Russ Karel

Almonds and Raisins

Russ Karel, David Elstein

Orson Welles, Celia Adler

This documentary examines the dozens of Yiddish-language talking films made in the United States and Europe between the release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 and the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939.

In Black And White

Russ Karel

Until the rise of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, black and white audiences in America had to use separate movie theatres. In 1916 a new industry had begun with the first "all coloured" film, made as a protest against D W Griffith's Birth of a Nation. Director Russ Karel 's documentary charts the development of the independent African-American cinema movement through the eyes of the segregated audiences and tells of the fate of those opposing that dehumanising social order, including Paul Robeson and Josephine Baker , during the McCarthy era.