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American Matchmaker Amerikaner Shadkhn
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
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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
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, 1980, 8 minutes, Animated
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Sally Heckel
16mm
An animated fable based on Itzik Manger's folk tune, "Afn Veg Shteyt a Boym" (On the Road Stands a Tree) about a child whose mother deprives him of freedom to explore the world. More
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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 min, b&w
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Ilya Motyleff (Sidney Goldin, uncredited)
35mm DVD
This toe-tapping Yiddish musical drama marks the screen debut of Moishe Oysher in the title role critic J. Hoberman calls the “anti-Jazz Singer.” Leaving behind his Shtetle Belz for the Lower East Side, Sol eventually lands the American dream, becoming a popular radio star. More
USA, 1949, 93 minutes, B&W
English & Yiddish (No subtitles)
Directed by Josef Berne
16mm DVD
A Jewish resort hotel celebrates a pair of longtime customers' fiftieth wedding anniversary by staging an old-fashioned Borscht Belt show. More
Poland, 1935, 63 minutes, B&W
English & Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Aleksander Ford for the Jewish Labor Bund
Directed by Lodz native Aleksander Ford and financed by the Jewish Labor movement in Poland, Children Must Laugh is one of the few surviving documentaries about Jewish life in Poland before WWII. More
USA, 1968, 11 minutes, B&W
Yiddish (no subtitles)
Directed by Abe Wexler
16mm DVD
Yes, it's just your typical all-Yiddish shoot-'em-up: a small boy falls out of a covered wagon on its way West and shows up years later as a quick trigger cowboy. More
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Poland, 1938, 10 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with complete, new English subtitles
16mm DVD
The lively Jewish neighborhoods of Warsaw, including Zamenhof Street and the commercial "beehive" Nalewki Street, were home to 400,000 Jews before World War II. 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
This delightful comedy opens as Morris Brown, a New Yorker better acquainted with his checkbook than his prayerbook, returns to Galicia with his very American daughter, Mollie (Molly Picon) for a family wedding. More
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USA, 1931, 15 minutes, B&W
English, Hebrew, and Yiddish (no subtitles)
Producer: Sidney M. Goldin for Jacob Berkowitz
16mm VHS DVD
A seder in the midst of North American prosperity recalls traditional Passover celebrations in Russia (with the same cast enacting both scenes). More
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USA, 1949, 100 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
16mm DVD
A wager between God and Satan has dire consequences in this allegory about the material world's false promises. 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 Ulmer and Jacob Ben-Ami
35mm 16mm DVD
With a cast from the Artef and Yiddish Art Theaters, Peretz Hirschbein's semiautobiographical play and music by Vladimir Heifetz, Edgar Ulmer created a hit. More
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USSR, 1928, 76 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles (Incomplete: missing one reel)
Directed by Grigori Roshal
35mm 16mm
In the tradition of brilliant Soviet directors Eisenstein and Pudovkin, this film features stylized cinematography and stars Leonid Leonidov, a star of the Moscow Art Theater... 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
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USA, 1937, 15 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new 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
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Poland, 1937, 90 minutes, B&W with sepia tone and blue-green tone
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
16mm DVD
In 1938 and 1939, Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind of Warsaw-based Sektor Films produced six short films about urban Jewish communities in Poland. More
USSR, 1925, 100 minutes, B&W
Silent with new 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
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
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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
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USSR, 1928, 92 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
35mm 16mm DVD
Like Sholem Aleichem, on whose "Motl Peysi, the Cantor's Son" and "The Enchanted Tailor" stories Laughter Through Tears is based, director Gricher leavens pathos with humor in his earthy portrait of prerevolutionary shtetl life. More
Poland, 1939, 106 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Green and Leon Trystand
35mm 16mm DVD
A tale of family disintegration and poverty that serves as a metaphor for the displacements facing European Jews in 1939. More
USA, 1939, 94 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with 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 from the poverty and stifling old-world prejudices of the shtetl. More
USA, 1937, 97 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Joseph Seiden
35mm DVD
This dramatic tale of immigrant hardship highlights some of the traumatic problems of the immigrant experience, including alcoholism, separation and poverty. 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
