Ordering Films for Institutions
Renting Films for Public Exhibition
Previews
Ordering Films for Home Use
Shipping in the United States
Shipping Outside the United States
Ordering Films for Institutions
Institutions may purchase online or by phone, mail or fax. Please see our License Agreement for rights granted with sale.Order Online
Sales may be done online with a credit card (Visa and Master Card) through our Paypal account: ncjf(at)brandeis(dot)edu.Order by Mail or Fax
Download a blank Order Form for sales or Rental Request for rentals in Acrobat PDF format.
Download Order Form (PDF)
Download Rental Request Form (PDF)
All orders must be accompanied by an institutional Purchase Order, institutional check, money order or credit card number. Sorry, no personal checks are accepted for institutional orders.Fax orders to NCJF at (781) 736-2070
Mail orders to:
Film Orders
The National Center for Jewish Film
Brandeis University
Lown 102/ MS053
Waltham, MA 02454For institutions requiring NCJF Federal ID: xxxxxxxxx
Order by Phone
Telephone orders are taken only for orders paid by credit card (Visa or MasterCard.) Please call (781) 899-7044, Monday through Friday from 10AM to 4PM EST.
Scheduling a Film Rental
To schedule a film rental for exhibition, send your request in writing to the attention of Juliet Burch via fax (781-736-2070) or email ncjf(at)brandeis(dot)edu.Provide the following information:
Film Title(s)
You will receive a quote within 4 days of submitting your request. Most titles are available in 16mm and Beta SP. Check the Title Price Index for format availabilty.
Prices for public exhibition in theatres, museums, and cultural institutions are based on format, theater or venue capacity, ticket price, and number of screenings.
Rental orders must be placed at least 3 weeks before the show date or rush charges may apply. We will do our best to accommodate your scheduling needs; however, please provide an alternate showdate at least two weeks later. Previews are not available for rental consideration.
Prices are for one screening only. Additional film screenings on the same day are priced at 50% of the listed rental price. Screenings on additional days are billed at the full rental price.
If you wish to charge admission for your screening of a NCJF title you must contact us to make special arrangements.Return Shipping for Rentals
Rented videotapes must be returned the first business day after the three-day rental period. Film prints must be returned the next business day after screening via UPS 2nd Day Air or FedEx Standard. A late return fee equal to 50% of the rental fee will be charged per day.Renters are responsible for return shipping costs and are liable for any damage to prints or videotapes. Shipped items should be insured according to the values listed below.
Insurance Values for Various Formats
Videotapes $50
Beta Tapes $300
16mm film $500
35mm film $1000Rental Cancellations
All rental cancellations made prior to ship date are subject to a fee of $10.00 per title. If a cancellation is received after the ship date, customer is responsible for the full rental fee.
Institutions, Reviewers and Programmers OnlyTime-coded preview VHS tapes are available for a $10 fee per title for a 2-week period only to institutions with established acquisition budgets. Previews do NOT include public performance rights and may not be used for instructional purposes.
Previews for film critics, academic reviewers and other journalists are generally available for no charge. Please contact us to make arrangements.
To preview a title for consideration for a film festival, public exhibition, or for broadcast contact dortega(at)brandeis(dot)edu.
Sorry, preview tapes are not available outside the continental United States.
Home video versions are available for select NCJF titles and may be an be purchased by individuals in the US for personal home viewing with family and friends only. Home video versions are for personal home use only, and programs are protected by copyright. It is strictly prohibited to screen, loan or broadcast to any group for either educational or commercial purposes. Uploading to a server, host, or video-hosting website is also strictly prohibited. All home video orders must be paid by money order or credit card in advance of shipment.
View our Home Video License AgreementAll home video orders must be paid by credit card, check or money order in advance of shipment. To order with a credit card call (781)-899-7044, Monday-Friday, 10am to 4pm EST.
Orders are shipped to arrive 1 to 2 weeks from the time the order is placed. For orders needed sooner, a rush charge may apply. See below for details. The following fees cover standard shipping & handling within the continental United States:
Video Sales Shipping
1 title $8 each
each additional title, add $2
Film Sales and Rentals Shipping
16mm under 30 minutes $25
16mm over 30 minutes $30
35mm under 30 minutes $35
35mm over 30 minutes inquireFor Canada, Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico
Video Sales and Rentals Add $10.00 per shipment
Film Sales and Rentals Add $15.00 per shipmentRush Orders
A rush fee of $25 per order will apply to sales needed within 1 week from the receipt of order, and rentals with show dates less than 3 weeks from the receipt of order. Please include a "need by" date with all rush orders. Sorry, we are unable to accommodate orders that must ship the same day on which they are ordered. Please note that some older titles are not available on a rush basis. If the title you request is not available, you will receive an email within 24 hours.
Customers outside North America have three shipping options as outlined below. A rush fee of $25 will apply to orders needed less than 2 weeks from receipt of order.
Standard Service via U.S. Post (approximately 2-4 weeks delivery)
Europe and Latin America: $30 first tape, each additional tape add $5
All Others: $35 first tape, each additional tape add $5Express via FedEx (approximately 1 week delivery)
Asia, Australia and Europe: $55 first tape, each additional tape add $5
Africa, Latin America, Middle East and New Zealand: $65 first tape, each additional tape add $5Collect Shipping (Customer Account)
Customers are welcome to supply NCJF with a FedEx account number for collect shipping. A handling fee may still apply.All prices are subject to change without notice.
Customer is responsible for all customs fees, taxes and duties.
