Need a hand? Take a look at some DVD recommendations.
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USA, 2002, 21 minutes, color
Directed By Leib Cohen
35mm DVD VHS
A frustrated businessman, Jeffery Goldman (John Pankow) tries to end his hopeless marriage by asking his local Rabbi (Eli Wallach) to place a curse on his wife. What happens next sets in motion a chain of unexpected events. Also starring Rebecca Pidgeon. More
2009, USA/ Israel, 73 minutes, Color/ B&W
English & Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Robert Richman
DVD
Born in Brooklyn in 1911, Ruth Gruber became the youngest Ph.D. in the world before going on to become an international foreign correspondent and photojournalist at age 24. She emerged as the eyes and conscience of the world. With her love of adventure, fearlessness and powerful intellect, Ruth defied tradition in an extraordinary career that spanned more than seven decades. More
Germany, 1990, 82 minutes, color/B&W
German with English subtitles
Directed by Emanuel Rund
16mm DVD
Tracing the story of the German-Jewish Auerbacher family of Goppingen, Germany, from 1933 through 1945, Rund’s documentary utilizes the family’s home movies from the 1930s, as well as interviews and footage of the family’s return visit to their home town, and to Theresienstadt. More
USA, 2000, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Monika Kopla
DVD
Alois Brunner is the most notorious Nazi war criminal still alive. This documentary includes interviews with the last journalist to have questioned Brunner and with Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, who has, since the end of World War II, been pursuing Brunner—the man who murdered his father. More
Israel, 1994, 53 minutes, color/B&W
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Ilana Tsur
DVD
In 1948, the Altalena arrived in Israel carrying 930 World War II refugees and ammunition amassed by the irgun in direct violation of Prime Minister David Ben Gurion's new military chain-of-command. Ben Gurion gave an order to shell the ship, forcing Jews to fire on Jews and almost sparking a civil war. More
Poland, 1962, 15 minutes, B&W
Music only- no narration/dialogue.
Directed by Janusz Morgenstern
16mm DVD VHS
In this haunting short film, a group of Jewish children and their teacher are herded into ambulance (or so it appears) by Nazis. A powerful trigger for discussion, the film draws parallels to the real life fate of Janusz Korczak who died with his students at Treblinka. More
USA, 2013, 57 minutes
Directed by Marc Shaffer
Blu-ray DVD
The remarkable story of the pioneering Jews of San Francisco. Drawn to California by the Gold Rush, Jews were welcomed in San Francisco. They went on to build a thriving community, the second largest Jewish community in the United States after New York. With a newfound freedom, Jews played a central role in the transformation of this once-sleepy maritime village into the largest metropolis in the American West. More
RESTORED BY NCJF
USA, 1940, 87 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD
Leo Fuchs, the "Yiddish Fred Astaire," stars in this musical comedy as Nat Silver, a debonair and wealthy Jewish-American businessman whose recent engagement (his eighth) goes awry. Ulmer’s last Yiddish movie was also his most modern, an art deco romantic comedy about male ambivalence and Jewish assimilation. More
USA, 1997, 8 minutes, color
Directed by Susan Rivo
DVD
A poignant and hilarious personal narrative about the filmmaker’s lifelong attachment and deep bond with a stuffed animal received at birth. More
USSR, 1941, 6 minutes, B&W
Russian, Yiddish and English with English subtitles
16mm DVD
In 1941, a group of the Soviet Union’s most prominent Jewish writers and artists, including Solomon Mikhoels, Peretz Markish, and Sergei Eisenstein, signed an appeal to Jews throughout the world, asking them to join the Soviet people in fighting against fascism. More
USA, 2007, 61 minutes, color and B&W
Directed by Sandra Dickson, Churchill Roberts, Cindy Hill & Cara Pilson
DVD
While liberating the Ahlem concentration camp, GI Vernon Tott felt compelled to photograph the horror. 50 years later, Vernon sets out to find the men he photographed, a quest that transforms all their lives. The evidence—of unbearable cruelty and miraculous survival—cements a sustaining bond between Vernon and the Jewish survivors. More
Australia, 1993, 56 minutes, color
Directed by Judy Menczel
DVD VHS
Angst looks at the lives nd performances of three Jewish comedians—Deb Filler, Sandy Gutman, and Moshe Waldoks—whose parents are concentration camp survivors. More
Israel, 2004, 47 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Adi Japhet Fuchs
DVD VHS
Imagination, memories, and fiction combine in this film about the life and world of renowned Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld. The film joins the author on his daily pilgrimages to the Jerusalem café, Anna Ticho House. More
Israel, 2001, 48 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Moish Goldberg & Yonatan Gurfinke
DVD VHS
This is a story of a town square—the Kings of Israel Square, known as Rabin Square. When a controversial plan to convert the square into a parking lot is discovered, the relevance and importance of the square are heightened. More
Israel, 1999, 50 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Ayelet Bargur
DVD
Based on the personal experience of the director, this award-winning feature film focuses on one family waiting to hear news of a son who may have been involved in a terrorist incident. More
Israel, 2000, 50 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Ayelet Bargur
DVD
Four young men, all commanders in the same Israeli Defense Force Golan Heights paratrooper unit, were killed over a 22-month period from 1995 to 1997. Their families, realizing they all suffer a common fate, agree to meet and share their stories. More
Palestine, 1935, 50 minutes, B&W
Music only with English subtitles
Director: Helmar Lerski
35mm DVD
This landmark documentary celebrates the pioneering labors of early Jewish settlers in Palestine, recording the technological and agricultural accomplishments of the pioneers and the idea of a socialist Jewish state. More
Israel, 1994, 87 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Michal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD VHS
Director Michal Bet-Adam, stars in the title role as a woman driven by her father’s ambitions for her. Now she is shooting a film and fragments of dreams and fantasy alternate with reality. More
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USA, 2002, 56 minutes, color
Directed by Minna Packer
DVD
A tapestry of film and photographs including rare footage shot in Gombin in 1937, this film tells the story of a group of 50 children of survivors of the Shoah, who return to their parents’ Polish village of Gombin and experience acts of reconciliation, healing, and discovery. More
USA, 1999, 23 minutes, color
Directed by Jamil Simon
DVD VHS
Where does one find the meaning of life? Perhaps in the kitchen of Iraqi-born sculptor Helene Simon, where she discusses her life and shows us how to make her famous Baklava. More
Israel, 2000, 54 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Ruth Walk
DVD VHS
A moving portrait of Israel Becker, a founder of the first professional Yiddish theatrical company in post-war Germany and writer and star of the 1946 autobiographic feature film Long is the Road (restored by NCJF), the first feature to portray the Holocaust from a Jewish point of view. More
USA, 1935, 75 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Henry Lynn
DVD
Starring Yiddish theater superstar Boris Thomashefsky in his only film performance, this musical melodrama is a masterwork of shund, the bread and butter of the Yiddish theater. More
France, 2007, 185 minutes (Part I, 73 minutes; Part II, 112 minutes), color
French with English subtitles
Written and Directed by Yves Jeuland
DVD
A sweeping documentary that explores the complex history of Jews in France--the first country to grant Jews citizenship--beginning with Revolutionary cries of Vive la France in Yiddish through the explosive Dreyfus Affair, and the absorption of Jews from Arab countries in the 1960s to charges of rising antisemitism in the 21st century. More
France, 1999, 55 minutes, color/B&W
Hebrew and French with English subtitles
Directed by Alex Szalat
16mm DVD
Yorn near Kiev in 1882, Yakov Ben Dov came to Jerusalem from the Ukraine in 1907 with little more than a still camera to his name. He became one of the most accomplished photographers and filmmakers of his time. More
India, 1994, 33 minutes, color
Marathi with English subtitles
Directed by Karen Nathanson and Jean-Francois Fernandez
DVD
This film is both an intimate family portrait and a fascinating ethnographic study of the Bene Israel, one of three groups of Jews living in India today. More
Israel, 1993, 37 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Arnon Goldfinger
DVD
Benny Zinger presents slide shows at weddings until one day, while preparing a show for a couple, he falls in love with the bride. More
USSR, 1926, 90 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by V. Vilner
35mm DVD
The seamy Jewish underworld of Odessa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik "Mike the Jap" Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang until he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap. More
USA, 2009, 66 minutes, color
English and Amharic with English subtitles
Directed by Andrea Mydlarz Zeller & Sam Shnider
DVD
In 1990, Dr. Rick Hodes went to Ethiopia to set up medical clinics. He never left. "Dr. Rick" treats thousands of Ethiopians, among them a group of boys who live with him. An Orthodox Jew, he typifies the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam ("repairing the world"). More
Australia, 1996, 70 minutes, color
Directed by Monique Schwartz
16mm DVD
After World War II thousands of poor, Jewish immigrants fled Europe to rebuild their lives in Carlton, Australia. These new arrivals chose to maintain their own language, religion, and culture. More
Canada, 1991, 53 minutes, color
Directed by Garry Beitel
16MM DVD VHS
In the small Montreal municipality of Outremont, two very different communities live side by side: Hassidic Jews and their French-Catholic neighbors. This award-winning film examines the complex dynamics involved in this clash of cultures. More
