Burning Off the Page

Film Screening Co-sponsored by the Carole Zabar Center for Film at the Marlene Myerson JCC Manhattan Admission: $10 YIVO members & students: $8 Get tickets

This documentary about Russian-born American Yiddish poet and fiction writer Celia Dropkin (1887–1956) celebrates her unabashed writing about the female body and sexual liberation. Considered radical during her lifetime, Dropkin shocked readers around the world with sexually explicit depictions of lust. Her work defied gender norms and complicated traditional narratives and boundaries. Her poems invoked violent and erotic imagery as well as Christian iconography to describe passion, yearning, and death.

Burning Off the Page includes powerful dramatic readings, archival footage, historic recordings, and dazzling animations to bring Dropkin’s pioneering poems to life. Along with her descendants, filmmaker Eli Gorn interviews stars of the Jewish artistic world including writers, Yiddish translators, and musicians.

Join YIVO for the New York premiere of this documentary followed by a discussion with Gorn and poet Edward Hirsch.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.