Shlep to S.F. state for Yiddish poetry
Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, Branch 1054 will host an afternoon of Yiddish poetry, “Not the Last Yiddish Poets,” at 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 23 at San Francisco State University.
Alice Rogoff, author of the prize-winning poetry collection “Mural” and co-editor of the “Haight Ashbury Literary Journal,” will focus on the poetry collection of Sweatshop Poet Morris Rosenfeld. She also will read excerpts from “Nine Yiddish Writers,” a book written by her grandfather, Hillel Rogoff.
Joining her will be Poetry Flash assistant editor Sharon Coleman, who will present Yiddish poetry by Avraham Sutzkever and Celia Dropkin, plus some of her own work.
The Sweatshop Poets, Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe in the 1880s, wrote about the plight of immigrants who worked long hours for low wages under health- and life-threatening conditions.
“Not the Last Yiddish Poets” is free and open to the public. The event will take place at the Labor Archives and Research Center on the S.F. State campus, 480 Winston Drive, S.F. For information, call (415) 566-7235.
S.F. film fest will put movies online
Starting in June 2009, the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival will launch the New Media Initiative, a project that puts hundreds of Jewish movies online. Starting with 1,200 titles from its 28-year history, the festival will provide online clips from hundreds of Jewish-themed films, and offer a select number of titles for full viewing.
In addition to the films, the festival’s Web site, www.sfjff.org, will offer other streaming media, educational materials, social networking resources and a forum for new Jewish stories and films created specifically for emerging media platforms.
The first $200,000 in funding for the project comes from Steven Spielberg’s Righteous Persons Foundation and the Charles H. Revson Foundation.
Association of Jewish Libraries launches podcast
For those who want to add a little Jewish literature to their iPods, the Association of Jewish Libraries is offering a podcast series to enhance and enrich the appreciation of Jewish book culture.
Author and panel discussions, lectures on Jewish literature and workshops are available to listeners at www.jewishlibraries.org/podcast.
Subscriptions are also accessible via iTunes, through RSS feed readers at feeds.feedburner.com/ajlpodcast or by phone at (651) 925-2538.
“Jews are book lovers, and Jewish librarians even more so,” Susan Dubin, president of the Association of Jewish Libraries, said in a statement. “The AJL podcast gives us a way to share our enthusiasm with others without geographical or scheduling restrictions.”
The series will include material recorded at the AJL annual convention, as well as recordings of Jewish literary events across the North America. New episodes will be posted every few weeks.
For more information, contact Heidi Estrin at [email protected].
S.F. Film Society announces first residency awards
Ten local filmmakers have been awarded residencies with the San Francisco Film Society.
Two of the 10 filmmakers given inaugural FilmHouse residencies are Jewish.
• Yoav Potash, a Berkeley-based documentarian, was awarded a one-month residency. His film “Crime After Crime,” (formerly titled “Life Sentence”) profiles efforts of his friend Joshua Safran, an Orthodox Jewish lawyer, and a fellow attorney working to free convicted murderer Deborah Peagler from prison. (Their story was featured in j. on Oct. 18, 2007.)
• Tiffany Shlain, an S.F.-based documentarian, was awarded a six-month residency. Shlain made the award-winning short film “The Tribe,” and is currently working on a film called “A Declaration of Interdependence: A New Conversation About the Birds and the Bees.”
The SFFS FilmHouse Residencies seek to support local independent filmmaking by making office space available free of charge to those actively engaged in various stages of film production. FilmHouse, which opened Nov. 1, will serve as a workshop and community-builder for local filmmakers of all stripes.