![]() Those films were worth saving, Rivo said, because they had extraordinary footage of Jews in Iran, Yemen and other places across the world. Film studios were throwing out their silent films and Jewish organizations were getting rid of their old films as well. Soon they began collecting anything that was Jewish on film. “We had no idea what we were getting into and we’ve probably raised between $4 and $5 million now,” Rivo said. ![]() Now the process costs between $80,000 and $100,000 per film. That was in 1975, when it took $25,000 to save one film. Luckily the National Endowment of the Arts and the American Film Institute supported the project. She attempted, and originally failed, to raise money from the Jewish community for the project. ![]() “They were held privately by a guy in New York, and I ‘set out to save them.’ That collection became the beginning, the genesis, of what is now the National Center for Jewish Film.” It was while she had that job that she said stumbled across feature films that had been made in the Yiddish language. The two married in 1965: three children, Lisa, Steven, and Rebecca, followed.Īs a producer Rivo said she learned all kinds of things and then was hired by the Institute for Jewish Life, a think tank that was created by the Council of Federations, to be its arts and media director. Elliott Rivo, an OB-GYN originally from Buffalo, N.Y. “Because I had a background in political science, I was hired in the news department in 1963, the week that Kennedy was assassinated,” she said, adding that within four months she became a producer.Īround this time she also met Dr. Not thrilled with the graduate program she was enrolled in at the time, she interviewed for a position at WGBH-TV. Rivo came to Boston originally to visit her brother who was living there. Internationally recognized as an authority on Jewish film, film archiving and restoration, and Jewish programming and distribution, she has been an invited lecturer at hundreds of venues and has served on many film festival juries. Rivo has taught at Brandeis University for more than 20 years and lectures widely on the history of Jews in cinema, a field she helped pioneer. Rivo was an early advocate for the inclusion of film in the study of history and culture and for the historically accurate use of visual materials. Under Rivo’s leadership, NCJF has become the largest archive of Jewish-content film in the world, outside of Israel, with holdings of more than 15,000 reels of film. Established in 1976, The National Center for Jewish Film is a unique, independent, nonprofit film archive, distributor and exhibitor, located on the campus of Brandeis University. Now the executive director and co-founder of the National Center for Jewish Film, Rivo has been a leading force in the field of Jewish film and culture for more than three decades through her work as a curator, programmer, archivist, film distributor, film and television producer and academic. ![]() She graduated from Brandeis in 1961 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and continued her studies at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Master’s of Arts degree in political science in 1963. After attending Southwest High School, she spent two years at the University of Illinois before transferring to Brandeis University. Her presentation will include video clips from several Nazi propaganda films, including two rare films preserved and restored by Rivo’s organization, The National Center for Jewish Film: “Hitler Gives a City to the Jews” and “der Ewig Jude (The Eternal Jew).”īorn in Kansas City, Mo., the Jewish film expert grew up in a three-generation household with her parents Joseph Pucker and Ida Katz Pucker and brother Bernie Pucker, her uncle Leo Katz and her maternal grandmother Lena Katz, a Yiddish-speaker born in Radin, near Vilna. Rivo will provide an analysis of film propaganda - newsreels, documentary and narrative film - employed by the Third Reich in its campaign for genocide against the Jewish people. 10, to discuss the use of film in Nazi propaganda. Yet that’s exactly what she is now, and she’ll be here next Wednesday, Sept. When Sharon Pucker Rivo left Kansas City to study political science, she never dreamed years later she would beĬonsidered one of the world’s foremost experts on Jewish films.
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