Feature Films
Yiddish 35mm // Documentaries // ShortsBenya Krik
USSR, 1926, 90, minutes, B&W
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 the criminal activities until the Russian Revolution and the local commissar assigns them “emergency revictualing patrol,” making them a “revolutionary” regiment, complete with tattooed red stars. But 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
International Critics Prize, 1984 Venice Film Festival; Israeli Oscar, Best Movie of the Year
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
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 1993
Based on a novel by Lilly Perry Amitai, this film is a bittersweet look at the life of a young Israeli woman. Trying to sever 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 is still caught in a lattice of demanding relationships. Tension increases as she attempts to achieve her potential in the classical music world. Her eclectic new neighbors, though, introduce her to a new world of desires in which Micki finds the courage to confront her problems and emerge as an independent and mature woman.“... engrossing, quietly powerful...” - Los Angeles Times
Chronicle of Love
Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color (35mm/video)
Director: Tzipi Trope
Chronicle of Love is the first Israeli feature film to deal with the subject of battered women. Portraying the lives of women struggling with the cycle of domestic violence, director Tzipi Trope explores the tragic, horrifying consequences of physical and emotional abuse. When Nava, a social worker, shares the painful secret of her suffering with Jania, another woman victimized by her husband, the two form a healing bond. The story's resolution is deeply troubling and unsparing in its emotional intensity.
" Chronicle of Love is being screened at the height of Israel's jubilee celebrations-- celebrations which conceal a deep pain, the pain of the terrible violence in which we live, violence whose source has more than once been in love - of land, of God, of lofty ideals, of power, of woman. I chose to tell the stories of women, women who are beaten and murdered in the name of love. As a woman, I wanted to examine the destructive force of love." - Tzipi TropeCommissar
Russia, 1967, 105 minutes, b&w, scope (35 mm/16mm/video)
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Alexander Askoldov
Banned by the soviet government for 21 years. In this extraordinary human drama set during the Russian civil war, a tough red army commander's military career is disrupted by an unwanted pregnancy. Forced to stay with a poor Jewish family until her child is born, she comes face to face with the realities of different cultures, and finds herself transformed by the warmth and compassion of her hosts. Ultimately, she is forced to make the most difficult decision of her life: to rejoin her troops at the front, or stay with her child."A brave humane and powerful work... Image after stunning image" - New York Times
"Dazzling...sheer lyricism, passion and epic scope..." - Los Angeles Times
The Distance
Israel, 1994, 85 minutes, color (35mm/video)
Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Dan Wolman
A moving contemporary drama about the difficult choices faced by 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 modern-day Israeli society 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“The Distance is the story of separation from loved ones... Avoiding the melodramatic, [Wolman] tries to penetrate the depths of the subject, using a restrained, careful probe.” - Jerusalem Film Festival
The Imported Bridgegroom
USA, 1990, 93 minutes, color (35mm/16mm/video)
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 Film Is a Charmer” –Variety
Gripsholm
Germany, 2000, 100 minutes, color (35mm/video)
German and Swedish with English subtitles
Director: Xavier Koller
Cast: Ulrich Noethen, Heike Makatsch, Jasmin Tabatabai, Marcus Thomas, Inger Nilsson, Leif Liljeroth
Screenings: Jerusalem Film Festival - July 2001; Washington D.C. Jewish Film Festival - Dec 2001; The New York Jewish Film Festival - Jan 2002
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. Kurt (Noethen) is a German-Jewish publisher, ironic author and, thanks to his risqué chanson lyrics, a celebrated star of the cabaret. It is the summer of 1932, and soon nothing will ever be the same again in Europe. Kurt travels to the Swedish palace of Gripsholm with his girlfriend Lydia and their friends, the seductive vaudeville singer Billie and the passionate fly-boy Karlchen. Kurt’s claim that “all soldiers are murderers” has agitated the German Reich at home. The author sees the brown shirts looming on the horizon and decides not to return to Germany.Jewish Luck (Yevreiskoye Schastye / Menakem Mendl)
USSR 1925 100 minutes B&W Silent wiht English intertitles (Russian intertitles also available)
Director: Alexander Granovsky
Assistant Director: Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
Based on the Menakhem Mendl stories by Sholem Aleichem
Cinematography: Eduard Tissé, Vasili Khvatov
Original Russian intertitles: Issac Babel
Cast: Solomon Mikhoels, Tamara Edelheim, T. Khazak, M. Goldblat, Y. Shidlo, I. Rogaler, S. Epstein, R. Imenitove
Jewish Luck was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. Based on Sholem Aleichem's series of stories featuring the character Menakhem Mendl, Jewish Luck revolves around the daydreaming entrepreneur Menakhem Mendl who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. Despite Jewish oppression by Tsarist Russia, Menakhem Mendl continues to pursue his dreams and his continued persistence transforms him from schlemiel to hero as the film uncovers the tragic underpinnings of Sholem Aleichem's comic tales. Notes Village Voice critic Georgia Brown, "The movie's best intertitle, translated from Isaac Babel's Russian: `What can you do when there is nothing to do?'"A dramatized version of the Menkhem Mendl stories was first staged by the Moscow Yiddish State Theater, under the direction of Alexander Granovsky, who later made this silent film. Jewish Luck features some of the finest artistic talents of Soviet Jewry during this period. It has been speculated that the cinematography done by Eduard Tissé in Jewish Luck inspired the filming of particular scenes in one of his later projects, Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. The original Russian intertitles were written by Soviet Jewish writer Isaac Babel, who later became a victim of the Stalinist purges in the late 1930s.
Labyrinth
Czechoslovakia, 1991, 90 Minutes, color (35mm)
German with English subtitles
Director: Jaromil Jires
Critics’ Choice, AFI International Film Festival 1992Labyrinth 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 the late Charlie Chaplin, plays Kafka.