Israel, 1991, 85 minutes, color/B&W
German, English, Swedish and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Naomi Ben-Natan and Leora Kamenetzky
16MM DVD VHS
A penetrating look at the lives of three Jewish women writers: Cordelia Edvardson, Angelika Schrobsdorff, and Inge Deutschkron. All three grew up in pre-war Berlin until Nazi racial laws shattered their lives, and eventually all three made their way to Israel. More
USA, 2003, 40 minutes, color
English and Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Beth Toni Kruvant
DVD VHS
This documentary provides personal insight into the difficult situation faced by many Jews in Argentina, particularly following the bombings of the Israeli embassy and AMIA Jewish community Center, both in Buenos Aires, in the 1990s. More
Canada, 1993, 51 minutes, color
Directed by Neal Livingston
16mm DVD VHS
In 1940, the British government shipped thousands of refugees, most of them Jews, to P.O.W. camps in Canada and Australia. The Canadian government, while still refusing entry to Jewish refugees, realized that their prisoners were civilian refugees and not the Nazis they were expecting. More
USA, 1939, 9 minutes, B&W
Produced by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC)
16mm DVD VHS
The JDC produced this film to record what it thought would be a successful effort to save over 900 Jews, by sailing them from Nazi Germany to Cuba on the ship St. Louis, but Cuba and then the United States barred the refugees’ entrance. More
Israel, 1989, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Yitzhak Halutzi
16mm DVD
Based on a true story, Braids tells the tale of So'ad, a 14-year-old Jewish girl imprisoned by the Iraqi government in 1947 for her participation in the Zionist movement. More
USA, 1984, 58 minutes, color
Directed by Edward A. Mason; Produced by Eva Fogelman
DVD
This classic film tells a moving story of personal growth as the children of Holocaust survivors find the strength to confront their painful legacy and overcome the barriers of unasked and unanswered questions that separate them from their parents. More
Australia, 2006, 52 minutes, color
Directed by Andrew Wiseman, Danny Ben-Moshe & Uri Mizrahi
DVD
Uplifting, full of swagger and joie de vivre, this film tells the story of 45 orphans who survived the Holocaust and found their way to Australia. Every year on April 11, the anniversary of their liberation from Buchenwald, the “Buchenwald Boys” hold a music and dancing ball. More
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Argentina, 2008, 86 minutes, color/B&W
Spanish and Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed By María Victoria Menis
35mm DVD
A lyrical, inventive new film from award-winning, film festival favorite director María Victoria Menis. At the end of the 19th century, Gertrudis grows into her role as the ugly duckling in a colony of Argentinean Jews until she meets a nomadic photographer whose uncompromising vision allows her to see herself for the first time. More
USA, 1931, 10 min, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
35mm 16mm DVD
Cantor Leibele Waldman plays multiple roles in this spoof of a synagogue committee in search of a chazan (cantor). More
USA, 1937, 90 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Ilya Motyleff (Sidney Goldin, uncredited)
35mm DVD
This "anti-Jazz Singer” marks the screen debut of Moishe Oysher who stars as a wayward youth who makes his way from his Polish shtetl to New York's Lower East Side where he becomes a well-known singer. Ultimately, he returns home to the Old Country and reunites with his parents and his childhood sweetheart. More
USA, 2015, 85 minutes
Directed by Steve Rivo
Digital Blu-ray DVD
A real life 19th-century American western adventure story, Carvalho's Journey tells the extraordinary story of Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897), an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, South Carolina, and his life as a groundbreaking explorer and artist. The film interweaves stunning HD digital and 16mm film landscape cinematography, rare 19th century photographs and artwork, Carvalho’s own surviving paintings and daguerreotypes, and interviews with scholars and artists, including modern day daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer who recreates Carvalho’s original daguerreotypes on location. More
USA, 1949, 93 minutes, B&W
English and Yiddish
Directed by Josef Berne
16mm DVD
A Jewish resort hotel celebrates a pair of longtime customers' 50th wedding anniversary by staging an old-fashioned Borscht Belt show. Filmed on location at Young's Gap Hotel in Parksville, New York. More
UK, 1990, 52 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by Naomi Gryn
16mm DVD
Hugo Gryn was 15 years old when he left his hometown, Berohovo, believing he would never see it again. In 1990, Gryn and his daughter, filmmaker Naomi Gryn returned to the world of his childhood, where only ghosts and shadows remain. More
Poland, 1935, 63 minutes, B&W
English & Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Aleksander Ford for the Jewish Labor Bund
16mm DVD
One of the few surviving documentaries about Jewish life in Poland before World War II, this film was produced to raise funds for the Vladimir Medem Sanitarium which stood as the embodiment of health and enlightenment, in striking contrast to the grim images of urban Polish-Jewish poverty. More
USA, 1992, 28 minutes, color
Directed by Tom Demenkoff
DVD
In 1944, one month before the end of World War II, the Gestapo in Lyon, under the command of Klaus Barbie, sent two vans to the French village of Izieu to remove the Jewish children from an orphanage known as La Maison d’Izieu. More
Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English Subtitles
Directed by Tzipi Trope
35mm DVD
In this the first Israeli feature film to deal with the subject of battered women. Nava, a social worker, shares the painful secret of her suffering with Jania, another woman victimized by her husband and the two form a healing bond. More
(Kronika powstania w getcie warszawskim wg Marka Edelmana)
Poland, 1994, 70 minutes, B&W
Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Jolanta Dylewska
DVD VHS
Marek Edelman, a member of the Jewish Labor Bund and a leading participant in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, gives a daily account of events from April 19 through May 10, 1942. More
Israel, 2009, 48 minutes
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Tal Haim Yoffe
DVD
A fascinating investigation that mirrors the development of Israel itself. Shaking his own family tree in this beautifully-crafted documentary, Tal Yoffe discovers a pioneering kibbutznik filmmaker, a Czarist army officer, a Nazi-trained blacksmith, several war heroes and a much missed father. More
USA, 1913, 10 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Mack Sennett
16mm DVD
Cohen is a sergeant in the Union Army and the bitter rival of another officer for the attentions of Rebecca. Like most burlesque Jewish characters of this period, this caricature borders on anti-semitism. Yet Cohen is also the hero of the film. More
USA, 1904, 1 minute, B&W
Silent without intertitles
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
16mm DVD
This may be the earliest cinematic example of the Jewish stereotype known as the "scheming merchant”. Cohen, a grotesquely made-up Jewish shop owner, tricks a passerby into wearing a coat that has a sign advertising his store attached to the back. More
USA, 1907, 10 minutes, B&W
Silent without intertitles
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
16mm DVD
Cohen, made-up in grotesque vaudevillian Jewish style, pursues a trash wagon, picking up hats as they accidentally drop off. When he finds the hats are not selling, Cohen reads his insurance policy and arranges for an "accidental" fire." More
USSR, 1919, 18 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Alexander Razumni
35mm 16mm DVD
Tne 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, a leader in the Red Army. More
USA, 1968, 11 minutes, B&W
Yiddish (no subtitles)
Directed by Abe Wexler
16mm DVD
It's just your typical all-Yiddish shoot-'em-up. This hilarious spoof was made by adding a Yiddish dialogue to a 1932 Hollywood Western. More
USA, 2017, 46 minutes, color
Directed By Robin Truesdale & Judy Kreith
DVD Blu-ray DCP
Explore the little-known history of the Jewish refugees who escaped Nazi-occupied Europe for the Caribbean island of Cuba. The documentary recalls the refugees' lives in wartime Havana: the draw of Cuban food, music and dance, its language and people, and the challenges of an unfamiliar land. Shot on location in Cuba, featuring an original score of Cuban and Jewish music. More
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Poland, 1938, 10 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with complete new English subtitles
Produced by Shaul and Yitzhak Goskin
16mm DVD
Rare pre-war views of the lively Jewish neighborhoods of Warsaw—home to 400,000 Jews lived before World War II—including Zamenhof Street and the commercial “beehive” Nalewki Street. More
Lithuania, 1999, 65 minutes, color/B&W
Lithuanian, Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles and English narration
Directed by Saulius Berzinis
DVD
This overview of an academic conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the destruction of the Vilna Ghetto held in Vilna in 1993 includes contemporary footage juxtaposed with historical visual materials. More
Israel, 2006, 86 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Hanan Peled
35mm DVD
In Tel Aviv in the 1960s 10-year-old Hilik knows his goal in life is to compensate for the grief his parents suffered in the Holocaust. More
USA, 1945, 22 minutes, B&W
Produced by the U.S. Department of War Information
16mm DVD VHS
Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. More
USA, 1994, 59 minutes, color
Directed by Mira Reym Binford
16mm DVD VHS
Thousands of Jewish children lived in the Polish city of Bendzin before the Holocaust. Barely a dozen survived the community’s destruction. This critically-acclaimed documentary tells the story of three of these children—Ada, Shulamit, and the filmmaker herself, Mira. More
USA, 1934, 66 minutes, B&W
Directed by A.J. Bloome for Palestine-American Film Co.
