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In 1982, 76-year-old Henry Fonda finally won a long-overdue Best Actor Oscar trophy, becoming the oldest Best Actor winner up to that time. His last acting nomination had been in 1941, and he held the record for the longest span between acting nominations until 2023. Judd Hirsch broke Fonda’s 41-year record 41 years after it was set, earning his second supporting nomination for “The Fabelmans” 42 years after his bid for “Ordinary People.” Now, one of his former co-stars could possibly break that record.

Hirsch earned two Best Comedy Actor Emmys for the sitcom “Taxi” (1978-1982). Carol Kane co-starred on the series from 1980-1983, also earning two Emmys, one for lead and one for supporting comedy actress. She is now receiving rave reviews for her role in “Between the Temples,” and might be on track to break the record Hirsch broke two years ago. Kane has already earned the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress,...

“I have to say I’m stunned. I haven’t been able to make it real in my mind yet,” reflects Carol Kane on her recent awards nominations and wins for the film “Between the Temples.” The veteran star received the Supporting Actress prize from the New York Film Critics Circle and an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Supporting Performance for her turn in the Nathan Silver movie, on which she also serves as executive producer. The recognition comes as a welcome surprise because, as she says, “It’s a unique experience at my age to get re-noticed, as it were.” Though she would prefer that she and her co-star Jason Schwartzman “were nominated for things together,” she remains “extremely grateful” and thinks the citations are “like a miracle.” Watch our complete video interview above.

Kane stars in “Between the Temples” as Carla, a woman who, following the death of her husband,...

Brady Corbet’s historical epic “The Brutalist” was the big favorite at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, taking home two major prizes for best film and actor for Adrien Brody.

As the oldest critics’ group in the United States, the NYFCC is seen as a bellwether for awards season, with its best film winner often correlating with an Academy Award nomination for best picture. Since the Oscars expanded to 10 best picture nominees in 2009, only two NYFCC winners — “Carol” (2015) and “First Cow” (2020) — have failed to secure Oscar nominations in the category.

Brody’s win reignites his Oscar prospects surrounding his performance in Corbet’s historical epic, which has already been described as a towering achievement. The actor, who made history in 2002 as the youngest-ever best actor Oscar winner for “The Pianist” at age 29, could now become the youngest two-time winner at 51. However, he faces stiff competition from a strong...

Comedy icon Carol Kane reflected on her experience on her new TV show Dinner With The Parents in her new uInterview.

Kane gained recognition as an actress in the 1975 film Hester Street, for which she received an Academy Award nomination for best actress. In the 1970s and ’80s, she appeared in acclaimed films like Dog Day Afternoon and Annie Hall. In the early 1980s, she also appeared on the television series Taxi, acting as a comedic actress for the first time.

Dinner With The Parents is a single-camera comedy series about two 20-something brothers and their awkwardly hilarious weekly dinners at their parents’ house.

“I just think the family dynamic is so fun and so crazy, not any crazier than most families probably, but we just get to play so much, and this character is fantastic, and I got to wear such great clothes,” Kane told uInterview founder Erik Meers.

Sony Pictures Classics has acquired all rights worldwide to “Between the Temples,” a comedy with Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane that earned strong reviews when it debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Nathan Silver, the film follows a forty-something cantor who is at a personal and professional crossroads. That’s when his grade-school music teacher re-enters his life as an adult bat mitzvah student, prompting the pair to form an unusual connection.

In a positive notice, Variety‘s Guy Lodge wrote, “Buoyed by the unlikely chemistry between its two stars, this alternately raucous and tender ‘Harold and Maude’ riff is the warmest work to date from microbudget auteur Nathan Silver.”

“Between the Temples” will have its international debut at the upcoming Berlin International Film Festival in the Panorama section. Schwartzman’s credits include “Rushmore,” “Asteroid City” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” Kane is the Oscar-nominated star...

Back at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Celine Song’s debut feature, “Past Lives,” premiered to rave reviews and early speculation about its awards chances. That turned out to be prescient. One year later, “Past Lives” is a 2024 Oscars Best Picture nominee, while Song is a nominee for Best Original Screenplay. So with the 2024 Sundance Film Festival at its end, what better time than now to speculate about what next year’s “Past Lives” will be? Whether anything on 2024’s Sundance roster can scale those heights is up for debate, but plenty of promising titles could compete for acting and screenplay prizes. The documentary lineup was robust this year, which makes sense: Six of the last 10 Best Documentary Feature Film winners got their start at Sundance.

Below is a sample of Sundance highlights that could be award contenders this time next year.

Narrative features

“Between the Temples”: It’s hard to fathom,...

After three years of virtual and hybrid event offerings, the Sundance Film Festival is set to celebrate its fortieth anniversary with its most robust in-person edition of the festival since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. While online offerings will still be available to those who wish to participate from home, with the official online viewing window opening on Thursday, January 25. That lineup will include at-home screenings of the five competition sections (including Next).

