film and discussion
The Family Oppenheim: A Banned Anti-Nazi Film Rediscovered - In-person Program
Join us for the long-lost US premiere of The Family Oppenheim (Semya Oppengeym) (1938) – a powerful Soviet-made anti-Nazi film written by acclaimed German-Jewish novelist Lion Feuchtwanger (The Oppermanns) in collaboration with visionary Soviet Jewish filmmakers Grigorii and Serafima Roshal.
Conceived in exile, censored in Britain, and banned in the United States, The Family Oppenheim, based on Feuchtwanger’s 1933 novel, stands as one of the earliest cinematic warnings against Hitler’s rise to power and fascism’s brutal reshaping of Germany. Premiering internationally in the spring of 1939 but soon banned and forgotten for nearly nine decades, the film now returns to US screens – newly restored, translated, and subtitled through a remarkable student-led research project at the University of Oregon led by Miriam Chorley-Schulz. Experience a rediscovered masterpiece once banned by American censors – a work of resistance, vision, and urgency that still echoes powerfully today.
Accompanying the screening, join Miriam Chorley-Schulz (University of Oregon) and Rossen Djagalov (NYU) for an illuminating conversation tracing the film’s extraordinary journey from its complex conception to its celebrated 1938 Moscow premiere to decades of suppression, and finally, to its revival today.
About the Speakers
Miriam Chorley-Schulz is Assistant Professor and Mokin Fellow of Holocaust Studies at the University of Oregon. Her work explores German Jewish and Yiddish diasporic histories, cultures, and thought; Jewish left-wing and internationalist traditions; Jewish resistance to fascism; and the intertwined histories and theories of racism, antisemitism, and genocide. She is particularly interested in the lives and legacies of self-identified Jewish antifascists from the 1920s through the Cold War – among them, a figure to whom she often returns: Lion Feuchtwanger.
Chorley-Schulz is the author of numerous publications, including her award-winning first monograph, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees (Berlin: Metropol, 2016), recipient of both the Hosenfeld/Szpilman Memorial Award and a Special Mention of the Scientific Award of the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland in Germany. She is also co-founder of the EU-funded project We Refugees. Digital Archive on Refugeedom, Past and Present, which documents global histories of displacement and refugeedom – with Feuchtwanger serving as one of its key historical interlocutors.
Rossen Djagalov is Associate Professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University. His work focuses on the intersections of culture and Marxism, Soviet and Eastern Bloc internationalism, and the global history of the left.
He is the author of From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and the Third World (2020), which reconstructs the Soviet roots of postcolonial literature, film, and theory. His current projects include a study of multinational Soviet literature through the Friendship of the Peoples literary magazine and The People’s Republic of Letters: Towards a Media History of Socialist Internationalism, exploring how left-wing movements used media – from novels and theater to song and film – to connect publics worldwide. He is a member of the editorial collective of LeftEast and the provisional committee of the Black Sheep.
Ticket Info: Free; registration required
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film and discussion
film screening and discussion
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny – In-Person Program
Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny takes a closer look at one of the most fearless political writers of modern times. It originally aired on PBS as part of the American Masters series.
Arendt came of age in Germany as Hitler rose to power, before escaping to the United States as a Jewish refugee. Through her unflinching capacity to demand attention to facts and reality, Arendt’s time as a political prisoner, refugee and survivor in Europe informed her groundbreaking insights into the human condition, the refugee crisis, and totalitarianism.
Her major works, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The Human Condition (1958), Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), On Revolution (1963), and Crises of the Republic (1972) remain among the most important and most-read treatises on the development and impact of totalitarianism and the fault lines in American democracy. Arendt’s reports on the trial of Adolph Eichmann also caused a firestorm of controversy, and its impact is still felt today.
The screening will be followed by a conversation between Jeff Bieber, director of the film; Leon Botstein, President of Bard College; and Jia Lynn Yang, senior ideas writer at The New York Times.
