The Cafeteria & Isaac Singer’s Nightmare and Mrs Pupko’s Beard

DOUBLE FEATURE

The Cafeteria

In the New York cafeteria where the Yiddishists congregate, a successful writer develops a relationship with an intriguing young Holocaust survivor. Although the wounds of her trauma become frighteningly intense for him, his curiosity will not let her go.

Dec 3, 2pm Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick

In a New York cafeteria, a haven for Yiddish-speaking intellectual strays, a successful refugee writer develops an intense, intermittent relationship with a beautiful, intelligent Holocaust survivor. When her past emerges into her life as apparitions of the evil she has known, he is frightened by her apparently unhinged mind, but continues to be intrigued by her. “It had seemed utter nonsense, but now I began to reappraise the idea. If time and space are nothing more than forms of perception as Kant argues, why shouldn't Hitler confer with his Nazis in a cafeteria on Broadway?” And in Singer’s magical-realist story, the writer’s subsequent experience vindicates his new perceptions

Isaac Singer’s Nightmare and Mrs Pupko’s Beard

A wonderful chance to see Singer himself starring in the role of Yiddish writer in New York. Within a mischievous picture of his daily life, including witty interactions with female acolytes, his wild imagination creates a surreal, guilty nightmare.

Dec 3. 2pm Classic Cinemas, Elsternwick

A surreal collaboration between Singer and director Bruce Davidson, the author’s neighbour on New York’s Upper West Side. The film is a wonderful chance to see Singer himself, the starring actor of the film, in his element – his haunts on the streets of his adopted city, including the Garden Cafeteria, and the chaotic apartment he shares with his wife, where a clamour of adoring women evoke his wit, mischief, and charm.

Alongside this real-life portrait, Singer narrates and Davidson dramatises his short story The Beard, a guilty dream in which the alarmingly bearded widow of a dead writer, whom Singer had denigrated, comes to accuse him of causing her husband’s demise, making Singer a little frightened by his bizarre visitor.