40 Nickels

The Man Without a World(en)

The Man Without a World is credited to the legendary (and imaginary) 1920s Soviet director, Yevgeny Antinov. But the film is anything but old. In fact, Antinov himself is the creation of contemporary filmmaker Eleanor Antin. Her film is a moving, comic melodrama set in a typical shtetl (village) in Poland. The Jews’ struggle against poverty and racial hatred is complicated by their own division into hostile political factions of the religious orthodoxy, assimilationists, socialists, Zionists, anarchists and survivors. While the Jews of the shtetl pursue their loves, politics, religion, business and dreams for the future, the Angel of Death is ever near...

The Song of Names(en)

A man searching for his childhood best friend — a Polish violin prodigy orphaned in the Holocaust — who vanished decades before on the night of his first public performance.

An American Pickle(en)

An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.

The Paper Brigade(fr)

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

The Great Yiddish Love(en)

Set in Berlin and New York's Lower East Side, The Great Yiddish Love stars the self-exiled Marlene Dietrich and her Nazi-endorsed replacement, Zarah Leander. It is a melodrama of love, emigration, and betrayal reassembled from Hollywood, German Ufa and Yiddish films from the 1930s and 40s.

Gold for Fools(en)

Raised in rural isolation by an extremist Hasidic sect, Chaim is torn between his devotion to his grandmother, an aging Holocaust survivor, and his attraction to a sexy blond in a Liberty car insurance ad.

Nifradnu Kach(he)

While saying goodbye to his son and grandchildren who are leaving Israel, Yackov remembers when, as a child, he also said goodbye to his family in Poland in 1937, not realizing that he would never see them again.

Motel the Operator(yi)

Motel, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide. The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs by Sholem Secunda featuring Cantor Leibele Waldman and Joel Feig's famous choir are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.

The Night Trotsky Came to Dinner(en)

Every family has its own fictions: why are they invented, what social values do they reflect and how do later generations interpret them? How is political identity formed - passed down, integrated or rejected - within one family? The tale traverses the Pale, the New World and back to the Old World.

East Side(yi)

East Side is a brand new yiddish DVD written and directed by Ari Abramowitz. Thrilling, exciting, dramatic and emotional, perfect for the entire family.

A Yiddish World Remembered(en)

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.

A bissele Glik(de)

Omi(en)

An impulsive millennial mensch who gets possessed by the spirit of his dead Yiddish grandma.

Song Searcher(en)

This film is the story of a man’s lifelong search for authentic Yiddish folk music and of his unique archive, which was presumed to be lost forever. Moyshe Beregovsky, a musician and scholar, crisscrossed Ukraine with phonograph in hand during the most dramatic years of Soviet history in order to record and study the traditional music of Ukrainian Jewry. His work began in the 1920’s and led to his arrest and imprisonment in a Stalinist labor camp in 1950. Most of those he recorded on hundreds of fragile wax cylinders were shot by the Nazis and tossed into countless mass graves. Ultimately, Beregovsky succeeded in saving the musical heritage of the centuries-old Yiddish civilization. He rescued the Living Voice of his people from the flames of the Holocaust but paid for it with his life. With this introduction, Yelena Yakovich one of the leading Russian documentary film-makers, begins her latest work, Song Searcher.

A Little Family Conversation(fr)

The questioning of Jewish heritage and identity via the portrait of a diversed family, across Belgium and the United States.

Too Early to Be Quiet, Too Late to Sing(he)

Only a handful of Yiddish poets remain alive. Chava Alberstein sets out to interview those last writers of Yiddish poetry, to hear their poems and stories. Along the way, she sings a collection of Yiddish folk songs.

Welcome to Yiddishland(en)

An upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists creating innovative work in their quest to rediscover and revitalise the endangered Yiddish language. From behind-the-scenes with an acclaimed Yiddish-language version of Yentl in Melbourne, to enjoyably transgressive punk-Klezmer musicians, and Barrie Kosky’s latest trailblazing production in Berlin – the endangered Yiddish language is alive and well in this rousing documentary. The language originated amongst the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, but almost disappeared when more than half of the world’s Yiddish speakers were murdered during the Holocaust. Most of the artists and performers (aka Yiddishists) in the film didn’t grow up speaking Yiddish, but all have found solace, identity, and inspiration in its rich traditions and culture. Ros Horin has mapped a fascinating cultural history.

Circle(cs)

Fanny is ten year old girl and a very talented gymnast, but suddenly she's getting seriously injured and ends in a wheelchair.

The Rich One's Kitchen(tr)

Lutfu is a cook in the mansion of the wealthy Kerim. One morning he sees that there is nobody at home. The maid is to get engaged on that day but her fiancée does not show up either. From the brother of their driver, he learns that workers are on strike and their boss Kerim has gone to Europe. Things get back to normal.

Courage(ru)

The airborne trickster - Aleksei Tomylin, civil aviation pilot - one day decides to stop tempting fate and only flies directly. The airport where Tomylin works is near the border with Afghanistan. One day he receives the task to fly across the border and transfer a package with an order to catch a notorious saboteur. On his way back, Tomylin crash lands near an abandoned settlement - and soon finds himself taken hostage by a gang. The hero pretends to agree to take the saboteur abroad, and relies only on his expertise as a flying ace.....