“Riveting… an excellent performance from Maximilian Schell.” - Harriet Robbins, La Opinion
“Beautifully made.” – Todd McCarthy, Variety
Ladies Tailor
USSR, 1990, 92 minutes, color (35mm/video)
Russian with English subtitles
Director: Leonid Gorovets
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 (renowned Soviet actor Innokenty Smoktunovsky) and his family just prior to their deportation and execution at Babi Yar. Director Gorovets uses the simple human drama of his characters to raise complex and terrifying questions about the fate of the Jews under Nazi and Soviet tyranny."Impressive and affecting... the violence is never fully depicted, but Ladies’ Tailor is as disturbing as many far more explicit films about the Nazi genocide." - Mark Jenkins, Washington City Paper
"
A brilliant film." - Leonid Anninskij, Soviet Culture
Laughter Through Tears (Skvoz Slezy)
USSR 1928 92 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles
Director: Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
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. Motl's father dies, leaving him to survive on his own in a changing world while the tailor Shimen-Elye buys a she-goat which mysteriously changes gender each time its new owner stops at the inn between Kozodoyevka, where he purchased the creature, and Zlodyevke, where he lives. In accord with then-official policy, director Gricher emphasizes the poverty and repression of Jews in Czarist Russia. He capitalizes on the skills of the Moscow Art Theater's actors through close attention to facial expression and gesture.Love at Second Sight
Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color (35mm/video)
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 a young female photographer infatuated with a stranger whose image she accidentally captures on film.Leon the Pig Farmer
UK, 1992, 98 minutes, color (35mm/video)
Directors: Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor
International Critics' prize, 1992 Venice Film Festival; Best Film, 1992 Edinburgh Film Festival
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 (the late 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."*** ... Fresh and vastly amusing." - Chicago Tribune "Insightful and witty." - Village Voice
My Mother's Courage
Germany, 1996, 92 minutes, color (35mm/video)
German with English subtitles
Director: Michael Verhoeven
Winner, Jewish Experience Prize, Jerusalem Film Festival; Best Film, Bavarian Film Awards; Best Film, German Film Award 1996
From Michael Verhoeven, director of the 1990 Academy Award-nominated film The Nasty Girl, comes this stunning film version of Hungarian author George Tabori’s play and novel. Shifting between Nazi-occupied Budapest and present-day Berlin, the film artfully depicts the true story of what happened to Tabori’s mother Elsa on a summer's day in 1944. Pauline Collins' stellar performance as Elsa, plucked from her everyday life and thrown into the surreal nightmare of mass deportation, affords an extraordinary account of one individual's escape from death juxtaposed with that of the millions who did not survive. Verhoeven’s satirical darkly humorous film about fate and human cruelty forges new ground in cinematic portrayals of the Holocaust.“My Mother’s Courage shows that blue skies and sunshine can be as devastating as night and fog.” -J. Hoberman, Village Voice
“A film about the Holocaust that, after the few memorable films on the subject and the flood of lesser ones, needs to be seen.”- Stanley Kaufmann, New Republic
The Quarrel
Canada, 1992, 88 minutes, color (35mm/16mm/video)
Director: Eli Cohen
Winner, Crystal Heart Award, Heartland Film Festival
First Prize Jury Award for Best Feature Film, Santa Barbara International Film Festival
A highly-acclaimed cinematic interpretation of Yiddish writer Chaim Grade’s story “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” The Quarrel is a thought-provoking film about the reunion of two Holocaust survivors in 1948 Montreal. Chaim (R.H. Thomson), a secular Jewish poet, and Hersh (Saul Rubinek,) a Hassidic rabbi, are old friends and sometime rivals from Bialystok who presumed each other dead after their separation during the war. The pair’s chance meeting in a public park leads to bittersweet reflection on their shared past and a dramatic debate over their contrasting philosophies.“Excellent...A war of the spirit on a battleground of ideas”
-Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times“A sensitive and haunting film.” - Chaim Potok, author of The Chosen
Rosenzweig's Freedom
Germany, 1998, 89 minutes
German with English subtitles
Director: Liliane Targownik
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. Set against a backdrop of historically accurate events, the fictional story of the two brothers explores the ongoing right-wing extremist violence that has plagued Germany since its reunification in the early 1990s.Rutenberg
Israel, 2002, 90 minutes, 35mm
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Director: Eli Cohen ( The Quarrel, Wordmaker)
Pinchas (Peter) Rutenberg was a fascinating personality in the first part of the 20th Century. His mysterious past in Russia and England and his conflicting characteristics set the tone for this film.
The story focuses on one stormy weekend in February 1931. A flood ruins the Preparations for the opening of the new power station in Nahararyim, Rutenberg’s Last venture. Rutenberg embarks on a journey to the power station and recollects the days he surveyed the waters of the Jordan River with his brother.
When he arrives at the damaged power station he is shocked by the damage and begins to question his own power to stand against all odds. Despite the devastation and losses, Rutenberg manages to see beyond himself and finds new strength to carry on.
Rutenberg is the story of a man who was a true pioneer – larger than life, obsessive, conflicted. He was also a man who had to come to terms with the complicated politics of a new country, his loved ones and his rivals.“ Menasha Noy's Rutenberg is a brilliant, formal, self absorbed man who had the ability to compel the most recalcitrant worker to follow his lead.” - Los Angeles Times
Three Days in April
Germany, 1995, 105 minutes, color (35mm/video)
German with English subtitles
Director: Oliver Storz
Screenings: Jerusalem Cinematheque, Jewish Film Festival; jewishfilm.2001, Brandeis University.
