“Yellow Stars” is a concerto for orchestra in seven parts by Russian composer Isaac Iosifovich Shvarts, born 13 May 1923. Composed in 1998, the work was inspired by surviving diaries written from various Jewish Ghettos in World War II that the composer read. ”The idea of writing this work came to me while reading a shattering personal account of life in the Kovno ghetto in Kaunas (southern Lithuania). I was particularly moved by the description of the happy Jewish festival of Purim. Under the barbaric conditions of the death camp, it becam a ’festival of nooses’.” The concerto was recently recorded in Moscow by the National Philharmonic of Russia, conducted by Vladimir Spivakov.
In 2004, New York film producer, Joan Grossman, used film and still photography to create the film “Yellow Stars: Purim in the Ghetto.” This film is set to the Spivakov recording. Grossman has said that the film “is structured around the symphony’s seven movements. It is a collage of images from the war on the Eastern front, as the Germans fought the Russians, and from Jewish ghettos in Lodz, Warsaw, Kovno, and elsewhere. The images are punctuated with short excerpts from ghetto diaries that help to anchor the piece in place and time with personal thoughts and observations. The film is a meditation on fragments of film and writings, remnants of countless people who for the most part did not survive.”
This is a first time screening of this film will in Texas.
When: Saturday, September 29, 2007, 7:00 p.m.
Where: 2337 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005
Tickets: $7; RCC members – $5
Information: 713-395-3301 or e-mail anna@ourtx.com