On the ground, however, seems like the place to be. As ever, this year’s festival boasts a wide variety of new films from some of our favorite filmmakers, plus an assortment of rising stars, new talents to keep an eye on, and perhaps a few surprises.

This year’s program includes new films from Steven Soderbergh, Debra Granik, David and Nathan Zellner, Richard Linklater, Lana Wilson, Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, Dawn Porter, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden,...

When Barbra Streisand’s “Yentl” opened on Nov. 18, 1983, directing was very much a man’s world. In the 1970s, there had been a few inroads for women. Italian director Lina Wertmuller was nominated for best director for 1976’s “Seven Beauties” Stateside, actress Barbara Loden, who was married to Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan, wrote, directed and starred in the acclaimed 1970 indie drama “Wanda,” which won best foreign film at the Venice Film Festival. She never followed up with another movie and died of breast cancer in 1980.

There was also Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”), Claudia Weill (“Girlfriends”), Martha Coolidge (“Not a Pretty Picture”), Joan Tewkesbury (“Old Boyfriends”) and Joan Darling (“First Love”). But those filmmakers ran into brick walls when they tried to set up projects with the major studios. The late Silver told Vanity Fair in 2021 that a studio executive didn’t mince his word: “Feature films are expensive to make and expensive to market,...

Joanna Merlin, who created the role of the daughter Tzeitel in Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway and served as a casting director for Stephen Sondheim, Harold Prince and Bernardo Bertolucci, has died. She was 92.

Merlin died Sunday in Los Angeles of complications from myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone marrow disorder, her daughters, documentary filmmaker Rachel Dretzin (Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey) and actress Julie Dretzin (The Handmaid’s Tale), announced.

Merlin also portrayed the dance teacher Miss Berg in Alan Parker’s Fame (1980) and recurred as Judge Lena Petrovsky for more than a decade on NBC’s Law and Order: Svu.

Her acting résumé included the films Hester Street (1975), All That Jazz (1979), Baby It’s You (1983), The Killing Fields (1984), Mystic Pizza (1988), Class Action (1991) and City of Angels (1998) and such TV shows as Naked City, The Defenders, East Side/West Side, Homeland and The Good Wife.

Merlin cast the original Broadway productions of Sondheim’s Company,...

Anyone who loved Mary Tyler Moore as Laurie Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” as the thoroughly modern career woman Mary Richards on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and as the brittle, distant Beth in her Oscar-nominated turn in 1980’s ‘Ordinary People,” will love the new Max documentary “Being Mary Tyler Moore.” Moore, who died in 2017 at the age of 80, narrates the story of her life which had incredible triumphs but also great tragedy. But one aspect of her storied career it doesn’t really delve in as her work in telefilms, miniseries and even an “PBS Hollywood Presents” that reunited her with Dick Van Dyke.

Did you know that two years before she went to Broadway winning a special Tony for her performance in “Whose Life Is It Anyway?” and did “Ordinary People,” she unveiled her dramatic chops in the 1978 CBS TV movie “First, You Cry.” Based on...

Jason Schwartzman and Carol Kane are starring in “Between the Temples,” a new film from writer and director Nathan Silver that’s being described as “an anxious comedy.” It’s the story of a cantor who is locked in a crisis of faith and finds his world turned upside down when his grade school music teacher re-enters his life as his new adult Bat Mitzvah student.

The supporting cast for this humorous exercise in neurosis boasts Dolly De Leon, who was just nominated for her scene-stealing work in “Triangle of Sadness.” Other ensemble members include Screen Actors Guild award-winner Caroline Aaron (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”), longtime funnyman Robert Smigel (SNL’s “TV Funhouse”), stage and screen actress Madeline Weinstein (“Beach Rats”) and indie film regular Matthew Shear (“Mistress America”).

Principal photography wrapped in Kingston, N.Y., on the film. CAA Media Finance is handling domestic sales.

“Between the Temples” was...

Turns out sometimes the true undiscovered country is a revolving door.

At least it is to Capt. Kirk (Paul Wesley), who has some difficulty with one in a funny moment in the “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds” Season 2 teaser, which also features normal Klingons!

Yes, the monstrous Klingons of “Star Trek: Discovery,” redesigned via additional, far more extravagant prostheses to create a truly terrifying effect, unlike anything we had seen of the warrior alien race on 50 years of previous “Trek,” seem to have been abandoned, if this Season 2 teaser is to be taken at face value. Perhaps the reappearance of Michael Dorn’s Worf on “Star Trek: Picard,” looking as he always did, other than white hair to make him look even cooler, inspired a return to the classic design.

In fact, the Season 2 teaser of “Strange New Worlds” is overflowing with moments to make fans smile, including Spock (Ethan Peck...

