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      in Movies

      Academy Museum to Highlight Hollywood’s Jewish History After All

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      The museum was criticized earlier for failing to acknowledge the contributions of the Jewish pioneers who helped establish the American film studio system.Having initially drawn criticism for failing to acknowledge the formative role that Jewish immigrants like Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer played in creating Hollywood and the film industry, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures on Thursday announced the details of a new permanent exhibition that will spotlight their contributions.The show, called “Hollywoodland,” is scheduled to open May 19, the museum said in its news release, and will spotlight “the impact of the predominately Jewish filmmakers whose establishment of the American film studio system transformed Los Angeles into a global epicenter of cinema.”When the museum opened in 2021, it made a point of highlighting the contributions of women, artists of color and people from other backgrounds, but there was barely a mention of the Jewish immigrants who were central to founding the Hollywood studio system — titans like Harry and Jack Warner, Adolph Zukor, Goldwyn and Mayer.The omission, coming at a time of growing concerns about antisemitism, drew complaints from Jewish leaders and concern from the museum’s supporters, many of whom saw it as example of Hollywood’s strained relationship with its Jewish history. Striving to assimilate, Hollywood’s founders feared being identified as Jews.The museum’s permanent exhibition about Jewish contributions is called “Hollywoodland.” via Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and SciencesVarious publications called out the affront, like The Forward, which ran a piece headlined “Jews built Hollywood. So why is their history erased from the Academy’s new museum?”The museum said then that it had always intended to open a temporary exhibit devoted to the subject, but in response to the backlash it decided to make a permanent gallery, and it consulted rabbis and Jewish scholars on what should be included.“We learned,” Bill Kramer, the chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who was then the museum’s director, said in an interview. “We took a lot of the information from the conversations that we’ve had and grew from that.“The show will be organized in three distinct parts: “Studio Origins,” which explores the founding of Hollywood’s original eight major film studios and their studio heads; “Los Angeles: From Film Frontier to Industry Town, 1902-1929,” which traces how the city evolved alongside the movie industry; and “From the Shtetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood,” a short-form documentary — narrated by Ben Mankiewicz, the TCM host and author — that looks at the Jewish immigrants and first-generation Jewish Americans who built the Hollywood studio system.The exhibition was organized by Dara Jaffe, an associate curator, with help from Gary Dauphin, a former associate curator of digital presentations, and Josue L. Lopez, a research assistant. Neal Gabler, the author and film critic who wrote “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” served as an adviser.“They were the ones who established this system,” Jaffe said of the pioneering Jewish filmmakers. “They were drawn to this industry because they were restricted from so many others.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Zone of Interest’ Oscars Speech Is Defended by Jewish Film Artists

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      Remarks about Israel that the director Jonathan Glazer made as he accepted an Oscar for “The Zone of Interest” drew a letter of support after facing criticism last month.More than 150 Jewish actors, filmmakers and other artists signed an open letter that was published on Friday in defense of remarks about Jewishness and the war in Gaza that the director Jonathan Glazer made in his Oscars acceptance speech for “The Zone of Interest,” his film about the Holocaust.Glazer’s speech has become one of the most hotly debated in Oscars history, drawing an open letter of strong denunciation from other Jewish film professionals last month and now one of support.“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” Glazer, who is Jewish, said at the Academy Awards on March 10. “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”The new letter expresses support for Glazer. “In his speech, Glazer asked how we can resist the dehumanization that has led to mass atrocities throughout history,” it says. “For such a statement to be taken as an affront only underscores its urgency.”Its signatories included the actors Joaquin Phoenix, Hari Nef and Debra Winger; the directors Joel Coen, Nicole Holofcener and Boots Riley; the playwright and screenwriter Tom Stoppard; and the artist Nan Goldin, according to Variety, which reported the existence of the letter on Friday. Its signatories were confirmed by Sarah Sophie Flicker, an artist and cultural organizer who helped organize the letter.“We stand with all those calling for a permanent cease-fire, including the safe return of all hostages and the immediate delivery of aid into Gaza, and an end to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of and siege on Gaza,” the letter says.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      Amnon Weinstein, Who Restored Violins From the Holocaust, Dies at 84

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      Many had been left behind by victims of the gas chambers. He let the instruments be heard again in melodic tributes through his organization, Violins of Hope.Amnon Weinstein, an Israeli luthier who restored violins belonging to Jews during the Holocaust so that musicians around the world could play them in hopeful, melodic tributes to those silenced in Nazi death camps, died on March 4 in Tel Aviv. He was 84.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed by his son Avshalom Weinstein.Mr. Weinstein was the founder of Violins of Hope, an organization that provides the violins he restored to orchestras for concerts and educational programs commemorating the Holocaust. The instruments have been played in dozens of cities worldwide, including Berlin, at an event marking the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.“Violins of Hope, it’s like a huge forest of sounds,” he said in a 2016 PBS documentary. “Each sound is standing for a boy, a girl and men and women that will never talk again. But the violins, when they are played on, will speak for them.”There are more than 60 Holocaust-era violins in his collection.Some belonged to Jews who carried them in suitcases to concentration camps, and who were then forced to play them in orchestras as prisoners marched to the gas chambers. Others were played to pass the time in Jewish ghettos. One was tossed from a train to a railway worker by a man who knew his fate.“In the place where I now go, I don’t need a violin,” the man told the worker, in Mr. Weinstein’s telling. “Here, take my violin so it may live.”Mr. Weinstein in his Tel Aviv workshop. He himself was the son of a violin repairman.Menahem Kahana/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Jewish Film Professionals Denounce Jonathan Glazer’s ‘Zone of Interest’ Speech

