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Lower East Side Heritage Film Series, Season 2, Part 4: Bubbies & Beats

Well, Yudie is not exactly a Bubbie, but I simply could not resist the alliteration. (Although, Tante and the Beats would make an excellent band name, don't you think?)

This month's Lower East Side Heritage Film Series (LESHFS) pairs the seemingly improvised storytelling of the Beat Generation with the candid and (seemingly) unrehearsed historytelling of a first generation American to Russian-Jewish parents that landed in the Lower East Side.

We are pleased to offer the following films on Tuesday evening (in the universe), February 7, 2012 at 6:30 p.m.

Fourth part in the series:

Pull My Daisy
(1959, 29 min., 16mm)

"Friday morning in the universe..." is the opening line of Jack Kerouac's improvisational narration of a day in the life of the Beat poets. In a Bowery loft, a railyard worker (artist Larry Rivers) and his wife (actress Delphine Seyrig) play host to the Beat poets (Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Peter Orlovsky), a visiting Bishop (actor Richard Bellamy), his sister (dancer Sally Gross), and his mother (artist Alice Neel). Awarded the first prize for Best Experimental Film for 1959 at the San Francisco Film Festival, the film is a "portrait of the inner condition of an entire generation." Directed by photographer Robert Frank and artist Alfred Leslie.

Yudie
(1974, 20 min., 16mm)

A portrait of the filmmaker Mirra Bank's resilient 70-year-old Jewish aunt whose parents immigrated from Russia to New York's Lower East Side. Yudie describes the family business, early labor organizing, and life as an independent Jewish girl who broke some of the expected codes.

Yudie and Pull My Daisy are courtesy of the Reserve Film and Video Collection of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

This is a FREE monthly series held at Seward Park Library. Documentary and feature films (both 16mm and DVD) shot on location in lower Manhattan are presented the first Tuesday of every month.

Previously: Lower East Side Heritage Film Series, Season 2, Part 3

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