Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1975 • United States
Starring Steven Keats, Carol Kane, Dorrie Kavanaugh
Joan Micklin Silver’s remarkable feature debut is a vivid, lovingly detailed evocation of the late-nineteenth-century Jewish Lower East Side built around a luminous, Academy Award–nominated performance from Carol Kane as Gitl, a young woman from Eastern Europe who arrives in New York to join her husband Yankel (Steven Keats) who has already emigrated. While Yankel, who now goes by Jake, has quickly acclimated to life in America—and even begun an affair with a dancer—Gitl initially struggles to assimilate. As she attempts to find her place within an unfamiliar culture, Gitl must find a way to become a victor instead of a victim.
Up Next in Season 1
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Bernice Bobs Her Hair
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1976 • United States
Starring Shelley Duvall, Bud Cort, Veronica CartwrightAdapted from the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald—a literary landmark that all but defined the mores of 1920s Jazz Age youth—this PBS-produced short film stars the wonderfully idiosync...
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Between the Lines
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1977 • United States
Starring John Heard, Lindsay Crouse, Jeff GoldblumInspired by director Joan Micklin Silver’s time working at New York’s storied alt weekly the “Village Voice,” this unsung gem of 1970s slice-of-life seriocomedy offers an incisive, bitterswe...
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Chilly Scenes of Winter
Directed by Joan Micklin Silver • 1979 • United States
Starring John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, Peter RiegertThe trailblazing Joan Micklin Silver—one of only a handful of women to direct a film for a major Hollywood studio in the 1970s—digs fearlessly into the psychology of a thorny relationship in...
