Svigals, one of the world’s foremost klezmer fiddlers, will perform The Yellow Ticket with piano virtuoso Marilyn Lerner in Philadelphia on May 9 and again at the June 10 Jewish Cultural Achievement Awards in New York.

The score is the newest commission from the Foundation’s New Jewish Culture Network (NJCN). It marks the first feature-length film composition by Svigals, who performs it live with pianist Marilyn Lerner at each screening. Previous stops have included New York, Miami, and Vancouver.

A peak inside the story of how this project came to be showcases both the intriguing detective work—and a strong appetite for collaboration—that marks the FJC and its grantees.

Back in 2012, when Alicia Svigals received initial support from the Washington DC JCC to score the film—which portrays a woman’s struggle to overcome adversity in Tsarist Russia in a story of secret identifies, heroic measures, and triumphant love—the only copy available to her was a DVD from a distributor in Texas lasting only a rushed 47 minutes.

“The original film copy that Alicia worked with had all those weird, funny moves you associate with silent films,” says Andrew Ingall, director of the FJC’s New Jewish Culture Network. That’s because many old films are transferred or projected in the wrong speed. “You shouldn’t be seeing all the jerky movements when you watch a silent film,” says Ingall.

Because silent films have deteriorated so greatly over the decades, and the existing DVD of The Yellow Ticket left a lot to be desired, Ingall helped Svigals to track down a 35mm print in Berlin. Svigals was able to leverage her funding from the FJC to raise additional funds from another foundation in order to remaster the film. That’s the crisp version that the audience in Boston—and forthcoming ones in Philadelphia and Houston—get to see.

When Ingall tracked down the film’s original censor report at the Detusches Historisches Museum, he and Svigals discovered that the film’s English-language title cards were significantly different from the original German ones. The government-commissioned report included the original titles along with a rather dated caution that the film’s themes may not be suitable for adolescents. Svigals set about to retranslate the titles herself, further helping today’s audience a clearer glimpse into the world of the movie.

“The social mores depicted in this wonderful and strange tale are a bit mysterious to 
us now,” says Svigals. Set in Poland and Tsarist Russia, The Yellow Ticket portrays a woman’s struggle to overcome adversity in a story of secret identities and heroic measures. Svigals says that the aims and goals of the characters might 
not as self-evident to audiences today as they were when the
 film was made. “I felt my 
task would be to help the viewer overcome these obstacles. I wanted to use the soundtrack to clarify the story’s structure, and through the music arouse in the viewer the profound emotions depicted in the film,” says Svigals.

For a city still reeling in the wake of terrorist attacks only a few weeks ago, the live performance of The Yellow Ticket served as a reminder of the transcendent possibilities of art, and of collaboration. The Boston screening was particularly memorable because it marked the first time that three major Boston Jewish organizations—the New Center for Arts & Culture, the Boston Jewish Music Festival, and the Boston Jewish Film Festival—had worked together.

“The FJC has long had a vision for what Jewish culture on the North American stage could look like,” says President and CEO Elise Bernhardt. “The New Jewish Culture Network was created in part to fulfill that vision. Rather than simply commissioning musicians, the idea was to foster a pipeline to serve grantees and the public who seek artistic excellence.”

The New Jewish Culture Network fosters ties between three different but equally important groups: musicians who want to push themselves into different territory, arts presenters interested in a collective commissioning process and building demand for new Jewish music, and audiences of all backgrounds.

***

More Press About The Yellow Ticket

“Silent movie opens window on lost world of Eastern European Jews” from The Miami Herald (March 2, 2013)

***

The Yellow Ticket performance was commissioned by the Foundation for Jewish Culture’s New Jewish Culture Network, a league of North American performing arts presenters committed to the creation and touring of innovative projects. The Yellow Ticket debuted at the Washington Jewish Music Festival, presented by the Washington DC Jewish Community Center, through a commission made possible by the Arthur Tracy “The Street Singer” Endowment Fund. The New Jewish Culture Network has received major support from the Howard and Geraldine Polinger Family Foundation. Additional support is provided by Sylvia M. Neil, the Milken Family Foundation, and other donors. 

The Arty Semite interviews Renee Silverman on Sosúa: Dare to Dance Together, about her film’s troubling subject–the rescue of Jewish refugees by brutal Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo.

This unlikely story was brought to life by Broadway director/composer Elizabeth Swados as a musical, starring twenty Jewish and Dominican-American teens from Washington Heights; the film chronicles the production, and the growth of the people involved through capturing this little-known moment in history.