Nesselbühl, Germany, April 1945. The roaring guns of the approaching American troops can be heard in the distance. Only Anna, daughter of an innkeeper and leader of the German girls society still believes that hope can be found in trusting the Führer. But then, overnight, a train arrives at the village station bringing a horror nobody is prepared for: three cattle cars of prisoners—innocent Jewish victims-en route to a concentration camp further away from allied forces. The dying victims, trapped in the boxcars, remain on the tracks for three days. No one takes responsibility. Grimly, life goes on as usual in Nesselbühl although, for young Anna, nothing will be the same.The Wannsee Conference
West Germany, 1987, 85 minutes, color (35mm/16mm)
German with English subtitles
Director: Heinz Schirk
On January 20, 1942, 14 key representatives of the SS, Nazi Party and government bureaucracy met secretly at a house in Wannsee, a quiet Berlin suburb. There, the decision was made to implement the policy of Jewish extermination. This film reenacts the historic Nazi meeting minute-by-minute, based on the actual notes and letters written by Hermann Goering and Adolf Eichmann, and testimony by Eichmann during his 1961 trial in Israel.“A chilling movie… the film is shot simply and acted superbly.” – John Richardson, Los Angeles Times
“A must-see…. for its authenticity, for its casual air, for its haunting look, for its horror.” – Bruce Kirkland, Toronto Sun
The White Rose
Germany, 1983, 108 minutes, color (35mm/video)
German with English subtitles
Director: Michael Verhoeven
Lena Stolze (The Nasty Girl) 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. Known collectively as the "White Rose", the Munich-based group distributed anti-Hitler literature in a resistance effort which cost them their lives. Initially, the German government refused to allow the film to be shown abroad due to an epilogue which pointedly observed that the legal judgment condemning the White Rose society had never been rescinded. Ultimately, the political controversy surrounding Verhoeven's film directly caused the German government to officially invalidate the Nazi "People's Court" system that sentenced the group to death."An extraordinary film! Quite simply the finest German movie since 'Das Boot'." - Newhouse Newspapers
"The White Rose is a great story and an important one." - The Village Voice
Yiddish Features and Shorts
Feature Films //Documentaries // ShortsCatskill Honeymoon
USA 1949 93 minutes B&W English and Yiddish (no subtitles)
Director: Josef Berne
Cast: Michal Michalesko, Jan Bart, Bas Sheva, Max and Rose Bozyk, Bobby Colt, the Feder Sisters, Henrietta Jacobson, Julius Adler, Irving Grossman, and Dinah Goldberg.
A Jewish resort hotel celebrates a pair of longtime customers' fiftieth wedding anniversary by staging an old-fashioned Borscht Belt show replete with singers, dancers, comedians, and impressionists. The show concludes with a fervent musical tribute to the year-old State of Israel. Filmed on location at Young's Gap Hotel in Parksville, New York and includes glimpses of the golf course, tennis matches, calisthenics classes and sunbathers.
Children Must Laugh (Mir Kumen On)
Poland 1935 63 minutes B&W English and Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: Aleksander Ford for the Jewish Labor Bund
Directed by Lodz native Aleksander Ford and financed by the Jewish Labor movement in Poland, Children Must Laugh is one of the few surviving documentaries about Jewish life in Poland before WWII. This institutional film was produced to raise funds for the Vladimir Medem Sanitarium which, noted for its modern and spacious facilities, stood as the embodiment of health and enlightenment, in striking contrast to the grim images of urban Polish-Jewish poverty. The sanitarium's theme song, "Mir Kumen On (Here We Come)," punctuates the film with a sense of hope and accomplishment. The Bund's optimistic internationalism, exemplified by the children's endearing performances, permeates the film, creating powerful yet unintended ironies for post-Holocaust audiences.
The Dybbuk (Der Dibuk)
Poland 1937 123 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Director: Michal Waszynski for Feniks Production Company
Based on the play by S. Ansky
Cast: Abraham Morewski, Isaac Samberg, Moshe Lipman, Lili Liliana, Dina Halpern, G. Lemberger, Leon Liebgold
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. Inspired by S. Ansky's ethnographic research of Jews living in the Polish-Russian countryside just before the first World War, The Dybbuk reflects Ansky's deep perception of the shtetl's religious and cultural mores, as well as his insightful appreciation of its hidden spiritual resources. The film's exquisite musical and dance interludes evoke the cultural richness of both pre-WWI shtetl communities and Polish Jewry on the eve of WWII."... one of the most solemn attestations to the mystic powers of the spirit the imagination has ever purveyed to the film reel."
Parker Tyler, Classics of the Foreign Film, New York; Citadel 1962"The Dybbuk was the most ambitious Yiddish movie of its day... In fact, The Dybbuk is a time capsule... Drama intensifies a given moment, film freezes it. Whatever the movie's original intentions, events have dictated that its themes will be read as harbingers of exile and oblivion."
J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds
Green Fields (Grine Felder)
USA 1937 95 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directors: Edgar Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami
Cast: Michael Goldstein, Herschel Bernardi, Helen Beverly, Isidore Casher, Dena Drute
AWARDED BEST FOREIGN FILM IN FRANCE, 1938
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 to rival Joe Green's Yiddle. When an orphaned Lithuanian scholar leaves the yeshiva to find "true Jews," he learns some unexpected lessons from the Jewish peasants who take him in as a boarder and tutor for their children."Sunlit and air-filled, yet suffused with yearning, the film recalls Renoir and Vigo... [It] exudes a dreamy pantheism...."
J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds"The cast is brilliant with... famous payers from the Yiddish Art Theater and the Artef Theater... The direction of Jacob Ben-Ami and Edgar G. Ulmer has caught the beauty and poetry of the classic work and transferred it to the screen in a masterful manner."
