Mothers of Today (Hayntige Mames)
Opening night film and Mother's Day celebration! New England premiere of 35mm restoration from the archives of The National Center for Jewish Film, featuring a post-screening Q&A with NCJF Directors Sharon Pucker Rivo & Lisa Rivo.
85th Anniversary Screening. This essentially unknown 1939 Yiddish film stars Esther Field, the 1930s radio personality known as the “Yiddishe Mama,” in one of her only appearances on film. Field plays an immigrant Jewish widow in New York who suffers the gradual deterioration of her family and Jewish tradition at the hands of neighborhood criminals and the realities of assimilation. This soapy, over-the-top drama — with cantors and gangsters, Yiddish songs, liturgical singing and comedy interludes — is surprisingly moving in its authentic emotional directness.
Mothers of Today is a surviving example of the era’s shund genre: proudly sentimental, low-budget and low-brow films, books, and theater. Shund films were particularly popular with working-class Jewish immigrant audiences, who recognized and enjoyed seeing their own daily lives reflected on the big screen, especially the central role women played in Jewish family life. Mothers of Today is a fun ride, a time capsule, and a rescued piece of Jewish and cinema history. Bring a hanky for the tsuris, and a few insults to yell at the no-goodniks.
Please note: by purchasing a ticket to this screening, you agree that your contact information will be shared with the National Center for Jewish Film for the purpose of including you on their mailing lists. There are no member comps for NCJF Festival Films.
