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Acknowledgements
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ix Acknowledgments Luckily, there are many people to thank. This project germinated in 2008, during the NEH Summer Institute on Russian and Soviet Visual Cultures, when I started thinking seriously about the representation of Jews in Soviet cinema. By 2009, I was en route to Russia, to work in the archives and interview the filmmakers . Supported by a grant from the International Research and Exchanges Board, I spent six difficult and exhilarating months in Moscow. My scholarly home, the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, granted me a research leave, which enabled me to do this work. Later, UMass also funded my sabbatical, as well as a follow-up visit to Moscow, and several trips to Germany and Israel, where I met with filmmakers and writers. I am indebted to these filmmakers and writers, the main heroes of my book, who, over many hours, generously and patiently shared their stories with me: Valentin Vinogradov (who has since passed away), Mikhail Kalik, Icchokas Meras, Grigorii Kanovich, Maya Turovskaya, and Aleksandr Askoldov. This is just the primary cast. Many other filmmakers, or their friends and family members , shared their stories with me. Without them, there would have been no films, no scripts—nothing to write a book about. During my sojourns in Moscow, I benefited tremendously from the expertise of my Russian colleagues, especially Evgenii Margolit and Naum Kleiman, with whom I had long conversations, and Aleksandr Fedorov, with whom I have had ongoing email correspondence since I discovered his work. Thanks also to a French colleague, Valérie Pozner, an organizer of the KinoJudaica conference, which was seemingly designed with my research in mind. In Moscow, Valérie was one of my kind guides (Birgit Beumers was another) to the dark world of the Russian archives. She introduced me to the most helpful person there, Misha Melnichenko, a wonderful researcher and writer in his own right. Without them, I would have been lost. The archivists and librarians at the Film Research Institute (NII Kinoiskusstva) were also understanding and generous. During that trip to Moscow, I also had a lot of help from Igor Gorlov (the key person to know if you need to find a rare film), as well as Aleksandr Desiatov and Anna Lazutkina (who can do magic with technology). Tremendous thanks go to Irina and Oleg Gaze, the kind of friends without whom one cannot possibly survive in Russia—talented, generous, and just insane enough to help me every step of the way. The same goes for Alik Loevsky, for whose help I am thankful in more ways than I can say. x Acknowledgments Back in the United States, my writing was launched in 2010, during the CrossCurrents Fellowship in New York, where I discovered the luxuries of Butler Library at Columbia University, a place where one can easily take off the shelf an issue of Ogonek from 1946, not to mention more recent literature. This is where the bulk of this book was written during my sabbatical year, in my favorite spot on the fifth floor, near a window facing the beautiful quad. Occasionally, I made a pilgrimage to Bobst Library at New York University, which houses an incomparable film collection. My thanks go to the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Center for Religion and Media at New York University, both of which welcomed me as a visiting scholar during that year and granted me access to their rich resources. My work on the manuscript was supported, in part, by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the American Academy for Jewish Research. Throughout the solitary writing, I had a good fortune to consult with colleagues and friends: Jeremy Hicks, Thomas Doherty, Jonathan Skolnick, and Valérie Pozner let me read their yet unpublished works. Mikhail Beizer, Sasha Shatskikh, Miron Penson, Zvi Gitelman, Ilya Altman, Gennady Eistrakh, Elana Jeckel, Polina Barskova, Omer Bartov, and Kiril Feferman were able to answer the thorniest questions about Soviet history and culture. Thanks also to Mindaugas Karbauski, Dovid Fishman, and Elissa Bemporad for their linguistic expertise , as well as to Julian Graffy, Vadim Altskan, and Sky Arndt-Briggs for help with access to rare materials. Once there was something to read, I circulated the chapters, and learned a great deal from my colleagues’ comments: David Shneer, Anna Shternshis, Karel Berkhoff, Harriet Murav, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Ala Zuskin-Perlman, Maya Turovskaya , and Taylor Carman––thank you all. More people than I can list here offered feedback at various talks and presentations I gave while...