It’s been a long time coming a horror film set in a Hasidic section of Brooklyn, where much of the dialogue is in Yiddish. Films that deal with the supernatural are certainly no stranger to Jewish lore and culture. Since the advent of cinema, there have been several films made about dybbuks, demons and golems, movies produced in Europe, Israel and the United States, movies in Hebrew, Polish, French, English, and now once again in Yiddish.
In his debut feature film “The Vigil,” film director Keith Thomas trains his camera lens on the Boro Park section of Brooklyn, where an OTD Jew (or “off the derech” a term that refers to a Jew who has left the Hasidic world), is in search of a different life.
Last year, America was reminded of the anti-Nazi onscreen activism of Canadian actor Christopher Plummer, who died on Feb. 5 at age 91, after the previous occupant of the White House’s State of the Union address.
After that event, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up a copy of the speech in a filmed image which was quickly turned into a GIF juxtaposing Plummer as Baron von Trapp in “The Sound of Music,” tearing a Nazi flag into pieces.
Even if Plummer is best remembered for his appearance in “The Sound of Music,” his full achievements were vaster and varied. A fervent, if sloppily edited, memoir published in 2008, reminds us that his artistry was often inspired by Yiddishkeit.
Credit WAMC
Kino Classics has just released a ten- film BluRay set of Yiddish language feature films. The titles come from the heyday of Yiddish film production, the late 1930s. When I first heard of the release, I assumed it featured the restorations of The National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, but I was mistaken. These are restorations completed by Serge Bromberg at Lobster Films, along with the Museum of Modern Art, the Deutsche Kinemathek, and the Fillmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw.
It’s quite an exciting collection, including the two most significant Yiddish films, The Dybbuk and Tevya, three other outstanding titles, Motel the Operator, Eli Eli and Mir Kumen On , as well as five low-budget pictures of lower quality but rare. All have very readable English subtitles written by Allen Lewis Rickman, a Yiddishist who appeared in the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man. Also there are many extras.