16mm DVD
A rare, early documentary on Palestine, featuring the last appearance of Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. More
Israel, 1996, 50 minutes, B&W
English
Directed by Yaakov Gross
DVD
This historic document of Palestine during the tumultuous 1920s includes footage from three rare films by Ya'akov Ben Dov, the father of Hebrew cinema, preserved in a joint project by the National Center for Jewish Film and the Israel Film Archive. More
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Austria, 1923, 85 minutes, B&W
Silent with Yiddish & English intertitles
Added original soundtrack (1991)
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin and Ivan Abramson
16mm DVD
Morris Brown, a New York gambler acquainted more with his checkbook than his prayer book, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. But Mollie, whose exuberant antics fill the film, unexpectedly meets her match—an engaging young yeshiva scholar who forsakes tradition and joins the secular world to win her heart. More
France, 2009, 180 minutes (Two parts)
English narration, French, German w/ English subtitles
Directed by Michaël Prazan
Nazi mobile killing squads, led by highly-educated officers and aided by local collaborators, systematically murdered over a million Jews. Who were the men who carried out mass murder at close range? Prazan's definitive masterwork features a powerful array of astounding, never-seen-before film and photographs. “Essential viewing” – Variety More
Belgium, 1990, 95 minutes, color
French with English narration
Directed by Diane Perelsztejn
35mm DVD VHS
In 1939, European Jews lucky enough to escape the Nazis had only one place in the world to go that did not require an exit visa: Shanghai. Escape to the Rising Sun tells the little-known story of nearly 5,000 Jews who reached Shanghai. More
USA, 1989, 58 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by Abraham Ravett
16mm DVD
Ravett attempts to reconcile issues in his life as the child of a Holocaust survivor in this experimental, non-narrative film about memory, death, and what critic Bruce Jenkins calls “the power of the photographic image and sound to resurrect the past". More
USA/Germany, 2001, 90 minutes, color
English and German with English subtitles
Directed by Peter Laufer and Jeff Kamen
DVD VHS
The collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe unleashed anti-semitism in the former Soviet bloc, creating the first massive exodus of Jews since the end of World War II. Today, in bittersweet irony, tens of thousands of Jews escape persecution by fleeing to Germany. More
Canada, 1996, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Simcha Jacobovici and Roger Pyke
DVD
This documentary traces the descendants of Spanish Jews who were forced to either flee or convert to Catholicism after Queen Isabella's edict of 1492. Many of these Jews had to practice their religion in secret, passing their furtively-recalled customs down through the generations. More
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Russia, 1992, 27 minutes, B&W
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Arkadiy Yakhnis
35mm DVD
This award-winning documentary chronicles a 90-year old man’s emigration to Israel from his native shtetl in Bessabaria. This beautifully photographed film poetically captures the end of a rich Jewish heritage in Russia. More
France/Israel, 2007, 95 minutes, color
French & Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Marco Carmel
DVD
In the early 1970s, the Maimons, a rambunctious but tight knit Tunisian-Israeli family, settle in Paris seeking adventure and fortune. Israeli-French filmmaker Marco Carmel draws on events from his own childhood in this unusual coming of age story. Starring French celebrity actor/humorist Gad Elmaleh. More
USA, 1931, 15 minutes, B&W
English, Hebrew, and Yiddish (no subtitles)
Produced by Sidney M. Goldin for Jacob Berkowitz
16mm DVD
A seder in the midst of North American prosperity recalls traditional Passover celebrations in Russia (with the same cast enacting both scenes). Then modernity returns with a knock at the door and a humorous twist. More
USA, 2008, 30 minutes, color
English with songs in Ladino
Directed by Kathleen Regan
DVD
Judy Frankel was one of the leading collectors and practitioners of Sephardic folk music. Fiestaremos! includes interviews with Frankel, musical excerpts and performances in an intimate look at Frankel and Sephardic music and songs. More
USA, 2010, 48 minutes, color
Directed by Sarah Golabek-Goldman
DVD
This documentary explores Polish-Jewish relations as well as one filmmaker's personal journey to discover her family roots. Through her eyes, Finding Leah Tickotsky provides a perspective on one of the most painful periods in history and serves as a reminder of the extraordinary contributions Jews made to Poland over nine centuries. More
USA, 1989, 60 minutes, color
Produced by Steven Schlow
DVD VHS
This Emmy Award-winning documentary traces the rise of Nazism in general and the career of Adolf Eichmann in particular by documenting the small incremental steps the Nazis took to introduce their ideology of anti-semitism in Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. More
USA, 1991, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Judith Montell
16mm DVD
The Spanish Civil War and the October 1986 reunion of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade serve as the backdrop to Judith Montell's documentary on these heroic veterans and their years of activism. Nominated for an Academy Award. More
Australia, 2009, 55 minutes, color
English
Directed by Monique Schwarz
DVD
Amid the crisis surrounding the education of Aboriginal children in Australia, there is a ray of hope. The unlikely source: Israeli teachers. Follow a team of Israeli educators as they bring a new method for teaching at-risk kids to the Australian outback. More
Israel, 2000, 60 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Esther Dar
16mm DVD
Four women—a Palestinian Moslem; a Palestinian Christian; a Jew from a prominent Zionist family; and a Jew from Tel Aviv—roommates at an Anglican boarding school in Jerusalem in 1939, meet 50 years later for a reunion. More
USA, 2005, 37 minutes, color
Directed by Judy Gelles and Marianne Bernstein
DVD
This award-winning film is one of the few documentaries to explore the experiences of Jewish-American World War II soldiers. For Jews, the war to defeat Hitler had deeply personal significance. An audience favorite, this film focuses on six Philadelphia veterans, now in their 80’s. More
Germany, 1944, 23 minutes (incomplete), B&W
Produced by the Ministry of Propaganda of the Third Reich
16mm DVD
Germany’s Ministry of Propaganda produced this 1944 film about Theresienstadt, the “model” ghetto established by the Nazis. The film, however, is an elaborately staged hoax presenting a completely false picture of camp life. Upon completion, the director and most of the cast of prisoners were shipped to Auschwitz. More
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USA, 1989, 30 minutes, color
Directed by Patricia Giniger Snyder
DVD
This film documents Jewish daily life in Girona, a city in the northeastern Spanish region of Catalonia, from its “golden age” in the middle ages through the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492 and up to the present day. More
Austria, 1982, 110 minutes, B&W
German with English subtitles
Directed By Axel Corti
16mm DVD
The first film in Corti’s acclaimed epic trilogy, Where To and Back. After his father is murdered by the Nazis in 1938, Ferry Tobler, a young Viennese Jew, flees to Prague and then Paris, lands in a French prison camp, and eventually escapes to Marseille. More
USA, 1949, 100 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
16mm DVD
Based on a play by Jacob Gordin, God, Man and Devil centers on a wager between God and Satan that has dire consequences. Beware, the film cautions, when money sounds sweeter than music. More
USA, 2006, 120 minutes, B&W/color
Hebrew, Yiddish and English with English subtitles
Directed by Rich Pontius; Produced by Cantor Murray Simon
2 DVD Set
These two films feature some of the rarest and finest performances of renowned cantors from 1910 to the 1940s, including Adolph Katchko, Yossele Rosenblatt, David Roitman, Joseph Shlisky, and Mordechai Hershman, Moshe Koussevitsky, and Leibele Waldman. More
USA, 1937, 95 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami
35mm 16mm DVD
Voted Best Foreign Film in France 1938. Ulmer’s soulful, open-air adaptation of Peretz Hirshbein’s classic play heralded the Golden Age of Yiddish cinema. When an ascetic young scholar ventures into the countryside, searching for the city of “true Jews,” he learns some unexpected lessons from the Jewish peasants who take him in. More
Israel, 2008, 50 minutes
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Tal Haim Yoffe
DVD
Traveling on his scooter through Tel Aviv, filmmaker Tal Haim Yoffe finds a discarded box of old photographs in a green dumpster. This docu-detective film, slowly unwinds a family history, beginning in Lodz, Poland, and traveling through the Siberian Gulag, a Samarkand sugar plant, a Ha’apala ship and the battlefields of the Sinai Peninsula. More
Germany, 2000, 102 minutes, color
German and Swedish with English subtitles
Directed by Xavier Koller
35mm DVD VHS
Based on Kurt Tucholsky’s autobiographical novel about the decadent world of Berlin cabaret of the early 1930s. After writing inflammatory articles about the Nazis, Kurt (Ulrich Noethen), a German-Jewish publisher, travels to the Swedish palace of Gripsholm with his girlfriend Lydia and their friends. More
Romania, 2008, 100 minutes, color
Romanian w/ English Subtitles
Directed by Radu Gabrea
35mm DVD DigiBeta
An Italian journalist suffering from debilitating allergies searches for a Jewish allergist named Gruber amid the outrageous, and increasingly sinister, bureaucracy of Nazi-occupied Romania. What begins as an absurdist wild goose chase leads directly to the heart of the final solution, and the disastrous fate of the local Jews. Radu Gabrea’s “Perfect yet subdued” film is Romania’s first drama about the Holocaust. More
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USA, 1985, 22 minutes, color
Directed by Abraham Ravett
16mm DVD VHS
At 26, Abraham Ravett learned that his mother had previously been married and lost her family at Auschwitz, including his 6-year-old half-sister, Toncia. Half Sister is a cinematic amalgam of memory and imagination, inspired by Ravett’s conception of a life that would have been. More
Canada, 1989, 58 minutes, color
Directed by Francine E. Zuckerman & Roushell N. Goldstein
DVD
In this provocative, award-winning documentary seven remarkable women from Canada, Israel, and the United States strive to find common ground between religious and cultural tradition and contemporary feminist principles. More
Germany, 1936, 48 minutes, B&W
Silent with German and English intertitles
Produced by the German Zionist Union
16mm DVD
Made in 1936 in an effort to inspire German Jews under Nazi rule to make aliyah to Palestine, this documentary about the earliest period of Zionist history is a singular celluloid artifact. More
USSR, 1928, 76 minutes (Incomplete: missing one reel), B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Grigori Roshal
35mm 16mm DVD
This 1928 film features stylized cinematography and actors from the Moscow Art Theater in a fiction story based on the life of Jewish Labor Bund member Hirsch Lekert who attempted to assassinate the Vilna governor in 1902 to avenge the flogging of workers who participated in a May Day rally. More
