• Title:
• Jewish Luck

• Director:
• Alexander Granovsky

• Silent with English intertitles

• USSR, 95 minutes

• Venue:
• AFI Silver Theater

• Purchase Tickets:
• Show 1  

With a World Premiere live score performed by
One Ring Zero

One of the first Soviet Yiddish films to be distributed in the U.S., Jewish Luck tells a classic Sholom Aleichem story of perpetual loser, Menakhem Mendel, who never tires of his doomed get-rich schemes. Some of the finest Soviet talent of the day worked on the film; director Alexander Granovsky was among the founders of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, Solomon Mikhoels, the theater’s most famous star and later a victim of Stalin’s purges, was the era’s foremost Yiddish actor, similarly martyred author Isaak Babel wrote the original Russian intertitles, and cinematographer Eduard Tissé contributes work, including shots of the famous Odessa Steps that will recur in his later work with Sergei Eisenstein.

This silent classic comes alive with the World Premiere of a new score performed by the renowned art-lit-rock group One Ring Zero. One Ring Zero is led by Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp. The Brooklyn-based band has released six CDs, including their critically acclaimed album, As Smart As We Are, a book-cum-CD, featuring songs with lyrics contributed by such authors as Jonathan Lethem, Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Dave Eggers, A.M. Homes, Rick Moody, Neil Gaiman and Myla Goldberg. Using odd-ball instruments including claviola, toy piano, theremin and glockenspiel, One Ring Zero creates a musical landscape that is part cartoon, part klezmer and part circus. Their post-Kurt Weil sound has been compared to everything from They Might Be Giants-crossed-with-Tom Waits to “Nino Rota on processed sugar.” In the end, they are a singular band uniquely well-suited to the tragic-comic existential pratfalls of Jewish Luck. Listen to One Ring Zero's music by clicking here.

In cooperation with Yiddish of Greater Washington

Funded in part by the Arthur Tracy “The Street Singer” Endowment Fund. Honoring the memory and musical legacy of Arthur Tracy—the renowned radio, stage and screen singer and entertainer whose talents delighted millions around the world—the arts programs supported by this fund continue Tracy’s ability to entertain for years to come.

• Purchase Tickets:
• Show 1