Hester Street

Joan Micklin Silver’s groundbreaking debut feature film, Hester Street (1975), vividly portrays the immigrant experience through the eyes of Gitl (Carol Kane), a young, Orthodox Jewish woman who arrives in New York City from Eastern Europe at the end of the nineteenth century. Reunited with her already-assimilated husband, Gitl finds they now have little in common and she is forced to adjust to a new way of life. Hester Street achieved international critical and commercial success, and Kane received a Best Actress nomination at the 1976 Academy Awards.

Marking the film’s 50th anniversary, Julia Wagner’s landmark book is the first to focus exclusively on Micklin Silver’s film. Wagner examines how, despite the sexism and prejudice that Micklin Silver faced, a low-budget, black-and-white, female-led, independent production with Yiddish dialogue became an unexpected box-office hit. Through close analysis, Wagner highlights the importance of Hester Street as a milestone in cinema and affirms Micklin Silver’s status as a unique voice in the history of American film-making.

Julia Wagner is a writer and lecturer based in London, UK, specialising in Jewish film and culture, documentary and Italian cinema. She holds a PhD in Film Studies and has written widely for publications including Sight and Sound and the Jewish Chronicle. She curated the BFI/JW3 archival project Jewish Britain on Film.