USA, 1925, 91 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Edward Sloman
16mm DVD
The two sons of a poor Russian-Jewish pushcart peddler on New York's Lower East Side are causing their father grief. As Morris and Sammy stray from traditions cherished by their parents, each generation learns to accept change to preserve the family as a source of love and respect. More
USA, 1931, 80 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
35mm DVD
His Wife’s Lover stars the popular comedian of the Yiddish theatre Ludwig Satz. It was billed as the "first Jewish musical comedy talking picture." More
UK, 2005, 10 min, color
Directed by Jes Benstock
DVD
A wry, animated documentary about how Holocaust tourism distorts history. A whistle-stop tour from Auschwitz hot-dogs to Krakow's kitsch Judaica. More
Israel, 1995, 34 min, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Assaf Bernstein
DVD VHS
This fiction film spoofs tours of the "holy" sites of Israel. Join Jonah and his unwitting group of tourists on an insane two-day tour of Tel Aviv. More
USA, 1914, 10 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Produced by Crystal Films
16mm DVD
An example of Jewish characterizations in the silent film era, Moshe, a 98-pound boxer defeats his 240-pounds opponent…by cheating. More
USA, 1922, 80 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Added original soundtrack (2006)
Directed by E. Mason Hopper
16mm DVD
A Hollywood adaptation of the short stories of Anzia Yezierska, the first writer to bring stories of American Jewish women to a mainstream audience, Hungry Hearts focuses on the hopes and hardships of the Levin family, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe living on New York City's Lower East Side. More
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USA, 1984, 20 minutes, color
Directed by Mary Halawani
16mm DVD
Halawani profiles her grandmother, Rosette Hakim, the daughter of a prominent Egyptian-Jewish family who fled her homeland in 1959 when Egyptian anti-Zionist sentiments increased and when hundreds of Jews, suspected of pro-Communist activities, were interned in detention camps. More
USA, 1937, 15 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm 16mm DVD
A lively short about a husband and wife who seek to reignite their marriage by pretending to be landlady and tenant. More
USA, 1990, 93 minutes, color
Directed by Pamela Berger
35mm 16mm DVD
A Jewish romance begins when Asriel, a turn-of-the-century, rich Boston widower returns from a visit to the old country with a man he believes is the perfect man for his daughter. But when the two meet, his thoroughly modern daughter is appalled by this pious scholar, or is she? More
USA, 1993, 13 minutes, B&W
Directed by Abraham Ravett
16mm DVD
In this non-narrative, meditative, and poignant film, footage of life from the Lodz Ghetto is juxtaposed with the chanting of “Kel Maleh Rachamim,” a plea to God to let the souls of those “slaughtered and burned” find peace. More
Denmark, 1975, 70 minutes, color
English, Dutch and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Philo Bregstein
16mm DVD VHS
Through the interplay of past and present, Bregstein sets out to discover what Jewish life was like in Amsterdam before the virtual annihilation of the city's Jewish population during World War II. More
USA, 1964, 58 minutes, B&W
Produced by Harold Mayer
16mm DVD
A portrait of 20th century America as seen through the eyes of its working people: immigrants in the early 1900s, workers in sweatshops, coal mines, and textile mills, soldiers on the battlefields of world wars I and II and in the Civil Rights movement. More
USA, 1992, 60 minutes, color
Produced by Vivienne Hermann and Dale Sonnenberg
DVD VHS
This moving portrait of artist Vivienne Hermann, who spent five years as a child in forced labor camps during World War II, answers the eponymous question with a resounding “Yes!” As Hermann says: “I am the poem. I may be a tragic poem. I may be an irritating poem. But I am the poem." More
USA, 1995, 55 minutes, color
English, Italian, French and Ladino with English subtitles
Directed by Gregori Viens
DVD
This film visits the Los Angeles community of “Rhodeslis”—Jews who lived on the Mediterranean island of Rhodes from 1492 to World War II—who have passed down their traditions, food, songs, rituals, and their medieval Ladino Spanish dialect to their American-born descendants. More
Israel, 2000, 55 minutes, color
Hebrew with English Subtitles
Directed by Izzy Abrahami and Erga Netz
DVD VHS
Can you grasp the complexities, the tribulation, and the dreams of Israel by its music? This film features 20 singers, bands, and choruses, from rock to blues, folk, and rap. More
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Poland, 1937, 90 minutes, B&W with sepia tone and blue-green ton
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski
35mm DVD
A parade of costume, buffoonery and music, The Jester highlights both a shoemaker's scheme to marry his daughter into a prominent family as well as the festival of Purim. More
Poland, 1938 and 1939, each 10 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with complete new English subtitles
Produced by Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind
16mm DVD VHS
In 1938 and 1939, Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind of Warsaw-based Sektor Films produced six short films about urban Jewish communities in Poland. One, about Lodz, is lost. The other five—on Bialystok, Cracow, Lwow, Vilna, and Warsaw—have survived. Viewed together or separately, these rare documents present vibrant portraits of people, communities, and institutions all but completely obliterated after the Nazis invaded and occupied Poland during World War II. More
USSR, 1925, 100 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Alexander Granovsky
35mm 16mm DVD
Menakhem Mendl (one of Sholem Aleichem’s characters) is a daydreaming entrepreneur who specializes in doomed strike-it-rich schemes. Despite Jewish oppression in Tsarist Russia, Mendl continues to pursue his dreams and his continued persistence transforms him from schlemiel to hero. More
USA, 2011, 86 minutes
Directed by Jonathan Gruber
DVD
Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, this exploration of the little-known history of the Jews who fought for both the Confederacy and Union is the first documentary devoted to the subject. Allegiances during the War Between the States split the Jewish community as deeply as the national debate in the country at large: some prominent Jewish voices cited the Torah to justify slavery, while others led the abolitionist movement. More
Spain, 1929, 13 minutes, B&W
Silent with new English intertitles
Produced by Ernesto Giménez Caballero
35mm 16mm DVD
Shot in the 1920s, this film visits Sephardic communities in Salonika, Constantinople, Yugoslavia, and Romania as well as former centers of Jewish life in Spain. More
Poland, 1937, 62 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Leon Jeannot and Z. Turkow
35mm 16mm DVD
In this musical comedy, the comic duo Dzigan and Shumacher play two small town "entrepreneurs" who believe they have struck oil in a local field. Thus begins a comedy of errors, including millionaire investors, American schemers, and insane asylums, with a little matchmaking on the side. More
Germany, 1996, 130 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Thomas Mitscherlich
16mm DVD
Journey into Life follows the struggles of three concentration camp survivors—Yehuda Bacon of Israel, Gerhard Durlacher of The Netherlands, and Ruth Kluger of the United States—in rebuilding their lives after World War II. More
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Mexico, 1995, 93 minutes, color
Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Daniel Goldberg
35mm 16mm DVD
In exploring the history of Jewish immigration to Mexico, A Kiss To This Land presents fragments of memories and oral histories together with vivid depiction of Jews in Mexico in the 1920s and 1930s. More
USA, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
Digital Blu-ray DVD
A melodrama -with music and romance- about a girl torn between two childhood boyfriends, this film is a suprisingly risque shund Yiddish tearjerker exploring assimilation, antisemitism and gender roles. More
USA, 2005, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Norman Meyer and Harvey Sherzer
DVD
After World War II, Christian midwives in Kupishok compiled a list of the town’s Jews who were murdered in the summer of 1941 by the Nazis and their Lithuanian accomplices. In 2004, fifty survivors and descendants of the Jews of Kupishok, returned to the town to dedicate a Wall of Memory. More
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USA, 1973, 80 minutes, B&W/color
Directed by Harold Mayer
DVD VHS
Produced for the Women's American ORT and narrated by Eli Wallach, this highly-acclaimed documentary describes more than a century of Jewish life in Russia. More
USSR, 1990, 92 minutes, color
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Leonid Gorovets
35mm DVD VHS
Set in Kiev, Russia, on 29 September 1941, this feature chronicles the last 24 hours in the lives of a Jewish tailor (renowned Russian actor Innokenty Smoktunovsky) and his family just prior to their deportation and execution at Babi Yar. More
Palestine, 1935, 57 minutes, B&W
English and Hebrew
Directed by Juda Leman
DVD
This is one of Palestine's earliest sound films and part of a larger campaign to encourage settlement and investment in "the Jewish homeland." Land of Promise emphasizes secular accomplishments and portrays Zionist settlers with considerable cinematographic and editorial skill. More
USA, 1993, 55 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by Gertrude Dubrovsky
DVD VHS
Set in New Jersey, The Land Was Theirs profiles Jewish farmers and their communities. It opens a window on the experience of immigrants who came to America in search of a better life and found it in the rural countryside. More
USA, 1966, 85 minutes, B&W
Directed and Produced by Benjamin Rothman & Lawrence Rothman
DVD
A lyrical, sweeping history of Jewish life in Poland, depicting the richness of Jewish culture both religious and secular... More
Israel, 2001, 52 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Shosh Shlam
DVD VHS
After the Holocaust, survivors who had nowhere else to go or were emotionally shattered by their experiences ended up in a mental hospital in Israel. This moving documentary follows estranged daughters as they visit mothers they have not seen in decades. More
France, 1991, 64 minutes, color
Portuguese with English subtitles
Directed by Frédéric Brenner and Stan Neumann
DVD
Despite being forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497 many of the Jews of Portugal continued to practice Judaism in secret. Today, residents of the village of Belmonte practice an amalgam of Christian and Jewish rituals. More
USSR, 1928, 92 minutes, B&W
Silent with new English intertitles
Directed by Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
35mm 16mm DVD
Gricher-Cherikover leavens pathos with humor in this earthy portrait of pre-Revolutionary shtetl life based on two Sholem Aleichem stories. 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. More
Argentina, 2004, 72 minutes, color
Spanish and Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Vivián Imar & Marcelo Trotta
DVD
Our narrator was 10 when she stepped off the boat in Moisesville, the first Jewish settlement in Argentina. Her account spans 80 years. More
UK, 1992, 98 minutes, color
Direced by Vadim Jean and Gary Sinyor
35mm DVD
