ts & Entertainment

Time Gone By

PBS special focuses on music
of Jewish American immigrants.

Suzanne Chessler
Special to the Jewish News

A

French director-writer
connects the dreams of
American immigrants to
the music of Jewish American
immigrants in a lively documen-
tary coming to public television.
Fabienne Rousso-Lenoir, also a
human rights activist and film-
maker, read extensively and
researched movie archives to
develop From Shtetl to Swing, a
segment of Great Performances to
be shown 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct.
5, on Michigan Public Television-
WFUM in Ann Arbor.
The hour-long program, fea-
turing Broadway actor Harvey
Fierstein as host, recalls the
music of composers Irving
Berlin and George Gershwin, the
performances of band leaders
Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw
and the humor of comedians
Fanny Brice and the Marx
Brothers along with the talents of
many other early 20th century
icons.
"This is a film about Jewish
vitality, success, integration,
adaptation and solidarity," says
Rousso-Lenoir, whose 1996
award-winning film Zohar
focused on the transmission of
Jewish memory after the
Holocaust. "I'm very emotional,
so I can reflect both what is fun
and what is serious.
"I'm very interested in Jewish
history, and I thought it was
important to make a happy film
with people smiling, dancing and
singing. Zohar had Yiddish
songs, and I heard in some of
those songs a link between them
and what became Broadway
musicals. The Yiddish spirit
brought about the Yiddish the-
ater, and that led to the Broadway
stage."
Rousso-Lenoir, whose TV seg-
ment covers the years between

1880 and 1940, points out the
collaboration between Jewish
and black artists. Jewish singer
Sophie Tucker records "Some of
These Days" written by black
composer-lyricist Shelton
Brooks. Benny Goodman and
his band perform klezmer riffs
in "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" with
instrumentalists from the Count
Basie Orchestra.
"This film has an all-star cast,
and it was a great pleasure for
me to work on it," Rousso-Lenoir
says. "It's like a super production
with the best filmmakers and
actors. It was like magic for me
to work with the biggest names
in [show business].
"I chose Harvey to narrate
because of his voice and person-
ality. He was doing Fiddler on the
Roof at the time and was very
good. I liked his tone!"

International Career

Rousso-Lenoir, raised in a Jewish
home where issues were more
important than ritual, patterned
her career after her parents' pri-
orities. Her" father was a member
of the resistance against the
Nazis during World War II, and
her mother was a journalist.
With an early interest in film,
she decided to learn on the job.
Traveling to Argentina for a
friend's wedding, she stayed and
worked on her first project, Pour
Memoire, a short documentary
against torture selected by
Amnesty International to mark
the group's 25th anniversary.
The cruelties of the dictator-
ship in Argentina inspired her
further to get a law degree, and
she became secretary-general of
the International Federation of
Human Rights, a nongovernmen-
tal organization which pursues
investigations, observes trials
and takes on mediation or train-
ing in some 100 countries.

"I thought it was most impor-
tant to help people before doing
things on my own:' she says. "I
came back to movies because I
really did want to make movies."
As her cinema career devel-
oped, she served as assistant
director for many French direc-
tors, such as Marc Allegret,
Francois Reichenbach, Jean
Schmidt and William Klein. She
also was a line producer in the
research department for French
Television.
In Argentina, she collaborated
with director Jorge Cedron on
Operation Massacre and made La
Casa del Rio, her first short film
as writer and director.
Rousso-Lenoir, divorced from

a sociologist who also was a
human rights activist, added
books to her credit as she
returned to making films. She
contributed to America Latina,
translated into English to extend
its presentation of Latin "
American myths as seen through
American literature.
While From Shtetl to Swing is
shown around the country, a
companion DVD will be released
to present her theme in longer
form.
"I used all archival film so
there would be no talking heads:'
says the director-writer, whose
next goal for the material is a
Broadway show. "I used the
archives in their full actuality

and as if they were my own rush-
es. I did not use them as dusty
material.
"I chose them myself. I didn't
want to delegate my eye onto
somebody else."

From Shtetl to Swing airs 8
p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 5, on
Michigan Public
Television-WFUM in Ann
Arbor. Viewers will have to
check local listings to find
the cable channel carrying
the broadcast. Detroit
Public Television will air
the program but has not
scheduled it as yet.

September 29 2005

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