Cinema with Subtitles

Join us for a foreign historical film - this month's movie will be "Children Must Laugh: Mir Kumen On" (1936, 1hr 1min, unrated) in English/Hebrew/Yiddish/Polish with English subtitles. *Should this movie become unavailable before showing, another foreign film in the same language(s) will be substituted.*

A rare record of Jewish life in Poland before World War II, this 1936 film was produced in several language versions as an international fundraiser for the Medem Sanatorium near Warsaw, a clinic sponsored by the General Union of Jewish Workers that provided care and an escape from urban poverty for some 10,000 children between 1926 and 1939. Directed in a Soviet-influenced style by Alexander Ford, a committed Communist who later became the head of Poland’s National Film School, the film follows three children as they gradually overcome their emotional withdrawal and distrust and enter the communal life of the institution