Date: Sunday, February 10, 2019
Time: 2 p.m.
Location: Temple Israel, 1301 Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa
Cost: General admission: $20.00; Full-time students: $10.00
To purchase tickets in advance (recommended) call Temple Israel at 613-224-1802 ext. 5 or purchase online at www.templeisraelottawa.ca/concerts/theyellowticket.
“The Yellow Ticket” will be screened to a live performance of a new original music score by Klezmer stars Alicia Svigals and Marilyn Lerner. The film, produced in 1918 by Templehof Studios in Berlin, was originally released as “Der Gelbe Schein” (The Devil’s Pawn). It stars a young Pola Negri as she was climbing her way from the stages of Warsaw to Hollywood and international stardom. It tells the story of a Lea, young Jewish woman who aspires to study medicine at the academy in St. Petersburg. The film sensitively portrays the anti-Semitism prevalent in Russia, which forces Lea to take on a “yellow ticket” – the only document that would allow her, as a Jew and a woman, to reside in St. Petersburg. The “yellow ticket” designated the bearer as a prostitute.
The production was shot entirely in Warsaw near the end of the First World War including the Jewish neighbourhood of Nalewki – the Warsaw ghetto – that would later be destroyed along with its inhabitants, some of whom are captured in street scenes in the film.
Alicia Svigals, an accomplished Klezmer violinist based in New York and co-founder of the “Klezmatics”, was commissioned in 2013 to write a new musical score for the film by the Foundation for Jewish Culture. Svigals, along with jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner, will be performing this score live during the screening.
