AWARDS
BEST
DOCUMENTARY LA Film, TV and Webisode Festival (2012)
BEST
DOCUMENTARY New York International Film Festival (2011)
BEST
DOCUMENTARY- AUDIENCE AWARD New York International Film Festival (2011)
"BEST
OF FEST" Palm
Springs International Film Festival (2011)
BEST
DOCUMENTARY- AUDIENCE AWARD Washington
Jewish Film Festival (2010)
BEST
DOCUMENTARY- PEOPLES'
CHOICE AWARD Starz
Denver Film Festival (2010)
BEST
DOCUMENTARY- AUDIENCE
AWARD Woodstock
International Film Festival (2010)
FESTIVAL SCREENINGS
LA Film, TV and Webisode Festival (2012)
Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival (2012)
Schenectady JCC Film Festival (2012)
Farthest North Jewish Film Festival (2012)
New York International Independent Film and Video Festival (2011)
Jacksonville Film Festival (2011)
Jewish Book & Arts Fair; Houston, TX (2011)
Palm
Beach Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Toronto Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Sarasota Film
Festival (2011)
Northwest Film Center Jewish Film Festival
(2011)
Westchester Jewish Film Festival (2011)
San Diego Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Jewishfilm.2011
NCJF's 14th Annual Film Festival (2011)
Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Palm Springs International Film Festival (2011)
New York Jewish Film Festival (2011)
Washington Jewish Film Festival (2010)
Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival (2010)
Starz Denver Film Festival (2010)
EAST
COAST PREMIERE Woodstock
Film Festival (2010)
WORLD PREMIERE San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, 2010
- DIRECTOR
PRESENT
Screening July 25 at the Castro Theatre & Aug 1 at Berkeley’s
Roda Theatre
"So good
is this new work—so immediate, enthralling, moving and funny—that
it will probably create a bunch of new Paley fans... Every moment in the
film is alive and rich—just like Grace... If the movie is a paean
to Paley well—goddamn— the woman deserves it." -James
Van Maanen, TrustMovies
TRAILER
Lilly Rivlin’s
intimate documentary is a rich, inspiring portrait of writer, activist
and New York icon Grace Paley (1922-2007). Paley’s acclaimed first
short story collection, The Little Disturbances of Man, established
her reputation with its brilliantly sad and funny chronicles of Jewish
American urban females much like herself. Paley’s New York tales,
filled with an emotional and sexual frankness especially bold at the tail
end of the frightened 1950s, soon became classics of the short fiction
form. Not content to rest on her laurels, however, Paley combined her
evolving literary career with passionate pursuit of her political concerns
through the 1960s, 70s and 80s. “Art is too long and life is too
short,” wrote the outspoken Paley, “There’s a lot more
to do in life than writing.” Indeed, she spent the rest of her life
on the front lines of the anti-war and women’s movements, where
she endured being arrested time and again. Rivlin’s film confidently
juggles all aspects of Paley’s extraordinary story, told in candid
recollections and passionate readings by Paley herself, along with fond
remembrances by literary critics, family and writer-friends Allan Gurganas
and Alice Walker. Throughout, Grace
Paley: Collected Shorts casts an important and penetrating
light on a brilliant and highly principled woman who constantly reinvented
both her life and art. (Thomas Logoreci, SFJFF)
Paley’s
life illuminates the major protest movements of the latter part of the
20th century, culminating in the feminist movement, regarded by some social
theorists as the most important movement of those turbulent times. Translated
into 92 languages, Paley was New York’s first official state author
and past poet laureate of Vermont. Ranked among the great writers of her
generation by peers like Philip Roth, Paley combined a life as a master
short story writer, compared to Chekhov, with political activism, motherhood,
and being a cherished friend. The film will take us into her early life.
Grace was the child of Russian Jewish refugees who’d fled oppression
for the freedom of America. They were Socialists who instilled in her
a passion for social justice. Her talent for writing poetry was encouraged
by W.H. Auden with whom she studied. Grace taught creative writing for
twenty-two years at Sarah Lawrence College where she was a major influence
on her students. Many went on to become successful authors. She also instilled
in them a passion for political activism which is an equally important
part of her legacy.
To visualize the story of a writer is difficult. But to make a film about
a writer, political activist and someone whose life touched so many was
a special challenge. The film is structured in chapters to create a journey
that is coherent, entertaining and satisfying to both fans and those discovering
Grace Paley. With the modular structure for
Grace Paley: Collected Shorts we parallel The Collected
Stories an anthology of Paley’s three slim volumes of fiction.
In a further departure from the usual approach to biography, we have no
narrator, instead, Paley tells her own story through on camera interviews
intercut with recorded readings of excerpts from her works of fiction,
book of essays, and poems. Some readings are illustrated by Paley’s
close friend and distinguished artist, Vera Williams, whose water colors
are used as an interpretive device. Interviews with family, friends, students
and colleagues are interwoven with rare archival footage and stills. Grace
Paley died in August of 2007 but her voice and message live on vividly
in this film.
