Farewell Russia, 1992, 27 minutes, B&W Arrange a Screening Contact us at jewishfilm(at)brandeis(dot)edu Public Exhibition Formats: 35mm, Beta, DVD |
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“In 1992 the Russian Jewish filmmaker Arkadiy Yakhnis made an elegiac short film, Farewell, that painfully portrayed the departure of an elderly Jew from his Soviet Bessarabian town. The film visualized a particular moment in Soviet and immediate post-Soviet history when Jews were participating in the most recent migration of Jews - the exodus from late and post-Communist Europe to Israel, the USA, Germany and elsewhere. The film also captured the ambivalence many Soviet Jews felt upon departure. Departure was not generally conceived of as an exile per se, since they were leaving of their own volition. For the main character in Farewell, leaving was experienced as nothing less than psychic rupture, an emotion appropriately colored gray in the entire film.”
– David Shneer, East European Jewish Affairs
"... each exquisitely-composed shot creates a world of haunting loss, unsurpassed faith and human dignity."
- San Francisco Jewish Film Festival
Synopsis
This short documentary chronicles a 90 year old man's emigration to Israel from his native shtetl in Bessabaria. Yakhnis' beautifully photographed film poetically captures the end of a rich Jewish heritage in Russia.
Awards
JURORS' CHOICE AWARD 1998 Jewish Video Competition, Judah L. Magnes Museum
Selected Screenings
Seattle Jewish Film Festival (2004)
Vancouver Jewish Film Festival (2000)
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival (1998)
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