Presented by:

 

 

SUNDAY, march 25, 2012

4:00PM AND 7:30PM

ADMISSION: 
$15 GENERAL ADMISSION
$10 AGES 18 - 35 (7:30 PM ONLY)
RUSH SEATS ON SALE 15 MINUTES BEFORE EACH SCREENING, NO ADVANCE TICKET SALES

FOR MORE INFORMATION CLICK HERE

A search for a sofa owned by Pearl Gluck’s great-great grandfather in Hungary unearths more than she bargained for in this bittersweet documentary. The near legendary divan, reputedly slept on by scores of famous Hasidic rebbes, brings Gluck back into the fold of her Orthodox family and in close contact with her estranged father. Anchored by touching testimonies from others who have also strayed from their Orthodox roots, Divan tackles the big questions of faith, morality and the meaning of family, with sharp wit and style.

Click here to view the film's trailer

Special Guest Speaker: Filmmaker Pearl Gluck

Ten years after leaving her native Borough Park, Brooklyn, Pearl Gluck received a Fulbright grant to collect oral histories from Yiddish speakers in areas of Hungary once home to thriving Hasidic communities. At heart, she is a zamler, Yiddish for collector, an ethnographer.

Pearl's first film, Divan (2004), is a Hasidic tale five years in the making which was developed in part at the Sundance Institute, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, opened theatrically at the Film Forum in NYC (2004) and broadcast on the Sundance Channel. Gluck continues to draw from her rich Hasidic heritage and through her current work seeks to provide both a bridge to the past and a form of cross-communal dialogue through the arts. She was the first to receive a Yiddish Fulbright to Hungary and her work was created with the support of foundations such as New York State Council on the Arts, Eva Eastman Fund, and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture.

Her commercial work includes directing and producing documentary shorts for The Covenant Foundation, the Heritage Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries, the American Committee for the Weitzmann Institute of Science, and editing radio and 30-second TV ads for Oxygen Advertising.

Gluck's video art includes Trance with sound artist Basya Schechter for the Eldridge Street Project in NYC, with musician Matt Darriau for the Krakow Jewish Arts Festival installed at Alchemia, and a multimedia installation in Weimar, Germany for backup.loungelab 2002. She co-directed the award-winning short, Great Balls of Fire (6 mins; 2001) which is a homeless man's response to September 11. The short continues to screen worldwide at venues such as Transmediale, Oberhausen, Walker Center for the Arts, New York Video Festival, and in competition at the Globalica 10th International Media Art Biennale in Wroclaw, Poland.

Gluck has spearheaded community arts programs, curated literary and film events from Hungary to Israel to New York City, and has completed an artist residency at the Paideia Institute in Stockholm. As part of her ongoing commitment to educational outreach, she has appeared on numerous college and university campuses, and acted as writer/mentor at the MacArthur-granted program, The Harlem Writers Crew. Her first involvement with documentary film was in A Life Apart: Hasidism in America (1998; Oren Rudavsky and Menachem Daum). Her appearance in the film has encouraged grass-roots organization for an ex-Orthodox creative alliance. As one reviewer of The Boston Globe wrote, "Gluck deserves a documentary of her own."