Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.
Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.
2004-11-14
10
Films, photographs and interviews depict Jewish life in the "shtetls" of Eastern Europe.
In these three short films, we examine key issues in the American cultural conversation—incarceration, race, life, death, digital culture, gender—through a distorted lens. They may be fictional, but these dizzying one-take videos do have the ring of truth.
Living Distance is a fantasy and a mission, in which a wisdom tooth is sent to outer space and back down to Earth again. Propelled by a crystalline robotic sculpture called EBIFA, the tooth becomes a newborn entity in outer space. Its performance is about death, body, and home, in a world where our science exploration and spiritual journeys are diverging.
In the year 2035, survivors of a now almost completely evacuated post-apocalyptic Britain compete for a government bounty to retrieve a mysterious bio weapon known only as Unit Eleven.
A film that depicts the everyday life and the beauty of Portela’s Old Folk – a group of veteran samba musicians who belong to one of Rio’s most revered samba schools, the one with the most first places and accolades in Rio’s Carnaval pageant. These old gentelmen’s and ladies’ musicality and poetry are unveiled through their simple, but rich and meaningful, every day life in Oswaldo Cruz, a quaint neighborhood in Rio’s North Zone, that serves both as set and as a main character in this story.
The crew from Outkast Paranormal dive deep into Myakka City, Florida, to investigate the mystery of the skunk ape like no one has before.
An electronics expert searching for evidence of aliens picks up signals that he believes are from an alien spacecraft--and they are coming from a lake near town.
A documentary overview of the career of silent cinema pioneer Edwin S. Porter.
Join King Andreas and friends as they search to know how to handle their newfound power. What will become of the Moosehead on stick?
In this fast-paced Greek wedding comedy, young lovers Ilias and Marina arrive on the island of Crete for their wedding, along with their large, boisterous families all eager to celebrate the nuptials. However, when a typo on the wedding invitation confuses the reception venue and scatters the guests in different directions, they embark on a collision course of increasingly comedic proportions.
A documentary road-movie about 7 young women's artists on tour on a bus, all over Europe this summer, who create on stage a manifesto on feminism, sex, art and education.
One night in a lonely hotel room, two strangers fatefully meet - one blind - one suicidal. During the night they spend together, they learn of each others differences and similarities and change as people.
Laura and Micha travel the Danish countryside performing their off-beat cabaret show. Their personal lives suffer as a result of their dedication to their craft, yet the chaos that ensues becomes the grist for their revue.
Do you know what goes on in the head of someone who walks past you?
30 thousand Hasidim journey to Uman in Ukraine to celebrate the Jewish New Year at the gravesite of Rebbe Nachmann. A Ukrainian far-right group erects a cross at the site of Hasidic prayers and builds a monument to Cossacks who slaughtered thousands of Jews and Poles in 1768.
Commentator-comic Bill Maher plays devil's advocate with religion as he talks to believers about their faith. Traveling around the world, Maher examines the tenets of Christianity, Judaism and Islam and raises questions about homosexuality, proof of Christ's existence, Jewish Sabbath laws, violent Muslim extremists.
The first film in Miklós Jancsó's documentary series Message of Stones.
A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.
Chez Schwartz takes us inside a year in the life of Schwartz's Deli - the unique 75-year-old landmark on Montreal's historic Main. Filmed through changing seasons, from the quiet of early morning preparation to the frenetic bustle of packed lunch times and never ending line-ups, to the more relaxed ambiance late at night - Chez Schwartz is an evocative, cinematic portrait of a small spunky deli known worldwide equally for its atmosphere and smoked meat.
Shalom Italia tells the story of three brothers, who set off on a journey to find a cave in the woods of Tuscany. The place where they, as children, hid to escape the Nazis. But more than a search to find a geographical location, the brothers are on their way to locate the common ground of memory, the nexus where the conflicting versions of their stories can come to rest.
A deep dive documentary into the history of the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague.
Naomi seems like a typical nine-year-old girl, until her passion for powerlifting transforms her life with world record-breaking championships and national news headlines. Supergirl explores Naomi’s coming-of-age journey as she and her Orthodox Jewish family are changed forever by her inner strength and extraordinary talent.
Documentarians Justine Shapiro and B.Z. Goldberg traveled to Israel to interview Palestinian and Israeli kids ages 11 to 13, assembling their views on living in a society afflicted with violence, separatism and religious and political extremism. This 2002 Oscar nominee for Best Feature Documentary culminates in an astonishing day in which two Israeli children meet Palestinian youngsters at a refugee camp.
Leningrad, 1970. A group of young Jewish dissidents plot to hijack an empty plane and escape the USSR. Caught by the KGB a few steps from boarding, they were sentenced to years in the gulag and two were sentenced to death; they never got on a plane. 45 years later, filmmaker Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov reveals the compelling story of her parents, leaders of the group, "heroes" in the West but "terrorists" in Russia, even today.
This story follows one man's quest to uncover the origins and reveal the mysteries of a possible Holocaust artifact some historians now say never existed: lampshades made of human skin. When the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina receded, they left behind a wrecked New Orleans and a strange looking lamp that an illicit dealer claimed was 'made from the skin of Jews.'
In the nine months prior to World War II, 10.000 innocent children left behind their families, their homes, their childhood, and took the journey... to Britain to escape the Nazi Holocaust.
Josef Ganz, editor of trade journal Motor-Kritik, amazed Germany by appearing in a revolutionary tiny car in 1932. It was his dream: a people's car anyone can afford. The idea made its way to new Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler. But in Hitler's dream there was no place for Jewish inventor Ganz. This is the story of the man whose designs led to the invention of the Volkswagen Beetle, and who ultimately lost everything. In the film, Ganz's relatives and admirers bring his lost heritage back to life.
Director Miguel Kohan tries to connect the memories of his Gaucho-Jewish family with the fleeing of the Sephardim from the Iberian Península in 1492. Surinam, New York, Jamaica, and Brazil are some of the places where the untold story of those who escaped inquisition is visibilized.
An inspiring documentary film that details the life mission of Col. Ilan Ramon, the first and only Astronaut from Israel, who blasted off on the Shuttle Columbia. He carries with him a cherished artifact, a miniature Torah scroll, that had survived the Holocaust. From the "Depths of hell to the heights of space," his simple gesture would serve to honor the hope of a nation and to fulfill a promise made to generations past and future. - Written by Anonymous via IMDB
Intent on shaking up the ultimate 'sacred cow' for Jews, Israeli director Yoav Shamir embarks on a provocative - and at times irreverent - quest to answer the question, "What is anti-Semitism today?"
Jude addresses the transformation of an Orthodox Jewish Rebbetzin (Rabbi’s wife) in a British Synagogue to a single, non-binary person coming to terms with their parenthood, religious identity, sexuality and gender, using the Internet as a way of forging new possibilities for their existence and self-expression.