Allen Lewis Rickman's New Translations Featured On Kino Lorber's 'The Jewish Soul: Classics Of Yiddish Cinema' Out Today

Kino Lorber's long-awaited Blu-ray of THE JEWISH SOUL: CLASSICS OF YIDDISH CINEMA is being released today (Tuesday). With new translations by noted Yiddish cultural historian, actor (the Coen Brothers' A SERIOUS MAN, "Boardwalk Empire"), playwright, and translator Allen Lewis Rickman, the five-disc set will include ten classics of Yiddish cinema along with an abundance of bonus features.

The films include THE DYBBUK; TEVYA (starring Maurice Schwartz, based on the Sholem Aleichem stories which inspired the legendary musical FIDDLER ON THE ROOF); AMERICAN MATCHMAKER; HER SECOND MOTHER; MIR KUMEN ON; OVERTURE TO GLORY; ELI ELI; JEWISH KING LEAR; MOTEL, THE OPERATOR; and THREE DAUGHTERS.

The Blu-ray extras will include audio commentaries, alternate versions and a printed booklet including essays by journalist and historian Samuel Blumenfeld, film preservationist Serge Bromberg and Allen Lewis Rickman. During its heyday in the late 1930s, Yiddish movies covered a broad range of genres: Comedies, soap operas, the supernatural, literary adaptations, musicals, and Lubitsch-style romances. Unified through language, gesture and a common cultural sensibility, they captured the essence of the Jewish soul. This lavish box set captures the diversity of Yiddish film and encourages a better appreciation of this most fascinating, but rarely viewed genre. The ten features in the collection were restored by Lobster Films, the result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art, the Deutsche Kinemathek and the Filmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw.

Allen Lewis Rickman directed, co-translated and starred (along with Shane Baker and Yelena Shmulenson) in 2018 in the unanimously acclaimed TEVYE SERVED RAW Off-Broadway. An original take on the work of Sholem Aleichem, the production went on to play in Romania at the State Jewish Theater in Bucharest, and the cast performed a selection from it at Carnegie Hall in the concert FROM SHTETL TO STAGE. Allen adapted and directed the revival of Leon Kobrin's THE LADY NEXT DOOR, the most successful straight-play production ("Delightful" -- NY Times) presented by the Folksbiene in decades. More recently he co-adapted, directed and wrote supertitle translations for the Folksbiene's Drama Desk-nominated Yiddish PIRATES OF PENZANCE, and directed his own musical CHRISTMAS AT THE SMALL EMPIRE for Centenary Stage. He is also an internationally produced playwright and his work has been presented in six languages. His co-written farce OFF THE HOOK was published in French in L'Avant-Scene Theatre, and his revue THE ESSENCE: A YIDDISH THEATER DIM SUM has toured widely and was published in an anthology co-edited by the late Harvey Pekar.

For more information about the new release of THE JEWISH SOUL: CLASSICS OF YIDDISH CINEMA, visit www.kinolorber.com/product/the-jewish-soul-classics-of-yiddish-cinema-blu-ray.

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