Special Event: Cinenosh – serving bagels + Dancing Goats Coffee
In Person: March 10 + Virtual: Streams March 11 – 17
This breathtaking and exceptionally well-crafted documentary about Russian Jewish photographer Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) captures his transformation from a free-spirited scientist in Berlin to one of the world’s greatest photographers as his early style of Russian pictorialism morphs into more modern photography. When Vishniac loses work because of being Jewish and is hired by the Joint Distribution Committee to document the shtetls of Eastern Europe, his images mature into a visceral chronicle of Eastern European Jews, in whom this self-identified Western Jew discovers a deep spirituality and essential Jewishness. His shots of daily life in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania brim with vitality. His book, “A Vanished World,” is often compared to the work of documentary photographers Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange. The film is superbly narrated by his daughter, Mara Kohn Vishniac, born in Berlin in 1926. Her clear-eyed view of her father adds to the complexity of a man who was a microbiologist, top-notch photographer, and sometimes unreliable narrator of his own life story. She was his helper in the darkroom and his “alibi” for photographing Nazi propaganda, often posing innocently in front of it. Ultimately, she took responsibility for his legacy by preserving his oeuvre, a haunting eulogy to a world on the brink of destruction.
Director Bio: View on IMDB
Laura Bialis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her film ROCK IN THE RED ZONE (2015) explores the lives of musicians in Sderot, Israel, and how they create in a conflict zone. She also directed and produced the critically acclaimed REFUSENIK (2007), a seminal film about the movement to free Soviet Jews, later released on Netflix. Other projects include VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE: STORIES FROM KOSOVO (2008); and TAK FOR ALT (1998), the story of Holocaust survivor turned civil rights activist Judy Meisel, which was honored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, broadcast on PBS, and has been used extensively for Holocaust education in high schools across the United States.
Sponsors: Glazer’s Camera
Event Sponsors: Dancing Goats Coffee + Sholom Tea, Cinenosh hosted by Rebecca Steinfeld + David Frockt
Community Partner: Washington State Jewish Historical Society, Jewish Family Service of Seattle