An irreverent comedy from the production company of Monty Python's Eric Idle, this zany story is set in motion when Leon Geller, a sensitive Jewish boy from London, accidentally learns that he is the product of artificial insemination. More
Poland, 1939, 106 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Leon Trystand
35mm 16mm DVD
One of the last Yiddish films made in Poland, ths is story of a mother's persistent struggles to support her three children in pre-war Polish Ukraine. After her family is pulled apart by the war, she and her children make their way to New York and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. More
USA, 1939, 94 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD
Impoverished and disabled lovers Fishke and Hodel dream of life in the big city of Odessa, free of the poverty and old-world prejudices of the shtetl. Made on the eve of World War II, The Light Ahead is at once romantic, expressionist, and conscious of the danger about to engulf European Jews. One of four Yiddish features directed by Edgar Ulmer. More
2008, Israel, 50 minutes, color, Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Pini Schatz
DVD
Pini Schatz's funny and original film (subtitled How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blood) proves there’s no reason to be afraid of the liquid that flows in our veins. Meet a cross section of unique Israeli characters including the director of Magen David Adom. And learn how to mix the perfect bloody mary. More
USA, 2000, 53 minutes, color
Hebrew and English with English subtitles
Directed by Lilach Dekel
DVD
Director Dekel’s grandmother, along with other young idealists from Eastern Europe, immigrated to Palestine in the 1920s resolved to build the kibbutz movement. Now in their 80s and 90s, these women offer candid evaluations of the their youth. More
USA, 1937, 97 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm DVD
The story of a stage couple whose marriage is strained by life in the theater. Adapted from one of the best 2nd Avenue Yiddish Theatre domestic melodramas, director Joseph Seiden’s sentimental film is drawn from life in 1930s New York City. More
USA, 1926, 22 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Leo McCarey
16mm DVD
This offbeat comedy from future Hollywood screwball director McCarey is about a princess who must find a husband in 24 hours or forfeit her throne. She quickly marries a condemned man—but the man is pardoned. More
U.S.-Occupied Germany, 1948, 77 minutes, B&W
Yiddish, German, Polish with new English subtitles
Directed by Herbert B. Fredersdorf & Marek Goldstein
35mm 16mm DVD
Written by Israel Becker, this is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. Shot on location at Landsberg, the largest DP camp in U.S.-occupied Germany, the film follows a Polish Jew from pre-war Warsaw through Auschwitz and the DP camp. More
USA, 1936, 76 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by George Roland
35mm
The tale of a middle-class matron who shoots the man who compromises her, this film is a prime example of "shund," the melodramatic escapist entertainment of the Yiddish theater. More
Israel, 1998, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Michal Bat-Adam
35mm DVD VHS
Renowned Israeli filmmaker/actress Michal Bat-Adam wrote and directed this intriguing tale of romantic obsession in present-day Tel Aviv. Michal Zuaratz stars as a young female photographer infatuated with a stranger whose image she accidentally captures on film. More
Israel, 2000, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by David Fisher
35mm DVD
Bittersweet, honest, and touchingly funny, this multi-award-winning film chronicles Fisher’s attempt to solve a family mystery—uniting his troubled family in the process. More
USA, 2005, 59 minutes, color
English
Directed by Abraham Ravett
DVD
Lunch with Fela is the filmmaker's response to the passing of his parent, Fela Ravett. Utilizing a combination of DV footage shot during her stay at a nearby nursing facility, excerpts from previously made 16mm films, animation sequences, plus remaining family memorabilia, the film renders the presence and absence of a much loved parent. More
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Austria/Germany, 2010, 97 minutes, color
German w/ English subtitles
Directed by Percy Adlon & Felix Adlon
35mm
This exuberant imagining of the real-life marriage of Gustav Mahler (Johannes Silberschneider) and his tempestuous wife Alma Schindler Mahler (the luminous Barbara Romaner) is a sensory feast of art, sex and celebrity in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Chafing under her agreement to give up her own musical ambitions, Alma seeks passion in the arms of the young, dashing architect Walter Gropius, which sends a tormented Mahler to Sigmund Freud for consultation. More
UK, 1998, 52 minutes, color
Directed by Anne Webber
DVD VHS
Directed by Anne Webber, Chair of the European Commission on Looted Art, this documentary is a compelling detective story about one family's 50-year quest to recover their missing art collection set against a backdrop of murder, greed, and corruption. More
2006, USA, 85 minutes, Color
Directed by Rachel Talbot; Produced by the Jewish Women's Archive
DVD
This film festival favorite tells the story of six of the greatest female comic performers of the last century — Molly Picon, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, Joan Rivers, Gilda Radner, and Wendy Wasserstein. Hosted by four of today’s funniest women — Judy Gold, Jackie Hoffman, Cory Kahaney, and Jessica Kirson — it's the true saga of what it means to be Jewish, female and funny. More
Australia, 2000, 73 minutes, color
Written & Directed by Monique Schwarz
16mm DVD
A funny, penetrating look at how the loving and affectionate portrayals in early Yiddish and Hollywood silent movies developed into the Jewish Mother of modern Hollywood and, conversely, the more flesh and blood characterizations in contemporary Israeli cinema. More
Poland, 1938, 100 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Konrad Tom
16mm DCP DigiBeta Blu-ray DVD
Mamele embraces the entire gamut of interwar Jewish life in Lodz—tenements and unemployed Jews, nightclubs and gangsters, religious Jews celebrating sukkot—but the film belongs to Molly Picon who romps undaunted through her dutiful daughter role, keeping the family intact, singing and acting her way through the stages of a woman's life from childhood to old age. More
USA, 1999, 25 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by Abraham Ravett
16mm DVD
Both of Ravett’s parents survived Auschwitz and the ”death march.” His mother “continuously made references to the ‘miracle’ of her survival and recounted in vivid detail what it was like to walk for miles in the bitter cold with just a blanket and a pair of wooden shoes (Trepches)" More
Denmark, 2009, 43 minutes, color
Directed & written by Ulrik Gutkin
DVD
A witty and thoughtful meditation on the collision of two cultures. Danish Jewish filmmaker Ulrik Gutkin and his Danish non-Jewish girlfriend find themselves on opposites sides in deciding whether to circumcise their new baby boy. More
USA, 2002, 74 minutes, color
Directed by Steven Calcote and Jonathan Shulman
35mm 16mm DVD
Narrated by Leonard Nimoy. The last rabbi of Kaifeng died well over a century ago, and today's descendants of the ancient Chinese Jewish community have never celebrated Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. More
USA, 1939, 80 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Berne
16mm DVD
Mirele Efros, "the Jewish Queen Lear," was the masterpiece of influential Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin. Berta Gersten gives a memorable performance as Mirele, a wealthy and pious widow whose devotion to her children extends to hand-picking a wife for her eldest son. Unfortunately, she gravely mistakes the young woman's character. More
USA, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm DVD
Focusing on a labor dispute in the garment district of New York City, the film survives as an important historical document highlighting the hardships of the Jewish immigrant experience in America. More
USA, 1939, 85 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henry Lynn
35mm DVD
Mothers of Today includes the sole motion picture performance of radio star Esther Field, who was well-known on the radio airwaves of the 1930's as the 'Yidishe Mama.' More
Israel, 2003, 68 min
English, Hebrew & Polish w/ English subtitles
Directed by Amalia Margolin & Oshra Schwartz
DigiBeta DVD
When Lena Küchlar discovered dozens of orphaned Jewish children in Krakow after WWII, she employed the progressive psychiatric methods of Janusz Korczak and slowly brought these damaged kids back to life. Based on Küchlar’s best-selling autobiography. Best Documentary, Israel Film Academy. More
USA, 2003, 36 minutes, color
Directed by Dan Akiba
DVD VHS
After his brother’s radical conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Akiba found it increasingly difficult to remember the brother he once knew. In an effort to better understand his brother’s new life, Akiba documented his family’s trip to Israel in 2001 to attend his brother’s wedding. More
Canada, 2002, 44 minutes, color
Directed by Gary Beitel
DVD VHS
When Clara Greenspan left Montreal for Warsaw in June of 1938 she could not have known how her personal destiny would soon become intertwined with unfolding events in Europe. This is the dramatic story of a Polish Jewish refugee’s survival and his Canadian wife’s unflinching battle to change her government’s immigration policies. More
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USA, 2011, 60 minutes
Directed by Judith Glatzer Wechsler
DVD
Filmmaker and art historian Judith Glatzer Wechsler's new documentary is a moving portrait of the life and work of her revered father and scholar Nahum N. Glatzer (1903-1990). More
USA, 1972, 23 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Directed by Jamil Simon
16mm DVD VHS
80 year-old Louise Zilkha reminisces about her traditional Jewish upbringing in Baghdad, Iraq, the often turbulent coexistence of Iraqi Jews and Moslems, and the persecution that led her family on a journey from Iraq to Beirut, to Cairo, and finally, to New York. More
France, 2000, 90 minutes, color
Directed by Isabelle Rozenbaumas and Michel Grosman
DVD
A film about the identity of Yiddish culture. One of the filmmakers returns to her native Lithuania, leading to a broader series of reflections on the survival of the Yiddish language in today’s world. More
Israel, 2005, 62 minutes, color
Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky
DVD
Argentinean-born Israeli filmmakers Jorge Gurvich and Shlomo Slutzky met in Buenos Aires before both men immigrated to Israel. 30 years later, they take up the question of Jewish-Argentine history, identity and attitudes toward Israel. More
Czech Republic/ Slovak Republic, 2002, 64 minutes, color
English and Czech with English subtitles
Directed by Matej Minac
35mm DVD
A gripping documentary about the courage and determination of a young English stockbroker who saved the lives of 669 children. In 1939, Sir Nicholas Winton organized 8 transports to take children from Prague to new homes in Great Britain, and kept silent about it until his wife discovered a scrapbook documenting his unique mission in 1988. More
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USA, 1995, 55 minutes, color/B&W
Directed by John Michalczyk
DVD VHS
Both Irish and Jewish immigrants settled in Protestant Brahmin Boston in the late-19th century, and both encountered bigotry, exploitation, exclusion and discrimination. This film chronicles the interaction between the two ethnic communities over the last 100 years. More.
