Yiddish film

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Movie poster from East Side Sadie , USA 1929th

The Yiddish film is a genre that particularly in the United States and in Poland was 1911-1950.

Silent films

The first films by Yiddish theater makers were made in Poland by 1911 at the latest. Abraham Kamiński and Andrzej Marek shot a number of silent films in Warsaw with members of various Yiddish theaters. The films were mostly based on theater productions based on plays by Jacob Gordin , Schalom Asch and other Yiddish authors.

They often dealt with contemporary issues, life in the Eastern European shtetl , emigration to the USA, the difficulty of being successful there, generational conflicts, the tension between Jewish tradition and the modern world.

In the 1920s, Jewish films such as Ost und West (1923) or Jiskor (1924) were made in Austria , albeit in German. Saul Goskind has produced some ambitious films in Poland .

In 1925, Jewish happiness was created in the Soviet Union with actors from the Moscow State Jewish Theater .

Sound films

Yiddish sound films had been around since 1929, first in the USA. Ad Mosi ("Bis Wann", 1929) was the first sound film in Yiddish. The main sponsors of Yiddish film were producers Sidney M. Goldin and Joseph Seiden .

Yidl mitn Fidl became the most successful Yiddish film ever in 1937. Afterwards numerous other Yiddish films were made in the USA and Poland. Edgar G. Ulmer and Joseph Green were successful directorswith films such as Der Dybuk .

After 1939, Yiddish films could no longer be produced in Poland. The film was shot in the USA until 1941.

From 1947 onwards, several documentaries were made in Poland about the situation of the survivors of the disaster. In Germany there were with Long is the way (1948) the only Yiddish film there at all. Got, Mentsh un Tayvl (1950) was the last commercial Yiddish film in the United States .

literature

  • Jim Hoberman: Bridge of Light. Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. Schocken, New York, NY 1991.
  • Eric A. Goldman: Visions, Images, and Dreams. Yiddish Film Past and Present. UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor 1983.

Web link

Itzik Gottesman: Di geshikhte funem yidishn kino / The History of Yiddish Cinema . Numerous episodes, ed. by the editors of the Jewish Daily Forward , 2010 ff. (Yiddish, with English subtitles).

See also