PFA Film Series September-October 1995


To Film Calandar by date, with links to full film notes


Laughter through Tears: Yiddish Film

-- September 7, 10, 14, 16, 17, 21, 23, 28, 30; October 1, 5, 7, 12, 19, 21, 22, and 26. Sharon Rivo, Executive Director of The National Center for Jewish Film, Brandeis University, introduces the programs on September 7 and 10; and J. Hoberman, Village Voice film critic and author of Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds introduces the screenings on October 19 and 22. Priceless films from the vanished world of European Jewry (and from the New World's communities of Yiddish speakers) can be seen in this major series of films restored by the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University. The series includes 26 feature-length films, made during the years 1923 to 1948, in the U.S., Poland, Russia, West Germany, and Austria. Included are adaptations from the writings of leading Yiddish authors, including Isaac Babel, Sholem Aleichem, and Sholem Asch. Although these films are poignant records of lost European and American cultures, they also offer joyous testament to cultural treasures--songs, dances, unique humor, legends, holidays, and rituals--including a wealth of wedding celebrations.

Among many highlights are heartwarming performances from some of the stars of New York's once-thriving Yiddish theater. Molly Picon can be seen as a girl who disguises herself as a boy to tour with a klezmer band in Yiddle with His Fiddle; as a flapper visiting Poland in East and West and as the selfless, singing heroine of Little Mother/Mamele. Maurice Schwartz, a famous actor/director who was called "the Olivier of the Yiddish stage" is the definitive screen Tevye in a 1939 film adaptation of the Sholem Aleichem stories that later were the basis for Fiddler on the Roof. In Uncle Moses, one of the revelations of this series, Schwartz gives an outstanding performance as a Lower East Side mini-mogul. Cantor and matinee idol Moishe Oysher can be seen in Edgar G. Ulmer's The Singing Blacksmith and as a devout musician seduced into the world of Gentile opera in Overture to Glory. Popular stage star Jennie Goldstein demonstrates the emotional gusto that brought her acclaim in the melodrama Two Sisters, and the irrepressible comic Ludwig Satz sings and plays a double role in His Wife's Lover.

Beautiful films made in the USSR present extraordinary visions of village life and society. Laughter through Tears and Jewish Luck hearken back to tsarist Russia as described in the humorous and touching stories of Sholem Aleichem, and His Excellency examines class divisions in the Jewish community in turn-of-the-century Vilna. The Return of Nathan Becker is a fascinating comedy about a Jewish immigrant who, after 20 years in America, goes back to his hometown in the USSR. Haunting films made in Poland -- by Polish and American directors -- in the era just before World War II now present a window to a world that would soon be destroyed. These include the musical comedy The Jester and the touching A Letter to Mother, both made in Poland by American director Joseph Green, as well as a documentary, Children Must Laugh, about the Jewish Labor Bund's efforts on behalf of sick children. The beautiful film, The Dybbuk is a mystical, expressionist depiction of uneasy spirits who haunt the world of the living. Without a Home, starring Polish diva Ida Kaminska (who can be seen acting with her mother, Ester-Rokhl Kaminska in A Vilna Legend) was the last Yiddish feature made in Europe before the war. Our Children, Long is the Road, and We Who Remain, made in 1947 and 1948 in Europe, offer the first views of the Holocaust, recounted by its survivors.

Margaret Mead Film and Video Festival

-- October 25, 28, 30. George Stoney in Person, October 28. PFA is happy to be present a kaleidoscope of views of cultures and communities around the globe, selected from this year's Mead Festival, America's preeminent showcase for ethnographic film and video. On October 28, PFA salutes the outstanding documentarian George Stoney, who will appear in person with his films Uprising of '34, the story of a historic attempt by millworkers throughout the American South to form a union; All My Babies, an influential documentary about an African-American midwife in Georgia in the 1950s; and The Shepherd of the Night Flock, a portrait of Manhattan minister John Garcia, who befriended many jazz musicians and whose church offered jazz services. Other films show life in a small Appalachian community in West Virginia; transformations in the working-class town of Byker in Northeast England; competitive tomato raising among Sicilian immigrants in Australia; the philosophies of Soviet cosmonauts; and the lives of an African emigrant in London and a Philadelphia boy chosen as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Mother Dao, the Turtlelike is a beautiful film record of life in the former Dutch East Indies in the years 1912 to 1932. When Billy Broke His Head... and Other Tales of Wonder features Billy Golfus, a journalist who sustained brain damage in an accident. Golfus travels throughout the U.S., and offers his wry and insightful comments on political and personal challenges, as he works for the rights of people with disabilities.

Alf Sjöberg

-- September 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 15, 22, 24, 29; and October 6, 13, 20, 27. A retrospective view of a master of Swedish cinema. Mentor to Ingmar Bergman (Torment was Bergman's first produced screenplay), Sjöberg (1903-1980) was an internationally-acclaimed stage director, famed for multi-disciplinary productions as Artistic Director of Sweden's Royal Dramatic Theater, and a Cannes-Festival-winning filmmaker esteemed for works of keen psychological insight graced with beautiful acting performances. Among the highlights in this series are Torment, a parable about Nazi power set in a school terrorized by an evil Latin teacher, and Only a Mother (never theatrically released in the U.S.), a film about a poor farm worker played by Eva Dahlbeck, who gives, according to critic Elliot Stein, "one of the greatest performances in European cinema." Sjöberg is best known for his screen adaptations from Strindberg. PFA's series includes a stunning version of Miss Julie, as well as The Father, and Karin Månsdotter, which is partly based on Strindberg's Erik XIV.

The New Child

-- September 13, 19, 27; and October 3, 11, 17. Presented in conjunction with the University Art Museum's major exhibition "The New Child: British Art and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730-1830." This film and video series expands upon themes in the art exhibition, offering seven feature films, including Michael Apted's 35 Up, Dennis Potter's Blue Remembered Hills, Marguerite Duras's Les Enfants, Peter Brook's Lord of the Flies, and the West Coast Premiere of Obsessive Becoming by Daniel Reeves. The series also encompasses a wealth of short works by film and video makers as varied as Peggy Ahwesh, the Lumiere Brothers, Guy Sherwin, Stan Brakhage, Jean-Luc Godard, Joseph Cornell, Todd Haynes, and Bruce Conner.

The Decade Between: American Video Art, 1978-1988

-- September 6, 20; and October 4, 18. A crucial era in the young history of video art is displayed in this series, which includes works by Doug Hall, Ilene Segalove; often-witty appropriations from television as manipulated by Chip Lord, Jeanne Finley, Joan Braderman and Dara Birnbaum; and thoughtful analyses of visual and verbal languages by Juan Downey, Gary Hill, and Peter Rose.

A Halloween Favorite: James Whale's THE OLD DARK HOUSE

-- Tuesday, October 31, 7:30 pm. James Whale's 1932 classic--made shortly after his hit, Frankenstein--offers Boris Karloff, Charles Laughton, Melvin Douglas, and Raymond Massey in a mysterious mansion; The Old Dark House established the popularity of horror-comedies by offering a stylish mélange that included creaking doors, a thunderstorm, a demented butler, and a pyromaniac chained in the basement. Masks optional.