Detroit Jewish Film Festival April 2007

Back from Detroit Jewish Film Festival.

Here's what they wrote about us in their catalogue. It was a very interesting journey.
I also toured Birmingham MI later, and saw a small town covered with Tigers.

A Special Director’s Selection

2006, 90 minutes, English and some Yiddish with English subtitles, Color, USA.

“...irresistible and deeply sentimental...”

Israeli director Dan Katzir has picked a Rocky story to tell, but the boxer is replaced by an 84 year-old, diminutive Yiddish theatre wonder. It features her struggle to sustain an art form seemingly destined to die with her. For more than 40 years, Zypora Spaisman, a Polish Holocaust survivor, has fought to keep New York’s Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre alive. Despite glowing reviews, however, the theater seems to have lost its audience and faces certain extinction.

Then, during the brutal winter of 2000, a last-ditch effort is made to move the Folksbiene from the Lower East Side to Broadway. For eight days and nights (during Chanukah!) Katzir follows their quest for a modern-day miracle to save the longest running Yiddish theater in America.

The film includes many of the leading experts and stars of the Yiddish world. Sure to elicit laughter and tears, this moving documentary celebrates the beauty of a centuries-old culture and the devotion of those committed to preserving it.