28 Tonight; Number Our Days
- Series
- 28 Tonight
- Episode
- Number Our Days
- Producing Organization
- KCET (Television station : Los Angeles, Calif.)
- Contributing Organization
- The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip-526-k649p2xc5m
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- Description
- Episode Description
- "'Number Our Days' is a film produced and directed by Lynne Littman on the community of elderly but resilient Jews in Venice, California, who have originated their own unique culture. "The film intimately profiles the remarkable aged Jews who have been the subjects of anthropological fieldwork for the past three years by Dr. Barbara Myerhoff of the University of Southern California. They are colorful complex of people in their eighties and nineties, living, as Dr. Myerhoff says, 'every hour, every minute because death is there. It's the invisible protagonist of every little scene you see played out. And death can be a great consciousness raiser.' The old Jews originally came from small towns of Eastern Europe. After working in the garment districts of New York and Chicago -- and seeing to it that their children got educations and a chance for a better life -- they moved to Southern California some 30 years ago for what they hoped would be a peaceful, fulfilling retirement. Now, though, they live in small apartments and hotels in a dense, closed community of several thousand where they face poverty, loneliness, poor health and physical danger from the outside world. "The film observes a New Year's celebration along with other glimpses of their distinctive way of life: the lighting of the Sabbath candles, the daily 2-mile walk by one of the women as she feeds the pigeons, a recounting of the time that one of the men willed himself to stay alive until the day of his 95th birthday celebration. This lifestyle, Dr. Myerhoff notes, 'is like nothing else in American life that I have ever come across. They're not living in terms of ordinary American values. They've constructed a whole world of other values, an alternative world'."--1976 Peabody Awards entry form.
- Broadcast Date
- 1976
- Asset type
- Episode
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Credits
-
-
Director: Littman, Lynne
Producing Organization: KCET (Television station : Los Angeles, Calif.)
Speaker: Myerhoff, Barbara
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the
University of Georgia
Identifier: cpb-aacip-816ebf49399 (Filename)
Format: U-matic
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “28 Tonight; Number Our Days,” 1976, The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed May 5, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-k649p2xc5m.
- MLA: “28 Tonight; Number Our Days.” 1976. The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. May 5, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-k649p2xc5m>.
- APA: 28 Tonight; Number Our Days. Boston, MA: The Walter J. Brown Media Archives & Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-526-k649p2xc5m