Celebrating Joan Micklin Silver: A Pioneering Filmmaker
In the early 1970s, Joan Micklin Silver, a blossoming television writer/director, was ready to make her first feature film, Hester Street. Studio heads praised her credits but insisted that women were “one more problem” they didn’t need and that Jewish films would never reach a general audience. So with the support of her husband, Raphael Silver, who raised the film’s $400,000 budget and became the film’s producer, Joan Micklin Silver made and released Hester Street, to critical acclaim—it grossed over $5 million in the United States (an unheard-of amount for a small indie film), garnered her a Writers Guild nomination for Best Screenplay, and earned Carol Kane an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Micklin Silver, one of the country’s premier independent film directors, continued to defy film industry insiders for over 40 years. We’re thrilled to host her Jewish trilogy—Hester Street, Crossing Delancey, and A Fish in the Bathtub—and look forward to having her and other special guests here at the JBFC.
Crossing Delancey
Micklin Silver’s modern-day Jewish fairy tale, complete with a fairy godmother/yenta grandmother/bubba (Reizl Bozyk) and a dashing, down-to-earth Prince Charming/pickle man (played divinely by Peter Riegert), becomes more delightful with each viewing. Thirty-something Isabelle “Izzy” Grossman (Amy Irving, in an enchanting performance) spends way too much time (according to her bubba) overworking at a swanky uptown bookstore, or with the married, narcissistic writer Anton (Jeroen Krabbé). But leave it to Bubba and her Lower East Side kibbitzing cohorts to find a way for Izzy to meet her pickle prince.
