Marking the 50th anniversary of Joan Micklin Silver’s groundbreaking 1975 debut, Hester Street, this session with Dr. Julia Wagner explores how the film transformed Jewish American cinema and carved out a new space for women in the industry. A trailblazing Yiddish, feminist work that defied expectations and became an international hit, Hester Street vividly captures the immigrant experience through Gitl (Carol Kane, in an Academy Award–nominated performance) as she arrives from Eastern Europe to New York’s Lower East Side in 1896, confronting the challenges of assimilation and identity. Dr. Wagner will uncover the film’s rich layers of Yiddish culture, offering fresh insights into an under-appreciated classic, drawing from her book Hester Street (BFI Film Classics/Bloomsbury, 2025), the first to focus exclusively on Micklin Silver’s work.