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Benya Krik
Restored by NCJF
USSR, 1926, 90 minutes, B&W
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. More
USA, 1922, 86 minutes, B&W silent with German intertitles
Directed by Frank N. Seltzer and George K. Rowlands
16mm VHS
As antisemitic campaigns increased in 1920s America, American Jews looked for a way to present Judaism in a positive light. It was inevitable that some would turn to the motion picture as a solution to this dilemma. Consequently, a number of feature length films dealing with Jewish themes appeared in the 1920s. Breaking Home Ties, produced by a "syndicate" of prominent Jews in Philadelphia, was one of the first. The stated goal of the film was to truthfully represent "the every-day life of the Jew, with emphasis on that human and sympathetic element in his nature too often overlooked...." The film focuses on David Bergman who, thinking he has killed a friend in a jealous rage, flees Russia and becomes a successful lawyer in New York. His penniless family follows him to America, but by now he has lost touch with them. When David gets married on the premises of a home for the aged (to which he and his bride have contributed) he is happily reunited with his family, who also live in the home. Cast: Lee Kohlmar, Rebecca Weintraub, Richard Farrell, Arthur Ashley, Betty Howe, Jane Thomas, Henry B. Schaffer, Maude Hill, Robert Maxmillian.
USA, 1910, 15 minutes
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by D. W. Griffith
16mm DVD
This short tale of Lower East Side life captures the hustle and bustle of Rivington Street through the lens of legendary Hollywood director D.W. Griffith. More
USA, 1929, 9 minutes, B&W
Directed by Robert Ross
16mm DVD
With the advent of sound, the vaudeville-immigrant genre added comic speech to its repertoire of physical comedy and funny situations. More
USA, 1913, 10 minutes, B&W, silent
Directed by Mack Sennett
16mm DVD
Ford Sterling, Keystone's most popular comedian before Chaplin, plays Cohen, a sergeant in the Union Army who is the bitter rival of another officer for the attentions of Rebecca... More
USA, 1904, 1 minute, B&W, silent
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
16mm DVD
This typical one-shot gag film was produced for the Edison Company by Edwin S. Porter, who had previously filmed the famous silent movie version ofThe Great Train Robbery. More
USA, 1907, 10 minutes, B&W, silent
Directed by Edwin S. Porter
16mm DVD
By 1907, extended stories had become popular over the single gag. As in Cohen's Advertising Scheme, Cohen is again portrayed as the "scheming merchant." More
USSR, 1919, 18 minutes, B&W
Silent with English Intertitles
Directed by Alexander Razumni
35mm 16mm DVD
This short propaganda film (or agitka) tells the tale of a Jew who survives a pogrom and becomes a leader in the Red Army. More
Austria 1923 85 minutes B&W
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
Germany, 1936, 48 minutes, B&W
Silent with German and English intertitles
Produced by the German Zionist Union
16mm DVD
Created in 1936 in an effort to inspire German Jews under Nazi rule to make Aliyah, Hatikvah: The Hope is a documentary about the earliest period of Zionist history and a singular celluloid artifact. The film was made three years after the Nazi rise to power, at the narrow juncture in history when flight from Germany was both imperative and still possible. The unique footage focuses on some major personalities in the Zionist movement, the constructive work carried out in Palestine by the first waves of immigration, and the religious life of Jews from a diverse spectrum of backgrounds. Palestine is portrayed here as a land where ideologies are challenged only by physical tasks such as land clearing and swamp draining. Omitted, however, are the political challenges posed by the British Mandate and growing tensions between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous Arab population.
USA, 1925, 91 minutes, B&W
Directed by Edward Sloman
Silent with English intertitles
16mm DVD
Restoration by the National Center for Jewish Film with permission of Universal City Studios, Inc.
