Gold for Fools

Set in Berlin and New York's Lower East Side, The Great Yiddish Love stars the self-exiled Marlene Dietrich and her Nazi-endorsed replacement, Zarah Leander. It is a melodrama of love, emigration, and betrayal reassembled from Hollywood, German Ufa and Yiddish films from the 1930s and 40s.

An immigrant worker at a pickle factory is accidentally preserved for 100 years and wakes up in modern day Brooklyn. He learns his only surviving relative is his great grandson, a computer coder who he can’t connect with.

The Man Without a World is credited to the legendary (and imaginary) 1920s Soviet director, Yevgeny Antinov. But the film is anything but old. In fact, Antinov himself is the creation of contemporary filmmaker Eleanor Antin. Her film is a moving, comic melodrama set in a typical shtetl (village) in Poland. The Jews’ struggle against poverty and racial hatred is complicated by their own division into hostile political factions of the religious orthodoxy, assimilationists, socialists, Zionists, anarchists and survivors. While the Jews of the shtetl pursue their loves, politics, religion, business and dreams for the future, the Angel of Death is ever near...

Motel, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide. The richly-rendered beautiful Yiddish songs by Sholem Secunda featuring Cantor Leibele Waldman and Joel Feig's famous choir are a good example of the bittersweet melodrama in the finest tradition of the Yiddish theater.

Based her grandfather’s boyhood in St. Louis, Yasmin Gorenberg tells a story of the pain passed from refugee parents to their children and the hope that can overcome it. “40 Nickels” captures the image of a generation of immigrants to the United States in the 1920’s and 1930’s and through that spotlights the effects of the 1919 pogroms in Eastern Europe. This is a film about parents and children: how trauma never leaves a family, and how hope and resilience is also passed down. It asks the question: Can a new generation look at the world with wonder rather than fear?

Elliott Gould narrates this affectionate look at life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries. "It's unreal that all this could have just disappeared," says Polish native Mariem Adler Stok, one of the seniors whose memories of this "Yiddish world" give this documentary its life. The hour traces Jewish history in Europe and explores Jews' focus on education, their religious customs, clothing, food, music and theater.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

A bissele Glik

The questioning of Jewish heritage and identity via the portrait of a diversed family, across Belgium and the United States.

An upbeat, witty, and timely exploration of a global community of artists creating innovative work in their quest to rediscover and revitalise the endangered Yiddish language. From behind-the-scenes with an acclaimed Yiddish-language version of Yentl in Melbourne, to enjoyably transgressive punk-Klezmer musicians, and Barrie Kosky’s latest trailblazing production in Berlin – the endangered Yiddish language is alive and well in this rousing documentary. The language originated amongst the Jewish community in Eastern Europe, but almost disappeared when more than half of the world’s Yiddish speakers were murdered during the Holocaust. Most of the artists and performers (aka Yiddishists) in the film didn’t grow up speaking Yiddish, but all have found solace, identity, and inspiration in its rich traditions and culture. Ros Horin has mapped a fascinating cultural history.

This is a film about old fashioned Bulgarian customs and moral rules. A pre-arranged marriage of two children is no obstacle to true love.

A famous metropolitan journalist decides to pay a surprise visit to his classmate Pancho in the countryside. Pancho has gone to town and his wife has to greet the guest. Under the curious eyes of the neighbors, the two are waiting for him to come back home. The awkwardness between them intensifies. How will they sleep under one roof? What will people say?

Frivolous girl falls in love with a young construction worker. He trusts her and decides to include her in his team of workers. In the beginning, she is happy, but soon starts to feel the tensions between the people in the team. Hypocrisy and demagogy fill her with indignation and she does not keep silent about the shortcomings and mistakes of her colleagues. Gradually, her superiors become uneasy about her and the girl has to go. Her boyfriend offers her marriage, but she decides to take her own path and lead a worthy life. The movie was shot in 1966 but was censored by the communist government and released in theatres on 31st October 1988.

Impersonating a knight is one of the favorite games of nine-year-old protagonist. Now as Don Quixote, now as D'Artagnan he is fighting evil, he is searching for justice and defending the weak. Together with his friends, packed in cardboard armor, they play all day long. As he is playing, however, he unwittingly witnesses the relation between his parents and gradually comes to understand that the world of the adults is far removed from the canons of knightly honor. His parents love him, but never seem to find the time to listen to his concerns. The deceit, corruption and lack of respect in his own family alienate the small boy. The only adult, whom the boy trusts, is his uncle to whom he is attached by a genuine, equal, man-to-man friendship. He takes him to the cinema and theater performances and talks to him like with his peer. Will this sensitive kid ever succeed in building an internal armor against selfishness and rudeness?

Three novels deal with the mentality of the children, their agitations, and the merry and sad things in their everyday life. The movie is created with a lot of humor, cheerfulness, and great love for the kids.

Born in a small village, Yordan has to live and work in the nearby town. Only on the weekends can he return to his native village. He travels by a bike and observes the nature and the animals around him with overt sadness. In the village arrives a young pharmacist and she rents his house. Soon both of them fall in love. In order to be near her, Yordan tries to persuade his colleagues to move one of the workshops from the plant to the village. But they are all used to living in the town now and decline his offer. Yordan realizes that he cannot demand impossible things.

A dentistry student, graduating with honor, does not get the desired job and has to start working as a MASTER OF ALL TRADES in a construction company. He has to paint walls, clean chimneys, and fix water conduits. He is not able to accomplish any of these tasks and gets into funny situations all the time. Moreover, he and his roommate, a good friend of his, quarrel over a girl. But this situation is a misunderstanding as well - the friends love different girls. A happy end is in sight.

A surrealistic comedy-drama about a school shooting as seen through the eyes of a socially awkward college student named Jay. Walt Whitman, the shooter, is loosely based on Charles Whitman, but the film is not in any way a factual account of the 1966 shootings at the University of Texas.

There were times when stealing girls in these lands has been a worthy vocation, was a habit and a sort of custom in Bulgaria. Only the strongest and most experienced men took the profession up. A young and brave Bulgarian highlander was given the job to bring, no matter how, a certain beautiful girl to be married to somebody.

What happens when a distracted newspaper editor-in-chief initials a "yes" to print a sharply critical feuilleton and a "no" to the feuilleton author's application for leave instead of the other? Well, an incredibly funny mess, which only the screenwriter Radoy Ralin and the director Vladimir Yanchev can mix. Of course, supported by the whole constellation of comedians that Bulgaria had in the early 60's. The commotion occurs when dozens of big and small bosses and directors from all over the country recognize themselves in Karaivanov, the fictional hero of the feuilleton. They all run to the editorial office to demand refutation and punishment of the author. Just watch as they bury themselves in an avalanche...