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The National Center for Jewish Film

Lown Building 102, MS 053 Telephone: (781) 736-8600 Brandeis University Fax: (781) 736-2070 Waltham Massachusetts Email: NCJF@brandeis.edu 02454-9110 www.jewishfilm.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Rivo (781) 736-8600 lisarivo@brandeis.edu

North American premiere of newly-restored 1937 Yiddish Feature Film THE JESTER Palm Springs International Film Festival, January 11, 2009

Film includes rare color toned scenes

WALTHAM, MA (23 Dec 2008) -- The National Center for Jewish Film announces the restoration of the 1937 Yiddish-language feature film THE JESTER (Der Purimspiler). The 35mm restoration by The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) includes new English subtitles and preservation of rare blue and sepia toned sections. The restored film will have its North American premiere at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 1:30 pm, Camelot Theatres. (Screening details at www.psfilmfest.org) Lisa Rivo, Associate Director of The National Center for Jewish Film, located at Brandeis University, will present the film in Palm Springs. Following its North American premiere, THE JESTER will screen at the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 19, 2009, 1 pm at the Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center (filmlinc.com)

THE JESTER (Der Purimspiler) THE JESTER was co-directed by Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylsk in 1937, following the great success of their film YIDDLE WITH HIS FIDDLE the previous year. Green who had emigrated from Poland to the United States in 1924, returned to Poland with the American Yiddish theater stars (and then married couple) Miriam Kressyn and Hymie Jacobson for the procuction. Shot on location on a farm outside of Warsaw and in the predominantly-Jewish town of Kazimierz, near Lublin, the film also stars Zygmunt Turkow, co-founder with Ida Kaminska of the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater. The film premiered in Warsaw in September 1937 and opened in New York City three months later. This musical drama stars a lonely wanderer, a circus performer and Esther, the shoemaker's daughter, whose family tries to marry her into a prominent family. One of the film’s centerpieces is a Purim shpil (Purim play) with its parade of costumes and music. THE JESTER’s lively circus and vaudeville music and set pieces provide a glimpse of Warsaw’s then-thriving Yiddish revues and cabarets, which were destroyed soon after. Many of the film’s Polish-Jewish crew and actors were killed during the Holocaust, giving the film’s touches of melancholy an even more profound reading for today’s audiences. Another important historical note: In 1941, the Nazis appropriated a segment from THE JESTER’s Purim play scene for use in the notorious antisemitic propaganda film DER EWIGE JUDE (THE ETERNAL JEW).

RESTORATION OF THE JESTER NCJF’s 35mm restoration of THE JESTER was especially exciting and challenging because of the unusual film materials used to achieve the restoration: One of the two original 1937 35mm nitrate prints located by NCJF includes six color toned scenes—four in sepia and two in blue—totaling 27 minutes, or one third, of THE JESTER’s running time. Color toning—employed to create mood and enhancing

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narrative—was often utilized for silent films. It was, however, extremely rare for sound films especially for independent productions. Because there are no subtitles on the original prints, it was possible for NCJF to create a completely new subtitle track. A new English translation was commissioned and a separate subtitle track was prepared, allowing for the newly preserved materials to be archived in their original form. The outstanding restoration work was accomplished by Janice Allen and Michael Kolvek of Cinema Arts, Inc, NCJF’s laboratory for over 25 years. Joseph Green, the producer/director and owner of the film donated THE JESTER with all rights to NCJF in 1989. In recent years, only inferior and incomplete copies of the film have been available. Preservation and restoration of THE JESTER was made possible by grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation, Jules Bernstein and Linda Lipsett, the Eastman Kodak Company, and The Nation Center for Jewish Film’s Reel Funders, with support from Brandeis University and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR THE JESTER “An incomparable window into the world of Jewish Eastern Europe in the 1930s, where the rich folk-culture of the shtetl and ghetto meet the urbane sophistication of contemporary European society. Tap dancing, an old-fashioned Purim play, and a love scene in the park...THE JESTER truly has it all!” – Hankus Netsky, Director, Klezmer Conservatory Band “A wistful romance that’s interspersed with songs but rooted in the wisecracks and banter of Yiddish culture.” – J. Hoberman, The Village Voice

