Broken Barriers (Khavah) with live music
Performing: Alice Hastings, Alexander Tenenholtz, Giacomo Masuroff, Billie Wilson, Sonia Radin, Phil Sanford, Anna Kay, Raymond Friedgen
The silent movie Broken Barriers (Khavah) is the first U.S. adaptation of a "Tewje" story, which was later followed by other adaptations, most notably the Hollywood musical classic Anatevka (1971).
It centers on Tewje's daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka, which has repercussions for her family and community. The substantial depiction of the shtetl milieu in this film is a rarity even among the few surviving early American films with Jewish content.
The film is accompanied musically by Hamburg-based folk-klezmer-punk singer-songwriter Daniel Kahn, whose last album Word Beggar was released in Yiddish. For Broken Barriers (Khavah), the Detroit-born musician creates an interactive interplay between film and music.
