The New Klezmorim, one of a handful of films produced about the klezmer revival, was shot in 1998 and captures this musical movement at the peak of its greatest period of creativity. read more

The New Klezmorim, one of a handful of films produced about the klezmer revival, was shot in 1998 and captures this musical movement at the peak of its greatest period of creativity. Filmed entirely at the KlezKanada Festival north of Montreal in August 1998, the film features stellar performances by some of the greatest talents in Yiddish music, including Adrienne Cooper (z’l), Brave Old World, and Josh Waletzky with Jeff Warschauer and Deborah Strauss.

In interviews with leading performers The New Klezmorim explores the history of the klezmer revival from its beginnings in the 1970s. The film contrasts the Yiddish music of the late 20th century with that of the Second Avenue era as presented in a masterful and comic performance by the late Bruce Adler. The New Klezmorim also examines the reasons for klezmer music’s popularity with young people today. The film was popular with major Jewish film festivals and was broadcast on Bravo! Canada and on P.B.S. stations in the United States.

Performers featured:
Klezmer Conservatory Band
Hankus Netsky
Chicago Klezmer Ensemble
Bruce Adler
Brave Old World
Josh Waletzky
Deborah Strauss & Jeff Warschauer
German Goldenshteyn
Adrienne Cooper with Zalman Mlotek
Mimi Rabson & David Harris
Judy Bressler

Director of photography
Bill Casey

Sound recording by
Craig Lapp

Produced, directed and edited by
David Kaufman

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back

Abraham Moses Klein (1909-72) was the leading Anglo-Jewish poet of the 20th century and one of Canada’s most important poets of the 1930s and 40s. Klein wore many hats – poet, novelist, journalist, community activist, Joyce scholar, lawyer by training – and his strong cultural identification as a Jew permeated all his activities and informed his lifelong pursuits. read more

Abraham Moses Klein (1909-72) was the leading Anglo-Jewish poet of the 20th century and one of Canada’s most important poets of the 1930s and 40s. Klein wore many hats – poet, novelist, journalist, community activist, Joyce scholar, lawyer by training – and his strong cultural identification as a Jew permeated all his activities and informed his lifelong pursuits. Klein lived through and wrote extensively about the most turbulent era in modern Jewish history, becoming the leading voice of Canadian Jewry for two decades.

Through interviews, historical stills, and film footage with selections from his poetry, we gain insight into the personality of the writer and his place in his beloved Montreal. The film explores Klein’s writing, his political activism, his fascination with Joyce, his affection for French Canada, and his eventual descent into silence. Klein is literary “father” to Irving Layton and “godfather” to Leonard Cohen, both of whom have acknowledged their debt to this lesser known but influential figure in Canadian literature.

Produced and directed by
David Kaufman

Director of photography
Rodney Charters

Editing by
Stephen Lawrence

Music composed and performed by
Cynthia Moseley and Albert Kussin

Voice of A. M. Klein by
Earl Pennigton

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back

The night of November 9-10, 1938 marked the beginning of the final chapter in the thousand year-old history of Germany’s Jewish communities. On “Kristallnacht” or “Crystal Night”, as it was cynically named by the Nazis, the Nazi party went on a rampage against Jews, destroying almost 300 synagogues, 7500 Jewish businesses, thousands of residences and community buildings across Germany. read more

The night of November 9-10, 1938 marked the beginning of the final chapter in the thousand year-old history of Germany’s Jewish communities. On “Kristallnacht” or “Crystal Night”, as it was cynically named by the Nazis, the Nazi party went on a rampage against Jews, destroying almost 300 synagogues, 7500 Jewish businesses, thousands of residences and community buildings across Germany. Ninety-one Jews were murdered in what was the first widespread pogrom in Germany since the Middle Ages. Following “Kristallnacht”, 30,000 Jewish men were rounded up and incarcerated for up to six months in concentration camps, where 2,500 of them died. Tens of thousands of Jews subsequently fled the country, but about 160,000 of Germany’s Jews could not escape and eventually perished in the Holocaust.

“Night of the Reich’s Pogrom” tells the story of how the Nazis shaped public opinion in Germany to create a climate receptive to attacks against Jews and which would eventually lead to the Final Solution, or extermination of most of European Jewry. The film features interviews with survivors, with German eyewitnesses and with two prominent historians, Michael Marrus and Robert Gellately. Several survivors describe their desperate efforts to leave Germany in the late 1930s and the reluctance of most of the democracies, especially Canada, to give refuge to them or their families. The film foreshadows the persistence of this indifference well into the war, and the inevitable consequences for European Jewry.

Written and directed by
David Kaufman

Edited by
Bruce Griffin

Narrated by
Cedric Smith

Directors of photography
Robert Holmes
Bruce Macomber

Sound recording
Robert Holmes
Rick Sabin

German unit director
John Goetz

German unit photography
Ian Wilkenson
Klaus Bernhardt

German unit sound 
Antje Rode

Music composed and performed by
Marc Beaulieu

Songs performed by
Elisa Goldman

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back

Sixty-four years after the event, the devastating psychological wounds inflicted on the citizens of a small Basque town by German bombers have still not healed. The day was Monday, April 26, 1937. The planes were part of Nazi Germany’s notorious Condor Legion, and the town was Guernica. read more

Sixty-four years after the event, the devastating psychological wounds inflicted on the citizens of a small Basque town by German bombers have still not healed. The day was Monday, April 26, 1937. The planes were part of Nazi Germany’s notorious Condor Legion, and the town was Guernica. In a surprise attack lasting three-and-a-half hours, the undefended town was completely destroyed by German pilots flying for Spanish army rebels. This infamous act still haunts those who survived the inferno that engulfed the small town.

