Hester Street

One of the most beloved American films of the 1970s, this recently restored, exquisitely wrought period drama from the groundbreaking independent director Joan Micklin Silver brilliantly recreates Jewish immigrant life on the Lower East Side at the turn of the 20th century. Carol Kane received a Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her precious, jewel-like performance as Gitl, a wife and mother newly arrived in New York from Eastern Europe who is taken by surprise at how much her husband, Yankel (Steven Keats), has already assimilated to the new world. Charting the timid Gitl’s gradual journey toward independence, Silver (who would later paint a more contemporary portrait of the same milieu with the iconic Crossing Delancey) transports the viewer to a distant past, captured in crystalline black-and-white, that remains emotionally relevant in its inquiries into gender and tradition in a world forever on the cusp of modernity.