Join Emaneul Thorne as he discusses It Will Yet Be Heard along with Anita and Noel Epstein as they discuss Miracle Child.

Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer once described Dr. Leon Thorne’s memoir as a work of “bitter truth” that he compared favorably to the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Proust. Out of print for over forty years, this lost classic of Holocaust literature now reappears in a revised, annotated edition, including both Thorne’s original 1961 memoir Out of the Ashes: The Story of a Survivor and his previously unpublished accounts of his arduous postwar experiences in Germany and Poland.

Rabbi Thorne composed his memoir under extraordinary conditions, confined to a small underground bunker below a Polish peasant’s pigsty. But, It Will Yet Be Heard is remarkable not only for the story of its composition, but also for its moral clarity and complexity. A deeply religious man, Rabbi Thorne bore witness to forced labor camps, human degradation, and the murders of entire communities. And once he emerged from hiding, he grappled not only with survivor’s guilt, but also with the lingering antisemitism and anti-Jewish violence in Poland even after the war ended. Harrowing, moving, and deeply insightful, Rabbi Thorne’s firsthand account offers a rediscovered perspective on the twentieth century’s greatest tragedy.  

Others' Milk author Kristin J. Wilson will discuss her book at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Details and time tbd.

https://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/

RUNS THROUGH FEBRUARY 23, 2019.

https://www.cinema.ucla.edu/events/2019/liberating-hollywood-women-directors-feminist-reform-1970s-american-cinema

In-person: author and series co-curator Maya Montañez Smukler; writer-director Joan Tewkesbury (1/25); writer-director Barbara Peeters (1/26); writer-director Lynne Littman (2/2); associate producer Jonathan Sanger (2/3); writer-director Stephanie Rothman (2/22).

From the mid-1930s until the mid-1960s, only two women had careers as directors in Hollywood: Dorothy Arzner and Ida Lupino. By 1980, there were an estimated 16 women directing feature films in and around Hollywood. In her new book, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema, scholar Maya Montañez Smukler argues that the 1970s represents a crucial decade for women directors working in and around Hollywood. Still suffering from a postwar slump, the film industry in the 1960s and into the early 1970s was forced to reckon with a growing independent filmmaking community, the enduring dominance of television, and a changing audience demographic whose tastes were influenced by the many social movements of the era. During these years, second-wave feminism challenged all parts of the social, political, and cultural landscape in the United States, including the institutionalized sexism that ran rampant in Hollywood.

Liberating Hollywood examines how the collision of these social and industrial conditions allowed, for the first time in 40 years, the number of women directing feature films to increase significantly. Our eight-night screening series showcases the wide variety of narrative films directed by women who began their careers during this critical decade. Working across production cultures—from low-budget exploitation, to independent art house cinema, and the Hollywood studio—these women made their mark in one of the most mythologized eras of American cinema.

Author and series co-curator Maya Montañez Smukler will sign copies of her new book, Liberating Hollywood: Women Directors and the Feminist Reform of 1970s American Cinema, on January 25 and 26 and introduce each screening.

This series was co-curated by Maya Montañez Smukler and KJ Relth; program notes written and edited by the same.

The Writers Studio Reading Series

Featuring A.W. Barnes, reading from his just-published collection of essays. Free.

Featuring A.W. Barnes, reading from his just-published collection of linked essays, The Dark Eclipse: Reflections on Suicide and Absence.

https://www.thespottydog.com/events/all-events/

Kenneth Finkel discusses Insight Philadelphia at the Philadelphia City Institute branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Details tk.