Joshua Waletzky

Partisans of Vilna

Joshua Waletzky

Roberta Wallach, Abba Kovner

This extraordinary film tells the story of the men and women who formed the Jewish partisan movement in Vilna, Lithuania, during World War II. Using rare archival film footage dating from 1939 to 1944 and contemporary interviews with 40 partisan survivors (including Abba Kovner, a founder of the partisan movement and one of Israel's leading poets) the film explores the difficulties of organizing under the anarchic conditions of the ghetto.

Music for the Movies: Bernard Herrmann

Joshua Waletzky

Martin Scorsese

Music For The Movies: Bernard Herrmann explores the work of a composer who created music for over 50 films, collaborating with such diverse directors as Orson Welles, Nicholas Ray, and Martin Scorsese. Best remembered for his twelve-year collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in such classics as Vertigo, North By Northwest ,and the unforgettable Psycho, Herrmann pioneered many fundamental techniques of film scoring in the course of his 35-year career.

Image Before My Eyes

Joshua Waletzky

Using historical footage, still photographs, and live interviews, the filmmaker tells the story of Jewish life in Poland between the two World Wars. Includes scenes of urban and rural life, and covers the rise and flourishing of the many religious and secular economic, political, and social movements which characterized Jewish society at this time. Film is a broad survey rather than focusing on any particular sub-topic. Notable in that it deals with the vibrancy of the life of this population of 3.5 million, and not with the tragedy of its subsequent destruction.

Heavy Petting

Obie Benz, Joshua Waletzky

David Byrne, Frances Fisher

Celebrities and creatives -- including musician David Byrne, performance artist Spalding Gray, comedian Sandra Bernhard, radical activist Abbie Hoffman, and poet Allen Ginsberg-- recall their earliest sexual experiences.