OC Jewish Arts Festival: Vishniac with Q&A

Experience the film Vishniac during the OC Jewish Arts Festival at the Merage Jewish Community Center of Orange County.  Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American photographer best known for capturing on film some of the most iconic images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, documenting a world that was soon to vanish.
The film is narrated by his daughter Mara Vishniac Kohn who lived in Santa Barbara for more than 40 years and died in 2018 at the age of 92, not living to see its completion. At first Kohn was reluctant to tell the story of her idiosyncratic father, because the two had had a fraught relationship. Ultimately, she took responsibility for his legacy by preserving his work, a haunting eulogy to a world on the brink of destruction.

In 1935, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) hired Vishniac to travel to Eastern Europe and take photographs documenting Jewish poverty and relief efforts to be used in its fundraising campaigns. Few predicted that less than a decade later, these communities would be wiped out, and that Vishniac’s photographs would provide the last visual records of an entire world.

Followed by a live Zoom Q&A and audience discussion with filmmaker Laura Bialis.
Documentary, 90 minutes

Executive Producers:
Nancy Spielberg
Ori Eisen
Mirit Eisen
Taube Philanthropies
Maimonides Fund
Take a look at our scheduled events from November 4-9 | November 11-14 | November 16-19.