"I felt privileged to have been able to see it and in such a wonderful setting." - The Audience Club

"Q &A session afterwards... thoughtful, and very well compèred." - The Audience Club

Festival of Early Cinema: Jews and the Popular Film Boom (UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 12/01/2022-13/01/2022)

In January 2022, I worked with academics at UCL's Hebrew and Jewish Studies department on another outreach project - this time round, we put together a set of early films that show the different facets of early Jewish cinema, from the USSR to the UK to the USA. It was then postponed until 2023 due to Covid-19.

Led by Professor Michael Berkowitz, we screened two films: Man With A Movie Camera (in the BFI release, trailer for which below), and Disraeli, starring George Arliss in the title role.

Both early films at the cusp of the sound era, the former an iconic Soviet documentary, and the latter a British obscurity (in the first year of British soundies), it was a pleasure to work in a curatorial role, hosting Q&As, working on the programming from Michael's selection, and helping produce the festival.

From a personal standpoint, perhaps the highlight was spending so much time with Disraeli. It is an adaptation of a stage play from the period, and as a result captures critically-acclaimed acting of the 1920s. As one might expect, it uses a grandiose acting style too large for our current conception of film. However, I was also delighted by how intimacy was achieved within that style.

I believe that Michael currently possesses the only digitised copy of said film. The creation of which was also a rather exciting task, but not the topic of this webpage.