Spoilers for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Consider yourself warned. The first season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds wrapped up earlier this summer, and as someone who was hungry for episodic Star Trek once again… I loved it. The second season is already in the can and will debut next year, but the production has been keeping a big secret all this time. It was announced during today’s Star Trek Day presentation that Carol Kane will be beaming up for the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

Carol Kane is best known for her roles in Dog Day Afternoon, When a Stranger Calls, The Princess Bride, Taxi, and much more. She also received an Academy Award nomination for her role in Hester Street. Carol Kane will be playing Pelia in the Star Trek series, a “highly educated and intelligent” engineer who “suffers no fools.” She solves problems “calmy and brusquely,...

Every breakout independent hit seems like a miracle. This delightful ‘little’ picture was fated to be ghetto-ized into ethnic theaters before its producers opted to distribute it themselves. Capturing a vibrant part of the immigrant experience, Joan Micklin Silver’s micro-production often has a big-picture look; it charmed audiences and became a sleeper success. Star Carol Kane was nominated for an acting Oscar as ‘Gitl,’ a woman with Old-Country values plus the grit and determination to win a better life. Also with fine performances from Steven Keats, Mel Howard, Dorrie Kavanaugh and Doris Roberts.

Hester Street

Blu-ray

Cohen Media Group / Kino Lorber

1975 / B&w / 1:85 anamorphic 16:9 / 90 min. / Street Date March 8, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Carol Kane, Steven Keats, Mel Howard, Dorrie Kavanaugh, Doris Roberts, Stephen Strimpell, Lauren Frost, Paul Freedman, Martin Garner.

Cinematography: Kenneth Van Sickle

Production Designer: Stuart Wurtzel

Film Editor: Katherine Wenning

Original Music: Herbert L. Clarke...

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“You Gotta Get A Get”

By Raymond Benson

(Note: Much of this review is repeated from an earlier Cinema Retro review of a previous Blu-ray release.)

In the world of the Jewish Conservative Orthodox community, a divorce is truly final only when the husband presents his wife with a “get”—a document in Hebrew that grants the woman her freedom to be with other men. Likewise, the wife must accept the get before the man can re-marry, too.

This is the crux of the story behind Hester Street, an independent art-house film that appeared in 1975, written and directed by Joan Micklin Silver. Starring Carol Kane, who was nominated for Best Actress for her performance as Gitl, a newly arrived immigrant to New York City in 1896, and Steven Keats as her husband Yankl, who, in an attempt to assimilate, in public goes by the name “Jake.

Fifteen years have passed since Penélope Cruz broke new ground as the first Spanish woman to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Although her performance in Pedro Almodóvar’s Spanish-language film “Volver” was passed over in favor of Helen Mirren’s in “The Queen,” she bounced back two years later by triumphing in the supporting category for “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Now, based on her work in Almodóvar’s “Parallel Mothers” (their seventh collaboration), she may have another shot at lead glory. If she does land in the lineup, she will join an exclusive club as the fifth leading lady to be recognized for two non-English language performances.

The first woman to accomplish this feat was Sophia Loren, who was nominated for “Marriage Italian Style” (1965) after winning for “Two Women” (1962). Both are Italian-language films directed by Vittorio De Sica. After losing on her second outing to Julie Andrews (“Mary Poppins...

The 4K restoration (released this month by Cohen Media and featured at the New York Film Festival) of Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 “Hester Street” is getting deserved credit as a rare female-directed American film from its era. The black and white feature, set in the mostly Jewish immigrant community in New York’s Lower East side in the 1890s, overcame tough odds on multiple fronts to become a significant financial success.

The film grossed $5 million by the end of its run, the equivalent of over $22 million today. All this on a budget of $375,000 (about $1.7 million now). That was a significant success, even if at the time it wasn’t supplemented by home video, and as a black and white film it had limited interest for broadcast television.

Micklin Silver’s film is getting renewed credit for its quality, as well as for being the debut film that caused her to break out as a director.

Cohen Film Collection is gearing up for a number of newly restored releases, among them Simon Callow’s 1991 drama “The Ballad of the Sad Café” and a number of Buster Keaton works.

Part of New York-based Cohen Media Group, Cohen Film Collection restores classic films and re-releases them theatrically. It’s vast catalogue includes the Merchant Ivory collection, of which “The Ballad of the Sad Café” is a part.

Based on the 1951 novella by Carson McCullers, the film stars Vanessa Redgrave, Keith Carradine and Rod Steiger.

The George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, is currently finishing the restoration of the film, which Cohen Film Group plans to release next year.

“There’s still a number of features to go, so we’re working our way through those, including some of the films set in India, which I’m personally really interested in,” says Tim Lanza, Cohen Film Collection vice president and archivist.

