It all started with Pauline

The Palisades aren’t particularly long, and when you compare them to other cliffs, they might not be particularly formidable. They’re very steep but run for only 20 or so miles and they aren’t attached to any mountains. But they’re stark, they’re dramatic, they overhang the Hudson, and in a way they gave birth to the American motion picture industry — which, as we all know, eventually decamped to Hollywood.

That’s where “The Perils of Pauline,” an early silent-film series starring Pearl White, was filmed; Ms. White, as Pauline, an heiress (natch!) dangled from the Palisades as she was pursued by villains who almost but never quite got her.

The term “cliffhanger” may not have originated with Pauline,  but her movies helped popularize it.

New Jersey is a vital part of early film history because it was fueled in large part by Thomas Edison, who, yes, came from the Midwest but lived in Menlo Park — a neighborhood in the town that was renamed in his honor — and who later developed the moving image on film after relocating his laboratory from today’s Edison to West Orange.

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Edison’s “Great Train Robbery” — considered to be the first movie to tell a story — was filmed on Second Mountain in West Orange in 1903. Today, Edison’s lab in West Orange is a national historical site; his Black Maria movie studio is proudly replicated out front.

Nearby Fort Lee was a perfect place to film, because it was rural but just a ferry-ride from the city, and it provided filmmakers with many kinds of picturesque scenery. But the weather in Hollywood was more dependable and often more pleasant, and the climate’s charms lured the industry out West. New Jersey’s place in moviemaking quietly faded.

But in 2022, Fort Lee opened the Barrymore Film Center — named after the still-famous family of actors. Maurice, the father of John, Ethel, and Lionel, lived in Fort Lee, and so did some of his relatives. Now that history is becoming part of the borough’s present, and of its future.

From Wednesday, June 4, through Wednesday, June 11, the Barrymore will host the Jewish Film Festival.

Its sponsors, Edwin and Doris Cohen, who have lived in Fort Lee for nearly 50 years, are founding members of the Barrymore, and the creators of the festival. They talked about both as “a work of love.”

Borough leaders had been aware of Fort Lee’s history as the birthplace of the motion-picture industry. “The Fort Lee Film Commission had been historically preserving a lot of old movies, and a lot of information about Fort Lee,” Mr. Cohen said. But it operated quietly. Then the borough’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, “who has been a wonderful person to guide our borough for the past decade and a half” (he became mayor in 2008), had an idea. “There was a big vacant tract of land right by the bridge” — the George Washington Bridge — “that went from Bridge Plaza South to Main Street,” Mr. Cohen said. “It had laid dormant for some 20 odd years.”

Despite attempts to develop it, “nothing much happened. Then a deal was reached to sell it and built the Modern,” residential towers, “and part of the deal was to leave a corner on Main Street for a common public use.

The documentary “Brighton Beach” was made in 1980.

“So Mark Sokolich woke up in the middle of the night realizing that we need something dedicated to the Fort Lee film industry,” Mr. Cohen said.

That’s how the Barrymore Film Center — a nonprofit, publicly owned institution — came to be.

“It was entirely Mark Sokolich’s idea,” Ms. Cohen said. “Fort Lee funded it. Ed and I are founding members of the board, together with a lot of other people.

“When it started, it primarily showed silent films, but we all decided that we had to do something else,” she continued. The audience for silent films is dedicated, but it is niche, and not growing. “We want the theater to thrive. We want it to be self-sustaining. We — that’s not only us but the leadership and Mark and the town council — are trying to grow it to make it more accommodating to people throughout the region, not just from Fort Lee.

“So we have diversity programming” — the Barrymore hosts not only the Jewish Film Festival but also, just in May, series called “French Essentials,” “Japanese Essentials,” “Studio Ghibli,” “Scandinavian Film Series,” and “Celebrating Pride Month,” for the LGBTQ community.

The theater is small — it’s got 253 seats — and therefore intimate; the screen isn’t far away. But it’s a theater, not a living room. There’s also a museum in the building that showcases the history of the movie industry, both in and outside of New Jersey.

The Barrymore is also bringing in live entertainment.

“Doris and I are involved in the production of live events,” Mr. Cohen said. Why? They both love live theater; Mr. Cohen, in particular, has a nearly lifelong love of Broadway musicals.

“I grew up in Flatbush, in Brooklyn, and Doris grew up near Parkchester, in the Bronx,” he continued. I’d never been to a Broadway show, but my parents always bought original cast albums, and I started listening to them early, from as early as I can remember. ‘South Pacific,’ ‘Carousel,’ ‘My Fair Lady’ — all the shows. They kept buying the albums, and I kept singing the songs.

“My first Broadway show was the original production of ‘Hair.’ I was 18 years old.”

“The father of a friend was a stagehand for ‘Peter Pan,’” Ms. Cohen said. “That was my first Broadway show.

“So why the passion for Broadway?” Mr. Cohen asked rhetorically. “Why bring it to the Barrymore. Because over the years, the audience for the standards” — the Great American Songbook — “has gotten smaller, and we are passionate to keep it alive.”

Doris and Ed Cohen are Barrymore Center board members and they are sponsoring the Jewish Film Festival there. (Photo by Jin Hong Kim)

“We sponsor events in Manhattan, at Town Hall and at Merkin” — Merkin Hall is part of the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side — “that are directed and produced by the music historian, writer, director, and producer Scott Siegel.

