Page 1 of 2 The National Center for Jewish Film Lown Building 102, MS 053 Telephone: (781) 899-7044 Brandeis University Fax: (781) 736-2070 Waltham Massachusetts Email: [email protected] 02454-9110 www.jewishfilm.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Rivo 781-736-8600 [email protected] World Premiere of the Newly-Restored 1937 Yiddish Feature Film THE JESTER at the Jerusalem International Film Festival, July 16 Film Includes Rare Color Toned Scenes WALTHAM, MA (26 June 2008) -- The National Center for Jewish Film (NCJF) announces the 35mm film restoration of the 1937 Yiddish-language feature film THE JESTER (Der Purimspiler). The newly-restored print will have its World Premiere at the Jerusalem International Film Festival on Wednesday, July 16 at 6:00 pm at Beit Shmuel, 6 Eliahu Shama St, Jerusalem. (Confirm screening details at www.jff.org.il) Sharon Pucker Rivo, Executive Director of NCJF, located at Brandeis University, will present the film in Jerusalem. The premiere of THE JESTER will be the 18th consecutive year that NCJF has brought a film from its collection to the Jerusalem International Film Festival. THE JESTER is the 37 th Yiddish feature film restored by NCJF. Following its world premiere, the film will be available for festival and public performance screenings and dvd purchase. ABOUT THE JESTER (Der Purimspiler) Poland, 1937, 90 minutes, b&w/sepia tone/blue tone, Yiddish w/ new English subtitles Set in a Galician shtetl before World War I, this musical comedy is rich with itinerant performers and star- crossed lovers. Negotiating the romantic rapids are a lonely jester, a circus performer, and Esther, the shoemaker's daughter, whose poor father tries to marry her into a prominent family. The intrigue climaxes with a Purim shpil (Purim play) and its parade of costumes, buffoonery, and music. Directors Joseph Green (YIDDLE WITH HIS FIDDLE, MAMELE, & A LETTER TO MOTHER, previously restored by NCJF) and Jan Nowina-Przybylski filmed on location on a farm near Warsaw and in Kazimierz. The film’s lively circus and vaudeville music and set pieces offer a taste of Warsaw’s then- thriving Yiddish revues and cabarets. Green, who had emigrated from Poland to America in 1924, returned to Poland with the American Yiddish theater stars (and then-married couple) Miriam Kressyn and Hymie Jacobson for the production. Many of the film’s Polish-Jewish crew and actors perished during the Holocaust. The film premiered in Warsaw in September 1937 and opened in New York City three months later at the Cameo Theater. Another important historical note: In 1941, the Nazis appropriated a segment from the Purim play scene of THE JESTER for use in their notorious antisemitic propaganda film DER EWIGE JUDE (THE ETERNAL JEW). RESTORATION OF THE JESTER NCJF’s 35mm restoration of THE JESTER involved an expensive and labor-intensive process accomplished, under NCJF’s direction, by Cinema Arts, Inc, NCJF’s primary lab for over thirty years. Restoration was achieved using two original 1937 nitrate prints of the film, one of which contained six color toned scenes. The color toned sections—four in sepia and two in blue—total 27 minutes of the film, or one third of THE JESTER’s running time. Color toning—employed for creating mood and enhancing narrative—was often utilized for silent films, it was, however, extremely rare for sound films especially for