This is the first feature film to represent the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective. More
USA, 1936, 76 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Director: George Roland
35mm DVD
Based on a book by Isidore Zolotarefsky This film is a prime example of "shund", the melodramatic theatrical escapist entertainment of the Yiddish theater. More
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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, 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 Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin, an enormously influential Yiddish playwright. More
USA, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with 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
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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, comedy duo Dzigan and Shumacher play all the parts in a Sholem Aleichem story for an audience of children who survived the Holocaust. More
USA, 1940, 77 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Max Nosseck
35mm 16mm DVD
Beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending on Yom Kippur, this story of a Vilna cantor seduced by the opera resonates with the voice of Moishe Oysher. More
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USSR, 1932, 72 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Boris Shpis and Mark Milman
35mm DVD
This rare, newly restored feature was originally advertised as "the first Yiddish talkie from Soviet Russia." The plot centers on Nathan Becker, a Jewish bricklayer... More
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USA, 1938, B&W, 95 minutes
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer
35mm 16mm DVD
The Singing Blacksmith is the film version of "Yankl der Schmid," a classic 1906 drama that was one of the first Yiddish plays to offer a psychological study of physical passion. More
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USA, 1939, 96 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Maurice Schwartz
35mm 16mm DVD
A renowned Yiddish theater and stage actor, Maurice Schwartz's adaptation of the classic Sholem Aleichem novel, centers on Tevye's daughter Khave... More
USA, 1938, 82 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Ben K. Blake
16mm DVD
After the death of their mother, older sister Betty works tirelessly only to see her happiness shattered when her sister and fiancée fall in love. More
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USA, 1932, 87 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with new English subtitles
Directed by Sidney Goldin & Aubrey Scotto
16mm DVD
When poverty and persecution compel his Polish landsmen to leave their shtetl, "Uncle" Moses welcomes them to the promised land of his Lower East Side clothing factory. More
(reedited reissue of 1926 silent Broken Hearts)
USA, 1932, 68 minutes, b&w
Yiddish and English intertitles with music and sound sequences
Directed by Maurice Schwartz
35mm
Schwartz's film directorial debut is a film within a film where a grandfather tells his grandchildren a cautionary tale about a Jewish political dissident writer who leaves his wife in Russia... 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
Few reminders are left of the vibrant Yiddish theatrical world that flourished in Warsaw, Poland, in the 1920s. This film is one of them. More
Poland, 1937, 82 minutes, b&w
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henryk Szabo
35mm DVD
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
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USA, 1933, 66 minutes
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by George Roland
The Wandering Jew is a unique find: the first American feature film to depict the situation of Jews in Nazi Germany, and the only Yiddish-language film of its era to address this subject. 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 opened in New York in September 1948 and has rarely been seen since. More
USA, 1937, 92 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Abraham Leff, Harry Lynn
16mm DVD
Celia Adler, doyenne of the Yiddish stage, gives a haunting performance as the film's heroine who arrives in New York in 1911at the height of mass Jewish immigration. More
Poland, 1939, 88 minutes, B&W
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
Directed by Alexander Martin
16mm DVD
The last Yiddish feature made in Poland before WWII, this 1939 film was based on a 1907 play by the prolific playwright Jacob Gordin. More
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USA, 1991, 60 minutes, B&W/Color
Directed by Rich Pontius
DVD
Narrated by prolific playwright David Mamet, this film is a perfect way to introduce new audiences to Yiddish cinema. More
Austria, 1924, 100 minutes, b&w
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Sidney M. Goldin
16mm DVD
Yizkor dramatizes its theme of fidelity to one's self, one's community and one's religion through a plot that revolves around hostage-taking, heroism and resistance. More
USA, 1935, 18 minutes,b&w
Yiddish with NEW English subtitles
16mm DVD
This film is a performance of one of Yosl Cutler's solo puppet shows. More
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Israel-Germany, 1989, 135 minutes, Color
Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Henryk M. Broder & Frans van der Meulen
DVD
The state of Yiddish culture in Israel is examined, from socialist Bundists in Tel Aviv to and all the people for whom Yiddish is a living language in the midst of Hebrew. More
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