“We sponsor about 15 to 20 performances a year at 54 Below,” a cabaret space in Midtown; Mr. Siegel produces and performs in them. “Most of them are Broadway music.

“We brought Scott to the Barrymore Film Center for three sold-out concerts last year,” Ms. Cohen said. “And he’ll be back on July 19.”

What about the Jewish Film Festival?

“From my perspective, being a Jew, I felt like I want that experience to be out there via the Barrymore, via Jewish writers, via Jewish creators,” Mr. Cohen said. “The Jewish people have been through so many experiences — it is important to me to get these Jewish stories out into the community, and we are very proud to be part of telling these stories.

“Who started the movie industry? The Jews! The major studios were established and run by Jews. This is a way of showing the contribution Jews continue to make.”

David Schwartz, the longtime curator of the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, is the Barrymore’s program director and the curator of the Jewish Film Festival. He described the festival in a phone call from Cannes; he was at the (much bigger) film festival there last week.

The festival’s “an exciting mix of films — documentaries and fiction,” he said. “Most of them are new, and audiences in New Jersey wouldn’t have seen them. And some of them are old.

“The most unusual is ‘Uncle Moses,’ a 1932 Yiddish-language film made in Fort Lee.

“At the time, there were theaters in big cities that would specialize in showing Yiddish film,” he said. “It is a small niche market, but there was an audience for films from different countries and cultures.

“‘Uncle Moses’ starred Maurice Schwartz, the famous Yiddish stage actor. He plays an immigrant who comes to America and starts a clothing business. It’s a sweatshop, and a union tries to organize it. It has both politics and entertainment. It was pro-union.

“The title character was the patriarch, who went after the American dream — to make as much money as possible. A young character, a union organizer, falls in love with Uncle Moses’ daughter. That’s the basic set-up. It’s a melodrama, and it also captures what tenement life was like.

“The film critic J. Hoberman wrote a book on Yiddish film” — it’s from 1991, and called “Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds” — “and he said that ‘Uncle Moses’ is one of the finest examples of Yiddish cinema,” Mr. Schwartz said.

The festival will open with a documentary, “Elie Wiesel: Soul on Fire.” “It’s a really intimate portrait of Wiesel by the documentary filmmaker Oren Rudafsky, the story of his experiences in the camps and with his family, and up through the time when he wrote ‘Night.’ The film was made with his family’s permission. It is wonderful. It’s been playing at a number of Jewish film festivals around the country but hasn’t been shown in New Jersey yet.”

Mr. Rudafsky will be at the Barrymore for a question-and-answer session after the film is shown.

“On Thursday, we have a very different kind of film. ‘Bad Shabbos.’ It is a farce, and it is hilarious. It was shown to a packed house at the Hamptons film festival, and the audience laughed nonstop. You rarely see a fun comedy like that.

“On Sunday, we have another filmmaker coming out.” That’s Susan Wittenberg, the co-director, with Carol Stein, of “Brighton Beach.” “It was made in 1980; it’s a portrait of the neighborhood then,” Mr. Schwartz said. “There were a lot of Russian Jewish immigrants, also Puerto Ricans, but mainly Russian Jews. It was just restored a few years ago.

“Like a lot of independent films, it was made, and it was shown, and then it was just put on the shelf. Recently, a group called Indie Collect that restores older films reissued it.

“Whenever it plays, there is a large crowd. It’s clear that a lot of people have ties to the neighborhood, and it is a wonderful portrait.

“On Sunday night we’ll show a British film called ‘Meidas Man,’ made about two years ago, about Brian Epstein and the Beatles.

“It’s such an interesting and well-made film. People think they know all about the Beatles, but two of the main characters in this film are Brian Epstein’s parents.” Epstein was the Beatles’ manager, and arguably the engine behind their original success. “Emily Watson is Brian’s mother, Queenie. She is so supportive of her son that it really makes you think that a Jewish mother had a founding role in the business of rock and roll.

“Epstein’s family ran a very successful store in Liverpool, and you can see how he learned a lot of the skills he needed as a music promoter there. He had a real feeling for music, and he also knew how to package things — the Beatles’ suits. Their haircuts. He fired their drummer, Pete Best, and brought in Ringo.

“We couldn’t get the director in person, but we have a recorded interview with the screenwriter, Bridgit Grant. It’s an interesting story, how she got involved, and how she did the research.”

The film festival will close with “a classic, Barbra Streisand’s ‘Yentl,’” Mr. Schwartz said. He’s also enthusiastic about the two other movies in the festival, “Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round” — a documentary whose writer and director, Ilana Trachtman, will be in the Barrymore to answer the audience’s questions, and “Come Closer,” an Israeli drama.

“What these films have in common is that they appeal to a common audience,” Mr. Schwartz said. “They are very varied. They are about all sorts of issues. I tend to go for films that have really compelling main characters — that are about fascinating people — but I try to make it varied in terms of the types of films. So there are new and old ones, documentaries and fiction.

“But it’s really about the audience. My experience has been that there is a real community that wants to see these films. There’s a lot to them — cultural, historical, shared values — and there is no other way to see them.”

Except at the Barrymore Film Center, that is. Learn more at barrymorefilmcenter.org.