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Memoria (2021)Distributor Neon has announced its release plans for Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Memoria: Playing only in theaters, Memoria will be “moving from city to city, theater to theater, week by week, playing in front of only one solitary audience at any given time.”Tilda Swinton and George Mackay will be starring in the next film by Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence). Titled The End, the film has been described as a "a Golden Age musical about the last human family." Co-programmed by James Hansen & Eric Souther, Light Matter Festival is a new "moving-image art festival dedicated to experimental film and media arts." Taking place in Alfred, New York, the festival will be screening films by Simon Liu, Mary Helena Clark, Lynne Sachs, and more. Sylvester Stallone's...

“Hester Street,” Joan Micklin Silver’s classic 1975 feature debut, portrays with momentous poignancy the Jewish immigrant experience in turn-of-the-century New York City: the lure of assimilation and the falling-away of tradition; the awesome, awful promise of becoming American. Newly restored in a 4K version that retains the 35mm original’s Jacob Riis-like black-and-white textures of Lower East Side tenement life, it’s a vision of the city on the brink of modernity, willed into existence at the height of the New Hollywood by a woman unaffiliated with any movement.

Continue reading ‘Hester Street’ Is A Classic Jewish Immigrant Tale Worth Seeking Out [NYFF Review] at The Playlist.

After a hiatus where New York’s theaters closed during the pandemic, we’re delighted to announce the return of NYC Weekend Watch, our weekly round-up of repertory offerings. While many theaters are still focused on a selection of new releases, a handful of worthwhile repertory screenings are taking place.

Film at Lincoln Center

NYFF’s Revivals is back! There’s almost too much to count—Sweet Sweetback, Hester Street, Ratcatcher… meanwhile, the Amos Vogel retrospective has a number of treasures.

Roxy Cinema

A 35mm print of Eastwood’s underseen Bird screens, as do shorts by Agnès Varda.

Museum of the Moving Image

A print of Barry Lyndon screens on Saturday, while 2001 plays on 70mm this Friday and Dcp on Sunday. Meanwhile, a Shinya Tsukamoto double feature plays on Friday.

Paris Theater

Brokeback Mountain shows on 35mm this Saturday.

Film Forum

As a 4K restoration of Goodfellas continues, Breathless begins...

Most people, cinephiles or not, know Carol Kane as Valerie, bossy wife to Billy Crystal’s Miracle Max in “The Princess Bride.” Her face may have been tough to recognize under all that old age make-up, but her distinctive warble is unmistakable, causing new generations to fall in love with her as Kimmy’s eccentric landlady Lillian in “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”

But Kane wasn’t always the incomparable character actress we know and love today, and younger audiences may be surprised to learn that her early career included some more dramatic turns, most notably in her Oscar-nominated performance in Joan Micklin Silver’s 1975 masterpiece “Hester Street,” which is receiving renewed interest with a gorgeous 4k restoration from the Cohen Film Collection.

In “Hester Street,” the young Kane plays a Jewish immigrant who arrives in New York to find her husband (Steven Keats) already happily assimilated into American life. She has...

Jack Hazan and David Mingay’s Rude Boy, starring Ray Gange with The Clash is a 59th New York Film Festival Revival highlight Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Film at Lincoln Center has announced the Revivals of the 59th New York Film Festival will include highlights Michael Powell’s Bluebeard’s Castle; Ed Lachman’s Songs For Drella; Lynne Ramsay’s Ratcatcher; Christopher Petit’s Radio On; Sedat Pakay’s James Baldwin: From Another Place; Mira Nair’s Mississippi Masala; Joan Micklin Silver’s Hester Street; Márta Mészáros’ Adoption, and Jack Hazan and David Mingay’s Rude Boy.

59th New York Film Festival Revivals

The other films in the program are John Carpenter’s Assault On Precinct 13; Sarah Maldoror’s Sambizanga; Melvin Van Peebles’ Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song; Christine Choy’s Who Killed Vincent Chin?; Nina Menkes’ The Bloody Child; Govindan Aravindan’s Kummatty; Miklós Jancsó’s The Round-Up, and...

Groundbreaking works by John Carpenter, Mira Nair, Melvin Van Peebles, Nina Menkes and Michael Powell will be featured in the Revivals lineup of the 59th New York Film Festival. These films, which range from historical dramas to pulpy crime thrillers, have been digitally remastered and restored.

Films being highlighted this year include a 4K restoration of Carpenter’s “Assault on Precinct 13,” Powell’s “Bluebird’s Ghost,” Menkes’s “The Bloody Child,” Nair’s “Mississippi Masala” and Van Peebles’s “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”

“One of the biggest satisfactions of programming Revivals within this festival is looking back at cinematic treasures of the past and seeing their continuity and relevance with today’s cinema,” said Florence Almozini, Flc Senior Programmer at Large. “We think this selection is both a celebration and a thought-provoking adventure, and we hope audiences will enjoy exploring it, whether they are seeing these films for the first or 20th time.

