Evocative yet playful, Life Forgotten asks, how does everyday entertainment bring people together and act as a catalyst for social change? Situating archival film in parallel with reenactment, the film conjures up New York’s Lower East Side in the early years of the twentieth century, it centers on a real storefront cinema, Frank Seiden’s Variety Theater. Here silent movies were anything but. Frank and his sons improvised dialog for the films and sang Yiddish ballads to an audience that didn’t hesitate to join in or argue back. It was a welcoming space for women and the film follows a group of radical young garment workers who gather here to figure out how to fight for women’s rights and change their world.
Zoe Beloff
Director, Writer
Kate Valk
Sarah Adler
Ariel Shafir
Frank Seiden
Maria Perez
Clara Lemlich
Lexie Waddy
Pauline
Cadillac Records70%
Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound69%
Radium Girls65%
Panther62%
Munich - The Edge of War69%
Belfast70%
The Current War66%
Dalíland59%
The Last Rifleman66%
Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead66%
Goltzius & the Pelican Company61%
Suffragette72%
Richard Jewell74%
Mayerling62%
The Invisible Woman59%
The Lost King65%
For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada68%
Supersonic73%
Wittgenstein64%
Shattered Glass69%
