Mad about movies.

Thanks to Rachel, our film info is starting to make it's way into blogs.
Today I noticed we're on a blog called: Mad About Movies:
http://madaboutmovies.net/?p=1109

And for all those too lazy to log into that blog- here's a summary:

I’ve said before and thoroughly believe that a documentary is only as good as its subject and what could be better than an outspoken 90+ year old woman with a passion?
FROM: MAD ABOUT MOVIES:
Earlier today someone, thanks Rachel!, sent me a link to a trailer for Yiddish Theater: A Love Story, a documentary about Zypora Spaisman, a woman who is has kept the oldest running Yiddish Theater in America alive. The documentary was shot in real time over the period of one very important week: the theater had to raise enough money in 7 days to keep the critically acclaimed show alive.

I’m not familiar with Yiddish Theater but the all knowing, and extensive, Wikipedia entry informs me that this type of theater is performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish and that it was widely performed from the late 19th century through to just before WWII. What is most impressive of this particular story is that Spaisman, herself a Holocaust survivor, continues to, even in her old age, not only support but also run the theater – which appears to be the last of its kind in NY – solely for the joy of passing on this tradition to the community.

This isn’t a topic which is particularly close to my heart but it’s hard to watch this trailer and not feel the warm and fuzzies for such an energetic lady. I want to be like her when I grow up.

Yiddish Theater: A Love Story opens in New York on November 21st and in LA on November 30th. I hope it gets a bit of a wider distribution or a nice DVD release down the road. I’d love the chance to cozy up with Spaisman.

I suggest you take a little clickity click over to the film’s official website for loads of additional information.

Check out the trailer after the jump!

Well.
We've made the cover of one Magazine.
We're on the cover of the Yiddish Forward- previously one of the largest Jewish magazines in the world, and today perhaps the largest Yiddish one.
We got an amazing review.
It's very heartwarming to know that our ultra low budget film was so appreciated.

Out Trailer is up and running. Check it out on myspace or youtube:

Yiddish Theater: A Love Story trailer

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EMAIL TO EVERYONE!

Hundreds of emails have been sent out to various Jewish organizations asking for help to get the word out about our film. Until now, no one!!! NO ONE!!! has replied.

As the target emails didn’t seem to work- I’m sending it out here to everyone on cyber space:

Hi Friends,
A new film about the battle to keep Yiddish Theater alive in the US in the 21st century is coming to theaters in NYC and Los Angeles in November.
I am an award winning Israeli director and will attend the screenings.

The film is scheduled to play for a week, but if we get enough advanced ticket sales, we’ll get additional screenings.
We would be grateful if you could help us get the word out, so that we’ll be able to bring our message about the importance of keeping Yiddish theater alive to a larger community.

Here’s the info about the film:


Our website: www.yiddishtheater.net
Our myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/yiddisht heateralovestory

As for the screening dates. Opening dates are:

IN LA- starting Nov 30 2007
http://www.laemmle.com/viewmovi e.php?mid=3304

In NYC - starting Nov 21 2007

(Please scroll down to the bottom of the homepage for info about our
film and screening dates and times as well as advance ticket sales.:)

http://www.twoboots.com/pioneer/jewish.html

If you have any questions please feel free to contact me.

Cover of TAU's website.

So I just noticed we're on the cover of TAU's website...
TAU is not a religion, but TEL AVIV UNIVERSITY.
Both I and my producer Ravit Markus were graduates. Many gradautes of many colleges leaving with a mixed baggage. There's something of closing a circle when you're on the cover of their homepage.

Slowly, painfully, but surely our Yiddish theater film is getting the word out there...

"Yiddish Theatre" Comes Home
Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Two TAU graduates are bringing their acclaimed documentary film, "Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story" to Manhattan and Los Angeles.

Writer-director Dan Katzir and producer Ravit Markus, both graduates of TAU, will see the long-awaited Manhattan premiere of their 2006 full-length documentary film, "Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story", this November. The film has played in festivals in the U.S. and Canada - and even in Queens, New York - but this will be the first time it is shown in the borough where it was conceived and shot.