A look at all the stars in movies, TV, music, sports and media we’ve lost this year

Mike Fenton

The “E.T.” and “Back to the Future” casting director died Jan. 1. He was 85 years old.

Joan Micklin Silver

The director known for acclaimed films “Hester Street” and “Crossing Delancey” died Jan. 1 due to vascular dementia. She was 85.

Gerry Marsden

Gerry Marsden, lead signer of the British pop band Gerry and the Pacemakers, died Jan. 3 after an infection of the heart. He was 78.

Kerry Vincent

“Food Network Challenge” judge and cake designing expert Kerry Vincent passed away Jan. 4. She was 75 years old.

Tanya Roberts

Former Bond Girl and star of “A View to Kill” and “That 70s Show” Tanya Roberts was confirmed dead Jan. 5 after initial misleading reports that she had passed away, then was still alive. Roberts died of a urinary tract infection that spread to other organs, and she was 65 years old.

Exclusive: Veteran indie executive and filmmaker Jeff Lipsky is hooking up with Kino Lorber to launch The Jeff Lipsky Collection on growing streaming service Kino Now. The collection, which becomes available on March 5, will include five out of seven of Lipsky’s directing efforts dating from 2006-2019. Other filmmakers who are similarly represented with Kino Now Auteur Collections include Jean-Luc Godard, Lina Wertmüller, Derek Jarman, István Szabó and F.W. Murnau.

On the Lipsky roster are Flannel Pajamas (2006), a relationship story co-starring Julianne Nicholson and Justin Kirk; family drama Twelve Thirty (2011), starring Jonathan Groff; surreal comedy Molly’s Theory Of Relativity (2013) with Sophia Takal and Lawrence Michael Levine; character study Mad Women (2015), co-starring Reed Birney and Jamie Harrold; and Holocaust-themed family drama The Last (2019), starring Rebecca Schull. Lipsky hopes to add his first film, 1997’s The End, to the collection as soon as its restoration is complete.

Says Lipsky, “Being inducted...

Film-maker best known for the 1988 romantic comedy Crossing Delancey

A sensitivity to cultural differences, a playful looseness with actors, and a nose for the churn and thrust of interpersonal relationships were among the characteristics of the film-maker Joan Micklin Silver, who has died aged 85 of vascular dementia. She was 40 when she made her debut with Hester Street (1975), the story of a young Russian-Jewish woman arriving in late-19th-century New York only to struggle to match her husband’s aplomb in adapting to their adopted culture.

Shot in black and white and scripted largely in Yiddish with subtitles, the film was self-distributed by her husband, Raphael D Silver, known as Ray, who worked in real estate. He volunteered to produce it after being appalled by the sexist responses his wife received; one studio executive had told her that “women directors are just one more problem we don’t need”. The picture attracted rapturous reviews,...

The late film-maker Joan Micklin Silver exploded the cliches of modern romances. If only others would do the same

The director Joan Micklin Silver, who died last week, was – to use the kind of cliche she abhorred – a pioneer. She was a female director at a time when studio executives were more than comfortable with being openly sexist, telling Silver: “Women directors are one more problem we don’t need.”

She made distinctly Jewish movies, as opposed to the kind of Jewish-lite movies that were – and are still – Hollywood’s more usual style. Her two greatest films, Hester Street (1975), about a Jewish immigrant couple (Steven Keats and Carol Kane) on the Lower East Side in the 1890s, and the peerless 1988 romcom Crossing Delancey, about a modern young woman (Amy Irving) who is reluctantly fixed up with a pickle seller (Peter Riegert), are to When Harry Met Sally what the Netflix...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Joan Micklin Silver on the set of Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979). Trailblazing filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver, best known for films Hester Street (1975) and Crossing Delancey (1988), has died. In an interview with Film Comment in 2017, Silver described the will she possessed as a woman filmmaker who wished to spotlight stories about female relationships and women's labor: "I didn’t want to feel like the woman director. I wanted to feel like one of many women directors."The 71st edition of the Berlin Film Festival will be replacing this year's physical event with a virtual European Film Market in March, and a "mini-festival with a series of onsite world premieres" in June.The International Film Festival Rotterdam has also announced the lineup for this year's hybrid multi-part 50th edition, to be presented between February 1-...

by Nathaniel R

A appreciative goodbye to the writer/director Joan Micklin Silver who died on New Years Eve at 85 years of age of vascular dementia. Long before elevating female directors was a thing for the media or the industry, she was out there doing her thing. Imagine the lift for female directors in the 20th century to get not one but several films made with little media attention or social justice support. The NY Times has a fine overview of the type of obstacles she faced.

Silver's directorial debut came in the 1970s with the Jewish drama Hester Street which earned a well deserved Best Actress nomination for Carol Kane and a WGA nomination for Micklin herself for Comedy writing -- though what an odd classification that was for the immigrant drama...