“They’re responding exactly as we hoped for—seeing the Holocaust within the 1,000 year history of Polish Jews,” says Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.  A 2008 winner of the FJC’s Jewish Cultural Achievement Award, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is one of the major forces behind the nearly decade-long development of the museum. She directs the museum’s core exhibits, which are expected to open in early 2014.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was chosen to head up the museum’s exhibition team in 2006, just as she was finishing up an illustrated memoir called They Call Me Mayer July. A look at prewar life in the Polish town of Apt, where her father had grown up, that book underscored what was already an entrenched, lifelong fascination with a lost Polish-Jewish world. She is Canadian by birth, has spent much of her professional life in the United States, but she’s lived nearly full-time in Poland for the past half-decade. In 2012, she applied and received Polish citizenship. In many ways, Kirshblatt-Gimblett, or BKG as she’s affectionately known to colleagues, hopes that the museum will prompt visitors—especially American Jews—to think beyond the Holocaust, or to put that event in a larger context. She also hopes the museum will help Jews from all over reflect on a small minority who, despite everything, decided to stay in that country.

“I think the most surprising reaction was how ‘at home’ people felt because this building is really monumental and dramatic,” she says. The nearly $100 million project was designed by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki.

“Most of all [there’s] the pride of those who attended –  these are the people, these are the Jews, who are here, who stayed in Poland, who cast their lot with Poland, who have stayed the course. This museum can be a great source of pride for them, for everyone in Poland, for Jews around the world –for the world. This is a museum that matters,” she says.

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is only one of several recent FJC grantees who work challenges popular misconceptions about Polish Jewry. Filmmaker Adam Zucker, whose documentary The Return was awarded a 2011 Kroll film fund, is another.

In this documentary, Zucker follows the journeys of four young Polish women, all of whom discovered in their teens about their Jewish ancestry. In many ways, their evolution of identity mirrors that of many young Poles, particularly those in cosmopolitan settings like Warsaw and Krakow, who are reaching beyond anti-Semitism and communism, who look to the legacy of Polish-Jewish culture for artistic and spiritual inspiration.

Zucker has traveled to Poland over half a dozen times during the shooting of The Return. He thinks there’s still a gap between American Jewish perceptions of Poland and the facts on the ground—a gap his film, like the new museum, hopes to challenge. “I find most American Jews are quite unaware that there are Jews in Poland today. I’m sure it’s changed a bit over the past 15 years, but don’t think it’s a whole lot. Part of the problem is that while American Jews continue to travel to Poland, either as part of youth groups or on their own, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in expanding itineraries beyond a historical tour, which is usually Holocaust-centric.”

Zucker, who also directed the 2007 documentary Greensboro: Closer to the Truth, is hard at work to complete his film as soon as possible. He recently screened a 28-minute shortened version of The Return at the 92^nd Street Y for potential funders. And he’s  raised about two-thirds of his $45,000 goal via Kickstarter.

For those interested in Polish-Jewish history, the work of two other grantees is particularly pertinent.

In 2007, the Gantz Zahler Grant was awarded to Antony Polonsky, a preeminent scholar of Eastern European Jewry at Brandeis University. Polonsky received the prize for a three-volume history, The Jews in Poland-Lithuania and Russia 1250–1914, published by the Littman Library of Jewish Civilization. Polonsky was most recently on the FJC’s academic selection committee for the 2013-14 Doctoral Dissertation fellowship in Jewish studies.

Also, don’t miss Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust, by filmmakers Menachem Daum and Oren Rudavsky, winner of the 2004 Kroll Film Fund. The documentary traces the encounter between Daum and his two sons, both highly religious Jews living in Jerusalem, and the family that helped to shelter Daum’s parents during the Holocaust. The documentary, which was broadcast on PBS’s Point Of View series, is a fascinating look at questions of the ethical legacy of rescuers and the complexities of Polish and Jewish identities.

“Trembling Before G-d”, “Waltz with Bashir”, “Numbered”, “Dancing in Jaffa”

The Foundation is accepting applications for its 2013 Kroll Documentary Film Fund.  A filmmaker will receive between $15,000 and $35,000 to finalize a project in post-production that explores Jewish history, culture, and identity.

Since its inception in 1996, the Kroll Film Fund has supported the completion and distribution of more than 85 award-winning documentaries exploring many aspects of Jewish culture and history.

Deadline for applications to the 2013 Kroll Film Fund is July 16, 2013.

Submit your application to the Kroll Film Fund here!

Cecelia Peck”s heartfelt documentary Brave Miss World will be screening at the Sarasota Film Festival this weekend. In her film, Linor talks about being a survivor of rape, and the healing process from such a traumatic event; she also interviews other survivors of rape from diverse cultures and countries, and how they have dealt with what they have endured.

