Films directed by Jewish women to be shown at Crawford Library

Directors to lead live discussions

MONTICELLO, NY — Two films directed by Jewish women will be shown this month at the St. John Street Education Center by the Crawford Public Library. Joan Micklin Silver’s classic “Hester Street” will be screened on Thursday, August 16, at 7:00 p.m. Admission is free. Silver will talk about the making of the film at the library itself on Wednesday, August 22, at 7:30 p.m. Her talk is also free and open to the public.

On Thursday, August 30, the documentary film “Divan” will be shown at the St. John Street auditorium at 7:00 p.m. The film’s director, Pearl Gluck, will be on hand to discuss the film with the audience. This film showing is also free of charge.

Silver began to work in film in the late 1960s. Her first feature project, with her husband as producer, was based on a story by Abraham Cahan, novelist and long-time editor of the Yiddish-language daily, The Forward. “Hester Street,” about young Jewish immigrants living on the Lower East Side in the 1890s, made on a budget of $370,000, went on to earn $7 million at the box office, a Writer’s Guild nomination for best screenplay for Micklin Silver, and an Oscar nomination for best actress for its star, Carol Kane.

Gluck appeared in the Menachem Daum-Oren Rudovsky film “A Life Apart,” a documentary about Hasidism in America. She received a Fulbright grant to collect oral histories from Yiddish speakers in areas of Hungary once home to thriving Hasidic communities.

“Divan” is a Hasidic tale five years in the making. This documentary feature, developed with the assistance of the Sundance Institute, tells the story of Gluck’s search for a revered sofa in the tangled remnants of post-Holocaust Jewish life in Hungary. Despite her break with her own Hasidic past, Gluck’s film depicts the various “characters” she encounters with respect, honor, admiration and good humor.

The film showings will be at the BOCES auditorium at the St. John Street Education Center. Silver’s lecture will be a separate event, to be held at the Crawford Public Library.

Discussions following the film showings will be facilitated by Jack Hirschfeld.