Enjoy this three-part screening series devoted to the comedy team Shimon Dzigan and Israel Schumacher, considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish comedy performers. Sometimes compared to Abbott and Costello, Dzigan and Schumacher are a product of the Jewish working class in Lodz, and emerged as a popular duo in Warsaw in the second half of the thirties, against the backdrop of the Depression and emergence of Nazism. These roots form the subversive edge of their humour that still resonates today. 

This tribute consists of Dzigan and Schumacher’s first and last film appearances, as well as a 2003 documentary that chronicles the team’s trajectory from Lodz to the Soviet Union to Israel, with stops in New York, Paris and Argentina along the way. 

TJFF is proud to offer the world premiere of a new restoration and translation of the Al Khet (1936), one of the first Yiddish sound films made in Poland, as well as the landmark of postwar Jewish cinema, Our Children (1948). Both in-person screenings will be introduced by Dr. Diego Rotman (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Toronto), author of The Yiddish Stage as a Temporary Home: Dzigan and Shumacher’s Satirical Theater (1927-1980).