Films
Search By:
At Home In Utopia
Monday, April 27, 6:30 PM at SIFF Cinema at the Uptown
Director(s): Michal Goldman
Country: United States
Year: 2008
Length: 57 MINUTES
Format: DigiBeta | Documentary
Language: English & Yiddish w/subtitles
Special Guest(s) Information: Ellen Brodsky, co-producer
OFFICIAL WEBSITE
"The Coops" (cooperative Bronx apartments), symbolized an experiment in justice and equality. In the mid-1920s, thousands of Jewish immigrant garment workers managed to catapult themselves out of urban slums and ghettos by pooling their resources and building four cooperatively owned and run apartment complexes in the Bronx. They believed that owning one's home went a long way toward controlling one's fate. At Home in Utopia focuses on the United Workers Cooperative Colony, the most grass-roots and member-driven of the Jewish labor housing cooperatives, where many of the residents were Communists or sympathetic to the communist movement. Beginning as a stalwartly secular East European Jewish working class enclave, they were part of an international movement the power of which blows minds today. In the 1930s they opted to bring their passion for racial justice home, by racially integrating their own cooperative house, with unexpected consequences. An epic tale of the struggle for equity and justice across two generations, the film tracks the rise and fall of one community from the 1920s into the 1950s, paying close attention to the passions that bound them together and those that tore them apart. Along the way, At Home in Utopia bears witness to lives lived with courage across the barriers of race, nation, language, convention, and sometimes even common sense. This documentary portrays the workers who embraced communist, socialist and union movements. Trailer>>
Plays with Yoo-Hoo, Mrs. Goldberg.
Topics: North American Jewish Community, New York City, Architecture, Human Rights and Social Justice, History, Jewish Union and Labor Movements
PRINT SOURCE: Filmmakers Collaborative
WEBSITE: www.filmmakerscollab.org
EMAIL: info@filmmakerscollab.org
ADDRESS:
397 Moody StreetWaltham, 02435, MA, USA
PHONE: 781.647.1102
CONTACT:
Michal Goldman, Director or Ellen Brodsky, Co-producer, coops@filmmakerscollab.orgSponsors
Balance Associates, Architects.
Hospitality: Pan Pacific Seattle Hotel.
Community Partners: Seattle Office for Civil Rights and Teamsters Local Union 117.
Copyright 2006-2012 Seattle Jewish Film Festival