SCREENINGS
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (2008)
The seamy Jewish underworld of Odessa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik ("Mike the Jap") Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang. They profit from their criminal activities until the Russian Revolution 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, The Village Voice
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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