The Film Daily, 20 October 1937Love and Sacrifice (Libeun Laydnshaft)
USA 1936 76 minutes
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Director: George Roland
Starring: Rose Greenfield, Lazar Fried and Cantor Leibele Waldman Based on a book by Isidore Zolotarefsky
This film is a prime example of "shund", the melodramatic theatrical escapist entertainment of the Yiddish theater. Produced by Joseph Seiden in a loft in New York City on a miniscule budget, this tale of a middle-class matron who shoots the man who compromises her was a tremendous success. It opened at the Clinton Theater April 7, 1936 and was held over three weeks - the most-popular Yiddish movie the Clinton had shown to date. The central theme focuses on a mother's sacrifice for her children. "......in the movie there is what to make you cry and what to make you laugh. The weaker sex, the women, wives and even young girls, weep openly with the heroine...." -- J.P. Katz, Jewish Daily ForwardA Letter to Mother (A Brivele der Mamen)
Poland 1939 106 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directors: Joseph Green and Leon Trystand
Screenplay: Mendl Osherwitz, Joseph Green, Leon Trystand, Anatol Stern
Music: Abraham Ellstein
Cast: Lucy Gehrman, Misha Gehrman, Max Bozyk, Edmund Zeyenda, Gertrude Bulman, Alexander Stein, Samuel Landau, Simche Fostel, Chana Levin, Itskhok Grudberg, Irving Bruner
A Letter to Mother's tale of family disintegration and poverty serves as a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. One of the last Yiddish films made in Poland before the Nazi invasion, the film tells the story of a mother's persistent efforts to support her family. While her husband lives in America, Dobrish struggles to care for her three children in pre-WWI Polish Ukraine. After her family is pulled apart by severe poverty and the turmoil of war, Dobrish and her family make their way to New York and turn to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in search of a brighter future.Released on September 14, 1939, two weeks after the German blitzkrieg over Poland, this film opened to packed audiences at the Belmont Theater in New York. Hailed by the New York Times as one of the best Yiddish films to reach America, A Letter to Mother was the highest grossing Yiddish film of its time.
A Letter to Mother was director Joe Green's last film and his "favorite from among his own films... may convey something of the flavor of Green's childhood."
J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds
The Light Ahead (Fishke the Lame)
USA 1939 94 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Isidor Casher, Helen Beverly, David Opatoshu
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. The benevolent and enlightened book seller Mendele helps them, turning small-town superstitions to their advantage. Based on Mendele Mokher Seforim's story of love frustrated by small-town ignorance, this luminous allegory of escape marries Edgar Ulmer's masterful direction with superb acting by members of New York's Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters."Beverly and Opatoshu are perhaps the most beautiful couple in the history of Yiddish cinema, and their scenes have a touching erotic chemistry."
J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds"Yiddish film producers will probably look to The Light Ahead... for their inspiration when new productions are under consideration. And well they might, for the film touches undreamed of heights."
New York World Telegram, 23 September 1939
Long is the Road (Lang ist der Veg)
U.S.-occupied Germany 1948 77 minutes B&W
Yiddish, German, Polish with NEW English translation and subtitles
Directors: Herbert B. Fredersdorf and Marek Goldstein
Based on idea and script by Israel Becker
SPIRIT OF FREEDOM AWARD, 1996 JERUSALEM FILM FESTIVAL
This is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Made by and about Jewish displaced persons, the film was shot on location at Landsberg, the largest DP camp in U.S.-occupied Germany. Effectively mixing neorealist and expressionist styles, the film follows a Polish Jew (played by Israel Becker, one of the founders of the first professional Yiddish theater company in postwar Germany) and his family from the thriving Jewish community of prewar Warsaw through the horrors of Auschwitz to the frustrations and instability of refugee life in the DP camps, and culminates in the emergence of a hope for rebirth and renewal in Israel."...works brillaintly.... little-known classic... a...marvel"
Ellen Cohn, The Jewish Week, January 1996."...something that no film in the five decades since has been able to recapture...."
Dave Kehr, New York Daily News, January 1996."Among the highlights of the [1996 New York] Jewish Film Festival."
The Forward, January 1996.Motl der Operator
USA, 1939, 88 minutes
Yiddish with New English Subtitles
Director: Joseph Seiden
This classic melodrama captures the sentimental, emotional characters and the convoluted plots and fantastic coincidences which dominated the Second Avenue Yiddish theaters. 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.Motl, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide.
The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.
"A sorrowful and tragic melodrama in the best Yiddish tradition..." The Film Daily 1/24/40"
Our Children (Unzere Kinder)
Poland 1948 68 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directors: Natan Gross and Shaul Goskind
Cast: Nusia Gold, Shimon Dzigan, Yisroel Shumacher, Z. Skrzeszewska, N. Kareni, R. Stolarska, H. Kestin, Y. Videcki, A. Daniewicz, N. Meisler, I. Glantz, G. Czifdar. The Children: S. Goldbrenner, B. Grinspan, M. Tauman, I. Greenberg, S. Redlich, E. Zalkind, S. Koczer, C. Pretter, V. Lason
Our Children "is not only among the first films about the Holocaust, it is also the first to critique its representation." (J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds) 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. But the children outdo the performers when they exchange roles and demonstrate the healing, liberating powers of song, dance and storytelling. With children from the JDC-supported Helenowek Colony.
Overture to Glory (Der Vilber Balebesl)
USA 1940 77 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Director: Max Nosseck
Screenplay: Max Nosseck and Ossip Dymov, from Mark Arnstein's play, Der Vilner Balebesl
Cast: Moishe Oysher, Helen Beverly, Florence Weiss, Lazar Freed, Jack Mylong Munz, Leonard Elliot, Erika Zaranova, Maurice Krohner, Benjamin Fishbein
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, one of the best-known cantors of his day. Carefully lit cinematography, well-shaped dialogue and Alexander Olshanetsky's musical score steer Overture clear of melodramatic excess."...one of the major events of the Jewish cinema... Moishe Oysher's voice is truly magnificent...."
