Yiddish cinema (; trans. Idish-Sprakhige Kino, Idishe Kino) refers to the Yiddish language film industry which produced some 130 full-length motion pictures and 30 short during its heyday from 1911 and 1940. Yiddish film almost disappeared after World War II, due to the Holocaust and the linguistic acculturation of Jewish immigrants, though new pictures are still made sporadically.
Silent era
In September 1911, at the Minsk Electric Theatre, a Jewish troupe led by A.M. Smolarsky accompanied a short projection of silent motion pictures with the Yiddish song A Brivele der Mamen (Letter to Mother). This was one of the first documented instances of Yiddish cinema. At the very same time, short silent films with Yiddish intertitles were being directed for Jews in the Pale of Settlement and Congress Poland. The most notable producer was the Warsaw-based Mordka Towbin, whose studio Siła released four short features adapted from the plays of Jacob Gordin within the year: Der Vilder Foter ("Cruel Father"), with Zina Goldstein and Ester Rachel Kaminska, directed by Marek Arnstein; der Metoiref ("The Madman"); ("God, Man and Satan"); and Mirele Efros. Another series of shorts based on plays were directed by a Warsaw studio Kosmofilm, founded by Shmuel Ginzberg and Henryk Finkelstein. Both companies employed the prominent actors of the city's Yiddish theater scene. In total, including several ones meted out in Russia, some 20 silent court métrage pictures with Yiddish titles were made before the end of World War I.
The postwar years saw the production of full-length features. Sidney M. Goldin, born in Odessa as Shmuel Goldstein, directed several films in America before moving to Vienna in the early 1920s and trying his luck with Yiddish. He produced two films: the 1923 Mazel Tov, starring Molly Picon in a comedy of errors about a young American visiting her traditional family in Galicia; and the 1924 Yizkor, with Maurice Schwartz as a Jewish guardsman who rebuffs a Christian noblewoman. In the Soviet Union, two silent Yiddish films were released during the decade. These were Alexander Granovsky's 1925 Idishe Glikn ("Jewish Luck"), based on Sholem Aleichem's wheeler-dealer character Menachem Mendel, starring Solomon Mikhoels, and the 1928 Durkh Trennen ("Through Tears"), which likewise adapted Sholem Aleichem's Motl, Peysi the Cantor's Son and was directed by Grigori Gritscher-Tscherikower.
In independent Poland, executive Leo Forbert was responsible for three silent Yiddish features which did well at the box office: Tkies Khaf (1924), based on S. Ansky's play The Dybbuk, Der Lamed-Wownik (1925), set in the 1863 January Uprising, and In di Poylishe Velder (1927). These films were even exported to Romania and other countries for local Jewish audiences. Forbert's productions represented the pinnacle of Yiddish cinema up to that time, and were of relatively high artistic quality. However, they were the last for several years. New York had a thriving Yiddish cultural scene, and in 1926 Maurice Schwartz directed the first American picture in the language, Tsebrokhene Hertser ("Broken Hearts"), based on the play by Jacob Adler and starring Schwartz and Lila Lee.
Talkies
In 1929, Sydney M. Goldin returned from Vienna to the Lower East Side, where he formed a partnership with producer Max Cohen. They decided to use popularized sound technology. In May 1929 they completed East Side Sadie, which had a few scenes with synchronized dialogue: J. Hoberman noted that in fact, it "contained scarcely more Yiddish than the few words heard in The Younger Generation". Then, on 25 October, they released Ad Mosay ("Until When"; English title: The Eternal Prayer). With a budget of $3,000, this 36-minute musical revue loosely inspired by the 1929 Hebron massacre was the first real Yiddish talkie. Goldin then allied with executive Joseph Seiden, who established the studio Judea Film and was keen on reaching the large Yiddish-speaking immigrant public. The pair produced eight short (one or two reel) sound pictures within just a year, each within a $3,000 budget and a single day of principal photography. The artistic quality of these films was deemed so low that the Yiddish Actors' Union prohibited its members from appearing in them, lest they damage the union's reputation.