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Yiddish King Lear; Habima Players

Film | Accession Number: 1992.271.1 | RG Number: RG-60.0768 | Film ID: 507

**There are burn-in time codes on the intermediate Betacam SP (Protection) video. There is no way to order a clean copy.**
Prominent actor, Solomon Mikhoels, of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, in dressing room, applying makeup. Starkly lit closeup of Mikhoels as King Lear.

Another prominent Jewish theater group in the Soviet Union, the Habima Players, perform an ancient Hebrew dance.


Film Title
Peoples of the Soviet Union
Duration
00:54:00
Date
Event:  1930s
Locale
Moscow, Soviet Union
Language
English
Genre/Form
Unedited.
Credit
Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Julien Bryan Archive

About This Film

Contributor
Director: Julien H. Bryan
Biography
Julien Hequembourg Bryan (1899-1974) was an American documentarian and filmmaker. Bryan traveled widely taking 35mm film that he sold to motion picture companies. In the 1930s, he conducted extensive lecture tours, during which he showed film footage he shot in the former USSR. Between 1935 and 1938, he captured unique records of ordinary people and life in Nazi Germany and in Poland, including Jewish areas of Warsaw and Krakow and anti-Jewish signs in Germany. His footage appeared in March of Time theatrical newsreels. His photographs appeared in Life Magazine. He was in Warsaw in September 1939 when Germany invaded and remained throughout the German siege of the city, photographing and filming what would become America's first cinematic glimpse of the start of WWII. He recorded this experience in both the book Siege (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1940) and the short film Siege (RKO Radio Pictures, 1940) nominated for an Academy Award in 1940. In 1946, Bryan photographed the efforts of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency in postwar Europe.
B&W / Color
Black & White
Image Quality
Fair
Time Code
05:50:63:00 to 06:45:03:00
Film Format
  • Master
    • Master 507 Video: U-matic - 3/4 inch - NTSC
  • Preservation
    • Preservation 507 Video: Betacam SP - NTSC - small
  • User
    • User 507 Video: VHS - 1/2 inch
Special Collection
Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive

Keywords and Subjects

Administrative History

Legal Status
Permanent Collection
Film Provenance
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased this collection of Julien Bryan film excerpts from Archive Films in October 1992.
Note
01:12:16-01:13:10

Same sequence as Story 769, with narration, apparently excerpted from Julien Bryan's edited film, "Peoples of the Soviet Union." On VHS, this quality appears to be much better than Story 769. Neither has the full Mikhoels sequence in King Lear as filmed on stage.

Additional photographs are available in the USHMM Photo Archives.

It is likely that the ancient Hebrew dance seen here was parodied in "A Night at a Hasidic Rebbe's" which premiered at the Moscow State Yiddish Theater in 1924. It was one of three sketches in "Three Jewish Raisins." According to the historian Jeffrey Veidlinger, this popular play parodied the "mystical piety of Moscow's own Habima [Theater].... One critic praised 'A Night at a Hasidic Rebbe's' for its intrinsic artistic content as well as its propagandistic anti-religious message..." See Jeffrey Veidlinger's book, "The Moscow State Yiddish Theater: Jewish Cuture on the Soviet Stage" (2000), for more information.
Copied From
35mm; b/w
Film Source
Getty Images
File Number
Legacy Database File: 2687
Source Archive Number: JB 2C

Rights and Restrictions

Conditions on Access
You do not require further permission from the Museum to access this archival media.
Copyright
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Conditions on Use
Sam Bryan transferred the copyright for the Julien Bryan Archive to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in April 2020. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum places no restrictions on use of this material and you do not require further permission from the Museum to reproduce or use this film footage.

 
Record last modified: 2021-06-03 12:47:46
This page: https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn1002065