One of the few women film-makers working in Hollywood in the 1970 and 80s was best known for her Jewish-themed films set in New York’s Lower East Side

Joan Micklin Silver, the American film-maker best known for the Jewish-inflected romcom Crossing Delancey and the largely Yiddish-language immigrant romance Hester Street, has died aged 85. The New York Times reported that Silver’s daughter Claudia said the cause of death was vascular dementia.

Silver was both one of the few female directors operating in US cinema in the 1970s, as well as one of the few film-makers that tackled specifically Jewish material – still a rarity in a Hollywood that had traditionally been dominated by Jewish figures in production and studio roles.

Joan Micklin Silver, a film director who broke several barriers for female filmmakers, died Thursday at her Manhattan home. She was 85 and her death was attributed to vascular dementia by her daughter.

Silver’s 1975 film Hester Street, the story of an immigrant Jewish couple on the Lower East Side of Manhattan set in the 1890s, was turned down by various studios as “too ethnic.” Silver also faced discrimination as a female film director. So backed by family members, she made the movie on a low budget in 34 days. The black and white film was in Yiddish with English subtitles.

Ms. Silver’s husband, Raphael D. Silver, was a tireless supporter. A commercial real estate developer, he financed the film and even worked to get it distribution. The film went on to earn $5 million after its October 1975 debut, a massive increase from its $370,000 budget. Actress Carol Kane was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award.

Joan Micklin Silver, the trailblazing director behind “Hester Street” and “Crossing Delancey,” died on Thursday in Manhattan due to vascular dementia, her daughter Claudia Silver told the New York Times. She was 85.

Silver was outspoken about her experiences confronting sexism, misogyny and anti-Semitism within the entertainment industry.

“I came of age for film at a time when sexism was pretty strong. And although I could get work as a writer, I couldn’t get work as a director at all. And I had the experience of watching young men who had made shorts as I had, prize-winning shorts as I had, moving on to directing films and I couldn’t do it,” Silver said in a 2005 interview with the Directors Guild of America.

In 1975, she wrote and directed the indie film “Hester Street,” a low-budget production based on Abraham Cahan’s novella “Yekl” about a young Jewish couple who emigrated...

Joan Micklin Silver, who forged her own way as a female director in the 1970s and ’80s and helmed seven features including “Crossing Delancey” and “Hester Street,” died Thursday in Manhattan. She was 85.

Her daughter, Claudia Silver, told the New York Times the cause was vascular dementia.

The 1975 independent film “Hester Street” was the story of a Jewish immigrant couple in the 1890s. The low-budget black and white film, in Yiddish with English subtitles, proved a hard sell to studios, and was eventually financed by her husband, real estate developer Raphael D. Silver. It won rave reviews and earned $5 million at the box office, an impressive amount at the time. The 21-year old Carol Kane was nominated for a best actress Oscar for her role as the wife, Gitl.

The 1988 romantic comedy “Crossing Delancey” was also set in Manhattan’s Lower East Side Jewish community. Starring Amy Irving, Sylvia Miles and Peter Riegert,...

Joan Micklin Silver, the director of films like “Crossing Delancy,” “Hester Street,” and “Between the Lines” died on Thursday at the age of 85, The New York Times reports. Her daughter, Claudia Silver, told the paper that the cause of death was vascular dementia. In addition to Claudia, Silver’s survivors include two other daughters, Dina and Marisa Silver; a sister, Renee; and five grandchildren. Her long-time husband, Raphael D. Silver, died at age 83 in 2013 after a skiing accident in Park City, Utah.

An indie pioneer who first got her start writing a series of educational films for companies like Encyclopedia Britannica and the Learning Corporation of America in the 1970s, Silver was long aware of the barriers that would likely prevent her from entering into the male-dominated filmmaking milieu.

And yet the Omaha native soon made her own opportunities, including writing and directing her first film, the low-budget drama 1975 “Hester Street.

Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind Hester Street and Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85.

Silver died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan of vascular dementia, Silver’s daughter, Claudia, told The New York Times.

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska to Russian Jewish parents, Silver left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Not long after her graduation in 1956, Silver married the son of a Cleveland-based Zionist rabbi, Raphael D. Silver, and the couple settled in Cleveland, where Silver taught ...

Joan Micklin Silver, the pioneering independent female director behind Hester Street and Crossing Delancey, among many other titles, who fought to bring Jewish stories to the silver screen, has died. She was 85.

Silver died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan of vascular dementia, Silver’s daughter, Claudia, told The New York Times.

Born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska to Russian Jewish parents, Silver left home to attend Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Not long after her graduation in 1956, Silver married the son of a Cleveland-based Zionist rabbi, Raphael D. Silver, and the couple settled in Cleveland, where Silver taught ...

