The Dybbuk re-exorcised

This year’s festival also featured a screening, but with substantial artistic and entertainment augmentation.

Adi Kaplan and Shachar Carmel’s reworking of the iconic 1937 Polish film ‘The Dybbuk’ taking place in Jerusalem (photo credit: AMIR BOLZMAN)
Adi Kaplan and Shachar Carmel’s reworking of the iconic 1937 Polish film ‘The Dybbuk’ taking place in Jerusalem
(photo credit: AMIR BOLZMAN)
There are few more stirring or evocative pieces of celluloid in the annals of Jewish culture over the past century than The Dybbuk. Over the years the iconic Polish-made film, which was released as a talkie in 1937, has been shown, in its pure form, at the Jerusalem Film Festival to rapturous audience response.
This year’s festival also featured a screening, but with substantial artistic and entertainment augmentation. That, too, was well received.
And the new work, overseen by Adi Kaplan and Shachar Carmel, working together with the Sala Manca group, will get a reprise this Wednesday (8:30 p.m.), when the YMCA in Jerusalem hosts an event incorporating a new version of the world’s first Yiddish-language movie, with a different soundtrack and with live dubbing by Lea Mauas and Diego Rotman replacing the voices of the original actors, Lily Liliana and Leon Lievgold. Intriguingly, the Polish pair were a couple in real life, as are Mauas and Rotman.
The one-time YMCA slot includes performance art, as well as live musical accompaniment courtesy of the Jerusalem Street Orchestra, conducted by Ido Shpitalnik.
For tickets and more information: www.eventer.co.il/dybbuk.