Filmography – Jewish Studies

The Media Services contribution to the Library Subject Guides is a selective list of video holdings in the American University Library. Filmographies are created by doing multiple keyword searches in the ALADIN catalog to capture as many titles on a topic as possible. For complete up-to-date holdings (including VHS tapes) please refer to the library ALADIN catalog (www.catalog.wrlc.org)

Most streaming videos listed are available exclusively to AU students, staff and faculty after an online authentications by AUID#.

Here’s a sneak peak at what can be found in the JEWISH STUDIES Filmography

2000 years of freedom and honor the Cochin Jews of India. 1997. 1 videodisc (80 min.). Jews arrived in India over 1900 years ago. Throughout the years, though deeply loyal to India, they prayed for their return to Zion. Film captures the conflicting emotions of two generations of Cochini Jews. The elderly, heartbroken by the mass emigration of the younger generation to Israel, and their children, who as young parents could only envision a bright future as Jews in Israel. Explores the religious, cultural and economic life of the Cochini Jews in the native India and also follows the younger generation to a new life as Israelis. DVD 5907

Blacks & Jews. 1997. 1 video file (85 min.). Early in the 20th century black and Jewish Americans joined forces against bigotry and for civil rights but in the late 1960’s each group turned inward and the coalition fell apart. This film examines the history of this collaboration and recent racial conflicts between Afro-Americans and Jews and attempts at understanding and reconciliation, with particular emphasis on events in New York City and Oakland, California. DVD 5698 and Streaming video

Budrus. 2011. 1 videodisc (82 min.). They not only save the village, but the Barrier is pushed back behind the Green Line into No Man’s Land. In the process, Ayed and Iltezam unleash an inspiring, yet little-known, movement in the Occupied Palestinian Territories that is still gaining ground today. In an action-filled documentary featuring archival footage of this movement from its infancy, Budrus will inspire and challenge audiences worldwide. DVD 8309

Dreamers and builders. 2006. 1 videodisc (60 min.). “The early builders of the Zionist vision, pioneers of the Third Aliyah and the Fourth Aliyah of the 1920s, have been captured on film for time in memoriam by the father of Hebrew film, Ya’akov Ben Dov. Based on three films – Return to Zion, Rebirth of a New Palestine, Romance of Palestine – which were considered lost for more than 70 years”–Container. DVD 7146

The Jewish Americans. 2008. 2 videodiscs (360 min.). Chronicles the 350 year saga of immigrants who gradually wove themselves into the fabric of American life without abandoning their cherished traditions. DVD 3812 and Streaming video
part 1
part 2
part 3

Shtetl. 2009. 1 videodisc (180 min.). Tells the homecoming story of two elderly Polish-American Jews who return to their families’ small village from which most of the Jews had been sent to Treblinka’s gas chambers. Captures these pilgrims as they face old neighbors, some betrayers, some saviors. Interviews Polish Jews in America and Israel who were holocaust survivors or emigrated in the late 1930’s. DVD 5865

See the full Jewish Studies filmography here.

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