to never let the world forget what happened under Nazi rule." - Variety
USA, 1999, 95 minutes
Directed by Aviva Kempner
35mm 16mm
As Hitler invaded Europe, a young Jewish baseball player challenged Babe Ruth’s homerun record. This is the story of how he became an American hero. More
USA 1939 94 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
Impoverished and disabled lovers Fishke and Hodel dream of life in the big city of Odessa, free from the poverty and stifling old-world prejudices of the shtetl. More
USA 1937 97minutes B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm DVD
This dramatic tale of immigrant hardship highlights some of the traumatic problems of the immigrant experience, including alcoholism, separation and poverty. More
USA, 1926, 22 minutes, B&W
silent with English intertitles
Directed by Leo McCarey
35mm 16mm
An offbeat comedy short from future Hollywood screwball director McCarey about a princess (Martha Sleeper) who must find a husband in twenty-four hours or forfeit her throne. Threatened by a greedy prime minister and his henchman (Oliver Hardy), she quickly marries a condemned man (Charles Chase) who is sentenced to die next weekend; she then returns home to rule her country. When the man is pardoned, he enlists the aid of a Jewish speculator (Max Davidson) to bankroll a journey to his new kingdom. Together, the two partners battle court intrigue, murder plots, and strange customs to emerge victorious.
U.S.-occupied Germany 1948 77 minutes B&W
Yiddish, German, Polish with NEW English translation and subtitles
Directed by Herbert B. Fredersdorf and Marek Goldstein
35mm 16mm DVD
This is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. More
Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed byMichal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD VHS
The beautiful Michal Zuaratz stars as a young female photographer infatuated with a stranger whose image she accidentally captures on film. More
USA 1936 76 minutes
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Director: George Roland
35mm VHS
Based on a book by Isidore Zolotarefsky This film is a prime example of "shund", the melodramatic theatrical escapist entertainment of the Yiddish theater. More
Israel, 2000, 90 minutes
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed By David Fisher
35mm VHS
In revealing moments of grief and humor, filmmaker David Fisher leads his brothers to uncover the family's dark secrets of the past, secrets his parents were afraid to unearth. More
USA, 2002, 74 minutes, color
Narrated by Leonard Nimoy; Directed by Steven Calcote and Jonathan Shulman
35mm 16mm DVD
The last rabbi of Kaifeng died well over a century ago, and today's descendants of the ancient Chinese Jewish community have never celebrated Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. More
USA, 1939, 85 minutes, B&W, Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henry Lynn
35mm DVD
Mothers of Today includes the sole motion picture performance of radio star Esther Field, who was well-known on the radio airwaves of the 1930's as the 'Yidishe Mama.' More
USA 1939 88 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm DVD
Focusing on a labor dispute in the garment district of New York City, the film survives as an important historical document highlighting the hardships of the Jewish immigrant experience in America. More
USA, 1983, 73 minutes, color
Directed by Jim Brown
35mm 16mm
Since its first concert in 1978, the Soviet Emigre Orchestra was hailed by critics and audiences as one of the best chamber music ensembles in America. This "entertainment-documentary" combines superb performances (including music by Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and Shostakovich) with an examination of the lives of the orchestra members and their conductor, Lazar Gosman. Director Brown expertly documents the struggles and triumphs of these Soviet Jewish musicians who risked their futures to seek personal and artistic freedom in the United States."An unqualified delight." - Vincent Canby, New York Times
Germany, 1996, 92 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Michael Verhoeven
35mm VHS
From Michael Verhoeven, director of The White Rose and The Nasty Girl, comes this stunning cinematic version of Hungarian author George Tabori's play and novel. More
Czech Republic, 2002, 64 minutes, color
Directed by Matej Minac
35mm DVD
A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stock exchange clerk who saved the lives of 669 children. More
Poland 1948 68 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Natan Gross and Shaul Goskind
35mm 16mm DVD
In this, Poland's last Yiddish feature, comedy duo Dzigan and Shumacher play all the parts in a Sholem Aleichem story for an audience of children who survived the Holocaust. More
USA, 1981, 15 minutes, B&W
Directed by Ron Blau
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
This moving experimental short uses rephotographed home movies and overlapping soundtracks to relate one woman's true memoir of growing up Jewish in 1930s Berlin. More
USA 1940 77 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Max Nosseck
35mm 16mm DVD
Beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending on Yom Kippur, this story of a Vilna cantor seduced by the opera resonates with the voice of Moishe Oysher. More
USA, 1985, 130 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by Josh Waletzky
35mm 16mm DVD
This extraordinary film tells the story of the men and women who formed the Jewish partisan movement in Vilna, Lithuania during World War II. More
Canada, 1992, 88 minutes, color
Directed by Eli Cohen
35mm 16mm DVD
"The Quarrel brings to the screen one of the most powerful works of modern literature - a haunting story by Yiddish writer Chaim Grade that was written shortly after the Second World War. More
USSR, 1932, 72 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Boris Shpis and Mark Milman
35mm DVD
This rare, newly restored feature was originally advertised as "the first Yiddish talkie from Soviet Russia." The plot centers on Nathan Becker, a Jewish bricklayer... More
