Arts & Entertainment Building Utopia Documentary traces the history of the United Workers Cooperative Colony — built in the Bronx in the 1920s by Jewish garment workers — across two generations into the 1950s. Joel Bleifuss Featurewell.com A s the country finds itself in the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s, people have been looking back to the first Great Depression to learn from FDR's administration and how it handled the crisis. But it is not only New Deal politicians who have something to teach us. In the 1930s, working people and their movements responded to the economic turmoil in creative and radical ways, and none more so than the hundreds of New Yorkers who lived in the Coops (rhymes with "loops"). At Home in Utopia, a documentary by Michal Goldman, tells the story of the United Workers Cooperative Colony in the Bronx. When built in 1927, the Coops, with 740 apartments, was the largest coopera- tive housing project in the United States — and the only one with hammers and sickles carved into its limestone lintels. The documentary debuts nationwide on most PBS stations on April 28 as part of PBS's Independent Lens series and will be broadcast 11:30 p.m. Sunday, May 3, on Detroit Public Television-Channel 56. The JCC's Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival will screen the film 2 p.m. Monday, May 4, in Commerce. On vacant land, located across from Bronx Park, recently immigrated Eastern European Jews, most of them members of the Communist Party and many of them garment workers, created a community where they could put their socialist ideals into practice. The Coops wasn't the only Jewish utopian experiment in the Bronx. The Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers established the Amalgamated Houses, members of the Socialist and Communist Parties built the Sholem Aleichem Cooperative and the Labor Zionists built the Farband Houses. In Yiddish-language newspapers, apart- ments in the Coops were marketed to potential cooperators with slogans like: "We want to build a fortress for the working class against its enemies." Shares in the for- tress were sold for $250 per room. In the film, Julius Lugovoy, speaking of his parents and their comrades, says, "What they felt here was that they were the owners of both their apartment and their fate!' Early cooperators pose on the steps of the Coops, still under construction. The Coops founders, believing a brand new world was in birth, saw their commu- nity as one more step toward the inevitable revolution. Pete Rosenblum was 2 years old when his family, who owned a nearby bak- ery, moved into the Coops. "We were expect- ed to conquer the world',' he says. "This was going to be the main headquarters!' People from all over the world came to see this workers' paradise. The Coops library held 20,000 volumes — in English, Russian and Yiddish. The courtyards were landscaped into well-tended gardens. Youth clubs flourished in basements that were the hive of communal activity. From the Coops, the residents set out to live their ideals. No one could be evicted if they couldn't pay the rent. Consequently, the Depression put a strain on the Coops' finances and, in 1933, it headed to bank- ruptcy, unable to pay its mortgage. However, responding to popular unrest, 24 states passed laws against mortgage foreclosures, including New York. It was in this political climate that the leaders of the Coops were able to negotiate a stay against foreclosure and remain the masters of their castle. Residents of the neighborhood sur- rounding the Coops, however, were not so lucky. So, when families in the neighbor- hood were faced with eviction, people from the Coops stepped in. "The women, my mother included, would go up into the apartment:' says Yok Ziebel, whose parents were both union organizers. At Home In Utopia airs 11:30 p.m. Sunday, May 3, on Detroit Public Television-Channel 56. It also will be shown 2 p.m. Monday, May 4, at the Commerce 14, as part of the JCC's Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival. $10. (248) 432-5459 or www.jccdet. org . Jews Nate Bloom Special to the Jewish News Film Notes Opening in theaters on Friday, May 1: X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a pre- quel to the previous X-Men films; most of the action takes place in the 1950s. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as the mutant Wolverine, a "fierce fighting machine possessing amaz- ing healing powers"; Liev Schreiber, 41, co-stars as the mutant Sabretooth, Wolverine's evil archrival and half- brother. The screen- play is by David Benioff, 39, the husband of actress David Benioff Amanda Peet, 37. Evan Rachel Wood, 21, and Justin Long voice two alien teens in Battle for Terra, a sci-fi animated film in which the teens live on a peaceful planet that is plunged into chaos when it is inun- B14 April 30 * 2009 dated with thousands of humans fleeing civil war on Earth. Comedian David Cross, 45, has a supporting voice role. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is a modern romantic comedy retelling of Charles Dicken's The Christmas Carol, in which Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey), a playboy who thinks nothing of break- ing hearts, is visited by the ghosts of jilted girlfriends who take him on a tour of his failed relationships past, present and future. His mentor and role model is his Uncle Michael Wayne, played by Douglas Michael Douglas, 64. TV Notes New episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent, starring Jeff Goldblum, are finally airing after a long delay, 9 p.m. Sundays on the USA cable network. Goldblum plays the role of Detective Zach Nichols, who will get a chance to play jazz piano now and again and thus highlight Goldblum's real-life skill as a pianist. Nichols is the replacement for actor Chris Noth's charac- ter. Episodes starring Goldblum, 57, will Jeff Goldblum alternate with episodes starring Vincent D'Onoforio. Fox News journalist Geraldo Rivera, 65, will guest star on the hit NBC sitcom My Name is Earl 8 p.m. Thursday, April 30. Dreamers By now, most of you have seen Susan Boyle, the Scottish working-class woman who exemplifies the old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover" Boyle, 48, floored the judges and audi- ence of Britain's Got Talent with her stunning rendition of the song "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Miserables. Boyle had never before had a chance to show her talent to an audience of any size, and her dream of being a profes- sional singer had been deferred for most of her life. Thus, some of the song's lyrics seem almost autobiographical. The creators of Les Miserables, too, bare- ly escaped the destruction of their dreams. The composer, Claude-Michel Schonberg, 65, was born in France, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents who had fled their native country and Nazi rule. They managed to survive the Schonberg & Holocaust by hiding Boublil out in rural Brittany. The lyricist, Main Boublil, 67, is a Sephardic Tunisian Jew who, like most North African Jews, left his homeland as things got tougher for Jews with the end of French colonial rule in the 1950s. He settled in France when he was 18. The English lyrics of Les Miserables are by Herbert Kretzmer, 84, a South African Jewish journalist who settled in Britain in 1954.