USA, 1908, 10 minutes, B&W
Silent without intertitles
Directed by Wallace McCutcheon
16mm DVD
In this film, a small girl in an urban slum seeks aid for her sick and starving mother. Trying to pawn her doll, she attracts the attention of the shop’s owner old Isaacs, who later stops the men trying to evict the sick woman. More
Israel, 1995, 75 minutes, color/B&W
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Aner Preminger
DVD
This film takes us on two journeys: the first to Vienna, where Preminger's father lived as a child under Nazi occupation; then to Palestine where he became a member of the first Knesset, joined the Palestine Communist Party, and established the Hebrew Communist Party. More
UK, 2004, 10 minutes, color
Directed by Jes Benstock
DVD
Some family trees get more complicated with every branch. Armed with a videophone, his dad, and a therapist, director Jes Benstock explores a family history of murder, migration, breakdown, and suicide. More
Poland, 1948, 68 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Natan Gross and Shaul Goskind
35mm 16mm DVD
In this, Poland’s last Yiddish feature film, comedy duo Dzigan and Shumacher play all the parts in a Sholem Aleichem story staged for an audience of children who survived the Holocaust. More
USA, 1981, 15 minutes, B&W
Directed by Ron Blau
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
A young Jewish woman’s charmed and secure life in 1930s Berlin is shattered as the Nazis take control. The family's home movies are presented with overlapping soundtracks, in order to re-create their "time in the garden." More
USA, 1940, 77 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Max Nosseck
35mm 16mm DVD
The story of a Vilna cantor seduced by the opera resonates with the voice of Moishe Oysher. Carefully lit cinematography, well-shaped dialogue, and Alexander Olshanetsky's musical score steer Overture clear of melodramatic excess. More
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USA, 1928, 20 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Les Goodwins
16mm DVD
Another in the Izzie and Lizzie series, this film continues the slapstick style which explodes from a domestic comedy into a frenzy of wild action and fast chases. More
Netherlands, 1970, 65 minutes, B&W
English narration
Directed by Philo Bregstein
16mm DVD VHS
This film documents the life of the late Jewish historian and author Jacques Presser, author of Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. More
France, 2009, 52 minutes
French and Italian with English Subtitles
Directed by André Waksman
DVD
In the summer of 1943, thousands of Jewish refugees in Italian-occupied southern France enjoyed a rare respite from persecution, protected by an unusual force: the occupying Italian Army, who temporarily shielded local and foreign Jews despite pressure from the Germans and the French Vichy administration. More
Israel, 1976, 57 minutes, color, English
Directed by Herb Krosney
DVD VHS
Orthodox Jews, Jewish atheists, Russian immigrants, and kibbutzniks discuss their views on who is a Jew. Featuring Abba Eban, Rabbi Goren, Yigal Alon, and David Ben-Gurion. More
Israel, 1980, 58 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Haim Shiran
16mm DVD
Based on the autobiographical novel by sociologist Albert Memmi, this feature film about an expressive and intelligent 13-year old boy captures the cultural richness and social complexity of a Jewish boy's life in Tunisia, North Africa. More
Austria/USA, 1998, 79 minutes, color
English and German with English subtitles
Directed by Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy
16mm DVD VHS
This award-winning documentary presents the story of nearly 20,000 European Jewish refugees who fled to Shanghai from 1938 to 1941. Shanghai, a free port that did not require papers for entry, became the “last resort” for many Jews seeking a safe haven from the Nazis. More
New Zealand, 1996, 58 minutes, color
Directed by Francine Zuckerman
16mm DVD VHS
Multi-talented writer/performer Deb Filler stars in this adaptation of her autobiographical off-Broadway solo show about her life as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. More
USA, 2012, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Jesse Zook Mann
DVD Blu-ray Digital
Profiling Hassidic punk rockers, Yiddish street performers, African-American Jewish activists and more, Punk Jews explores an emerging movement of provocateurs and committed Jews who are asking, each in his or her own way, what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century. In the process, they are challenging stereotypes and breaking down barriers. More
Israel, 1998, 56 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Dina Zvi-Riklis
DVD VHS
In this feature film, Yael and Shlomit, two secular, free-spirited women, share a flat in Tel Aviv. Their high rent forces them to take in a third roommate, Malka, an enigmatic ultra-orthodox woman with a secret. More
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Israel, 2010/1995, 62 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Producer: Noemi Schory, Belfilms
DVD
The assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin as he left a peace rally in 1995 plunged the country into mourning. That the gunman was a 25-year old Israeli further complicated the event’s fallout. Constructed entirely from television coverage aired in the seven days following the murder, the film is a mosaic, allowing viewers to experience the events much as Israelis saw them, through the TV screen. More
France, 2003, 52 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Directed by Judith Wechsler
DVD
Before the era of Sarah Bernhardt, Rachel Felix (1821-1858) was the great actress of the Comédie-Française-and the first international dramatic star. Small, plain and fierce, Rachel's ability to convey passion in her performances thrilled audiences. More
Israel, 1998, 52 minutes, color
Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
Directed by Ilan Yagoda
DVD VHS
The Jewish settlers of Kibbutz Megido and the Arab villagers of Lajun appear like two entirely different groups separated one from the other. Yagoda, who served in Megido during his military service, returns to meet the refugees of the past, Jews and Arabs tied to the same plot of land. More
USA, 2005, 73 minutes, color
Directed by Gina M. Angelone
DVD
This courageous documentary tells the story of Irene and her twin brother René, Czech Jews sent to Auschwitz at age six where they were they were experimented on by Josef Mengele. More
USSR, 1932, 72 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Boris Shpis and Mark Milman
35mm DVD
Yiddish author Peretz Markish wrote the screenplay for this film about a bricklayer who returns home to Russia after 20 years in America. The only Russian-Yiddish sound film produced in the Soviet Union, the film glorifies Soviet industrial productivity as it denigrates American capitalism and assimilation. More
Belgium, 1995, 60 minutes, color/b&w
Spanish, French, Italian and Greek with English subtitles
Directed by Diane Perelsztejn
16mm DVD
Portrait of the Jews of Rhodes, whose ancestors found refuge there after their expulsion from Spain in the 15th century. For five centuries, Jews lived in Rhodes until their community was destroyed during World War II. More
Italy/UK, 1987, 84 minutes, color/B&W
Italian and German with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Rochlitz
16mm DVD
Rochlitz’s documentary about the non-Jewish Italian resistance to Hitler’s “Final Solution” explores how Italian officials prevented the deportation of Jews in Italian-occupied Europe. More
Israel, 1998, 51 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Paula Weiman-Kelman
DVD VHS
In this intimate documentary portrait, Alice Shalvi shares her thoughts and memories of her public and private life, from her childhood in Essen to her success as a leading Israeli scholar, feminist, and peace activist. More
USA, 1984, 57 minutes, color
English and French with English subtitles
Directed by Budd Margolis
DVD VHS
Robert Clary (who portrayed Louis Lebeau on Hogan’s Heroes) returns to Europe in search of his own story: his happy childhood in the streets of Paris, his incarceration at Drancy transit camp and at Buchenwald. More
Germany, 2009, 86 minutes, color, In English
Produced & Directed by Hannes Karnick & Wolfgang Richter
DVD
World renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton discusses the processes by which ordinary doctors became murders, issues at the heart of his groundbreaking 1986 book The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. "This is a fascinating, compelling, profoundly disturbing movie that miraculously leaves one agreeing with Lifton that ‘there is room for hope.’” –Karen Cooper, Director, Film Forum More
USA, 1908, 10 minutes, B&W
Silent without intertitles
Directed by D.W. Griffith
16mm DVD
This early D. W. Griffith short shows the director's interest in Jewish ghetto life, portrayed here with sympathy and sentimentality. The melodramatic plot involves the conflict between generations in an immigrant Jewish family. More
USA, 2015, color Directed by Aviva Kempner
DVD (DCP, Blu-ray for public performance)
Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant peddler who never finished high school, rose to become the President of Sears. Influenced by the writings of the educator Booker T. Washington, this Jewish philanthropist joined forces with African American communities during the Jim Crow South to build 5,300 schools in the segregated American South. See this important new documentary from filmmaker Aviva Kempner. More
Germany, 1998, 89 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Liliane Targownik
35mm DVD VHS
When Michael Rosenzweig a working-class German Jew is charged with the murder of a neo-Nazi leader, he and his family find themselves fighting for justice is the face of with a brick wall of prejudice. More
Israel, 2002, 90 minutes, color
English and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Eli Cohen
35mm DVD VHS
Cohen takes an elliptical approach in telling the story of Pinchas Rutenberg, a visionary, complex, and larger-than-life figure, who, amongst other things, brought electricity to Jewish Palestine in the early 20th century by building a hydroelectric power station. More
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UK, 1987, 52 minutes, color
Directed by Naomi Gryn