Germany, 1998, 89 minutes
German with English subtitles
Directed by Liliane Targownik
35mm DVD VHS
When Michael Rosenzweig, a Jewish manual laborer, becomes the prime suspect in the murder of a neo-Nazi leader, his brother Jacob, a young attorney, takes on his defense. More
Israel, 2002, 90 minutes
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Eli Cohen
35mm DVD VHS
Cohen takes an elliptical approach in telling the story of Pinchas Rutenberg, a visionary who amongst other things, brought electricity to Jewish Palestine. More
Israel, 1997, 35 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD VHS
Hospitalized in a ward, a father (Yossi Yadin) pleads with his son to be allowed to return home at least once for a shower. More
USA 1938 B&W 95 minutes Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
The Singing Blacksmith is the film version of "Yankl der Schmid," a classic 1906 drama that was one of the first Yiddish plays to offer a psychological study of physical passion. More
Israel, 1991, 26 minutes, color/b&w
Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD VHS
While saying goodbye to his son and grandchildren who are leaving Israel, Yackov remembers when, as a child, he also said goodbye to his family in Poland in 1937... More
USA, 1939, 96 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Maurice Schwartz
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
A renowned Yiddish theater and stage actor, Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem novel, centers on Tevye's daughter Khave... More
Germany, 1995, 100 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Oliver Storz
35mm DVD
Nesselbühl, Germany, April 1945. A small Swabian village, shortly before the end of the war. The roaring guns of the approaching American troops can be heard in the distance. More
Belgium, 1998, 18 minutes, color
Directed by Sam Garbarski
35mm VHS
Billed as "a Jewish Christmas tale," this award-winning short takes place in Brussels, 1953. Rosa and Alfred, a young Jewish-Polish couple, await the arrival of Rosa's older brother from America. As Rosa prepares to leave for the airport, she asks Alfred to pluck the turkey that is to be delivered in her absence. When the farmer arrives with the delivery, Alfred realizes the turkey is alive! Alfred and his next door neighbor, Fons, who hid Alfred during the war, must try to kill the turkey.
Germany, 2005, 85 min, color
German & English w/ English subtitles
Directed by Malte Ludin
35mm
Ludin's documentary focuses on how his family grapples with--or refuses to engage--the history of their family and of Weimar and Nazi Germany more generally. More
(reedited reissue of 1926 silent Broken Hearts)
USA, 1932, 68 minutes, b&w
Yiddish and English intertitles with music and sound sequences
Directed by Maurice Schwartz
35mm
Schwartz's film directorial debut is a film within a film where a grandfather tells his grandchildren a cautionary tale about a Jewish political dissident writer who leaves his wife in Russia... More
(reissue of Tkies Kaf/The Vow, 1924)
USA 1933 60 minutes B&W Yiddish narration with English subtitles
Directed by Zygmund Turkow (1924); George Roland (1933)
35mm 16mm DVD
Few reminders are left of the vibrant Yiddish theatrical world that flourished in Warsaw, Poland, in the 1920s. This film is one of them. More
Poland, 1937, 82 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Henryk Szabo
35mm DVD VHS
Based on the same legend as S. Ansky's classic play The Dybbuk, this spirited film offers the divine intervention of Elijah and a happy ending. More
USA, 1933, 66 minutes
Directed by George Roland
35mm DVD
The Wandering Jew is a unique find: the first American feature film to depict the Jews in Nazi Germany, and the only Yiddish-language film of its era to address this subject. More
West Germany, 1987, 85 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Heinz Schirk
35mm 16mm
On January 20, 1942, 14 key representatives of the SS, Nazi Party and government bureaucracy met secretly at a house in a quiet Berlin suburb to decide to implement Hitler's "Final Solution". More
France, 1946, 53 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with some English subtitles
Produced by the Central Committee for Child Welfare of the Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid
35mm DVD
Among the first movies to deal with the subject of the Holocaust, this documentary about Jewish war orphans opened in New York in September 1948 and has rarely been seen since. More
USA, 1989, 90 minutes, color
English and French with English subtitles
Directed by Pierre Sauvage
35mm 16mm VHS
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was a tiny Protestant farming village in the mountains of south-central France. More
Czechoslovakia/Germany, 2000, 90 min, color
Czech and German w/ English subtitled
Directed by Iva Svarcova
35mm VHS
1969: The first winter after the violent end of the Spring of Prague. Just as three astronauts are flying to the moon, thirteen-year-old Hannah and her crazy young parents land in the German economic wonderland. More
Germany, 1983, 108 minutes, color
Directed by Michael Verhoeven
35mm VHS
Lena Stolze stars in this acclaimed feature based on the true story of five German students and their professor who formed a secret society dedicated to protesting the Nazi regime. More
Poland, 1936, 92 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green & Jan Nowina-Przybylski
35mm 16mm DVD
Director Green returned to his native Poland from America to produce this, the most commercially successful musical in the history of the Yiddish cinema. More
France, 1996, 22 minutes, color/b&w
French with English subtitles
Directed by Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir
35mm DVD VHS
Zahor (Remember) - pronounced Zah'or with a hard "h", is a short film dedicated to keeping alive the memory of Jewish individuals and families who were the victims of Nazi persecutions, those who survived and those who did not. More
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
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