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American Matchmaker Amerikaner Shadkhn
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
B
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USA 1980 8 minutes Animated
Directed by Sally Heckel
16mm
The Bent Tree is an animated fable based on Itzik Manger's folk tune, "Afn Veg Shteyt a Boym" (On the Road Stands a Tree) about a child whose mother deprives him of freedom to explore the world. Josh Waletsky's music and vocals infuse this work with warmth and feeling. Recommended for younger children and/or Yiddish-speaking audiences."Sally Heckel's sand animation is skillful and lyrical, its patterns visually follow the flow of the song."
Edith Zornow, Film Producer, Children's Television Workshop, 1980
C
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USA, 1931, 10 min, B&W
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
35mm 16mm DVD
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 musical drama marks the screen debut of Moishe Oysher who stars as a wayward youth who travels from Polish shtetl to New York's Lower East Side where he becomes a well-known singer. More
USA 1949 93 minutes B&W
Directed by Josef Berne
16mm DVD
A Jewish resort hotel celebrates a pair of longtime customers' fiftieth wedding anniversary by staging an old-fashioned Borscht Belt show. More
Restored by NCJF
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. More
USA 1968 11 minutes B&W Yiddish (no subtitles)
Director: Abe Wexler
16mm DVD
Yes, it's just your typical all-Yiddish shoot-'em-up: a small boy falls out of a covered wagon on its way West and shows up years later as a quick trigger cowboy. More
D
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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Poland 1938 10 minutes B&W
Yiddish with complete, new English subtitles
16mm DVD
The lively Jewish neighborhoods of Warsaw, including Zamenhof Street and the commercial "beehive" Nalewki Street, were home to 400,000 Jews before World War II. 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
E
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
Austria 1923 85 minutes B&W
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin and Ivan Abramson
16mm DVD
This delightful comedy opens as Morris Brown, a New Yorker better acquainted with his checkbook than his prayerbook, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. More
F
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
USA 1931 15 minutes B&W English, Hebrew, and Yiddish (no subtitles)
Producer: Sidney M. Goldin for Jacob Berkowitz
16mm VHS DVD
A seder in the midst of North American prosperity recalls traditional Passover celebrations in Russia (with the same cast enacting both scenes). More
G
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
USA 1949 100 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
16mm DVD
A wager between God and Satan has dire consequences in this allegory about the material world's false promises. More
USA, 2006, 120 minutes B&W/color
Hebrew, Yiddish & English with English subtitles
Directed by Rich Pontius
DVD
The long-awaited re-release of NCJF’s most popular titles, these two films feature some of the rarest and finest performances of renowned cantors from 1910 to the 1940s. 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 to rival Joe Green's Yiddle. More
H
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Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
USSR 1928 76 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles (Incomplete: missing one reel)
Directed by Grigori Roshal
35mm 16mm VHS
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
I
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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
J
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Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
Poland 1937 90 minutes B&W
Directed by Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski
Currently Unavailable
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
Poland 1938 and 1939, each 10 minutes B&W
Yiddish with complete, new English subtitles
16mm DVD VHS
In 1938 and 1939, Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind of Warsaw-based Sektor Films produced six short films about urban Jewish communities in Poland. More
USSR 1925 100 minutes B&W Silent wiht English intertitles (Russian intertitles also available)
Directed by Alexander Granovsky
35mm 16mm VHS
Jewish Luck was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. 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
L
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
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
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
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
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 VHS
This is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. More
M
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Please refer to the Title Price Index for film format and pricing information.
Poland, 1938, 100 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW additional English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Konrad Tom
Mamele is a muscial comedy that embraces the entire gamut of interwar Jewish life in Lodz in all its diversity, with tenements and unemployed Jews, nightclubs and gangsters, and religious Jews celebrating Succoth. More
USA 1939 80 minutes B&W Yiddish with English subtitles
Director: Joseph Berne
16mm DVD
Mirele Efros, "the Jewish Queen Lear," was the masterpiece of Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin, an enormously influential Yiddish playwright. 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 VHS
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
O
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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Poland 1948 68 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Natan Gross and Shaul Goskind
35mm 16mm VHS
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 1940 77 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Max Nosseck
35mm 16mm VHS
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
R
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USSR, 1932, 72 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Boris Shpis and Mark Milman
35mm
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
S
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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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
T
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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
USA, 1938, 82 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Ben K. Blake
16mm DVD VHS
After the death of their mother, older sister Betty works tirelessly only to see her happiness shattered when her sister and fiancée fall in love. More
U
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USA, 1932, 87 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Sidney Goldin & Aubrey Scotto
16mm DVD VHS
When poverty and persecution compel his Polish landsmen to leave their shtetl, "Uncle" Moses welcomes them to the promised land of his Lower East Side clothing factory. 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 and heads for America where he starts to learn English and begins on the road to a new life as a journalist. When he learns from a friend that his wife has died in Russia, the writer becomes involved with a cantor's daughter. The writer soon experiences the new "value" system among American Jews when the woman's parents do not approve of him because he is poor (even though he is more traditional than the wealthy man they have their eye on). This immigrant tale gets even more complicated when the first wife turns up and the cantor's daughter defies her parents by taking control of her own life decisions.
V
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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(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
W
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USA, 1933, 66 minutes
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by 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. 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 1937 92 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Abraham Leff, Harry Lynn
16mm VHS
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 immigration. More
Poland, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Alexander Martin
16mm DVD
The last Yiddish feature made in Poland before WWII, this 1939 film was based on a 1907 play by the prolific playwright Jacob Gordin. More
Y
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[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]
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USA 1991 60 minutes B&W/Color
Directed by Rich Pontius
DVD
Narrated by prolific playwright David Mamet, this film is a perfect way to introduce new audiences to Yiddish cinema. More
USA, 1935, 86 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Harry Thomashefsky
16mm
Jacob Gordin's famous play transposes the Shakespeare story to turn-of-the-century Jewish Vilna. 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
(remade in 1933 as Prince and Pauper)
Austria, 1924, 100 minutes, b&w
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
16mm DVD VHS
Yizkor dramatizes its theme of fidelity to one's self, one's community and one's religion through a plot that revolves around hostage-taking, heroism and resistance. More
USA, 1935, 18 minutes,b&w
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
16mm DVD VHS
This film is a performance of one of Yosl Cutler's solo puppet shows. A multi-talented artist, writer, poet, and Yiddish Art Theater designer, Cutler is probably best known as the cartoonist for the Jewish communist newspaper, the Freiheit. These fanciful and slightly surreal sketches preserve his work with the marionettes he designed, built and brought to life.
Z
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Israel-Germany, 1989, 135 minutes, Color
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henryk M. Broder & Frans van der Meulen
DVD VHS
The state of Yiddish culture in Israel is examined, from socialist Bundists in Tel Aviv to and all the people for whom Yiddish is a living language in the midst of Hebrew. 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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