Peck’s film rolls out this April (Sarasota, Cleveland, and Dallas), in conjunction with the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN)’s Sexual Assault Awareness & Prevention Month. Through these screenings, Peck and Linor hope to raise awareness of rape, and to help those who have suffered it find the courage to confront their terrible experience.

You can find out more about Brave Miss World on Linor’s website, as well as the recent Huffington Post Live video about the film.

Sarasota Film Festival Screenings:

Sun, 4/7 4:35 PM

Mon, 4/8 5:00 PM

Tickets can be purchased here.

Cleveland International Film Festival Screenings:

Thursday, April 11, 2013 at 7:15 PM

Sunday, April 14, 2013 at 12:20 PM

You can find more information about the Cleveland screenings here.

Dallas International Film Festival Screenings:

You can find more information about the Dallas International Film Festival here.

• Joe Papp in Five Acts: April 4th at 7.30pm and April 6th at 9.30pm
  
• Sosua: Make a Better World: April 7th at 5.00pm
• The Law in These Parts: April 11th at 5.00pm
• Inventing Our Life: April 11th at 7.30pm and April 13th at 1.30pm
• Numbered: April 13th at 3.30pm and April 22nd at 2.30pm

The Westchester Jewish Film Festival will run from April 3rd to April 25th. This year, the 11th of the Festival, is the largest Jewish event in Westchester county. Don’t miss it!

You can order tickets through the Jacob Burns Center website, or call them (914.773.7663) for more information.

Venue Information:

Jacob Burns Film Center

Media Arts Lab

Pleasantville, NY 10570

914.773.7663

The Foundation’s New Jewish Culture Network (NJCN) is accepting applications for its music commission!  A musician/composer will receive $10,000 to develop a new touring project. The NJCN is a pipeline for contemporary performing arts that explore the Jewish experience. NJCN is a collaborative commissioning and touring program represented by a select league of performing arts presenters. Past commissions recipients include Alicia Svigals for The Yellow Ticket (2012) and Galeet Dardasthi for Monajat (2011).

Applications for the NJCN 2013 Music Commission are due April 30th.

Submit your application to the New Jewish Culture Network here!

Artist Helene Aylon, a 2002 Jewish Cultural Achievement Award recipient, will be speaking at SUNY Purchase in Purchase, NY on Wednesday, March 13 as part of the university’s Spring 2013 Visiting Artist Lecture Series.

She will be reading from her newest book, Whatever is Contained Must Be Released: My Jewish Orthodox Girlhood, My Life as a Feminist Artist (Feminist Press, 2012). This exciting autobiographical work talks about the author’s upbringing in a Jewish Orthodox family, her dreams of escaping to a more open culture, and her involvement with the environmental art scene of the 1970s.

This event is free and open to the public, so don’t miss it!

Venue Information:

Wednesday, March 13th

5.00pm

Visual Arts Building

Room 1016

SUNY Purchase

Purchase, NY 10577
(914) 251-6000 

One night only! On March 22^nd, Ofri Cnaani (Six Points Fellow, 2007) will be presenting her live video installation based on Joseph Haydn’s orchestral composition Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross at the Metropolitan Museum. This will be accompanied by live music performed by the Salzburg Chamber Soloists.

Cnaani is drawing inspiration from Haydn’s original performance of the work in 1786, which employed special lighting and sound effects to enhance the experience of the performance. Her interpretation of the crucifixion originates with Haydn’s music, but her video installation will incorporate more universal elements that speak to a wider population than its original Good Friday audience in Cádiz Cathedral.

The performance will take place at 7.00pm on March 22^nd. Tickets are $45. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see this classical masterpiece in a wholly original light!

For information about the Metropolitan Museum and tickets for this event, you can read more here.

Venue Information:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1000 5th Ave

New York, NY 10028

(212) 535-7710

Avadenka’s work often incorporates elements of both scriptural texts and texture, mixing the visual beauty of calligraphy and that of the materials words are written on—paper, glass, wood, clay, and other surfaces. By using selected text in unusual contexts, she opens our eyes to seeing words in new ways.

Language Comes After Artist will showcase Avadenka’s large drawings and prints on the walls, one piece on glass, and potentially a few other book works.  Upstairs, in the Frankel room, all of Lynne’s hand made books that have been collected by the University library will be on display.

Language Comes After Artist will run from March 21^st to May 17^th.

In addition to the exhibit, Avadenka will be teaching a workshop at the University of Michigan for the spring, lecturing, and participating in panel discussion.  The panel discussion is April 9th, ath 12:30, at North Quad, Space 2435 (the front gallery space of North Quad) addressing books,texts and archiving  in a digital world.  Lynne’s more formal lecture will be on April 16th, at 12:30, at the Institute.

Event and Venue Info:

The University of Michigan

503 S State St

Ann Arbor, MI 48109

(734) 764-1817