Our friends at the Museum at Eldridge Street will be screening a rarely seen film, Hester Street, by Joan Micklin Silver, this Sunday at 3:00pm. The best part? Two for one tickets for Lower East Siders who live or work in the neighborhood!
They write:
See a landmark film at a landmark site when Hester Street, Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 film, is shown at the Museum at Eldridge Street. What better setting for this little-seen classic, which takes place on the Lower East side streets surrounding the Museum’s home, the historic Eldridge Street Synagogue.
Hester Street is based on an 1896 story by Jewish Daily Forward editor Abraham Cahan, and traces the comic and poignant story of Jake (Steven Keats) and Gitl (Carol Kane), Russian immigrants with very different ideas about Americanization. Kane was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance which the New York Times called “a triumphant bonfire,” as traditional Gitl battles Jake’s new world ways. Shot in black-and-white and partly in Yiddish with English subtitles, the independent production was selected in December 2011 for inclusion in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress, which cited Hester Street for its “accuracy of detail and sensitivity to the challenges immigrants faced during their acculturation process.”
Regina Stein, the Museum’s 125th anniversary scholar-in-residence, will introduce the film and lead a discussion following the screening, touching on the production of the film and its presentation of the American Jewish immigrant experience on New York’s Lower East Side.
Hester Street is free with Museum admission. $10 adults; $8 seniors and students // Sunday, February 26 // 3pm // 12 Eldridge Street.
Love this photo and her hair!