Director Ady Walter’s extraordinary and beautiful film is not about the disasters overwhelming Soviet Ukraine during WWII, but rather something completely different. It is a celebration of the dynamic nature of Jewish life in a fictional village on the eve of the Nazi invasion. Called “a masterpiece” by many critics, it immerses you into the characters’ lives and loves, as if you are interacting with real-life people. Like filmmaker Mendele who returns to his hometown from cosmopolitan Kyiv, his neighbors are full of dreams, hopes and passionately voiced opinions. SHTTL is “not only as an absolutely essential Jewish film but as an exquisite testament to those beautiful lives that never came to be.”

Virtual Guest Speaker: Jake Marmer on Ukraine: Literature and Life Beyond the Headlines.

Co-sponsor: Alliance Française de San Francisco.

Jake Marmer

Jake Marmer is a poet, performer, and educator. He is the author of three poetry collections: Cosmic Diaspora (Station Hill Press, 2020), as well as The Neighbor Out of Sound (2018) and Jazz Talmud (2012), both from The Sheep Meadow Press. He also released two klez-jazz-poetry records: Purple Tentacles of Thought and Desire (2020, with Cosmic Diaspora Trio), and Hermeneutic Stomp (Blue Fringe Music, 2013). Jake is the poetry critic for Tablet Magazine. Born in the provincial steppes of Ukraine, in a city that was renamed four times in the past 100 years, Jake moved to the US when he was 15. His family still lives in Ukraine.