Yiddish Goes Silverscreen

Seems we have a unique cinema event from Eve Annenberg.

She stumbled

onto Chulent, a weekly gathering of young, alienated Orthodox and formerly Orthodox Jews in Manhattan [i blogger here about it; and about Gitty]. She had no idea that she was about to embark on one of the most improbable movies of her career.

Four years later she is sending DVDs of her feature-length motion picture “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish” to film festivals, agents and famous literary figures...In Annenberg’s retelling of Romeo and Juliet, the character of Friar Laurence is transformed into Rabbi Laurence. Instead of coming upon what he assumes is a deceased Juliet in a tomb, Romeo lays eyes on her in a tahara shtibl.

It seems incongruous, at times, to hear Yiddish coming out of actors’ mouths as we see Shakespearean English in the subtitles on the screen. About 65% of the movie is in Yiddish.

The film not only includes the traditional Shakespearean story line — altered so that Hasidic sects resembling Satmar and Lubavitch substitute for the warring Montague and Capulet clans — but a story within a story: A substantial portion of the plot mirrors the real-life misadventures of its two stars, young Hasidim who left their communities and ended up on the wrong side of the law before they ended up in front of the camera. Neither had ever watched a movie before, let alone acted in one, before they left the Satmar orbit.

The trailer:

Oh, and San Franciscon not only doesn't like brit milah but:

There has been plenty of drama for real in Annenberg’s life during the last year. She not only finished “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish” but underwent cancer surgery and buried her mother. The night her mother died, Weiss and Zafir showed up, the director recalled. “They prayed and prayed and prayed,” she said. “And it helped me a lot.”

The film was finished just days before its first public screening, in front of a sellout crowd at the Berlin Jewish Film Festival on May 2. Annenberg, Weiss and Zafir were on hand when the movie won the festival’s Audience Favorite award.

The San Francisco Jewish Film Festival rejected “Romeo and Juliet in Yiddish,” but the film was solicited for upcoming Jewish film festivals in England, Australia and Boston.