Five Cities

In 1938 and 1939, Shaul and Yitzhak Goskind of Warsaw-based Sektor Films produced six short films about urban Jewish communities in Poland. One, about Łódź, is lost. The other five-on Bialystok, Cracow, Lwow, Vilna, and Warsaw-have survived and are now called "Five Cities." These low-budget 35mm films were made for Landsmanshaften groups in America for fundraising purposes. On the eve of war, the Goskinds sent the films to Joseph Seiden, the prolific director in New York who distributed Yiddish newsreels and feature films in the US and Europe. Yiddish titles. English title, "Jewish Life in Vilna" Pan, overview of the city of Vilna, showing broad streets, traffic, large buildings, pedestrians. Shows Vilna's famous landmarks: the Strashun Library, Shnipeshiker Cemetery, and the YIVO Institute. Elderly woman prays. In Jewish quarter, clocks displayed on EXT of buildings, Yiddish signs, narrow streets with shops, people engaged in the rituals and realities of daily existence at work selling wares on the street, resting. Men with horses and buggies wait for passengers at square. CUs, children. Street scenes, pedestrians, shops, signs, main square. Old and young relax in park. Diving, swimming, kayaking, boat on river. HAS, city of Vilna. "The End"