Recorded conversation with Christa Whitney, director of Who Will Remain? (Ver Vet Blaybn?), and local film experts Dr. Lawrence Baron and Beth Accomando (KPBS Arts Reporter and Cinema Junkie Podcast Host) for this exciting panel on the topic of film making and film criticism.
Christa Whitney | Director of Who Will Remain? (Ver Vet Blaybn?)
Christa is the director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, a growing collection of more than 1,000 in-depth video interviews about Yiddish language and culture with people of all ages and backgrounds. Originally from Northern California, Christa discovered Yiddish while studying comparative literature at Smith. She has studied Yiddish language at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, the Workers Circle, and the Yiddish Book Center. For the past ten years, she has traveled near and far recording oral history interviews, while also managing a video archive and producing documentary films and web features about all aspects of Yiddish language and culture. Christa was recently named on the 2020 Forward 50 list of “people we needed in a year we definitely didn’t.”
Beth Accomando | KPBS Arts Reporter and Cinema Junkie Podcast Host
Beth covers arts and culture around San Diego for KPBS News. Beth studied film at UCSD and had her student film Writer’s Notebook screened as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s "Forty-Two Emerging Artists" showcase in 1981. She has edited the sequels to "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and video documentaries on Billy Wilder and roller hockey. Beth is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Online Film Critics Society, and is the past President and former Education Chairperson for the San Diego Film Critics Society. She served as the festival director of Film School Confidential: A Showcase of San Diego Student Filmmaking. In the past she has served on the film selection committee for the San Diego State University Student Film Festival, San Diego International Film Festival and San Diego Latino Film Festival. Now she volunteers as part of The Film Geeks at the Digital Gym Cinema to bring independent and envelope-pushing genre filmmaking to the Media Arts Center San Diego's micro cinema. Beth has been a film critic for more than 25 years and began at KPBS in 1987. Since 1997 she has been covering independent and international cinema as well as pop culture for National Public Radio and Public Radio International’s The World. She has received numerous Society of Professional Journalist Awards and San Diego Press Club Awards for her radio and web site work at KPBS. She has also received 11 southwestern area Emmy Awards in the categories of producing, writing, and sound design for promotional spots as well as national Pro Max and Telly Awards while working at Fox. She has a passion for Hong Kong cinema, Japanese monster movies, horror, and film noir. She collects movie posters and toys, and loves putting on a haunted house every year.
Dr. Lawrence Baron
Professor Emeritus Lawrence Baron held the Nasatir Chair of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University from 1988 until 2012 and directed its Jewish Studies Program until 2006. He received his Ph.D. in modern European cultural and intellectual history from the University of Wisconsin where he studied with George L. Mosse. He taught at St. Lawrence University from 1975 until 1988. He has authored and edited four books including The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011) and Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005). He served as the historian and as an interviewer for Sam and Pearl Oliner’s The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. In 2006 he delivered the keynote address for Yad Vashem’s first conference devoted to Hollywood and the Holocaust. His contribution to Holocaust Studies was profiled in Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (Routledge: 2010). In the fall Semester of 2015, he served as the Ida King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton University of New Jersey.
Recorded conversation with Christa Whitney, director of Who Will Remain? (Ver Vet Blaybn?), and local film experts Dr. Lawrence Baron and Beth Accomando (KPBS Arts Reporter and Cinema Junkie Podcast Host) for this exciting panel on the topic of film making and film criticism.
Christa Whitney | Director of Who Will Remain? (Ver Vet Blaybn?)
Christa is the director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, a growing collection of more than 1,000 in-depth video interviews about Yiddish language and culture with people of all ages and backgrounds. Originally from Northern California, Christa discovered Yiddish while studying comparative literature at Smith. She has studied Yiddish language at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute, the Workers Circle, and the Yiddish Book Center. For the past ten years, she has traveled near and far recording oral history interviews, while also managing a video archive and producing documentary films and web features about all aspects of Yiddish language and culture. Christa was recently named on the 2020 Forward 50 list of “people we needed in a year we definitely didn’t.”
Beth Accomando | KPBS Arts Reporter and Cinema Junkie Podcast Host
Beth covers arts and culture around San Diego for KPBS News. Beth studied film at UCSD and had her student film Writer’s Notebook screened as part of the Museum of Contemporary Art’s "Forty-Two Emerging Artists" showcase in 1981. She has edited the sequels to "The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and video documentaries on Billy Wilder and roller hockey. Beth is a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association and Online Film Critics Society, and is the past President and former Education Chairperson for the San Diego Film Critics Society. She served as the festival director of Film School Confidential: A Showcase of San Diego Student Filmmaking. In the past she has served on the film selection committee for the San Diego State University Student Film Festival, San Diego International Film Festival and San Diego Latino Film Festival. Now she volunteers as part of The Film Geeks at the Digital Gym Cinema to bring independent and envelope-pushing genre filmmaking to the Media Arts Center San Diego's micro cinema. Beth has been a film critic for more than 25 years and began at KPBS in 1987. Since 1997 she has been covering independent and international cinema as well as pop culture for National Public Radio and Public Radio International’s The World. She has received numerous Society of Professional Journalist Awards and San Diego Press Club Awards for her radio and web site work at KPBS. She has also received 11 southwestern area Emmy Awards in the categories of producing, writing, and sound design for promotional spots as well as national Pro Max and Telly Awards while working at Fox. She has a passion for Hong Kong cinema, Japanese monster movies, horror, and film noir. She collects movie posters and toys, and loves putting on a haunted house every year.
Dr. Lawrence Baron
Professor Emeritus Lawrence Baron held the Nasatir Chair of Modern Jewish History at San Diego State University from 1988 until 2012 and directed its Jewish Studies Program until 2006. He received his Ph.D. in modern European cultural and intellectual history from the University of Wisconsin where he studied with George L. Mosse. He taught at St. Lawrence University from 1975 until 1988. He has authored and edited four books including The Modern Jewish Experience in World Cinema (Brandeis University Press: 2011) and Projecting the Holocaust into the Present: The Changing Focus of Contemporary Holocaust Cinema (Rowman and Littlefield: 2005). He served as the historian and as an interviewer for Sam and Pearl Oliner’s The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe. In 2006 he delivered the keynote address for Yad Vashem’s first conference devoted to Hollywood and the Holocaust. His contribution to Holocaust Studies was profiled in Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (Routledge: 2010). In the fall Semester of 2015, he served as the Ida King Distinguished Visiting Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Richard Stockton University of New Jersey.
