The Contribution of Jewish Artists to Hollywood Cinema
Presented by the EIJM and the FSJU’s Cultural Action program as part of the 21st Jewish Culture Festival
Movie and Concert Evening
Tuesday, June 23, 2026
Espace Rachi Guy de Rothschild
39, rue Broca, Paris 5e
6:00 p.m. – MOVIE: The Jazz Singer
Screening of Alan Crosland’s film (USA, 1927, 88 min, original version with French subtitles), presented by Samuel Blumenfeld, film critic and journalist for Le Monde.
Jackie, cantor Rabinowitz’s son, is destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. But the young man is fascinated by the emerging jazz scene and thinks of nothing but frequenting the clubs where the first Black jazz musicians perform. Furious at finding his son singing in a bar, Cantor Rabinowitz kicks him out of the family home. A few years later, wearing blackface, Jackie is a jazz singer in a nightclub and goes by the name Jack Robin. An American musical film, The Jazz Singer features several song sequences as well as a monologue, interspersed among silent scenes. It is often considered as the first talking film, as its triumph would sound the death knell for silent cinema.
7:45 p.m. sharp – American-style appetizers
Let’s get together for a buffet featuring “American-Ashkenazi” flavors!
8:30 p.m. – Concert: Exile To Hollywood
Album release
- Isabelle Durin, violin
- Michael Ertzscheid, piano
Introduction to the concert by Laure Schnapper, musicologist at EHESS and president of the European Institute of Jewish Music
In the early 20th century, the anti-Semitism of totalitarian regimes drove many Jewish composers from Central and Eastern Europe into exile. Fleeing pogroms and persecution, they settled in the United States—the new promised land—and made their way to Hollywood. Musicians such as Max Steiner, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Franz Waxman, Miklós Rózsa, Bronisław Kaper, Irving Berlin, and Dimitri Tiomkin made their mark there. Trained in European classical music, they blended it with American culture and jazz. Straddling the legacy of the “world of yesterday” and modernity, they shaped film music and left a lasting mark on the Golden Age (1930s–1960s).
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Ticket price for the screening: €5
Ticket price for drinks and the concert: €25
Presented by the European Institute of Jewish Music and the Cultural Action of the FSJU
