Divan is a 2004 documentary film directed by Pearl Gluck. This film documents the director's journey as she returns to her Hungarian roots in order to find a couch that had been in her family for years. During this search the audience gets to witness Gluck explore her true identity, as well as gain a glimpse into Hasidic culture. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Pearl Gluck seeks to bring an ancestral couch, upon which esteemed rabbis once slept, back to her family. She travels from her home community of Hasidic Brooklyn to her roots in Hungary. During this journey Gluck meets a colorful cast of people, such as a couch exporter, her ex-communist cousin living in Budapest, a pair of matchmakers, and a group of formerly Orthodox Jews. [5]
Divan was in production for five years as Gluck's debut feature documentary. It was developed with that assistance of the Sundance Institute. [1]
The film received an overall positive reception from critics, with a 71 score from Metacritic [6] and a 95% score from Rotten Tomatoes. [7]
Crystal Globe is the main award at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, first given in the Czech Republic city of Karlovy Vary in 1948.
Frank London is an American klezmer trumpeter who also plays jazz and world music.
Evan Beloff is a Canadian film writer, producer, director and production company executive.
Matthew Paul Miller, known by his stage name Matisyahu, is an American Jewish reggae singer, rapper, beatboxer, and alternative rock musician.
Joan Nathan is an American cookbook author and newspaper journalist. She has produced TV documentaries on the subject of Jewish cuisine. She was a co-founder of New York's Ninth Avenue Food Festival under then-Mayor Abraham Beame. The Jerusalem Post has called her the "matriarch of Jewish cooking".
Yair Qedar is an Israeli documentary filmmaker, social activist and former journalist.
Pearl Abraham is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. She was the third of nine children in a Hasidic family. Her father was a rabbi. At age five, the family moved to New York City and two years later returned to Israel. Following several moves back and forth between New York and Israel, the family settled in New York when she was 12. She studied first in Yiddish, then in English and then again in Yiddish.
Rachel Grady is the co-director of Jesus Camp, The Boys of Baraka, 12th & Delaware, DETROPIA, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, One of Us, and the Showtime docuseries, Love Fraud, which had its world premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. Rachel is currently co-directing a film for HBO on the silencing of journalists around the world.
Aarti Shrivastava is a national award-winning Indian documentary filmmaker and Asia 21 IPRYLI Fellow based in Mumbai.
Rachel "Ruchie" Freier is a New York City Criminal Court judge.
Deborah Feldman is an American-born German writer living in Berlin, Germany. Her 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, tells the story of her escape from an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn, New York, and was the basis of the 2020 Netflix miniseries Unorthodox.
Pearl Gluck is an American filmmaker and professor. Her films, which explores themes of class, gender, and faith, have appeared as a part of the Sundance Lab, as well as played at Cannes Film Festival, Tribeca Film Festival, and on PBS.
One of Us is a 2017 documentary feature film that chronicles the lives of three ex-Hasidic Jews from Brooklyn. The film was directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who also created the documentary Jesus Camp. One of Us opened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2017, and was distributed the following month of October via Netflix, which also financed the film.
Doreen Mirembe, is a Ugandan actress, filmmaker, producer, founder of Amani and dental assistant at Pan Dental Surgery. She has acted in numerous films and TV series as well as producing her own movies.
The 51st Karlovy Vary International Film Festival took place from 1 to 9 July 2016. The Crystal Globe was won by It's Not the Time of My Life, a Hungarian drama film directed by Szabolcs Hajdu. The second prize, the Special Jury Prize, was won by Zoology, a Russian drama film directed by Ivan I. Tverdovskiy.
The Philadelphia Jewish Film Festival is an annual film festival in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States that presents movies and film-related programs about the Jewish experience, culture, values, and legacy.
Unorthodox is a German-American drama television miniseries that debuted on Netflix on March 26, 2020. The first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish, it is inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots. The four-part miniseries was created and written by Anna Winger and Alexa Karolinski, and directed by Maria Schrader.
Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots is a 2012 memoir by Deborah Feldman. In the book, she documents her life in an ultra-religious Jewish community in Brooklyn, New York. The Netflix miniseries Unorthodox is loosely based on the book.
Shekinah Rising, the sequel to Shekinah: The Intimate Life of Hasidic Women, is a Canadian documentary produced in 2013, which explores the lives and attitudes of young Hasidic women at a Chabad-run seminary in Ste Agathe, Quebec. The documentary covers the perspectives of the female students, as well as religious views of former students in Hasidic communities in London, Belgium and France. The film' was directed by Abbey Neidik and produced by Abbey Neidik and Irene Angelico of DLI Productions. and Ina Fichman.
93Queen is a 2018 documentary film on Hasidic women in Borough Park, Brooklyn who form Ezras Nashim, an all-female ambulance corps. The film follows Judge Rachel Freier, a Hasidic lawyer running for public office as a New York Judge, and mother of six who is determined to shake up the “boys club” in her Hasidic community by creating the first all-female ambulance corps in the United States, as she negotiates her community initiative within the context of a male-dominated Hasidic community.