“Terror from the Skies” tells the story of the bombing and situates it in the context of the Spanish Civil War, which became the first great battle against 20th century fascism. The destruction of Guernica by the Luftwaffe alarmed people all over the world and struck fear into the minds of politicians in countries who foresaw that one day their cities would be the targets of Germany’s  destructive powers. The fear engendered by the attack and the apprehension of what it meant for the future of warfare also found artistic expression, most notably in Pablo Picasso’s mural named after Guernica.

“Terror from the Skies” includes segments of a previously little-seen documentary, “The Spanish Earth,” with a script written and narrated by Ernest Hemingway. Other highlights of the program include first person accounts from four survivors of the bombing of Guernica, an interview with the pre-eminent Spanish Civil War historian, Stanley G. Payne, and recollections from Jules Paivio, a Spanish Civil War veteran from Sudbury, Ontario.

Produced, directed and written by
David Kaufman

Directors of photography
Pablo A. Centeno Rodrigruez
Michael Savoie
Scott Winters

Sound recording
Pablo A. Centeno Rodrigruez
Michael Savoie

Spanish production co-ordinator
Jokin Alberdi Bidaguren

Music composed and performed by
Ronaldo Richard

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back

The haunting musical program of street songs from the Lodz Ghetto, as performed by Brave Old World, is the framework for David Kaufman’s recent film history of the “first and last ghetto” created by the Nazis in Poland. Made up equally of chilling narrative, stirring concert performances, and unforgettable photographs, this is the first major film to feature extensive interviews with survivors of the Holocaust from Lodz. read more

The haunting musical program of street songs from the Lodz Ghetto, as performed by Brave Old World, is the framework for David Kaufman’s recent film history of the “first and last ghetto” created by the Nazis in Poland. Made up equally of chilling narrative, stirring concert performances, and unforgettable photographs, this is the first major film to feature extensive interviews with survivors of the Holocaust from Lodz.

The film focuses on the lives of two historical figures: the Ghetto’s beloved and popular street-singer, Yankele Herszkowicz, whose remarkable songs lifted the spirits of the Jews of the ghetto when their lives were full of despair, and whose own tragic life mirrored the fate of Polish Jewry, and the despotic, Nazi-appointed Jewish leader of the ghetto, Chaim Rumkowski. The documentary also explores in detail daily life in the ghetto and the uplifting role that music and culture played for ghetto dwellers who faced the constant presence of terror and death. This history of the Lodz Ghetto is an extraordinary Holocaust narrative.

Produced, directed and written by
David Kaufman

Music performed by
Brave Old World:
Alan Bern (musical director, piano, accordion)
Michael Alpert (vocals, violin, drum)
Kurt Bjorling (clarinet, bass clarinet)
Stuart Brotman (bass, tsimbl, trombone)

Narrated by
Albert Schultz

Directors of photography
Robert Holmes
Colin Allison

Video and audio editing, and music and audio mixing by
David Kaufman

Music recorded by
Danny Greenspoon

Production research and assistance in Lodz, Poland
Joanna Podalska

Additional video photography
Bill Kerrigan
Bill Casey

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back

On April 19, 1943 the Nazis began the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, which only one year earlier had been the largest Jewish community in occupied Europe. But this time when the Nazis came for the Jews, the young people of the Ghetto shocked them by staging an armed rebellion. Seven hundred and fifty resistance fighters, many of them teenagers, read more

On April 19, 1943 the Nazis began the final liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto, which only one year earlier had been the largest Jewish community in occupied Europe. But this time when the Nazis came for the Jews, the young people of the Ghetto shocked them by staging an armed rebellion. Seven hundred and fifty resistance fighters, many of them teenagers, armed only with pistols and gasoline bombs, confronted the heavily armed soldiers of the German army. The uprising lasted twenty-eight days and inspired armed resistance throughout Europe.

From Despair to Defiance tells the story of the rebellion through the memories of five of the surviving veterans who were part of the Jewish Fighting Organization in Warsaw. They recall the horror of life in the Ghetto, the despair of the community following the mass deportations of the summer of 1942, and the resolve of the surviving young people to give their remaining days some purpose. “All we wanted to do was to choose how to die,” says Simcha Rotem, the Jewish Fighting Organization courier who led the attempt to save the leaders of the rebellion trapped in a bunker at #18 Mila Street. “Our aim was to take revenge and redeem the honour of the Jewish people,” says Mascha Putermilch, who fought in the uprising. Only twenty fighters survived the war, but, as historian David Engel points out, they earned their undeniable place in history.

Produced, directed and written by
David Kaufman

Narrated by
Cedric Smith

Directors of photography
Michael Savoie
Colin Allison

Edited by
David Kaufman
Ed Balevicious
Oliver Manton

Music composed by
Lou Pomanti

Sound recording
Michael Savoie
Colin Allison

The filmmaker will be present at all screenings, he'll introduce his films and answer questions from the audience. back