Klezmer

Documentary. 85 min. Director and script: Yale Strom

Feature. 123 min., B&W, Yiddish with English subtitles
Directed by Michal Waszynski
S. Anski (An-ski):  Based on the play by S. Ansky

Documentary. 85 min. Portraits musical encounter between radical Jewish musicians like John Zorn and traditionalists like Andy Statman. Interviews with leading contemporary klezmer musicians. Basis for the title is the folktale, "Sabbath in Paradise," which was originally told in the 1930's by Tovye Brand. Includes performances by Andy Statman, John Zorn, David Krakauer, Frank London, Anthony Coleman, and Marc Ribot. Director: Claudia Heuermann

Examines the popularity of klezmer music in Italy, where it has become synonymous with Jewishness and denotes a musical culture that is believed to live in a transnational and multicultural world outside of history. Recent scholarship on the definition and history of traditional klezmer repertoires is reviewed, and general trends in the klezmer revival are described.

Also appeared in: Judaism; a Journal of Jewish life and Thought, 47:1. New York(1998), 29-40.

The most important collection of early Klezmer music by one of the best scholars in the field.

Documentary. Between 1880 and 1924, 2.5 million Jews fled persecution in Russia and Eastern Europe and arrived in the land of milk and honey...America. Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Benny Goodman, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker and many others from the first and second generation of Jewish immigrants, combined their Jewish heritage with the African-American Jazz style, and changed the cultural face of their newly adopted homeland.