Katzir, born in Tel Aviv in 1969, is the recipient of 22 international awards for filmmaking. After graduating magna cum laude from TAU's Department of Film and Television, he earned an MFA from the American Film Institute in Hollywood. Although he was raised in a prominent Israeli family that disdained the Yiddish language, Katzir became enthralled with the subject during a vacation in New York City in 2000 when he met an elderly Holocaust survivor and Yiddish theatre diva, Zypora Spaisman. Zypora’s passion and determination to preserve her art form inspired Katzir to follow her through a bitter cold New York City Hanukah as she struggled to raise funds in an effort to save the oldest running Yiddish Theater in America.

Ravit Markus also graduated from TAU's Department of Film and Television and her collaboration with Katzir is her second project as a producer. She has worked on several projects for television which have aired on Israeli, American and British TV and is now collaborating on her first feature film, "LEAP", with Dan Katzir. Ms. Markus resides in Los Angeles.

"Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story" was made with generous contributions from Jona and Doretta Goldrich and Max and Anna Webb, long-time supporters of American Friends of Tel Aviv University. Mr. Goldrich is a Chairman Emeritus of AFTAU and a member of the AFTAU Board of Directors and the TAU Board of Governors. Mr. Webb is a founder of AFTAU, and serves on the AFTAU Board of Directors and the TAU Board of Governors.

In Manhattan, "Yiddish Theatre: A Love Story", runs from November 21st through November 28th at the Two Boots Pioneer Theatre on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The film also opens in downtown Los Angeles on November 30th at Laemmle's Grand 4-plex Cinema.

Follow the links below for more information on both the Manhattan and Los Angeles releases of the film.

http://twoboots.com/pioneer/jewish.html

http://www.laemmle.com/viewmovie.php?mid=3304

http://www.tauac.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5801

Yiddish Theater: A Love Story getting a theatrical release in NY, LA and Tel Aviv


Great news - our film is getting a theatrical release in LA, NYC and Tel Aviv in November.
It's very exciting indeed. Without a budget, and with very little support from large Jewish organizations, we're still managing to get our film out there - the full indie way, with grass roots marketing.
It's hard, but it's an exciting adventure.

Today I found an article written about us in an online magazine called JEWTASTIC -
A magazine for hip happenings in the jewish world.

Here's the link+ the full article:

http://www.jewtastic.com/posts/24362

Loving Yiddish Theatre
by Leslie Bunder September 19th, 2007

An Israeli filmmaker is to get his six years in the making documentary released on how a number of Jewish woman are keeping Yiddish theatre alive in the United States.

Where once Yiddish theatre was part of many Jews’ social lives going out to see productions in New York, it has dwindled over the years as performers switched from Yiddish to mainstream productions and the famous theatres themselves being turned into other buildings and offices.

Dan Katzir’s Yiddish Theater: A Love Story will be screened in Los Angeles, New York and Tel Aviv in November and features some of the major names in modern Yiddish theatre including Shifra Lerer, Felix Fibich and Seymour Rechzeit.

The inspiration for the film came in 2000 when Katzir came across Zypora Spaisman, a Holocaust survivor in her 80s from Poland who invited him to watch a show she was in and over the next six years, Katzir got to know her and others in the Yiddish theatre community and the issues they face in keeping it alive.

According to Katzir: “It’s a feature length film about the extraordinary woman who kept Yiddish theater alive in the US into the 21st century. It’s also a poetic film about the power of the human spirit.”

Yiddish Theater: A love Story review in London media:

So we played inLonding at an Independent Film Festival there.
Here's a short review I just found online:

http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2007-06/yiddishtheater.htm

Yiddish Theater: A Love Story
Dan Katzir
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rachel Greenstein Savage
posted 14 June 2007

Yiddish is the language of the Ashkenazi Jews of Eastern Europe. It is primarily a mixture of German and Hebrew but also incorporates other languages spoken by non-Jews in the countries where Yiddish was spoken. The history of Yiddish is one of decline, accelerating after the Second World War.

My own family history is probably typical. For my great grandparents, it was their native tongue. For my grandparents, it was a language to be vaguely ashamed of speaking to their immigrant parents while they made their own lives in English. For my parents it was the language their elders spoke when they didn't want the children to know what was going on, but which they managed to pick up a few words of. For my generation, it's something we know as much of through Seinfeld as through any day-to-day family experience.

This documentary follows the last eight days in the life of a production of the Yiddish play Green Fields by the Yiddish Public Theater Company of New York City. At the heart of the film is Zypora Spaisman, an actress who is also the heart of the theatre company. As the title suggests, the film is indeed an ode to Yiddish theatre as well as a prayer for its continuance. Coming out of the film, however, is also an important arts policy question about what types of minority arts and culture should be funded by the state, and how.

