SCREENINGS
Berlin Lesbian Film Festival, 2002
“The Jewish mothers that I know and love are sexy, smart, and strong, but I have never seen this mother in Hollywood movies, and I set out to find out why.” - Filmmaker Monique Schwarz
Jewish mothers are the most easily maligned image of Jewish women found in movies and television today. You know who they are: the caricature of the overbearing, emasculating, long suffering mother ever-ready with mountains of food. Australian director Monique Schwarz takes 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.
With characteristic Jewish humor, iconic filmmakers Paul Mazursky, Paul Bogart and Larry Peerce and actress Lainie Kazan reflect with disarming candor on their own Jewish mothers and how they influenced their on-screen portrayals. Critics J. Hoberman, Patricia Erens, Michael Medved and Sharon Rivo discuss the changing image of the Jewish mother on screen and Israeli directors Avram Hefner and Zepel Yeshurun and actress Gila Almagor illustrate the uniqueness of Israeli filmic images.Mamadrama features hilarious film clips from Come Blow Your Horn, Goodbye Columbus, Next Stop Greenwich Village, The Jazz Singer, Portnoy's Complaint, Where's Poppa, Torch Song Trilogy, rare Yiddish films and recent Israeli features. Interspersed throughout is the story of Schwarz’s own mother, Berta, from her life in Vienna before World War II to her struggles as an immigrant in post-war Australia, a picture of a woman vastly different from the Jewish mothers seen in contemporary films.
"The common stereotype of the Jewish Mother is a woman who is loud, obnoxious, domineering, not particularly attractive (though she wants to insist she once was) and emasculating.”
- Michael Medved, Film Critic. From Mamadrama.“The Jewish moguls had difficulty with their own Jewishness. As they became successful, the urge to assimilate fully was even stronger, So many of them found they would rather have a gentile wife than the Jewish wife they had first married.”
- Patricia Erens, Film Historian. From Mamadrama.
NCJF Restored Yiddish Films featured in Mamadrama:
Mirele Efros
A Letter to Mother
Where is My Child?
His People
Hungry Hearts
Mothers of Today
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