This restored early American feature starring Rudolph Schildraut is a nostalgic melodrama centered on two sons of a Russian-Jewish immigrant family: Morris, a lawyer, and Sammy, a prizefighter. More
USA, 1914, 10 minutes, B&W, silent
Produced by Crystal Films
16mm DVD
This short provides an interesting early example of a Jewish screen character: the nebbish who dreams of physical prowess. More
USA, 1922, 80 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by E. Mason Hopper
16mm DVD VHS
Based on 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 members of the Levin family who emigrate from Eastern Europe to New York City's Lower East Side. More
USSR 1925 100 minutes B&W Silent wiht English intertitles (Russian intertitles also available)
Directed by Alexander Granovsky
35mm 16mm DVD
Jewish Luck was among the first Soviet Yiddish films to be released in the US during the 1920s. More
Spain, 1929, 13 minutes, B&W, silent
Produced by Ernesto Giménez Caballero
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
The documentary provides a rare glimpse of Sephardic communities in Salonika, Constantinople, Yugoslavia, and Romania as well as former centers of Jewish life in Spain. More
USSR 1928 92 minutes B&W Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Grigori Gricher-Cherikover
35mm 16mm DVD VHS
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
USA, 1908, 10 minutes, silent, B&W
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company
Directed by Wallace McCutcheon
16mm VHS
This is a significant film in the history of American cinema. One of the first films scripted by D.W. Griffith, not only does it herald many of the social themes of his later films... More
USA, 1928, 20 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed byLes Goodwins
16mm DVD
Another in the Izzie and Lizzie series (see Nize People), this film continues the slapstick style which explodes from a domestic comedy into a frenzy of wild action and fast chases. More
1908, 10 minutes, B&W, silent
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. More
Austria, 1921, 59 minutes, B&W, silent
Directed by Otto Kreisler
16mm VHS
This early film biography of the founder of modern Zionism depicts Herzl learning in his youth about Jewish persecution throughout the ages and then developing his theory of political Zionism as the only solution to antisemitism. The film then follows Herzl's efforts to implement his ideas by converting European leaders and Jews to his cause.
USA, 1909, 3 minutes, B&W, silent
Produced by the Lubin Company
16mm VHS
This is one of the few surviving films made by the Sigmund Lubin Company of Philadelphia. In the film, Moses lives on the Lower East Side and helps support his family by selling papers. 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 VHS
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
For Public Performance Rental Only
USA, 1926, 85 minutes, B&W, Silent
Directed by James Young
16mm
Lionel Barrymore stars as Mathias, an Alsatian innkeeper whose political ambitions drive him to commit brutal murder in this 1926 melodrama based on Alexandre Chatrian and Emile Erckmann's 1869 play, "Le Jeuf Polonais" (The Polish Jew). Hunted by a circus mesmerist (chillingly played by Boris Karloff) and haunted by the ghost of his victim, Barrymore's Mathias is caught in a surreal fantasy where his guilty conscience torments him to the brink of spiritual agony. Although only marginally Jewish in subject matter, The Bells is an example of one way in which Jews have been stereotyped in theater and cinema-as the traveling merchant who becomes an easy target for violence and/or mockery.
USA 1917 4.5 minutes B&W Silent
Produced by Conquest Pictures
16mm
This historic footage of Palestine focuses on the holy Christian and Jewish sites of Jerusalem. Sites documented here include the Garden of Gethsemane, Mt. of Olives, the Wailing Wall, the Way of the Calvary, and the Damascus Gate. Other footage depicts beggars, lepers and Arab men and women at work in Bethlehem.
USA, 1917, 20 minutes, b&w, silent
Directed by Charlie Chaplin
16mm
Charlie Chaplin's hilarious portrayal of a penniless immigrant's journey to, and arrival in, America.
USA, 1927, 90 minutes, B&W
silent with some sound
Directed byAlan Crosland
16mm
This landmark of modern cinema, the first 'talking picture,' is also a pro-assimilationist story focusing on the conflicts between generations and between the old and new worlds. Al Jolson plays Jakie, a cantor's son who rejects his family's tradition and wish for him to follow in his father's footsteps by heading for Jazz and Broadway. The film emphasizes Jakie's new world rebellion against the loss of his father's old world values, a topic no less relevant for today's audiences than it was for moviegoers in the 1920s. Cast: Al Jolson, May McAvoy, Warner Oland, Eugenie Besserer, Myrna Loy.
USA, 1926, 22 minutes, B&W
silent with English intertitles
Directed by Leo McCarey
35mm 16mm
An offbeat comedy short from future Hollywood screwball director McCarey about a princess (Martha Sleeper) who must find a husband in twenty-four hours or forfeit her throne. Threatened by a greedy prime minister and his henchman (Oliver Hardy), she quickly marries a condemned man (Charles Chase) who is sentenced to die next weekend; she then returns home to rule her country. When the man is pardoned, he enlists the aid of a Jewish speculator (Max Davidson) to bankroll a journey to his new kingdom. Together, the two partners battle court intrigue, murder plots, and strange customs to emerge victorious.
USA, 1927, 20 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Sam Newfield
16mm
In this slapstick comedy in the immigrant/vaudeville genre, the Goldbergs and the O'Connors have planned a big welcome home party for their children... More
USA, 1923, 66 minutes, B&W
Silent with English intertitles
Directed by Burton King
16mm
A silent feature that shows how gingerly the Hollwood cinema of the 1920s dealt with Jewish-Gentile conflicts.
USA, 1927, 77 minutes, B&W, silent
Directed by Edward Sloman
16mm
One of the few American silent feature films to deal with life in a European Jewish shtetl. More
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