DIRECTOR'S PERSONAL
STATEMENT: LILLY RIVLIN
In 2006, I
met with Grace Paley to talk about making this documentary. We shared
a history in the Women’s Movement, the global Peace Movement and
in our Jewish heritage. Grace Paley lived a life of Tikun Olam. Her Judaism
was expressed through her commitment to a life of social justice and activism.
I felt it was essential to tell her story in full as a writer, activist,
teacher, friend mother and wife. All of these experiences informed her
work and motivated her efforts to achieve the dreams she had for a better
world for her grandchildren. In an interview with a Vermont newspaper
shortly before her death in 2007 she said: “It would be a world
without militarism and racism and greed and where women don’t have
to fight for their place in the world.” I set about uncovering everything
that would illuminate the story of this amazing woman from her F.B.I files
to rare television appearances. I also wanted to take every opportunity
to demonstrate the unique voice Paley brought to American literature and
was able to include many examples of Grace reading from her work throughout
the film. The image of the Jew in America has been largely defined by
the literary sons of urban Jewish immigrants. The American vision of the
immigrant experience is based on the narrative of such American Jewish
writers Philip Roth, Sol Bellow, Henry Roth and Irving Howe. It was not
until Grace Paley raised the missing voice, the other half, the female
perspective that Americans saw the role of women in that history and therefore
a different history. Her poems and stories are told through the Yiddish-inflected
voices of people in her family and the New York Jewish community in which
she was raised. I made an unconventional decision to shape this film in
a way that reflected Grace’s short stories. Each “short”
in the film is a chapter that covers a specific time or event in her life.
Grace gave me her personal blessing to proceed with the production of
this documentary. My aim, over the three years of putting this film together,
was to honor her as an iconic artist while demonstrating the example she
set as a good citizen. Grace Paley’s memory has lent ongoing vitality
to this project which will be an enduring tribute to her life’s
work and a source of inspiration for generations to come.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM
"The film is absolutely beautiful--beautifully made, full of soul, a wonderful visual biography." - Judith Thurman, author of Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller (National Book Award for Non-Fiction)
WASHINGTON
POST - By Ann Hornaday
"If anyone explored identity and community with vigor and joy, it
was the short story author Grace Paley, who died in 2007. In the documentary
Grace Paley: Collected
Shorts, Lilly Rivlin creates a lively, affectionate tribute
to Paley as a writer, mother, leftist, daughter of the Bronx, feminist,
teacher, wife, pacifist, troublemaker - who was, incidentally, Jewish.
Paley helped
forge new possibilities for women when she published the collection "The
Little Disturbances of Man" in 1959. With lines like "There's
a whole college of feeling between my corset and me," she made her
own immigrant Bronx vernacular worthy of literary respect, and later had
the guts to call out Norman Mailer when he organized a scandalously sexist
PEN conference.
Grace
Paley: Collected Shorts has already begun to win prizes
on the festival circuit. It includes interviews with Alice Walker, Allan
Gurganus and, most rewarding, the indomitable Paley herself, who emerges
here not just as a consummate storyteller, but an eminently worthy subject
herself. "
ABOUT PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
LILLY RIVLIN
Lilly Rivlin
has spent the majority of her film career creating art about social issues
and topics including feminism and women’s political activism and
spiritual advancement. Her films include Can
You Hear Me about Israeli and Palestinian women working
together for peace in the Middle East. The
Tribe, a microcosm of the saga of Jewish history, documents
the reunion of two thousand five hundred family members in Jerusalem,
Miriam’s
Daughters focuses on the birth and growth of Jewish feminism
and Gimme A
Kiss explores the meaning of love, as Rivlin’s parents,
at the close of their lives, lay in hospital beds next to each other.
Ms. Rivlin has also written for Newsweek, Ms. Magazine and The
Washington Post. She was born in Jerusalem and came to the United
States during WWII. Her family settled in Washington, D.C. and Lilly went
on to earn a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University
and a master’s degree in International Relations and Indian studies
from the University of California, Berkeley.
EXTRAS
Official
Website
Download
Press Kit (PDF)
Review:
Jewish Film Fest's 'Open Destiny', The Jewish Week
Review:
Intimate Struggles, Global Politics, Tikkun Magazine
Review:
TrustMovies by James Van Maanen
Review:
Still Amazing: Grace Paley on Film, War Resisters League
PURCHASE DVD
| HOME
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$29.95
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Home Use Only DVD (Not for Classroom/Institutional
Use)
Does
not include Public Performance Rights
Home
Use Policy (pdf)
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INSTITUTIONAL
USE
$90.00
plus shipping
Classroom/Institutional Use Only
DVD
Does
not include Public Performance Rights
Institutional
Use Policy (pdf)
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