RACC Annual DIASPORA Film Festival VISHNIAC by Laura Bialis Produced by Nancy Spielberg & Roberta Grossman

VISHNIAC by Laura Bialis 

Produced by Nancy Spielberg & Roberta Grossman

Documentary | USA | 95 min | Language English

Best Documentary Award at Berlin Jewish Film Festival, June 2024

Directed by Laura Bialis Produced by Nancy Spielberg & Roberta Grossman

(Reckonings, Who Will Write Our History, Above and Beyond)

Audience Award - Jewish Int Film Festival Australia

Audience Award - Hong Kong Jewish Film Festival

San Francisco Jewish Film Festival

Event Venue: Yorkville Library, Meeting Room
222 E. 79th Street, New York, NY 10075

Event Date: May 21st, 4:30 – 6:30 PM

The RACC Diaspora Arts Film Festival continues its Legacy program, exploring the little-known area of ​​Eastern European artistic culture of the first half of the twentieth century with a series of documentaries, including Vishniac, about the Russian-American photographer best known for traveling through Eastern Europe from 1935 to 1938, photographing Jewish life in Eastern Europe. Few predicted that less than a decade later, these communities would be destroyed, and that Vishniac’s photographs would provide the last visual records of an entire world.

When Roman Vishniac began photographing Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, he didn’t know he was documenting their final moments. A true Renaissance man with an interest in biology, physics, and art history, he was a pioneer of microscopic photography and one of the first to use photography as a documentary tool. As anti-Semitism grew in his native Russia, he fled to Berlin, only to flee again to New York when the Nazis came to power. Throughout, he never put his camera down. His daughter and grandchildren tell the intimate (and traumatic) family story of the man who became one of the world’s most renowned nature photographers. The film features his stunning photographs for Life magazine, as well as tragically moving images of life in Jewish towns just before the Holocaust.

The purpose of the photographs was to raise funds for impoverished Jewish communities, as Vishniac believed that these people could be saved if the world did not abandon them, and he later continued his efforts using these images to draw the attention of the American government to the terrible fate of Jews in Europe during the war. His book, A Vanished World, a collection of illustrated documents of Jewish life, was published in the United States in 1983. His legacy also includes portraits of celebrities - Albert Einstein's favorite portrait was of himself painted by Vishniac. Trained as a biologist and with a doctorate in zoology and medicine, Vishniac made significant contributions to photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography, demonstrating a humanistic, scientific curiosity and respect for life in his work.

Russian-American Cultural Center 646-831-0554  russculture@aol.com

 https://russianamericanculture.com

The Russian-American Cultural Center program was made possible by part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council, New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.