REEL Ashkenaz @ the Toronto Jewish Film Festival
Canadian Premiere
BROKEN BARRIERS (KHAVAH) (1919, restored 2021)
Directed by Charles E. Davenport
Sunday June 12, 1pm
Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, 506 Bloor St W, Toronto
INFO/TICKETS
This 1919 silent film is the first American film adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye stories, famously brought to life in Fiddler on the Roof. However, Broken Barriers focuses not on Tevye the milkman, but on his daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka, sending reverberations through her family and community. Long-thought lost, but recently discovered by one of the producer’s great-granddaughters and restored by The National Center for Jewish Film, Broken Barriers is back on the screen over 100 years later.
This Canadian premiere of the new restoration is presented with the world premiere performance of a live musical score created and performed by Boston’s
Boisterous and driving, lilting and elegiac, Mamaliga melds the klezmer melodies of old country Yiddishland with new era sensibilities, crafting intricate arrangements of original and traditional tunes to make you dance, laugh and cry – perhaps all at once! Featuring Rebecca Mac and Rachel Leader on fiddles, Raffi Boden on cello, and Mattias Kaufmann on accordion.
Presented as part of and in partnership with Toronto Jewish Film Festival