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      An open letter condemned remarks critical of Israel that Jonathan Glazer made when he accepted an Oscar for the film, which is about the Holocaust.Hundreds of Jewish actors, producers and others in the film industry have signed a letter condemning remarks critical of Israel that the director Jonathan Glazer made when he accepted an Oscar for his film about the Holocaust, “The Zone of Interest.”Described as a “statement from Jewish Hollywood professionals,” the letter was signed by the actors Debra Messing and Julianna Margulies; the producers Lawrence Bender and Amy Pascal; and the writer and showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino, according to Variety, which first reported on it on Monday evening.The signatories were confirmed Tuesday by Allison Josephs, an activist who has promoted Jewish representation in films and television and who helped with outreach for the letter. She said that by Tuesday morning it had nearly a thousand signatures.The letter criticized a speech Glazer made when he accepted the Oscar for international feature at the Academy Awards earlier this month for “The Zone of Interest,” which follows the Nazi commandant who runs Auschwitz and his family as they lead quiet domestic lives just beyond the walls of the camp.“All our choices were made to reflect and confront us in the present,” Glazer, who is Jewish, said as he accepted the Oscar. “Not to say ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’ Our film shows where dehumanization leads, at its worst.”“Right now we stand here as men who refute their Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” he said. “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Review: Jews Flee to China in New York Philharmonic’s ‘Émigré’

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      “Émigré,” a bland oratorio about brothers who flee to China to escape Nazi persecution, was given its American premiere by the New York Philharmonic.In Handel’s oratorio “Israel in Egypt,” which the New York Philharmonic performed in October, Jews are living in captivity across the Red Sea from their ancient homeland. In “Émigré,” a new oratorio that was given its American premiere by the Philharmonic on Thursday at David Geffen Hall, they’ve gone a lot farther: to Shanghai, where thousands fled Nazi persecution.Few milieus could be as seductively dramatic as that Chinese city in the 1930s, with its cosmopolitan glamour and wartime danger. But “Émigré” evokes none of this theatrical allure, failing to grab the ear or the heart.With music by Aaron Zigman (known primarily for films like “The Notebook” and “Sex and the City”) and a libretto by Mark Campbell with contributions by Brock Walsh, the piece sketches the historical situation through the story of two German Jewish brothers who settle in Shanghai, which was appealing for its open immigration policies. One of the brothers falls in love with a Chinese woman; her father and the other brother object to the match; amid the violence of the Japanese occupation, tragedy ensues.It’s a promisingly sturdy plot. But the 95-minute score is so blandly cloying, the rhymed-couplets text so stiff and the characters so cardboard, that not a moment ends up surprising or moving.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      ‘The Ally,’ a Play About Israel and Free Speech, Tackles Big Issues

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      Itamar Moses wrote a drama of ideas about Israel and antisemitism. Then Oct. 7 happened.Before his audition for “The Ally,” a new play by Itamar Moses, the actor Michael Khalid Karadsheh printed out the monologue that his character, Farid, a Palestinian student at an American university, would give in the second act.The speech cites both the Mideast conflict’s specific history and Farid’s personal testimony of, he says, “the experience of moving through the world as the threat of violence incarnate.” Karadsheh — who booked the part — was bowled over.“I don’t think anyone has said these words about Palestine on a stage in New York in such a clear, concise, beautiful, poetic way,” said Karadsheh, whose parents are from Jordan and who has ancestors who were from Birzeit in the West Bank.Farid’s speech sits alongside others, though, in Moses’s play: one delivered by an observant Jew branding much criticism of Israel as antisemitic; another by a Black lawyer connecting Israel’s policies toward Palestinians to police brutality in the United States; another by a Korean American bemoaning the mainstream’s overlooking of East Asians. These speeches are invariably answered by rebuttals, which are answered by their own counter-rebuttals, all by characters who feel they have skin in the game.In other words, “The Ally,” which opens Tuesday at the Public Theater in a production directed by Lila Neugebauer and starring Josh Radnor (“How I Met Your Mother”), is a not abstract and none too brief chronicle of our times, a minestrone of hot-button issues: Israelis and Palestinians, racism and antisemitism, free speech and campus politics, housing and gentrification, the excesses of progressivism — even the tenuous employment of adjunct professors.“I don’t think anyone has said these words about Palestine on a stage in New York in such a clear, concise, beautiful, poetic way,” said Michael Khalid Karadsheh, who plays Farid.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      Menachem Daum, Filmmaker Who Explored the World of Hasidim, Dies at 77

