Ellen Cassedy


Joanna Merlin stars as Jessie in "Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn"

Show Off Your Shorts Festival
Sun., February 7, 2009
12-3 p.m.
Pickford Theater
Hollywood, CA
www.soysfilmfest.com


"A deeply original film and a beautifully realized portrait,moving, affectionate, and filled with life."
-- Bob Balaban, "Gosford Park"

"An exquisite piece of acting."
-- Sam Waterston, actor

"Compelling...tender simplicity...Jessie gives dignity to every moment of her life."
-- Jewish Women's Archive

"Lovely."
-- Kathleen Chalfant,
actor

"A remarkably affecting piece. The juxtaposition of life's banality with the grandeur of the character's inner life will take your breath away."
--Nick Olcott,
Round House Theatre, Silver Spring, MD

"Wonderful....embraces and values the nobility in the rhythms of a simple life --a life that's actually not so simple, of course."
--Amy Schewel,
PBS American Masters

“…a lovely resonance…marvelous sense of voice, distinctly her own…”
--Rebecca Hoffberger,
American Visionary Art Museum

"Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn"


“BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN” WINS "FIRST PRIZE, BEST SHORT FILM" IN LOS ANGELES AT BEVERLY HILLS HI-DEF FILM FEST, January 1, 2009

WINS SHORTS COMPETITION AT NEW YORK'S BIG APPLE FILM FESTIVAL, November 24, 2008

BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN won first prize for BEST SHORT FILM at the Beverly Hills Hi-Def Film Festival on January 1, 2009, at the Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills, CA.

BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN won the Best Short Film Award at the Big Apple Film Festival on November 22, 2008, at the world-famous Tribeca Cinemas in New York, NY.

The film is now showing in the Connecticut Film Festival (www.ctfilmfest.com)throughout the state.

Directed by Ragnar Freidank, Joanna Merlin stars in the screen adaptation of Ellen Cassedy’s award-winning one-woman play, in a performance described by Sam Waterston as “an exquisite piece of acting.”

BEAUTIFUL HILLS OF BROOKLYN is based on a true story, drawn from the diary of Jessie Singer Sylvester, an elderly woman living on a pension, confronting the changes in her life and her beloved Brooklyn neighborhood.

The film moves effortlessly from present time to reverie and is told entirely in the words of the diary, interwoven with the Walt Whitman poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry.” The rhapsodic poetry, which speaks of generations reaching out to one another across the boundaries of time, vibrates against the simple diction of the diary, illuminating a small but important life.

The film opened the 2nd International Russians Abroad Film Festival in Moscow November 7-14 and will be screened in the Show Off Your Short Festival in Hollywood in February, 2009.

"Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn" provides an evocative spark for discussion among audiences of all ages. To arrange a screening at your workplace, conference, library, campus, or other setting, contact cassblum@aol.com.

Miss Merlin performed "Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn" as a one-woman play at the Makor Center of the 92nd St. Y, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Music School Playhouse, and Baltimore's Theatre Project with sponsorship by the American Visionary Art Museum. Amy Feinberg of the Hypothetical Theatre Company directed. The play won a Moondance Festival Award in 2002.

Quick Links

Contact Ellen Cassedy
Authors Guild

Selected Works

Articles
“We Are ALL Here: Facing History in Lithuania”
A society grappling with Holocaust history has something to teach us all.
“Home, In So Many Words”
Studying Yiddish in the Old World – a way to touch the past
“Honoring the Everyday: My Daughter's Yidishe Bat Mitzvah”
Mother and daughter embrace the lives of their ancestors with a Yiddish-flavored bat mitzvah
Film
"Beautiful Hills of Brooklyn"
Winner of Best Short Film Award at Beverly Hills Hi-Def Film Fest and Big Apple Film Festival. Celebrating the spare beauty of a small but important life


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