The New York Post"The entire film is done with exquisite restraint... Moishe Oysher's acting and singing are excellent... the music is magnificent, the finest that Alexander Olshanetsky has ever written... truly an artstic and beautiful triumph of the Yiddish cinema...."
William Edline, The Day (Der Tag)"Seldom has the Jewish faith been more nobly and beautifully espoused as it is in this film.... A milestone in the course of Yiddish film making."
Robert W. Dana, The New York Herald Tribune
The Return of Nathan Beker (Nosn Beker Fort Aheym)
USSR 1932 85 minutes B&W Yiddish and Russian with NEW English subtitles
Directors: Boris Shpis, Rokhl M. Milman for Belgoskino
Cast: Boris Babochkin, David Guttman, Solomon Mikhoels, Elena Kashnitzkaya, V. Yablonski
The only Russian-Yiddish sound film produced in the Soviet Union, The Return of Nathan Becker glorifies Soviet industrial productivity as it denigrates American capitalism and assimilation. Famed Yiddish author and poet Peretz Markish wrote the screenplay for this film about bricklayer Nathan Becker who returns home to Russia after twenty years in America. The film depicts the shtetl way of life as primitive and grotesque and promotes a shift away from traditional Jewish values, reflecting the government's determined effort to reduce Jewish culture to "Communist in content and Yiddish in form only." Neither Markish nor actor Solomon Mikhoels (who was also director of the Moscow Yiddish State Theater) survived the Stalinist purges.The Singing Blacksmith (Yankl der Schmid)
USA 1938 B&W 95 minutes Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Cast: Moishe Oysher, Miriam Riselle, Florence Weiss, and Herschel Bernardi.
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. Both the original play and the screenplay were written by David Pinski, one of America's most significant Yiddish writers. The film, shot at a Catholic monastery in New Jersey, focuses on a tough, hard-drinking, womanizing blacksmith who resists temptation and is ultimately transformed into a good hard-working husband by the love of a decent young woman. Although robust Yankl loves his sickly Tamara, he cannot help but succumb, however guiltily, to the more sensuous charms of his neighbor's wife. The film's examination of the complex relationships of love, work, and passion makes it a unique standout within the genre of Yiddish cinema. Ulmer's use of dramatically lit shots at odd angles and bold perspectives which characterize his later expressionistic noirs and thrillers made in Hollywood in the 1940s (and earned him the title "King of the B's") are already apparent here.
Tevye
USA 1939 96 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Director: Maurice Schwartz
Screenplay: Maurice Schwartz, based on a novel by Sholem Aleichem
Cast: Maurice Schwartz, Rebecca Weintraub, Miriam Riselle, Leon Leibgold
FIRST NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM TO BE INCLUDED IN THE NATIONAL FILM REGISTRY BY THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS IN 1991
A renowned Yiddish theater and stage actor, Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem novel, centers on Tevye's daughter Khave who falls in love with and marries a Ukrainian intellectual, testing Tevye's deep-seated faith, loyalty to tradition, and his love for his daughter. (Interestingly, this film adaptation combines characteristics from the husbands of two of Tevye's daughters in Aleichem's novela Ukrainian peasant and a Jewish Marxistinto one.) Running as a thread throughout Tevye is the tension between parental authority and paternal love, between tradition and change, and between a static way of life and counterrevolutionary upheaval. Tevye's world is a microcosm of the larger world of Russian Jewry at the turn of the century.For Schwartz's long-awaited return to filmmaking, he chose the Underhill Farm just east of Jericho, Long Island as the set of Anatevka, Teyve's beloved shtetl.
"With all due respect to Zero Mostel and Topol in Fiddler on the Roof, it was Maurice Schwartz, the great Yiddish actor/director, who first showed Tevye the Dairyman in his full light as a mensch for all seasons. A rare opportunity to see Schwartz in what may have been his most magnificent role." Judy Stone, San Francisco Chronicle
"The black-and-white print, rescued from nitrate, is gorgeous. It couldn't have looked much different when the film was in release...years ago. Bravo!!
Kirk Honeycutt, Daily News (Southern California)
A Vilna Legend (Dem Rebns Koyekh; reissue of Tkies Kaf/The Vow, 1924)
USA 1933 60 minutes B&W
Yiddish narration with English subtitles
Few reminders are left of the vibrant Yiddish theatrical world that flourished in Warsaw, Poland, in the 1920s. This film is one of them. Jewish producers were preeminent in the interwar Polish film industry but, due to the pervasive antisemitism of the early '20s, they shied away from films dealing with Jewish themes. It was not until 1924 that amateurs, Henryk Bojm and Leo Forbert, adapted a Peretz Hirshbein play for the screen. Ambitiously mounted, professionally cast, it was one of the most successful Jewish cinematic efforts undertaken up to that time. In 1933, a group of New York Yiddish actors decided to give the original 1924 gem a new lease on life. They added a
narration and several new scenes (those in the tavern) which gave dramatic justification to the narrative form.A precursor to the 1937 classic, The Dybbuk, A Vilna Legend features the same classic tale of frustrated love and destiny and the breaking/fulfillment of vows. A yeshiva student and an orphan girl who are deeply in love face eternal separation even though their parents promised them to each other before birth. Only the prophet Elijah's miraculous intervention allows their parents to fulfill their vow and the couple their love.
The Vow (Tkies Kaf)
Poland 1937 82 minutes
B&W 35mm Restored Yiddish feature film with English subtitles
Director: Henryk Szaro
This classic tale of love, fate and mysticism is one of several movie adaptations of an ancient folk tale. Two childhood friends make a sacred pact promising a marriage between their unborn children. Competing suitors and clashing ways of life nearly prevent the fulfillment of their vow, but the divine intervention of Elijah results in a happy ending. One of the last films produced in Europe before the Holocaust, the film captures authentic scenes of Jewish shtetl life, traditional folk melodies and Yiddish love songs. Director Szabo is believed to have perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. The festive ending offers its characters a poignant happiness that was tragically to be denied their real-life brethren.
