The Jolly Paupers (Freylekhe Kabtsonim)
OCTOBER 29
Sunday, 2 pm, LeFrak Concert Hall
(DVD; Yiddish, with English subtitles;
65 minutes; 1938)
A heartwarming musical comedy, starring the
famed comic duo Dzigan and Shumacher,
the film portrays two small-town “entrepreneurs” who believe they have struck oil in a
local field. The whole town finds out and
thus begins a hilarious comedy of errors,
including millionaire investors, American
schemers, and insane asylums. Despite many
setbacks and intramural quarreling, the two
heroes persevere and are relentless in their
efforts to escape their misery and their refusal
to give in to despair. The film combines the
rare talents of the Warsaw Art Players, and is
a wonderful example of a comedy revue theater,
full of satirical monologues and skits,
which provided Jews of that day, as of today,
with an escape and an opportunity to laugh.
Discussant: Professor Emanuel S.
Goldsmith
Emanuel S.
Goldsmith is
Professor of Hebrew and
Yiddish at Queens College.
He is the author of Modern
Yiddish Culture: The Story of
the Yiddish Language Movement
and the two-volume
Yiddish Literature in America (in Yiddish).
He is also the co-editor of Thinkers and
Teachers of Modern Judaism; The American
Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan; Events and
Movements in Modern Judaism; and
Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of
Mordecai Kaplan. Professor Goldsmith is a
member of the Highlands Institute for
American Religious and Philosophical
Thought and on the executive committee of
the Congress for Jewish Culture. His essays
and articles have appeared in numerous collective
volumes, journals, and anthologies.
The Legacy of Jedwabne
DECEMBER 3
Sunday, 2 pm, LeFrak Concert Hall
(DVD; 65 minutes; color and b&w; 2004)
The Legacy of Jedwabne is a feature-length
documentary that tells the story of a
pogrom in Jedwabne, Poland, a town in
which Jews lived side by side with localPoles for over two centuries, and in which
they constituted more than half of the
town’s 2500 residents. Relations were peaceful
for the most part until July 10, 1941, just
days after Nazi occupation, when almost
the entire Jewish population was murdered
by their Polish neighbors. This deeply moving
and troubling film explores the incident
but also probes the far-reaching implications
for the importance of historical memory
and its use by groups in the construction
of group identity. Specifically, it asks
what are the ramifications of history for
Jewish-gentile relations, and how can positive
contemporary intergroup relationships
be promoted in the wake of sharply conflicting
memories of the past?
Discussant: Professor Stuart Liebman
Stuart Liebman is Professor
of Media Studies, former
chair of the Department of
Media Studies at Queens
College, and coordinator of
the Film Certificate Program
at the CUNY Graduate
Center. Specializing in early European and
postwar German cinema, his publications
include the award-winning 1995 issue of
the mass rape of German
women after World War II. He
has written extensively on early
French filmmakers such as
Renoir, Dulac, and Epstein. He
is now engaged in teaching and
research on the representation
of the Holocaust in film, and
recently returned from a sabbatical
in Washington, DC, where
he held a prestigious fellowship
from the Holocaust Museum to
study postwar European films
on the Holocaust
Left Luggage
FEBRUARY 25
Sunday, 2 pm, LeFrak
Concert Hall
(DVD; 100 minutes; color; 1998)
A survivor of the Holocaust (Maximilian
Schell) had buried all of his possessions
when he fled Antwerp with his family during
World War II. Twenty-five years later,
he is obsessed with finding the hiding place.
Meanwhile, he and his wife, also a survivor,
have raised a daughter to be a non-religious
Jew. On the other side of town, a Hasidic
mother (Isabella Rosselini) is looking for a
nanny for her children. The survivor’s daughter,
desperately in need of money to support herself,
takes the job, though she admits to “detesting these people.” The development of
relationships is dramatically compelling, the
acting powerful, and the story endearing.
Discussant: Dr. Eric Goldman
Eric Goldman is founder
and president of Ergo Media,
Inc., a video publishing company
specializing in Jewish
and Israeli videos. He
received his PhD in Cinema
Studies from NYU, and holds
graduate degrees in Contemporary Jewish
Studies and Theater Arts from Brandeis
University. A former director of the Jewish
Media Service, he was a curator of film for
the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research,
organizer of an Israeli film series at the 92nd
Street Y and the Yiddish film series of
Hebrew Union College. Currently, he curates
and moderates film programs for YIVO at
the Center for Jewish History, is film
reviewer for New Jersey’s The Jewish
Standard, and is artistic director of the
Philadelphia Jack Wolgin Jewish Film
Festival. He has taught at Queens College,
Fairleigh Dickinson University, and the
University of Pennsylvania, and published the
soon-to-be reissued book, Visions, Images
and Dreams: Yiddish Film Past and Present.
Pillar of Salt
MARCH 11
Sunday, 2 pm, LeFrak Concert Hall
(DVD; 60 minutes; French, with English
subtitles; color; Israel, 1980)
Based on the acclaimed autobiographical
novel by Tunisian-born Jewish philosopher
Albert Memmi, this film is an unusual coming-
of-age drama about young Alexander,
age 13, set in the Jewish quarter of Tunis. It
mixes the story about childhood, family ties,
and community with insights into class,
colonialism, and religious conflict. It evocatively
captures and recreates the atmosphere
of the day, using Tunisian music, poetic narration,
and attention to detail.The film
affords a rare opportunity to see the unique
customs of Jewish life in Tunisia, including
Sabbath dinner and Alexander’s bar mitzvah.
Discussant: Professor Jane Gerber
Jane S. Gerber is Professor
of Jewish History and director
of the Institute of
Sephardic Studies at the
Graduate Center of the City
University of New York. She
is the author of numerous
books and articles on the history of
Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewry,
including The Jews of Spain, which won the
National Jewish Book Award in 1993. She
is the past president of the Association for
Jewish Studies, and has been a Visiting
Professor at Harvard, Yale, Columbia,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the
Jewish Theological Seminary.
Photo stills courtesy of: The National Jewish Film
Center, Castle Hill Productions, and Log In
Productions.