* _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.
* _Comrade Abram_ (Tovarishch Abram) USSR 1919 18 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles Director: Alexander Razumni for the Mos-Kino Committee
One of a series of short Bolshevik propaganda films, _Comrade Abram_ focuses on Abram Hersh, a young Jewish pogrom survivor who became a factory worker and organizer in Moscow and eventually rose to leadership in the Red Army. This short emphasizes Hersh's suffering and heroism as both worker and Jew, and promotes solidarity over antisemitism.
* _His Excellency_ (aka Seeds of Freedom/Yevo Prevoshoditelstvo) USSR 1928 76 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles (Incomplete: missing one reel) Director: Grigori Roshal
According to Director Roshel, the subject matter of this film was so delicate that the Soviet Commissar of Enlightenment oversaw production of this film personally. The film is based on the life of Hirsch Lekert, a shoemaker and militant Jewish Labor Bund member, who attempted to assassinate the Vilna governor in 1902 to avenge the flogging of workers who participated in a May Day rally. Although the film was intended "as a tract against individualism,...a greater emphasis is placed on class struggle within the Jewish community." Bourgeois Jewish Zionists find themselves pitted against fellow Jewish proletariats and the government.
_His Excellency_ was the first Soviet-Jewish film to be produced after a demand by the Central Committee's Department for Agitprop that fictional films be made "...in a way that an be appreciated by millions." In the tradition of brilliant Soviet directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin, _His Excellency_ features stylized cinematography and stars Leonid Leonidov, a star of the Moscow Art Theater, and in a small part, Nikolai Cherkasov, who would later play the lead roles in Eisenstein's _Alexander Nevsky_ and _Ivan the Terrible_. With J. Untershlak and Tamara Edelheim as Hirsh and Rivele Lekert, and the Moscow Art Theater's Leonid Leonidov as both the Tsar's governor and the community's rabbi.
* _Jewish Luck_ (Yevreiskoye Schastye / Menakhem Mendl) USSR 1925 100 minutes B&W Silent with 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.
* _Laughter Through Tears_ (aka 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.
* _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.
* _The Return of Nathan Becker_ (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.
* _Uncle Moses_ USA 1932 87 minutes B&W Yiddish with NEW English subtitles Directors: Sidney Goldin and Aubrey Scotto Based on the novel by Sholem Asch Cast: Maurice Schwartz, Rubin Goldberg, Judith Abarbanel, Zvee Scooler
When poverty and persecution compel his Polish landsmen to leave their shtetl, "Uncle" Moses, the crude and lusty former butcher, welcomes them to the promised land of his Lower East Side clothing factory. A master in the harsh new American system, with its fourteen-hour workday, Moses attempts to reconstruct the lost harmony of the shtetl community in the paternalistic order of his sweatshop...."[This is] the first Yiddish talkie engaged directly [in] the progressive currents of the day, political and aesthetic" (J. Hoberman, _Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds_).
_Uncle Moses_ stands as one of the finest examples of Yiddish cinema and is unique in its portrayal of a despotic Jewish factory boss who takes pleasure in seeing the "tables turned" by employing the former leaders and highly respected men of his shtetl as sweatshop tailors. Uncle Moses is a harsh man who uses his wealth and power to fight against unionization of his shop (by a young idealistic Jew) and manipulate women, especially the daughters of his workers.
_Uncle Moses_ "is a symphony of contradictions, which [Yiddish Art Theater founder] Schwartz orchestrates brilliantly" (Richard Corliss, _Time_).
* _Yosl Cutler and His Puppets_ USA 1935 18 minutes Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
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.
<http://www.jewishfilm.org/yiddish1.html> ***** -- Yoshie
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