About the Speakers:
Jeff Bieber’s films and social impact campaigns have focused on the transformation of America’s identity through The Pilgrims (2015), The Jewish Americans (6-hours, 2008), Latino Americans (6-hours, 2013), Italian Americans (4-hours, 2015), and Asian Americans (5-hours, 2020). Bieber has received two national EMMY Awards, a duPont-Columbia Award, and three Peabody Awards. As Executive Producer of Washington Week on PBS, Jeff produced nightly coverage of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and covered the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden presidencies. His other public affairs work includes Executive Producer for Avoiding Armageddon (2003), an eight-hour series about weapons of mass destruction; America at a Crossroads (2007), a 12-hour series about America’s role post-9/11, and Korea: The Never-Ending War (2019). Jeff Bieber Productions was created in 2022. Projects include Dante, a 4-hour series directed by Ric Burns (April 2024), The Harvest, a 2-hour film for American Experience (September 2023); Julia Alvarez: A Life Reimagined (September 2024); Weaving Nature (April 2024), and Hannah Arendt – Facing Tyranny (broadcast June 27, 2025 and now streaming); Projects in development include Liz Diller: Making Space for the Future for American Masters and a history of the Maryland State House, both slated for 2026.
Leon Botstein is president and Leon Levy Professor in the Arts of Bard College. Founder of Bard High School Early College, Dr. Botstein put into practice a vision of high school as a public space where young adults, with the guidance of a college level faculty, explore their intellectual potential. He has published widely in the fields of education, music, and history and culture and is the author of several books including Jefferson's Children: Education and the Promise of American Culture, and editor of The Compleat Brahms and The Musical Quarterly. He is the music director of the American Symphony Orchestra and The Orchestra Now (TON), and conductor laureate and principal guest conductor of the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, where he served as music director. He is the founder and artistic co-director of the Bard Music Festival. His work has been acknowledged with awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Harvard University, government of Austria, and Carnegie Foundation. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2011.
Jia Lynn Yang is a senior ideas writer at The New York Times, writing deep, explanatory pieces on a wide variety of big issues facing our nation. From 2021 to earlier this year, she was national editor, overseeing The Times’s coverage of the country. She is also the author of One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, a political history of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act – the landmark law that allowed her family and many others to settle in this country. Before joining The Times in 2017, she was an editor and reporter at The Washington Post, covering national security, business and economics. She graduated from Yale University, where she majored in philosophy.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register here
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film screening and discussion
film screening
Swedishkayt: YidLife Crisis in Stockholm - In-person Program
Jamie Elman and Eli Batalion travelled to the last place on earth they'd expect Yiddish to be a protected minority language: Sweden(?!), inspiring their funny and fascinating chronicle of the Swedish Jewish community, Swedishkayt: YidLife Crisis in Stockholm. In this special New York City premiere, the boychiks from Montreal will not just present the film but perform their patented comedy duo shtik, followed by a Q&A with YIVO Senior Academic Advisor & Director of Exhibitions, Eddy Portnoy. Expect to learn, laugh, and be inspired… not necessarily in that order.
About YidLife Crisis
Eli Batalion and Jamie Elman — the duo of cultural comedians known as YidLife Crisis — are filmmakers and performers from Montreal. With over 25 years of credits across television, theater, music, and film including Mad Men, House MD, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, their work has been showcased at prominent film festivals, including Sundance, Toronto, Berlin, and SXSW. A shared passion for Jewish comedy led them to create “YidLife Crisis,” the first Yiddish-language sitcom, which humorously explores the complexities of modern Jewish life. The show has received several awards and amassed over four million online views, inspiring live performances across North America and Europe. Their documentary works, including the Global Shtetl series, Narishkayt: YidLife Crisis in Krakow, Chewdaism: A Taste of Montreal, and Swedishkayt: YidLife Crisis in Stockholm, continue to explore and celebrate Jewish identity and humor worldwide.
Take advantage of our early bird pricing, available only until December 1!
Ticket Info: $10; YIVO members & students: $5
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