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Three Days In
April.
Photo: NCJF.
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Sometime this month some Jewish
family in the process of moving is going to come across
a box filled with old home movies. They were long
ago transferred to homevideo. Why not just throw them
away?
Sharon Rivo and Miriam Krant,
the founders of the National Center of Jewish Film,
are hoping they'll send them to Center instead. Rivo
and Krant, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the
film archive this year, hadn't intended to get into
preserving home movies, but it's now become one of
their major projects.
"There are people who are
moving from house to condo and they're throwing stuff
away. We want what people throw away," said Krant,
who has found out just how useful such movies can
be. The Center provided stock footage for the documentary
"The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg," about the
first Jewish major league baseball player in the 1930s
and '40s. One of the scenes showing a family celebrating
a wedding and clowning around on a Bronx rooftop are
Krant's own relatives.
This unusual collection of
personal movies includes rare footage of the thriving
pre-World War II Jewish communities in Europe. Immigrants
to America would go back to visit and take pictures
of a world that would soon be destroyed. The material
is literally priceless.
Said Rivo, "The vision people
have of the old world is either [photographer] Roman
Vishniac or the [death] camps." The home movie collection
shows everyday life, family gatherings, and other
images, which provide a fuller picture of the Jewish
communities of the era.
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Tevye directed
by and starring Maurice Schwartz.
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It's a long way from the original
task of the Center, which was the preservation of
a collection of Yiddish feature films. Today the Center's
work might best be thought of as multitasking. It
has grown into an institution - located on the Brandeis
University campus in Waltham, Mass. - that distributes
films and videos, holds an annual festival, nurtures
independent filmmakers, and even provides the only
American archive with legal access to antisemitic
Nazi propaganda films.
Originally operating under
the auspices of Brandeis and the American Jewish Historical
Society, it became an independent entity in 1981.
The Center's job began with the restoration of 30
Yiddish films from the first half of the 20th century.
These included "Tevye," "Green Fields," and "The Dybbuk."
The latter, based on a Jewish legend about a bride
possessed by the spirit of her dead intended, won
the Center recognition from the Boston Society of
Film Critics for "best rediscovery." The Library of
Congress recognized "Tevye" - which stars Maurice
Schwartz, famous as the "Olivier of the Yiddish stage"
- by putting it in the National Film Registry.
Over the years Rivo and Krant
have acquired the rights to films of the two major
distributors of specialized Yiddish project, Joseph
Green and Joseph Seiden, and with the help of grants
and donations, restored them and put them back into
circulation. Many of the titles also became available
on homevideo for the first time.
The Center might have existed
solely as an archive for these Yiddish films, but
audiences did more than applaud. "A very important
decision was made early on: the films we had restored
we would distribute ourselves," said Rivo. "Once we
went into the distribution business and went out and
lectured with the materials, people began donating
materials to us."
Thus the Center became the
repository for the film archives of numerous Jewish
organizations, including the United Jewish Appeal
and the Joint Distribution Committee. "Often they
would commission filmmakers to go out and document,"
explained Rivo. The footage would be used for educational
films, fundraising appeals, and other purposes. In
many cases the Center has not only the finished films,
but the raw footage as well. Thus they have films
of the post-war displaced persons camps, Jewish communities
in northern Africa, and a wide variety of subjects.
With appearances at film festivals,
the Center was approached about distributing other
films besides their Yiddish collection. Today they've
taken on about ninety of what Rivo describes as "orphan
films," Jewish-themed movies that lack distribution.
This includes movies like Pamela Berger's "The Imported
Bridegroom," Deborah Greenberg's "94 Years and One
Nursing Home Later," and Michael Verhoeven's "My Mother's
Courage." They've also become sub-distributors for
the major studios and for 16mm distributors like Swank
for their more mainstream Jewish movies.
While many of those booking
the films are Jewish organizations, other groups want
the films as well. When the Film Society of Lincoln
Center scheduled a retrospective of films from Poland,
they want to Rivo and Krant for some titles. When
the Goethe Institute sets up a German film series,
they may include some titles from the Center as well.
Turner Classic Movies will be screening "Tevye" later
this year in what is believed to be its national television
debut.
A few years ago Brandeis dedicated
the Edie and Lew Wasserman Cinematheque on the campus,
allowing the Center to have a home base for showcasing
their acquisitions and restorations, as well as bringing
in new films and filmmakers. This year's event, dubbed
"jewishfilm.2001" will run April 19-30. Among the
highlights are the world premiere of "The Vow," a
newly restored Yiddish film, "Dangerous Acts" with
Israeli star Gila Almagor in attendance, and "Terrorists
in Retirement," a documentary about French collaborators
during WWII. (Details are available at their website,
www.jewishfilm.org).
If this seems like enough
work for any film group, Rivo and Krant and their
staff are also involved in film rentals to the academic
market of not only their features but two other specialized
collections. The first is a collection of early American
silent films - by such directors as D. W. Griffith,
Mack Sennett, and Edwin S. Porter - featuring Jewish
characters. Some are moving, like Griffith's "Old
Issac the Pawnbroker" who takes pity on a little girl
trying to pawn her doll to get food for her sick mother,
while others are incredible for their brazenness.
In Porter's "Cohen's Fire Sale," a Jewish merchant
- complete with fake nose - saves his business by
setting fire to it.
Another collection is even
more specialized. Under an arrangement with the German
Film Archive, the Center is the only legal American
distributor of such Nazi hate films as "The Eternal
Jew," which are made available only for carefully
vetted academic purposes.
Finally, there are the private
screenings that don't appear in any newspaper listing
or festival schedule. Krant recalled showing a film
at a public screening that was a documentary about
a post-war displaced persons camp. An elderly gentleman
in the audience fainted when he recognized images
of himself and his late wife, who had recently passed
away. A private viewing was later arranged for the
man who came with someone to help him get through
it. Other such screenings are happier, as someone
watches old footage and starts naming old friends
and family members who were previously unidentified.
Rivo takes the title executive
director of the center while Krant is the associate
director, but the two women don't make much of the
formal positions, since their work involves so much
more. Said Krant, "We have to be diplomats, we have
to be distributors, we have to be video experts, we
have to do everything a library does, and more."
Now go check your attics and
cellars to see if you have any old home movies they
might be interested in. With the all the hard work
that they're doing, it's the very least you can do.
Daniel
M. Kimmel is the Boston Correspondent for Variety
Magazine.