16mm DVD
Celebrate the excitement and diversity of Shabbat in London. Gryn mixes chicken soup, cholent, and music with interviews with rabbis and members of Orthodox, Reform, Sephardi, and Ashkenazi communities. More
USA, 2001, 37 minutes, color
Produced by Rob Cooper and the Pucker Gallery
DVD
For over 60 years, from his first paintings as a child prodigy in the Vilna Ghetto, Samuel Bak has produced a remarkable body of work that has earned him an international reputation as a painter of thought-provoking images. More
Canada, 2003, 48 minutes, color
Directed by Christa Singer
DVD
On the occasion of a retrospective exhibit of his work, painter Samuel Bak returned to his hometown of Vilna. Saved from the death camps by his father, the miracle of Bak’s survival is a recurring theme in the unique and powerful visual vocabulary of his work. More
Austria, 1985, 110 minutes, B&W
German with English Subtitles
Directed by Axel Corti
DVD
Picking up after God Does Not Believe In Us Anymore, Freddy struggles to find work after arriving in New York in 1940. His world of refugee acquaintances includes the depressed daughter of a poet/delicatessen owner, an aging surgeon who cannot find work, and a lovable charlatan photographer. Corti’s trilogy continues with Welcome In Vienna. More
Israel, 2010, 56, minutes, color
Hebrew, Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Yael Leibovitz Zand
DVD
In this clever and heartfelt mockumentary, a renowned Yiddish actor disappears under criminal circumstances. Searching for him twenty-five years later we meet the colorful characters that made up Israel’s vibrant Yiddish scene during the country’s first decades. More
Israel, 1995, 14 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Udi Ben-Arie
16mm DVD VHS
An Israeli reserve soldier on watch at a remote post along the Israeli-Jordanian border finds a Jordanian soldier who is bored to death just like him. Together they pass the time, help each other, get into trouble and still manage to get away with it. More
Israel/Poland, 2001, 52 minutes, color
English, Hebrew and Polish with English subtitles
Directed by Ronit Kerstner; Produced by Noemi Schory
DVD
Through accidental discovery or deathbed confessions many Catholic Polish citizens have made an unsettling discovery: they were born Jewish. These “new Jews" must decide what this new truth means to them, as Poles and as Jews. More
Netherlands/USA, 2005, 82 minutes, color, English
Directed by Tim Morse and Karen Morse
DVD
Walter Suskind was a German Jew living in Amsterdam who was forced to serve as the Jewish head of deportation at the main deportation site in Holland. More
USSR, 1934, 84 minutes, B&W
Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Vladimir Korsh-Sablin
DVD
During the 1920s, many Jews moved to Birobidzhan, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region on the Chinese border. This melodrama tells the story of a Jewish family’s immigration and their experiences as settlers on a collective farm in the area. More
France, 1999, 24 minutes, color
French with English subtitles
Directed by Daniel Meyers
DVD VHS
Two young Jewish siblings sheltered by a family in the Nazi-occupied town of Compiègne, France, during World War II, went to live with a Catholic family. Now living in the U.S. they return to France for their “adopted” mother’s 90th birthday. More
Israel, 1997, 35 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD
An elderly man's anxiety in the face of loneliness and death fades and unresolved familial conflicts disappear for a few moments of grace when his son bathes him for the last time. More
Israel, 2000, 30 minutes, color
Dutch, English and Hebrew with English Subtitles
Directed by Izzy Abrahami & Erga Netz
DVD
Mrs. Hans Snoek, a 90-year old Dutch dancer, famous in The Netherlands as the founder of several dance companies, discusses a little-known episode from her past; during World War II she hid Jews in her Amsterdam home. More
USA, 1938, 95 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD
Moishe Oysher gives his most robust performance as a passionate shtetl blacksmith who must struggle against temptation to become a mensch. Ulmer’s film is a musical version of David Pinski’s classic 1906 play Yankl der Schmid. More
USA, 1956, 86 minutes, B&W
Directed by Max Nosseck
35mm DVD
A quirky combination of 1950s movie conventions—the musical, gangster and mystery movie—this virtually unknown independent film is one of the first American features to dramatize the Holocaust. Starring Moishe Oysher as a German concentration camp survivor suffering from traumatic amnesia who becomes a New York singing sensation. More
Canada, 1987, 58 minutes, color
Directed by Katherine Smalley and Vic Sarin
16mm DVD VHS
Interweaving docu-drama sequences with archival material, this film follows Israel and Frania Rubinek on their emotional return journey to Poland to reunite with the woman who, with her husband and son, saved their lives 40 years earlier. More
Israel, 1991, 26 minutes, color/B&W
Hebrew and Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Jorge Gurvich
35mm DVD VHS
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. More
USA/Hungary, 2005, 45 minutes, color/B&W
English, Hungarian and Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Nicole Opper
DVD VHS
Hoping to rescue victims of the Holocaust, 23-year old Hannah Senesh left the Palestine kibbutz she had helped to build and parachuted into her native Hungary. Instead, she was imprisoned and killed. More
USA, 1978, 60 minutes, color
Directed by Herbert Dorfman
DVD VHS
Join jazz saxophone virtuoso Stan Getz on his 1977 three-week tour of Israel. Getz jams with local musicians -a Kurdish drummer, an Arab quartet, a Hassidic wedding band, a Yemenite dance troupe- adapting his unique style to the various ethnic sounds of Israel. More
UK, 1990, 25 minutes, color
Directed by Naomi Gryn
DVD VHS
Tour Prague's legendary Jewish quarter with Rabbi Hugo Gryn as he visits some of its most evocative sites and recalls a world that is no more. Filmed six months before Prague's 1989 Velvet Revolution. More
Canada, 2001, 90 minutes, color, English
Directed by Simcha Jacobovici
16mm DVD
In 1941 a boat carrying nearly 800 refugees bound for Palestine found themselves stranded in Istanbul Harbor where it waited while Turkey, under pressure from the British, deliberated the passengers' fate. More
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Israel, 2009, 125 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Anat Zeltser, Modi Bar-On and Gabriel Bibliowicz
DVD
Produced for the 100th anniversary of Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv-Jaffa explores the city's history. Israeli TV celebrity Modi Bar-On hosts this fast-paced film which uses archival film and photos intercut with those of contemporary Tel Aviv. More
USA, 2014/2017, 75 minutes, color, in English
DVD has Closed Captioning & Subtitles for the Hearing Impaired Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by John Lollos
Narrated by Alan Alda
DVD Blu-ray DCP
A film festival favorite with more than 100 festival screenings. Portraits of two beloved icons--Sholom Aleichem and Theodore Bikel--are woven together in this enchanting new documentary. The two men have much in common: wit, wisdom and talent, all shot through with deep humanity and Yiddishkeit. This new film combines Bikel's charismatic storytelling and masterful performances with a broader exploration of Aleichem's remarkable life and work. More
USA, 1939, 96 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Maurice Schwartz
35mm 16mm DVD
Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem play centers on Khave, Tevye the Dairyman’s daughter, who falls in love with Fedye, the son of a Ukrainian peasant. More
Germany, 1995, 100 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Oliver Storz
35mm DVD
In the small Swabian village of Nesselbühl, Germany, in April 1945, Anna still believes hope can be found in trusting the Führer. But then, three cattle cars filled with Jewish concentration camp prisoners being moved to another camp are left abandoned on the train tracks. More
USA, 2008, 60 minutes, Color/B&W, sound
Directed by Abraham Ravett
16mm DVD
A collection of 3 short films by photographer and filmmaker Abraham Ravett who merges interviews of family members often with previously made films, animation, still photographs and archival footage to make highly personal statements on memory and the Holocaust. More
USA, 2005, 52 minutes, color
English and Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Issac Artenstein
DVD VHS
Throughout the early-20th century, thousands of Jews sailed to America and a small group made their way north to Tijuana. Tijuana Jews is a personal exploration of this unique community, which blended Jewish and Mexican cultures and customs. More
Ireland, 2009, 80 minutes, English, B&W/Color
Directed by Gerry Gregg
DVD
The first major documentary about the Holocaust made in Ireland. The film will play a central role in educating the Irish about the Holocaust and in promoting racial and religious tolerance as the Irish Minister of Integration, John Curran, has funded the distribution of the film to all secondary schools in Ireland. More
Israel, 1995, 50 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Ori Inbar
DVD
The future of the Golan remains a crucial issue for Israel's future. This documentary about the people who live in and protect the Golan provides important insight into the political and social issues surrounding the territory. More
Israel, 1996, 40 minutes, color/B&W
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Zolton Terner
DVD VHS
Irom 1941 through 1944, 300,000 Jews were killed at the hands of officials in Transnistria, an area of southern Ukraine bordering Rumania that has become know as the "Forgotten Cemetery." More
West Germany, 1984, 270 minutes, color/B&W
German with English subtitles
Directed by Eberhard Fechner
16mm DVD
At least one quarter of a million people were murdered in the Lublin/Majdanek concentration camp. Between 1975 and 1981, the longest trial in German legal history took place in Düsseldorf. Fifteen men and women, former camp guards, were accused of having participated in the murder of thousands. More
France, 2011, 90 minutes
English narration, Hebrew, German & French w/ English subtitles
Director: Michaël Prazan
Blu-ray DVD Digibeta