Exclusive: The Sarah-Jane Stratford novel Radio Girls has been optioned by @nyindieguy productions’ Ira Deutchman. The book is a historical novel set in 1920’s London which combines actual events and characters with a fictional mystery at its center. It is based on the real-life character of Hilda Matheson, an MI5 agent during WWI who became an influential producer in the early days of BBC Radio. The story is told through the eyes of a young Canadian woman, who falls into a job at the BBC where she gets caught up in the conflict between Matheson and her more conservative male superior. Along the way she unearths a conspiratorial plot with enormous consequences and potential danger to herself, the institution she works for and the whole of the European continent. The book was published in the UK, North America and Germany in 2016.

Deutchman, the former Fine Line Features chief who produces and teaches at Columbia U,...

The Covid-19 crisis has devastated cinema attendance. Several major cinema chains have closed around the world. In the face of adversity, this year’s 12th edition of the Lumière Festival in France’s Lyon, which runs Oct. 10-18, aims to fly the flag of cinema even more forcefully than ever, through its on site mix of career tributes, restored classics, world premieres of new films and a classic film market.

Veteran French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier (“My Journey through French Cinema”) has played a key role in organizing this year’s line-up, including the tribute to the classic French screenwriter Michel Audiard, who would have turned 100 this year, the award of the Lumière Award to Belgian directing duo, the Dardenne brothers, tributes to Oliver Stone and Viggo Mortensen, and a career tribute to French actress Sabine Azéma, who starred in two films by Tavernier. The Festival also pays homage to American...

Silver films star Jeff Goldblum, Jerry Stiller, Mark Ruffalo.

Cohen Media Group has added five titles to its Cannes virtual market slate including the market world premiere of documentary Breaking Bread.

Beth Elise Hawk directed the profile of Dr. Nof Atamna-Ismaeel, the first Muslim Arab to win Israel’s Master Chef who uses the platform to build cultural bridges and invites Arab and Jewish chefs to a cooking event in Haifa, Israel.

Cohen Media Group acquired Us rights to the film before the market and plans a theatrical release this year. On Monday it emerged that Cohen and wholly-owned Curzon...

“They say that Rock & Roll are here to stay. But where? Certainly not at my place, it’s too small.”

Between The Lines (1977) will be screening at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E Lockwood Ave)on Thursday, Nov 14 at 7:30pm as part of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Harper Barnes, former film critic of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will be in attendance for a post-screening Q&a. Look for an interview with Harper Barnes tomorrow night here at We Are Movie Geeks. This is a Free event.

In Between The Lines at the offices of a Boston alternative newspaper, the staff members enjoy a positive and open-minded work environment. Music critic Max (Jeff Goldblum) uses his influence to score dates, while news reporter Harry (John Heard) is involved with the lovely Abbie (Lindsay Crouse), the publication’s lead photographer. However, it seems as though their relatively...

Between The Lines, the second film from filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver (Hester Street), hits Blu-ray, DVD and digital platforms on June 18 via Cohen Film Collection.

Released in 1977, Between The Lines underwent a 2K restoration, is a romantic comedy about a Boston alternative newspaper which may be purchased by a major publishing company. Between the [...]

The post Joan Micklin Silver Feature ‘Between The Lines’ Hits Blu-Ray In June appeared first on Hollywood Outbreak.

“Have I ever missed a deadline?” “Constantly.” Over forty years after making its debut, Joan Micklin Silver’s sophomore feature — following her low-budget 1975 historical drama “Hester Street” — “Between the Lines” is more timely than ever. The zippy, lived-in dramedy chronicles the intersecting lives of a pack of staffers at a Boston alt-weekly that’s already full of drama before it kicks into its central plot: what happens when the paper seems destined to fall prey to a corporate takeover.

As the staff grapples with the possibility that their lives (and livelihoods) are about to be forever changed, the film digs into plenty of still-intriguing ideas about the responsibility of the press, what it means to grow up, and how to hold on to your youthful zest when real-life responsibilities won’t stop calling.

The film features Jeff Goldblum in one of his earliest roles — after “Next Stop, Greenwich Village,” before...

Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, her studio romantic comedy about a thirtysomething trying to escape her Lower East Side roots, is the epitome of the New York Woman series the Quad has been running all month. After a difficult experience at United Artists with her 1979 masterpiece Chilly Scenes of Winter, Silver took on her biggest production yet, an adaptation of Susan Sandler’s stage play, Crossing Delancey. The Nebraska native returned to examining Jewish identity in New York, as she did in her first film Hester Street, but instead of immigrants at the turn of the century, her focus was […]...

