Special Admission: Second feature included in first feature price.

Jean Young, writing in the British magazine Film, describes Hester Street as “a gently astringent examination of late 19th-century East European immigration to the United States. Hester Street is the teeming ghetto of New York's Lower East Side where the immigrants naturally gravitate to in their search for the American Dream. The film revolves around Jake, a pro-Yankee dandy who thinks he's found it. With a two-roomed flat, steady job in a clothing sweatshop and favorite of the street belle, Mamie, he sends to Russia for wife and child, but the wife is rooted in the old customs and her inability to become Americanized quickly enough for him leads to humiliation and conflict. Charged through with an ironic Jewish humor, Hester Street provides an authentic picture of the little-explored period when East-West cultures were beginning to cross-fertilize, and Carol Kane as the demure, sorely put-upon wife who ultimately outwits everyone is particularly moving.”

Look for Joan Micklin Silver's Chilly Scenes of Winter, which has its U.S. re-opening at the PFA in the Fall.