In 'the old country', Yiddish was a language of culture. Before the war, Yiddish theatre flourished in Germany and America, and new Yiddish plays, literature and music were constantly being written. Writers like Isaac Bashevis Singer were the bestselling novelists of their day. Yiddish is still spoken today by ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, such as those in Golders Green and Stamford Hill in north London and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. But today's Yiddish speakers are more inward-looking and less likely to develop great cultural masterpieces for consumption by the wider Jewish community, still less the secular society that surrounds them.

One expert interviewed in the film explains that with the establishment of the state of Israel, Hebrew came to be seen as the Jewish language of power and success whilst Yiddish was increasingly seen as the language of victimhood and oppression. Today there is something of a Yiddish revival going on, with increasing numbers of American universities offering tuition in the language and a small number of high profile academics taking up the cause.

For Spaisman and the other older members of the cast and crew, the draw to Yiddish theatre is obvious. They want to keep their native language and the culture they grew up in alive. But when we meet the younger members of the cast, who speak in unaccented English, their motivations for being involved in Yiddish theatre are less straightforward and therefore more interesting.

For Israeli actress Roni Neuman, appearing in the play is both a way to connect to her roots and get out of waitressing and into acting. She admits that she doesn't speak a word of Yiddish and had to learn her part phonetically. In contrast, Joad Kohn, one of the young male leads was raised in an Orthodox Yiddish-speaking home. While he rebelled against his strict upbringing, falling in love with rock music and getting a number of tattoos (forbidden in Jewish tradition), his performance here is, in a sense, a return to his roots. However, he explains that he cannot ask his mother to see his performances as seeing him speaking Yiddish and dressing in traditional dress would be too painful for her as a reminder of what might have been.

Green Fields is a critical success but a popular failure. The film contrasts the glowing reviews of the play in the New York Times, and the fact it is named one of the ten best off-Broadway shows of 2000 with the lack of audiences. 'On a good night,' the director says, 'we get 100 to 150 people. But we need to have 200 to 250 to keep going.' Some of the failure is no doubt due to the play's location in a theatre on the Lower East Side, far from the lights of Broadway. The fact that the audience members seem to need to keep their coats on in the theatre can't help either. Neither can the clichéd set with typical peasant hut and straw on the floor. It looks like a sub-par Fiddler on the Roof.

And yet the glimpses we get of the play are enticing. For the large proportion of the audience whose Yiddish is not up to snuff, there are supertitles in Russian and English. And the emotion in the play needs no translation. While it may be awkward to have 80-something Spaisman playing the mother of an actress young enough to be her great-granddaughter, the quality of the acting seems high. And yet, the play cannot make ends meet.

From the outset, we are told that the producers only have enough money to keep the play going for a further eight days. In addition to meeting the cast and following the performances, we also see them try to raise money to keep the production going. At this they fail. But to the observer, it seems like they are going about it in the wrong way. They see their play as an investment and go after traditional investors in major theatre projects who also happen to be Jewish. It is clear however that the investors do not see a return on investment forthcoming. One gives $250 because he likes the play, where he might invest $1 million in a traditional Broadway production. And this reticence seems justified. As an investment vehicle, Green Fields is never going to be a money spinner, even if the director fulfils his ambition to move it to a theatre closer to Broadway.

Why the producers do not approach public funding bodies or philanthropic organisations, or at the least appeal to the philanthropic side of the investors they court is a mystery. Even more so when the coda to the film reveals that some months after the production's inevitable closure the state of New York awards the theatre company $200,000 to help them purchase a building and continue their work. Sadly, the support comes too late for Spaisman who is already in a coma from which she will not recover.

The film raises the question of public funding, but does not explore it further. In a sense, supporting a theatre that represents a dying culture with a thousand years of history behind it is a typical undertaking for public funding of the arts. We ask ourselves whether funding Yiddish theatre is any more or less worthy a pursuit than supporting plays in ancient Greek.

In parts, the film is a love poem to the city of New York as much as its ostensible subjects. Several voiceovers are accompanied by long panning shots of the city, while footage of Broadway, Times Square, Central Park, Chinatown and the Empire State Building jostle for space in the film, despite their tenuous relation to the actual subject. The shots of New York do bring home the disconnect between the world of Yiddish theatre and the secular world in which it struggles to survive.