Films. Collection.

Title: Films.

Inclusive Dates: 1930's-1950's

ID: RG 105

81'3"; 72 bb ("Image..."); 3 bb (equipment)

Subjects (links to similar collections)

American Jewry
Cemeteries
Children
City scapes
Country scenes
Countryside
EVERYDAY LIFE_
Families
Hasidim
Landscapes
Marketplace
Modern Life
RELIGIOUS LIFE_
Synagogues
Traditional Jewish life
Urban Landmarks
Urban sights
YIVO Institute For Jewish Research (New York)

Forms of Material (links to similar genres)

Documents - Collection
Videos

Administrative Information

Restrictions: The collection is open to researchers by appointment with the Curator of Photographs and Films. Researchers should write to archives@yivo.cjh.org.

Rights:

The images, documents, film footage, audio materials, and texts displayed in any portion of this web site may be copyrighted. Permission to use this web site is given on condition that the user agrees to follow U.S. copyright laws. The user agrees that she or he assumes liability for any copyright violations resulting from unauthorized use of items appearing on this web site and to hold YIVO harmless from any action involving copyright infringement. It is the responsibility of the user to carry out a due diligence search under U.S. c opyright laws to determine the copyright status of items displayed on this web site.

The materials on this web site may be used for personal, research and educational purposes only. Publication (including posting on the Internet and online exhibitions) or any other use without prior authorization is prohibited. To request permission for use of these materials, please apply in writing to: YIVO Archives, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th Street, New York, NY 10011, archives@yivo.cjh.org.

Restrictions: The collection is open by appointment with the Chief Archivist. Researchers should write to the Chief Archivist at archives@yivo.cjh.org to request an appointment.

Other Note

A guide to the entire collection of films is available in an in-house Inventory & Index: English, 200 pp., typed, and an in-house electronic database.

Description:

While the description below relates to the entire collection, the films described and displayed in this website pertain only to Jewish life in Poland. The films presented here were digitized with the generous support of the Righteous Persons Foundation and the Steven Spielberg Foundation.

The collection is of mixed provenance and consists mostly of 16 mm films and some 8 mm and 35 mm films. There is also a group of VHS and 3/4 in. tapes. Many of the films are registered as part of other record groups in the YIVO Archives and were physically separated from these record groups, placed in the Collection of Films, and cataloged, for preservation purposes and for improved access to researchers. The collection includes the following series:

Amateur Films. ca. 75 items, 1920s-1930s. Amateur home movies made by American Jews on trips to Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. The films reflect the relationship between American Jews and their famiiles back in Europe and cover a wide range of subjects. The films depict country scenes, marketplaces, urban sites, families, traditional Jews, religious life, Hasidim, and also throw light on modernizing influences in Poland in the prewar period as well as on modern Jewish life in Poland. One segment of this series consists of films produced by Gustave Eisner who owned the Gustave Eisner Travel Agency in the inter-war period and arranged trips back to Poland and to Palestine. The Eisner films include some of Palestine and of American Jewish life. Amateur films made by Abraham Twersky of the Sholem Aleichem Houses in the Bronx which include images of a number of notable cultural figures in the Yiddish secular world.

Films of Towns and Cities Commissioned by Landsmanshaftn. 2 items. 1920s-1930s. A Pictorial Review of Kolbuszowa, 1929. A film about Sedziszow, Poland, 1935.

Post-war films made by social welfare organizations. 1940s-1960s. About 40 items. Films produced by social welfare organizations such as the HIAS and the AJDC describing the situation of Jewish refugees and displaced persons and organizational work carried out on their behalf. Included are films about HIAS's involvement with Hungarian refugees in 1956.

Miscellaneous films. A film about Jewish refugees in Shanghai in the late 1940s. 8 mm footage of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Cracow Ghetto during World War II. Yiddish language newsreel made of a memorial ceremony held in Skierniewice, Poland, in 1947 for Holocaust victims. *A Scientific Expedition to Birobizhan* (1929), a silent film by the faculty of Brigham Young University, Utah.

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