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      His acclaimed documentary “A Life Apart” presented a complex portrait of a religious group usually depicted as somber and impenetrable.Menachem Daum, a filmmaker who co-produced a groundbreaking 1997 documentary that illuminated the cloistered world of America’s Hasidim, died on Jan. 7 in a hospital near his home in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He was 77.His death was confirmed by Eva Fogelman, a friend and the author of a book about Christian rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. She said Mr. Daum had been treated for congestive heart failure.What made the documentary, “A Life Apart: Hasidism in America,” so striking was Mr. Daum’s ability to get people who scorn movies and television sets to sit on camera for revealing interviews, allowing him to chronicle their mores and rituals. The resulting film offered a complex portrait of a religious group usually depicted as somber and impenetrable; here it offered scenes of Hasidim joyfully dancing.That achievement was not a given. Mr. Daum, though ultra-Orthodox, was not Hasidic himself. And although he had earlier made a film about caregivers for the aged, he was scarcely a seasoned filmmaker.But he was well versed in the Torah, the Talmud and the intricacies of Orthodox Jewish observance. He spoke Yiddish — the Hasidic lingua franca — and lived in a Hasidic neighborhood. He teamed with an experienced filmmaker, Oren Rudavsky, the son of a Reform rabbi, to produce and direct the documentary.The Hasidic movement was founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe by a rabbi known as the Baal Shem Tov, who felt that Judaism had overemphasized intellectual qualities to the detriment of spiritual fervor and sincerity.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Theater

      Under the Radar at BAM: ‘Our Class’ Review

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      The story of a 1941 massacre is told through the lives of 10 Polish classmates, five Jewish and five Catholic, in this suspenseful but humane play.A simple staging idea can have a devastating affect.As audience members file into BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space and wait for “Our Class” to start, a man can be seen writing names in white chalk on a massive blackboard. It looks like a supersize version of the kind that might be in a classroom, but the list of names here are followed by birth and death dates. We are immediately, chillingly aware of each character’s life expectancy. So when we are introduced to Zygmunt (Elan Zafir), for example, we know that he was born in 1918 and lived to see 1977. On the other hand, Jakub (Stephen Ochsner) will die when he’s about 22, in 1941.That last year is the tragic turning point of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s play, which premiered in London in 2009 and, under the direction of Igor Golyak, is finally making a belated New York debut as part of the Under the Radar festival.Inspired by a real pogrom in Jedwabne, the show pivots on a day in 1941 when inhabitants of a Polish village killed hundreds of Jews. Many of the victims were burned alive in a barn. Afterward, the perpetrators claimed the Nazis were to blame for the massacre, a charade that went on for decades.The play (adapted by Norman Allen from Catherine Grovesnor’s literal translation) follows 10 classmates — five Jewish and five Catholic — through the years. One, Abram (Richard Topol), left in 1937 for New York, where he became a rabbi, but the others stayed put. Slobodzianek skilfully tracks people and events, giving the show a suspenseful but always humane urgency.Friendships ceased to matter during World War II, as classmate turned against classmate. Rysiek (José Espinosa) was among those lending a murderous hand on that fateful day, and he looked on as Jakub’s throat was slit open. “They were my neighbors,” Dora (Gus Birney) said. “I knew them. Just watching. Making jokes.” She and her baby died in the barn. Rachelka (Alexandra Silber) was Jewish and about 21, but, we know from that blackboard, died in 2002. How she made it through is a testament to the grim decisions one has to make in a war.It is tricky to bring this kind of tragic story to the stage, and the well-acted production from the Mart Foundation and Golyak’s Arlekin Players Theater is artistically ambitious. That is not a surprise. Golyak (“The Orchard” at Baryshnikov Arts Center) is among the most inventive directors working in the United States. His problem is one of abundance, though: He can have too many ideas and has a hard time editing them.The excessive stage business in “Our Class” often distracts from the story. Golyak unnecessarily frames the show as a play reading, for instance, with the actors in contemporary clothing, perhaps to suggest the timelessness of the issues. Mercifully he drops that conceit quickly enough.But then some scenes are overloaded with symbolism, as when the dying Jakub perilously and distractingly hangs upside down from a ladder, or when the characters draw faces on balloons, which then float up to the ceiling. Those could be powerful gestures on their own, but collectively they amount to a kind of aesthetic distancing, as if Golyak felt the audience could not withstand the story’s full horror. Tellingly, the most wrenching scenes are the more minimal ones, as when Dora quietly sings to her baby. It’s a lullaby, and a goodbye, the end of two lives and the end of a world.Our ClassThrough Feb. 4 at BAM Fisher’s Fishman Space, Brooklyn; bam.org. Running time: 3 hours. More