THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 7, 1994 TAG: 9412070013
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By MARK MOBLEY, MUSIC CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 93 lines
``THE LAST KLEZMER'' is more than a documentary on Jewish music. It's a film about memory, family, loss and the power of songs.
This intimate portrait of Ukranian-Polish musician and Holocaust survivor Joseph Kozlowski opens the Virginia Festival of Jewish Film, Saturday at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk. It would be difficult to find a more appropriate choice, as ``The Last Klezmer'' explores so much of the 20th century Jewish experience.
Saturday's screening will be followed by a klezmer concert featuring the film's director, violinist Yale Strom, and his band Hot Pstromi. The band plays traditional klezmer - the soulful, sometimes wild celebration music of Eastern European Jews - with touches of jazz and world music.
Strom, 37, found Kozlowski, 74, while researching another film, ``At the Crossroads: Jews in Eastern Europe Today.''
``I knew that at the time I had to do a film with him,'' the San Diego native said from Memphis, where he was also appearing with his film and band. ``There were 5,000 or 6,000 Jewish musicians in Poland in 1934. There is one Jewish traditional musician in 1994. That's pretty heavy. You better capture it.''
Strom is not the only director to have sought out the musician.
``Spielberg, when he was doing `Schindler's List,' came up to Kozlowski, not the other way around,'' Strom said. ``He made him the music consultant for camp scenes. He's the only survivor in the film who has a speaking line and still lives in Poland.''
For ``The Last Klezmer,'' Strom visited Kozlowski in Poland, where he conducts at the Yiddish theater and teaches private lessons. Strom captured him leaning over a pianist and saying, ``The Jewish twist, from here, in your heart,'' and singing a sobbing phrase. There are also scenes of Kozlowski leading the cast of ``Fiddler on the Roof'' in a rehearsal of ``Sunrise, Sunset.''
But Strom's film is most affecting when Kozlowski is at home and on the road. While chopping in the kitchen, the conductor says, ``A Jew without garlic, you know what this is? A sin.''
``He's a great musician, but no way could you have 90 minutes of klezmer,'' Strom said. ``I wasn't interested in doing a movie just on the revival of klezmer. If I had just shown the interview, that would have not really given the full perspective of what made this man - why he pays the way he does, why he jokes and why he cries.''
Kozlowski's tears flow freely when he returns to the place he grew up, Przemlyany, the Ukranian town he left when he emigrated to Poland a half-century ago. His mother, father and brother - a virtuoso violinist - were killed during the German occupation. He places candles in the vicinity of their unmarked graves, and takes a handful of dirt from each.
Just as moving are his stories of a nearly extinct musical culture. Kozlowski was born Kleinman, at a time when klezmer bands flourished. Tailors, butchers and other tradesmen would gather after work to rehearse. As Kozlowski spins tales of players like Hershele Dudelsack, Strom pans faded pictures of the handsome, happy, lost musicians.
Kozlowski's troubles did not end when the war did. In Poland he became music director of the Polish Army Symphony Orchestra, only to be fired in a 1960s anti-Semitic purge. He is still wary today - while traveling on a bus in the Ukraine a fellow passenger sees the camera and asks him what he's filming. He says it will be a documentary about Ukranian folk music.
``I can understand why he does that,'' Strom said. ``He will the rest of his years have this sense of fear, looking behind his back. We're riding to JFK airport and we're speaking in Yiddish about politics, and he turns and starts whispering and cupping his mouth. And I said, `Leopold, the guy speaks Spanish. He's Puerto Rican.' ''
The film also has joyous moments. Kozlowski is reunited with a friend he hadn't seen since he left for Poland. And he is amazed to discover, upon arriving in the Ukraine, a television broadcast of a klezmer concert.
Strom has continued to search for inspired images. In addition to book and album projects, he is at work on a film tentatively titled ``7 Years Down the Road,'' that he described as ``a snapshot of America in the last seven years of the 20th century.''
Strom and a collaborator recently visited Norfolk and Virginia Beach, where they had especially fruitful interviews at Regent University and the A.R.E. ``Those groups of people have some real specific beliefs about the coming millennium,'' he said.
But this week Strom will be concerned with the present and the past, as he introduces his film and plays afterwards. The music is experiencing a revival among young musicians and audiences, as witnessed by Don Byron's performance in September at the Virginia Beach Pavilion and the expanding catalog of klezmer recordings.
``It's a non-threatening, easy way into the culture,'' Strom said. ``You don't have to study Hebrew. You don't have to read the Bible. You don't have to have a circumcision! You just go to a club and hang out.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
``Klezmer'' director Yale Strom will perform Saturday.
by CNB