The 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann held in an Israeli courtroom and broadcast around the globe, was a benchmark event in the historiography of the Holocaust and a milestone in media and journalism coverage. This compelling new documentary features accounts of Eichmann's capture, the drama in the courtroom and behind the scenes, and reactions from around the world. More
Germany, 2005, 85 minutes, color
German and English with English subtitles
Directed by Malte Ludin
35mm DVD
Ludin's documentary focuses on how his family grapples with--or refuses to engage--the history of their family and of Weimar and Nazi Germany more generally. More
USA, 1938, 82 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Ben K. Blake
16mm DVD
Make sure there's a hanky nearby: After the death of their mother, older sister Betty works tirelessly, supporting her sister through nursing school and her fiancée through medical school only to see her happiness shattered when the two fall in love. More
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USA, 1932, 87 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Sidney Goldin & Aubrey Scotto
16mm DVD
When poverty and persecution compel his Polish landsmen to leave their shtetl, "Uncle" Moses, the crude and lusty former butcher, welcomes them to his Lower East Side clothing factory. More
Israel, 1996, 86 minutes, color
Hebrew with English subtitles
Directed by Doron Tsabori & Rino Zror
DVD
Soccer mania hits a small working-class Israeli town near the Jordanian border, and the local team prepares for their last crucial game of the season against the national champions from Haifa, exacerbating conflicts between rich and poor. More
USA, 1990, 30 minutes, color
Directed by Daniel Keller, Charles Light & Rob Okun
16mm DVD
This film shows the influence of the Rosenberg case on the work of artists past and present, including Arthur Miller, Adrienne Rich, Picasso and many more. Includes dramatic readings by Ed Asner, Ossie Davis, Tony Randall, Ruby Dee, and Tovah Feldshuh. More
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(reissue of Tkies Kaf/The Vow, 1924)
USA, 1933, 60 minutes, B&W
Yiddish narration with English subtitles
Directed by Zygmund Turkow (1924); George Roland (1933)
35mm 16mm DVD
Starring real-life mother and daughter Ester-Rokhl Kaminska and Ida Kaminska, this film is a precursor to The Dybbuk featuring the same classic tale of frustrated love and destiny and the breaking/fulfillment of vows. More
USA, 1963, 27 minutes, B&W
Directed by Lazar Dunner
16mm DVD
A documentary biography of Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first President of Israel, incorporating film footage, sketches, and still photographs. More
Poland, 1937, 82 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henryk Szabo
35mm DVD VHS
Two friends make a sacred pact pledging their newborn children, Rachel and Mendel, in marriage. Based on the same legend as S. Ansky's classic play The Dybbuk, this spirited film offers the divine intervention of Elijah and a happy ending. More
Canada/France, 1994, 52 minutes, color/B&W
English, German and French with English subtitles
Directed by Maziar Bahari
DVD VHS
In the summer of 1939, the German luxury liner carrying 937 German Jews was refused haven by every country in the Americas. The St. Louis episode is told by passengers who made the crossing as children and in readings from the diary of the ship’s captain. More
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Austria, 1921, 59 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Otto Kreisler
16mm DVD
This early film biography of the founder of modern Zionism depicts a young Herzl learning about Jewish persecution throughout the ages and developing his theory of political Zionism, which he saw as the only solution to anti-semitism. More
USA, 1933, 66 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by George Roland
35mm DVD
A German-Jewish artist encounters anti-semitism when his masterpiece is rejected by the Academy. The figure in the painting then comes to life and tells of Jewish persecution throughout history. This unusual film ends with footage of an anti-Hitler rally at Madison Square Garden. More
France, 1946, 53 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with some English subtitles
Produced by the Central Committee for Child Welfare of the Union of Jews for Resistance and Mutual Aid
35mm DVD
Among the first movies to deal with the subject of the Holocaust, this documentary about Jewish war orphans—which includes newsreels, footage of children receiving aid from relief agencies, and staged sequences—opened in New York in September 1948. More
Austria, 1986, 125 Minutes, B&W
German with English Subtitles
Directed By Axel Corti
DVD
The conclusion of Axel Corti’s trilogy. Freddy and Adler, a left-wing intellectual, return to Austria in 1944 as soldiers in the U.S. Army. Freddy falls in love with the daughter of a Nazi, and Adler attempts to go over to the Communist Zone. More
Israel, 1999, 73 minutes, color
Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles
Directed by Noit Geva & Dan Geva
DVD
Seventy years after the 1929 Hebron massacre, this is the personal testimony of 12 people who survived the atrocity. Noit Geva's grandmother was so traumatized that she never spoke of her experience, but recorded it in a journal entry entitled "What I Saw in Hebron". More
Czechoslovakia/Germany, 2000, 90 minutes, color
Czech and German with English subtitled
Directed by Iva Svarcova
35mm DVD
1969: The first winter after the violent end of the Spring of Prague. Just as three astronauts are flying to the moon, thirteen-year-old Hannah and her crazy young parents land in the German economic wonderland. More
USA, 1937, 92 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Abraham Leff and Harry Lynn
16mm DVD
Celia Adler, doyenne of the Yiddish stage, gives a haunting performance as a new immigrant forced to give up her son. Obsessed with the thought of reuniting with him, she spends the next 25 years searching, pining, and bewailing her loss. More
Poland, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Alexander Martin
16mm DVD
This, the last Yiddish feature film made in Poland before Word War II, is the story of the hardships faced by immigrants in America at the turn of the century. After the eldest son of the Rivkin family is drowned, the father leaves his family in Europe to go to America. More
Austria, 1984, 106 minutes, color
German with English subtitles
Directed by Axel Corti
DVD VHS
In October 1936, a high official in the Austrian government receives a letter from a German Jewish woman with whom he had an affair in 1925 asking him to help place an 11-year-old, half Jewish boy in a good Austrian school. More
USA, 2011, 60 minutes, color
Hebrew and English with English subtitles
Directed by Beverly Siegel & Leta Lenik
DVD
An important new film documenting the experiences of modern-day “agunot,” or women whose husbands refuse to grant them a Jewish divorce. Narrated by actress Mayim Bialik (Blossom, The Big Bang Theory), Women Unchained offers strategies for what women can do to protect themselves and why the issue matters to all Jews. More
Israel, 1991, 90 minutes, color
Hebrew, English, French and Russian with English subtitles
Directed by Eli Cohen
16mm DVD
At the beginning of the 20th century, a language war raged in Palestine among Yiddish, Russian, French, German, English, and Hebrew, a language barely spoken for 2000 years. This feature film tells the dramatic life story of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda who championed the cause of modern Hebrew. More
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USA, 1991, 60 minutes, Color/B&W
Directed by Rich Pontius
DVD
Narrated by prolific writer and director David Mamet, this film is a perfect introduction to Yiddish cinema. The history of the genre through interviews, archival photographs, and film clips of many of The National Center for Jewish Film’s Yiddish feature films. More
USA, 1989, 28 minutes, color/B&W
Spanish with English subtitles
Directed by Mark Freeman
DVD
At the end of the 19th century, some East European Jews fleeing persecution and pogroms emigrated to Argentina. There, many became ranchers and farmers, adapting a life on the pampas alongside the tough Argentine cowboys, the gauchos. More
USA, 2006, 74 minutes, color
Directed by Paul Mazursky
DVD
Directed by award-winning filmmaker Paul Mazursky, Yippee chronicles his whirlwind journey to Uman, a small Ukrainian town that is the site of a unique, annual gathering of Jewish men making pilgrimages to the burial place of Rabbi Nachman (1772-1810). More
(remade in 1933 as Prince and Pauper)
Austria, 1924, 100 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
16mm DVD
This period drama set in 18th century Volhynia stars Maurice Schwartz as Leybke, a handsome Jewish guardsman who martyrs himself and saves his brethren. More
USA, 2010, 24 minutes
Directed by Ruth Fertig
Digibeta DVD
Winner of the 2010 Student Academy Award Gold Medal for Documentary, Ruth Fertig’s film uses animation by Jeanne Stern, archival film, home movies and Super 8 footage to tell her grandmother’s story of survival and resilience in the face of crushing loss. More
USA, 1935, 18 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
16mm DVD
Fanciful and slightly surreal sketches preserve Cutler’s work with the marionettes he designed, built, and brought to life. More
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France, 1996, 22 minutes, color/B&W
French with English subtitles
Directed by Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir
35mm DVD
Zahor makes an essential point about the victims of the Holocaust—that the way they are traditionally presented in the media says nothing about them but everything about their Nazi tormentors. Here, we meet real people—not yet victims—young people with potential. More
Israel/ Germany, 1989, 135 minutes, color
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henryk M. Broder and Frans van der Meulen
DVD
The state of Yiddish culture in 1989 in Israel is examined, from Socialist Bundists in Tel Aviv to the Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem, and all the people, poets, singers, revolutionaries, journalists, and actors in between for whom Yiddish is a living language in the midst of Hebrew. More
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