The Wandering Jew (Der Vanderner Yid)
USA 1933 B&W 66 minutes
Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: George Roland
The Wandering Jew is a unique find: the first American feature film to depict the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany, and the only Yiddish-language film of its era to address this subject. The film, which dramatizes the situation of German Jews, was an American-Jewish response to the Nazi regime. It was produced by Jewish American Film Arts at the Atlas Studio on Long Island, NY during the summer of 1933, just months after the Nazi rise to power in Germany."This graphic account of the tribulations of the Jewish people from the days of Pharaoh to those of Adolf Hitler, produced in New York, grips the spectator from start to finish. It is difficult to imagine a more crushing indictment of Nazism and all its works." - The New York Times
Where is My Child? (Vu iz Mayn Kind?)
USA 1937 92 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directors: Abraham Leff, Harry Lynn
Cast: Celia Adler, Anna Lillian, Morris Strassberg, Ruben Wendorf, Blanche Bernstein, Morris Silberkasten
Celia Adler, doyenne of the Yiddish stage, gives a haunting performance as the film's heroine who arrives in New York in 1911at the height of mass Jewish immigrationnewly widowed, friendless, impoverished and the mother of a newborn baby boy. Fearing that she cannot care for the child, she places him in an orphanage. She quickly regrets her decision, but it is too late as she finds herself tricked into giving the boy up for adoption. Obsessed with the thought of reunion with him, she spends the next twenty-five years searching, pining, and bewailing her loss."This film provides an insight into the concerns of Jews in the late thirties and their particular methods in playing out the reality of their situation, for whatever the numerous advantages of life in the United States, inevitably there was a price to be paid in terms of health, family ties and religion." Mashey Bernstein, Kansas City Jewish Chronicle
Yiddle with His Fiddle (Yidl Mitn Fidl)
Poland 1936 92 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directors: Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski
Director Green returned to his native Poland from America to produce this, the most commercially successful musical in the history of the Yiddish cinema. Starring Molly Picon, consummate comedienne of Yiddish theater, vaudeville, and film. This is the classic folk comedy about a man and his daughter who, penniless, decide to become travelling musicians. The daughter disguises herself as a boy to relieve her father's anxiety about unforseeable problems that could befall a young woman "out in the world." They then join together with "another" father-son duo for music, comedy and romance.Green's original screenplay was enhanced by the folksy lyrics of Yiddish poet Itzik Manger and the memorable musical score of Abraham Ellstein, as well as the talents of Leon Leibold, the romantic lead who later starred in The Dybbuk and Tevye, and Max Bozyk, a character actor par excellence.
Breaking away from the studio-bound cinematography of the early Yiddish talkies, the film was shot on location in the picturesque town of Kazimierz and nearby Warsaw. With shtetl inhabitants as extras, the film captures the vitality and invincible spirit of traditional small town Jewish life.
"With Picon at her pert best, a lilting score, and picturesque scenery, the 1936 `Yidl' turned into the first truly international Yiddish-movie hit."
Karen Lipson, New York Newsday
Documentaries
Feature Films // Yiddish 35mm // ShortsAvodah
Israel, 1935, 50 minutes, B&W
Director: Helmar Lerski
This landmark documentary celebrates 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 in Palestine, toiling and triumphing amidst the sweeping desert landscape.Closed Country
Switzerland, 1999, 86 minutes, color
French and German with English subtitles
Director: Kaspar Kasics
Based on research by: Stefan Machler
Jerusalem Film Festival Jewish Experience - Best Documentary -Honorable Mention
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. This startling film documents the journey of the brother and sister back to Switzerland, where they confront people from their past, including a former government border official and a nun from a monastery where the children briefly hid.A Kiss to This Land (Una Beso A Esta Tiera)
Mexico, 1995, 93 minutes, color
Spanish with English subtitles (also available in Spanish and French versions)
Directed by Daniel Goldberg
Golden Gate Award 1995 San Francisco International Film Festival
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 shared their memories and observations on leaving their homes and adapting to life in a new land. The oral histories of the highly engaging, diverse interviewees are enhanced with archival footage and still photographs to form a vivid portrait of Mexican-Jewish life past and present.The Liberation of Auschwitz 1945
Germany, 1985, 55 minutes, B&W
English and German (with English subtitles)
Director: Irmgard von zur Muhlen
This horrifying, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th 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.“…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
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
USA, 1999, 95 minutes, color
A film by Aviva Kempner
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.
