Introduced by Sharon Rivo, Executive Director, The NationalCenter for Jewish Film, Brandeis University Bruce Loeb on Piano (Motl Peyse dem khazns/Skvoz Slezy).Based on Sholem Aleichem's stories of "Motl Peyse, the Cantor'sSon," this is a portrait of prerevolutionary shtetl life that, likeits source, is funny, earthy, skeptical, and sorrowful. Motl Peyse is anirrepressible lad, an orphan whose wonderings and wanderings make himemblematic of a generation of Jews. Motl's misadventures in kheyder(primary school) offer a typically mischievous satire on thisinstitution. A darker sequence based on "The Enchanted Tailor"tells of a fellow who finds himself in a crazy-making nightmare, theresult of a prank perpetrated by the innkeeper. The canvas of Jewishlife presented in this Soviet-made film set during tsarist times isanything but nostalgic, stressing instead the unyielding poverty of adusty hamlet and the anti-Semitism of the era. But Sholem Aleichem'scharacters are, above all, literary creations, beautifully realized byactors from the Moscow Art Theater and the wunderkind Moshele Silbermanas Motl.