Caught in the Crossfire: Hollywood 1947, Communist Conspiracy or Jewish Plot?
Lecture by J. Hoberman, senior film critic at the Village Voice
Thursday, April 17 at 4:30PM
Flavin Auditorium, School of Management 137
UMass Amherst
In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee initiated a political purge of the American movie industry. The widespread belief that Hollywood was a predominantly Jewish enterprise was dramatized in a spectacle pitting mainly Jewish producers against Jewish (and philo-Semitic) screenwriters.
No less significant was the FBI's interest in two recent movies, Crossfire and Body and Soul—one dealing with anti-Semitism, the other with a Jewish boxer's rise and fall—both largely produced by Hollywood communists.
J. Hoberman is the senior film critic at the Village Voice, where he recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of his first movie review. He has published in journals ranging from the New German Critique to High Times and is the author of nine books, including Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds and The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in the Absence of Communism. Currently, he is working on the prequel to his most recent book The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties.
In 2003, Hoberman co-curated an exhibit at The Jewish Museum in New York City: "Entertaining America: Jews, Movies and Broadcasting." An adjunct professor of cinema at the Cooper Union since 1990, he has lectured widely and also taught at NYU and Harvard.
Sponsors...
Presented by the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and cosponsored by the Office of Jewish Affairs, the English and Communication departments and DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst, the Posen Foundation Program for the Study of Secular Jewish History and Cultures at Hampshire College, the Smith College Program in Jewish Studies, the Amherst College English department, and the Mount Holyoke College Film Studies program and English department. Additional funding provided through the generosity of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and Five Colleges, Inc.
For more information, contact the Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies,
(413) 545-2550 or email judaic@judnea.umass.edu
For more information...
J. Hoberman's Top Ten Lists 1977-2006
Interview with J. Hoberman (Senses of Cinema, Dec 2001)
Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies
DEFA Film Library at UMass Amherst
Posen Foundation Program for the Study of Secular Jewish History
and Cultures at Hampshire College
Jewish Arts & Culture Initiative of the Harold Grinspoon Foundation