Joan Micklin Silver’s Crossing Delancey, her studio romantic comedy about a thirtysomething trying to escape her Lower East Side roots, is the epitome of the New York Woman series the Quad has been running all month. After a difficult experience at United Artists with her 1979 masterpiece Chilly Scenes of Winter, Silver took on her biggest production yet, an adaptation of Susan Sandler’s stage play, Crossing Delancey. The Nebraska native returned to examining Jewish identity in New York, as she did in her first film Hester Street, but instead of immigrants at the turn of the century, her focus was […]...

With his farewell film, three-time Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis could break the record for most wins by an actor while Meryl Streep, who just extended her nominations record with bid #21, could match the achievement of four-time winner Katharine Hepburn.

Below, we offer up 13 more facts, stats, and figures regarding this year’s Academy Awards nominees announced on Jan. 23. Winners of the 24 competitive races at the Oscars will be revealed on March 4 during a live telecast on ABC hosted by Jimmy Kimmel.

See 2018 Oscar nominations: Full list of Academy Awards nominees in all 24 categories

Lucky 13?

“The Shape of Water” is the tenth film in Oscar history to earn 13 nominations. The current record of 14 nominations is held by three films, “All about Eve” (1951), “Titanic” (1998) and “La La Land” (2017)

Best Actor mainstay

With his sixth Best Actor Oscar nomination, Daniel Day-Lewis (“Phantom Thread”) is now tied with Richard Burton for recognition in the category.

In a career that began with “sex lies and videotape” in 1989, “Logan Lucky” is Steven Soderbergh’s 26th theatrical release. It will extend his record as the top-grossing American director to come out of the independent scene in its formative years — a period we’ll define as 1975 (Joan Micklin Silver’s “Hester Street”) through 1992 (Quentin Tarantino’s debut, “Reservoir Dogs”).

To be clear, Soderbergh’s an outlier; his billion-dollar box office dwarfs every other indie filmmaker. However, looking at the performance of his contemporaries who got their start in that indie film movement, you may be surprised at who’s on the list. (Note: “Outside wide release” means less than 1,000 screens. Also, the list doesn’t include directors like Sam Raimi and Abel Ferrara, who have independent roots but were not discovered via the film festival/arthouse pathway, or Alan Rudolph, another significant ’80s figure; he started in horror films in the early ’70s.

Annie Hall Turns 40! 12 Scenes To Over-AnalyzeAnnie Hall Turns 40! 12 Scenes To Over-AnalyzeKurt Anthony4/20/2017 11:02:00 Am

Well, la-di-da! Today is the 40th anniversary of Annie Hall!

Released on April 20, 1977, Woody Allen’s nervous romance has earned its reputation as one of the funniest movies of all time. With an impressive supporting cast and an endless supply of classic one-liners and witty pop culture references, it’s no surprise Annie Hall is considered one of Allen’s most iconic films.

Set to a budget of $4M and taking in an adjusted $140M at the box office, Annie Hall definitely ranks as Allen’s highest grossing production, but don’t forget the awards! They always give out awards! During the 1978 Oscars, Annie Hall took home four of the coveted statues, including the top honour for Best Picture, beating out a little space opera known as Star Wars.

Now, throw on your best necktie,...

Annie Hall Turns 40! 12 Scenes To Over-AnalyzeAnnie Hall Turns 40! 12 Scenes To Over-AnalyzeKurt Anthony4/20/2017 11:02:00 Am

Well, la-di-da! Today is the 40th anniversary of Annie Hall!

Released on April 20, 1977, Woody Allen’s nervous romance has earned its reputation as one of the funniest movies of all time. With an impressive supporting cast and an endless supply of classic one-liners and witty pop culture references, it’s no surprise Annie Hall is considered one of Allen’s most iconic films.

Set to a budget of $4M and taking in an adjusted $140M at the box office, Annie Hall definitely ranks as Allen’s highest grossing production, but don’t forget the awards! They always give out awards! During the 1978 Oscars, Annie Hall took home four of the coveted statues, including the top honour for Best Picture, beating out a little space opera known as Star Wars.

Now, throw on your best necktie,...

Joan Micklin Silver applies sensitive direction to Ann Beattie’s novel about a lonely guy trying to win back his girlfriend, and going about it in all the wrong ways. John Heard is excellent as Charles, who can’t understand why Laura (Mary Beth Hurt) has gone back to her husband and child. The whole thing plays out during a snowy winter in Salt Lake City… which is not the place to expect unrealistic romantic dreams to come true.

Chilly Scenes of Winter

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date February 7, 2017 / Head Over Heels / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter Riegert, Kenneth McMillan, Gloria Grahame, Nora Heflin, Jerry Hardin, Tarah Nutter, Mark Metcalf, Allen Joseph, Frances Bay, Griffin Dunne, Anne Beattie.

Cinematography: Bobby Byrne

Film Editor: Cynthia Scheider

Original Music: Ken Lauber

From the novel by Ann Beattie

Produced by Griffin Dunne,...