FILM CREDITS THE JESTER

Poland, 1937, 90 min, b&w/color toning, Yiddish w/ new English subtitles DIRECTORS: Joseph Green & Jan Nowina-Przybylski SCREENPLAY: Joseph Green & Chaver-Paver (Gershon Einbinder) DIALOGUE & LYRICS: Itzik Manger MUSIC: Nicholas Brodsky CAST: Miriam Kressyn, Hymie Jacobson, Zygmunt Turkow, Isaac Samberg, Max Bozyk 2008 FILM RESTORATION & NEW ENGLISH SUBTITLES: The National Center for Jewish Film SCREENERS & PHOTOS AVAILABLE. For more information call 781.736.8600.

ABOUT THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR JEWISH FILM

The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) is a unique nonprofit film archive, distributor, and resource center, housing the largest collection of Jewish-themed film and video in the world, outside of Israel. NCJF exclusively owns 10,000 reels of feature films, documentaries, shorts, newsreels, home movies and institutional films, dating from 1903 to the present. NCJF’s first priority is the preservation and restoration of rare and endangered film materials. NCJF holds the largest existing collection of Yiddish feature films and has long been recognized and honored as the world leader in the revival of Yiddish cinema, having rescued these invaluable cultural and artistic artifacts from oblivion. Since 1976, NCJF has restored 37 Yiddish feature films as well as dozens of other “orphan” films that document the diversity and vibrancy of Jewish life past and present. In addition to its own restored materials, NCJF represents the work of 150 independent filmmakers, distributing their films to film festivals, institutions, and individuals. www.jewishfilm.org

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Der Purimspieler (The Jester) Review by J. Hoberman (1979) Zygmund Turkov, portrays a homeless wanderer without roots who wanders From “shtetl to shtetl” and falls in love with the shoemaker’s daughter (Miriam Kressyn) on a stop in a small town in Polish Galicia. A likeable Jewish romantic fantasy about a man’s unobtainable dreams. Der Purimspieler is set in a pre-World War I Galician Shtetl. It has a homemade Operetta quality appropriate to such a Hapsburg Empire backwater. It’s light without being saccharine, a wistful romance that’s interspersed with songs but rooted in the wisecracks and banter of oral Yiddish culture. The vagabond Getsel—a sad, moon-faced shlimazl, skillfully played by Zigmund Turkow—is drawn toward a town by the sound of women singing as they harvest apples. A jack-of-all trade, he takes work as a shoemaker’s assistant to be near Esther (Miriam Kressyn), the cobbler’s romantic, good-natured daughter. But, while Getsel amuses the shop with his tricks and pranks—trading barbs with Esther’s clownish, disreputable grandfather (Max Bozyk, in the first of several such roles)—the girl falls for a smooth song-and-dance man from a traveling circus. In the end, luckless Getsel wanders off again alone. As a director, Green excels at orchestrating a celebration. Here, the most evocative scenes are centered on the carnival of Purim. One the eve of the holiday, Esther’s father Invites a wealthy couple and their half-witted son to his home in hope of arranging a match. The dinner has already turned tumultuous when in marches Getsel and his band of PurimSpielers (players) wearing makeshift costumes and masks, sprouting doggerel; capering like a crew of goblins from the Jewish id. Energized by this whirligig—a comic counterpart to The Dybbuk’s expressionistic “dance of death”—Getsel uses the traditional Purim play to insult and drive off Esther’s rich suitor. Green’s films are always part documentary—much of Der Purimspieler was shot on location in the crooked streets and ancient marketplaces of southern Poland, and even the Studio scenes are populated by an army of Old World Jewish extras. With its circus and vaudeville set pieces, the film offers a taste of Warsaw’s then-thriving Yiddish revues and cabarets as well. Unlike American films made primarily for an immigrant market, Der Purimspieler draws on Jewish folk culture with more high spirits than nostalgia. “My films were just the beginning”, Green maintains, “If it weren’t for the war, Yiddish films would have competed with the greats.” Touching, often delightful, Der Purimspieler takes on a retroactive melancholy as the manifestation of a dawn that was, in reality, a twilight.