Abstract
ONE HUNDRED YEARS — on the dot, really — after disappearing from the motion picture screen, the Jewish-made and very Judeo-centric film Broken Barriers, also known as Khavah, has found a second visibility. Last January, for the first time since 1920, it played to a paying crowd at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center. It will be showcased again in May, COVID-19 permitting, in Boston at the annual film festival of the National Center for Jewish Film, the archive that restored and resurrected it. The restoration is of a piece with the film itself: a labor of love for a devoted core audience, a select subgroup (then of Americans, today of cinephiles) poised to appreciate the scale of the accomplishment and willing to overlook the rough patches inherent in the production.