Behind The JEM Film “Iron Curtain”
Yanky Ascher works at JEM and is involved in the task of browsing tens of thousands of hours of archived footage for JEM’s unique videos.
I had just started working at @jewish_media and was looking through the archive for footage of Russia to use in a biographical film about the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s early life. It was a late night, and I was the only one in the office when I came across a Betamax cassette tape labeled “Levy.”
It turned out to be a transfer of a collection of 8mm film reels shot by Rabbi Berel Levy during his trips to the Soviet Union. After each trip, he’d bring a projector to the Rebbe’s office and screen the footage for the Rebbe.
I began watching and couldn’t stop. Nothing I have seen in that archive touched me as deeply as what I saw that night. I cried as I watched and listened. Decades of Soviet oppression couldn’t extinguish the light in the souls of these men, women, and children. Captured on these reels, their light pierced right through the Iron Curtain.
I’ve been waiting fifteen years to work on this. Check it out at go.jem.tv/iron-curtain
