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