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg is a humorous and nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon. Detroit Tiger Hammerin’ Hank’s accomplishments during the Golden Age of Baseball rivaled those of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
This compelling documentary examines how America’s first Jewish baseball star was a beacon of hope to American Jews who faced bigotry during the Depression and World War II. Included in the colorful collage of forty-seven interviews are Hank Greenberg and family members; sports figures Ira Berkow, Ernie Harwell, Joe Falls and Dick Schaap; fellow players Bob Feller, Charlie Gehringer and Ralph Kiner; fans Alan Dershowitz, Congressman Sander Levin and Senator Carl Levin; and actors Walter Matthau, Michael Moriarty, and Maury Povich. The film also features famous scenes from such Hollywood classics such as Gentleman’s Agreement, Night at The Opera, Pride of St. Louis and Woman of the Year as well as dramatic historical footage."Fascinating! Valuable as history and resonant with meaning for today" -Lawrence Van Gelder, New York Times
"You don't have to be Jewish to find it thoroughly engrossing and rewarding. You don't even have to know baseball" --Jay Carr, Boston Globe
A Musical Passage
USA, 1983, 73 minutes, color )
Director: Jim Brown
Since its first concert in 1978, the Soviet Émigré 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 intimate examination of the lives of the musicians and their conductor, Lazar Gosman. Director Brown expertly documents the struggles and triumphs of the émigrés as they relate their experiences in Russia and America."An unqualified delight." - Vincent Canby, New York Times
"A tender and glowing story of artists who survive to share their music... beautiful." - Judith Crist, WOR-TV/Saturday Review
Partisans of Vilna
USA, 1985, 130 minutes, B&W/Color
Director: Josh Waletzky
Cine Golden Eagle, 1985; Anthropos First Prize Winner, 1987
This extraordinary film tells the story of the men and women who formed the Jewish partisan movement in Vilna, Lithuania during WWII. Using rare archival footage of 1939-44 and contemporary interviews with 40 partisan survivors (including Abba Kovber, a founder of the partisan movement and one of Israel's leading poets,) the film explores the difficulties of organizing under the anarchic conditions of the ghetto."You'll know you are watching heroes. Their courage is visible and unmistakable" - Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“A movie that must be seen..Stirring. absorbing…incredible.” – Jeffery Lyons, Sneak Previews
Weapons of the Spirit
USA, 1989, 120 minutes, color
English and French with English subtitles
Director: Pierre Sauvage
Best Independent Documentary, DuPont-Columbia University Awards for Broadcast Journalism
In the summer of 1942, the Protestant villagers of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon clandestinely sheltered their Jewish neighbors from Nazi deportation. Descendants of the Huguenots, the residents of Le Chambon selflessly saved 5,000 Jewish lives, among them director Sauvage and his parents. Returning to his birthplace in 1982, Sauvage uncovers his own personal story and that of the Huguenots who took it upon themselves to "love thy neighbor as thyself" despite tremendous risk to their community. (Note: Video version includes Bill Moyers' PBS interview with Pierre Sauvage.)“An inquiry into the nature of goodness and a personal odyssey. Moving and provocative… Enormously uplifting”
-David Ansen, Newsweek
Shorts
Feature Films // Yiddish 35mm // DocumentariesAdvise and Dissent
2002, USA, 21 min, Color
Directed By Leib Cohen
Starring: Eli Wallach, Rebecca Pidgeon,
and Joh Pankow
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, Ellen (Rebecca Pidgeon) . The rabbi refuses, but gives Goldman peculiar advice on how to do away with her, setting into motion a series of unexpected events."Breezy and pointed, Advise and Dissent is as magical and pixyish as Wallach's little smile. Filmed in Cambridge, Mass., this tale is a delightful surprise." - Michael Janusonis, Providence Journal
Farewell
Russia, 1992, 27 minutes, B&W
Russian with English subtitles
Director: Arkadiy Yakhnis
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 FestivalLegend of Ms. Goldman and the Almighty God
Germany, 1996, 3 minutes, color
Director: Michael Verhoeven
This gem is a short comic parable, related on camera by playwright George Tabori, which delivers a light-hearted punchline to an age-old spiritual dilemma. The film provides insight into Tabori’s wry, sardonic wit, a distinctive brand of humor that pervades the feature “My Mother’s Courage” (see above listing under Features.)Our Time in the Garden
USA, 1981, 15 minutes, B&W
Director: Ron Blau
Selected for 1981 Berlin Film Festival and Cinema du Reel Festival, Paris
This true story of a young Jewish woman growing up in Berlin at the time of Hitler's rise to power begins as a vividly detailed chronicle of her charmed and secure life, at the center of which is the family's walled garden. But outside, the antisemitism that has always existed becomes a shattering force as the Nazis take control and her family decides to abandon Germany forever. This moving short film combines the family's home movies (which have been re-photographed with special effects) with overlapping soundtracks, in order to re-create their "time in the garden.""Haunting... this film gains its considerable power by our hindsight knowledge of the impending Holocaust." - Gerald Peary, The Real Paper
The Shower
Israel, 1997, 35 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich
Best Short Film, Jerusalem Film Festival; Best Short Film, Uruguay International Film Festival
Hospitalized in a ward, a father (Yossi Yadin) pleads with his son to be allowed to go home at least once for a shower. The elderly man’s anxiety in the face of loneliness and death fades and the unresolved conflicts of his family disappear for a few moments of grace as his son bathes him in the shower.So We Said Goodbye
Israel, 1991, 26 minutes, B&W/Color
Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: Jorge Gurvich
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, not realizing that he would never see them again.“This beautiful short film by the Israeli outstanding photographer Jorge Gurvich moved me to tears. Do not miss it!” – Nacham Ingbar, Yediot Aharonot
The Turkey (La Dinde)
Belgium, 1998, 18 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Director: Sam Garbarsk
Awards: Best Scenario, European Film Festival of Virton; Prix Cinecole, Images en Region, Vendome, France
Billed as “a Jewish Christmas tale,” this award-winning short takes place in Brussels in 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.Zahor
France, 1996, 22 minutes, b&w
English
Directed by Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir
Awards: Gold Hugo Award -Chicago International Film Festival, USA - Best Documentary, History/Biography - October, 1996 Director’s Choice Award, Black Maria Film Festival, Jersey City, NJ, USA - January, 1997
“So many Holocaust films draw their power exclusively from the event itself, but Zahor has an original idea. In a brief 22 minutes Zahor makes an essential visual point about the victims of the Holocaust - that the way they are traditionally presented in the media, as skeletons in striped uniforms, says nothing about them but everything about their Nazi tormentors. Through vintage photographs and films we meet real people-not yet victims-young people with so much potential, crushed with so much hate, hate tolerated by so much indifference worldwide. You won’t easily forget Zahor.” — Gene Siskel
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
P: (781) 899 7044, F: (781) 736 2070
