From Ros Horin, director of documentaries The Baulkham Hills African Ladies Troupe and Rosemary’s Way, comes Welcome to Yiddishland, a place with no borders where progressive artists create provocative new works in an ancient endangered language that speaks to our times. Welcome to Yiddishland offers an upbeat, witty and timely exploration of a global community of artists who are rediscovering and revitalising the endangered Yiddish language through their progressive and provocative creative works. As the film travels through Yiddishland – not a homeland but a heartland without borders – we journey across continents, from Melbourne to Berlin, New York to Haifa to meet the diverse array of individuals who find solace, identity, and inspiration within Yiddish language and culture.
With Welcome to Yiddishland playing at the Jewish International Film Festival around Australia throughout November and December, Nick L’Barrow spoke with the documentary’s director, Ros Horin, about the rediscovery of an endangered language through art, and the power that art carries to facilitate cultural change.
Nick: Thank you for taking the time to chat, Ros! Your documentary was so fascinating as I was unaware of a lot of the cultural and artistic impacts that Yiddish has had on the Jewish community. And you highlight so many interesting people and groups who are affected by that impact, so I’m curious to know who was the first person or group you approached for this project, and how did that snowball into finding more and more people to take part in Welcome to Yiddishland?
Ros Horin: So, the first person really was a very old friend of mine, Evelyn Krape, who’s the actress in Yentl. She sort of was becoming part of the revival of Yiddish theatre in Melbourne. And I’m from Melbourne, I grew up in Melbourne, and she approached me to direct something in the Yiddish theatre.
Young people were getting into Yiddish, and I saw that there was a collective of people gathering around the Kadima, which had been the Yiddish Community Centre for 113 years, you know? And the Yiddish theatre company that was there for a while, and had died out for 20 years, but then it felt like something was really happening.
So, I was able to do a lot of research online during COVID, and not to denigrate Melbourne, but to see if this was actually significant and happening in other parts of the world. And I was just amazed at what I found out about, looking at Yiddish festivals in various countries, or various Yiddish artists. So, for a year, I set up Zoom calls with people I thought looked interesting and built relationships online.
I could have chosen hundreds of people who would be my characters, my subjects. But I gravitated towards artists because I’ve worked in the theatre for 30 years. I’m an artist, and I love artists. I thought I really appreciate the significant role artists play in bringing about social change, but also reviving endangered languages and cultures. I was particularly aware of the indigenous community, and how powerful the work of Bangarra and all the various indigenous theatre companies has been here in Australia. So that helped in deciding that my subjects would be artists who are using Yiddish in a contemporary way, to do something about their world.
Nick: With this revival of Yiddish being at the forefront of the documentary, what role do you hope a documentary like this plays in aiding the re-emergence of an endangered language?
Ros Horin: I do think it’s really important. And I’ve had that feedback from the people in it, and everybody who’s been associated with it. It’s important because it’s capturing a moment in time that is very rich, and it’s kind of historical. It will always be significant that we’ve kind of caught this moment where there’s so much activity.
I was interested in, I suppose, the political things people were saying in Yiddish about issues of our time, like refugees. Even one of the performances in the film is a song about refugees, and war, and racism.
I feel like this film is important at the moment because there has been such a reductionism in the view of Jewish people, which we could alternatively call antisemitism, if you like. People are out there who think all Jews are genocidal maniacs. But this documentary really highlights, and puts in front of a broad audience, our beautiful culture and what we’ve contributed to the world. I feel kind of politically, it’s a terrible time to be bringing out a film about being Jewish because of prejudice, but at the same time, it’s really important.
Nick: There’s a something spoken by someone in the film along the lines of, ‘the emotion of art isn’t just about displacement, but it’s about this placement of the language’. I’m curious to know what that line means to you, and whether there was a point during the making of Welcome to Yiddishland where that line really sort of hit home in understanding the importance of telling this story?
Ros Horin: Yes, and I can say there’s an even broader meaning behind that, too. This placement also refers to the Jewish workers who all spoke Yiddish, and their philosophy was wherever we are, we belong. We’re Australian Jews, and we fight for Australian worked, feminist ideas, and whatever. We are Jews, and we are Australian. It’s almost like an oppositional view to saying that we only have a national identity in Israel.
In the late 1800s, when a lot of ideas about Zionism were born, and lot of debate about how you would survive in this world, there were quite opposite views. Some thought we needed our own country. That would be the only way we’ll safe and secure. But other groups were saying we belong all over the world. That is ‘this placement’, and Yiddish is a part of that, placing itself in Polish context, Australian context, Ukrainian context. Never belonging to one country.
Nick: It seems like the way you filmed this documentary had a very conscious approach to making it feel cinematic, as opposed to the standard ‘point and shoot’ documentary style a lot of audiences are used too…
Ros Horin: Yeah, it was a very conscious decision. I wanted it to look beautiful, to be lush. When we were working on colour grading and sound, I said I wanted it to be a lush, enveloping world. I remember at the beginning, when you writing and describing what your documentary will be to try and get funding, I told people I wanted it to be a visual, intellectual experience. Something that you feel in the sense, in the body. It’s a very beautiful thing to look at.
Nick: Are the animated title cards and transitions also something you wanted to enhance that cinematic, visual feeling? Because I loved those.
Ros Horin: Thank you! I love them too! Quite early on, I said to myself that I don’t want this to feel like 60 Minutes. I don’t want it to be an earnest film. I wanted it to be playful, artistic film, because it’s about artist. So, I had to find a form that was going to reflect that feeling of being artistic and playful.
That’s when I thought, I want animation. But I didn’t initially know what animation style it was going to be. I was inspired by the work of Mark Chandon, the famous artist. His work featured figures flying in the air. It felt very joyful and spiritual. I was definitely influenced by that, this heightened reality. And I think it also provided an unconscious link between Yiddish in the old world, and Yiddish today.
Nick: We’ve spoken about how the documentary plays a role in the rediscovery of the Yiddish language, and there’s many subjects in the film who talk about the rediscovery of their own identity as they integrated Yiddish into their work. I’m curious to know how the discovery of language has helped form aspects of your identity, whether personally or as a filmmaker?
Ros Horin: That’s an interesting question. I’ve been involved in artistic things my whole life, starting with school plays, then as an actor, then teaching at NIDA and the Victorian College of Arts, and then I became a director. So, my particular gravitation as a director was to contemporary works and classic works in the theatre that can create change.
I had a number of years where I did three pieces of work that were about refugees, and I was obsessed with the terrible way we treat refugees in this country, dehumanising them, calling them numbers or queue jumpers. And I really felt like that work I did change people’s minds. I saw people in the audience reacting emotionally to these personal stories, rather than seeing it as just news or articles that didn’t reach them in that way. So, I really believe in the power of art making you ask questions and think things through.
Thank you to Ros for her time, and to TM Publicity for organising the interview. Welcome to Yiddishland is currently playing as part of the Jewish International Film Festival around Australia, throughout November and December.
