Founded by Ruth and Archie Perlmutter, PJFM debuted its first ever Jewish film festival in the City of Brotherly Love, December of 1981, the second Jewish film festival in this country’s history.The date was December 3, 1981. By this time, film festivals were already a common attraction internationally. The Venice International Film Festival (La Biennale di Venezia), the oldest film festival in the world, was founded in 1932 and led the gateway for other prestigious festivals like Cannes and Sundance. Jewish film festivals, however, were practically non-existent. The Jewish Film Institute had only just made a breakthrough a short year prior in the formation of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the world’s first Jewish film festival. For local Philly couple Ruth and Archie Perlmutter, the City of Brotherly Love would be next…
The Perlmutters, massive movie buffs, decided to pursue their love of film and Yiddishkeit to the next level and propose the city’s very own Jewish film festival. This wouldn’t just be the second Jewish film festival in the country: it would be Philadelphia’s first film festival. The location would be the Young Men’s/Young Women’s Hebrew Association (YM/YWHA), a historic structure at the corner of Broad and Pine Streets, a haven for the Jewish community and the city’s increasing Jewish population. From December 3 into April 25 of 1982, a short collection of films – some new, some old – debuted at the YM/YMHA to a curious and engaged audience. It was an incredible advancement, not just for the organization but for Jewish film festivals in general. Cut to 41 years later and these festivals have completely soared across the globe to the most remote locations, places where you wouldn’t even expect there to be a Jewish audience or movie lovers inclined in attending Jewish films.
PJFM’s first festival featured 10 films, including features and shorts, with four of them having been nominated for or awarded an Oscar. There was Homage to Chagall: The Colours of Love (1977), nominated for Best Documentary. Co-narrated by acclaimed British actor James Mason, Harry Rasky’s visually splendid film chronicles the life of famous Russian-Jewish artist Marc Chagall. Lacombe, Lucien (1974), another Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, is described by The Criterion Channel as “one of the first French films to address the issue of collaboration during the German occupation.” Controversial, indeed, Louis Malle’s film follows a teenage boy who joins the Nazi regime…only to fall for a Jewish girl not soon after. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called Lacombe, Lucien “a beautifully considered, complex, disquieting film. You come out of the theatre so disturbed, you don’t want to believe it.”
Short films that garnered Oscar nominations that year in our lineup included Number Our Days (1976) and The Street (1976). In Number Our Days, Lynne Littman films the lives of a community of elderly European Jews living in Venice, California. In his review for The New York Times¸ John J. O’Connor praised the film as “a moving portrait of loneliness, pride, humor, bitterness and dignity.” Littman’s beautiful snapshot of being Jewish in 1970s America took home the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. The Street, based on a short, semi-autobiographical story by Mordechai Richler, is an animated short about a family struggling to survive in their small, Montreal apartment while their grandmother’s health rapidly declines. In particular, the grandson of the family is eager for her death so that he can get her room. A darkly humorous yet moving and sweet movie? Exactly, so much so that the film won numerous awards, including an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short Film.
The Jewish film world has changed a lot these past 41 years! At PJFM, it is our honor to continue celebrating the best in Jewish international film and new media for as many years to come.
Lacombe, Lucien is available to watch on The Criterion Channel.
To view PJFM’s full selection of films from its first year, visit PhillyJFM.org/PJFM1.