Producer: S. Mintus

Cast: Fakhler, Lucija Lipste-Ozols, Janis Ozols-Heines

Film was screened: at the Opening ceremony of Baltic Film Competition at cinema “Riga” Main hall September 17 at 19:00 with the musical accompaniment of Ilya Shneiveis (Klezmer Music Ensemble “Forshpil”)

Russia, 1913, 30 min, F

The main thing about this film is that it appears to be the earliest to use Riga as a backdrop. Some shots show streetcars passing the Orthodox Cathedral, in others we see the University and a man with a chair on his shoulders crossing the little bridge by the Opera house.

Riga was not a film production center in the 1910s. Occasional films made there were half-amateur efforts (poorly) financed by the Mintus regional distributional agency, typically on Jewish subjects performed either by Yiddish stock theater company from Warsaw or (as it seems in this case) student amateurs and their friends.

Where is the truth? is based on a migrating story used more than once on Jewish stages and Jewish screens. The story is better known as Yellow Ticket – such was the name of the documents the police issued to prostitutes instead of a passport in order for the police doctors to keep them under medical control. The drama and bitter irony of the yellow-ticket story is that, in theory, a good girl born in the Jewish pale of settlement could live in a city legally only if she applied for a ticket like that.

Since intertitles are missing in Where is the truth? it will be hard to follow without reading its synopsis. A contemporary trade magazine in Moscow Vestnik kinematografii (1913, # 18, p. 40) writes that the story tells about orphan Adele Weisekind, who, thirsting for knowledge, goes to a university town to study further. Unfortunately, she does not fit into the low quota for Jewish students and only can attend lectures as a listener. She meets an old acquaintance, student Rafail Edelgerts. The young people soon fall in love. Suddenly Adele receives a message from the police that she is being denied resident’s rights. Rafail finds the only possible solution – he advises Adele to register as a prostitute because prostitutes are free and nobody bothers them. Afterwards, Rafail leaves for few days to visit his ill father. On returning he finds out that Adele has been arrested on suspicion of robbery. Rafail manages to dispel the misunderstandings, but Adele has fallen ill with nervous fever because of this harsh experience. She does not recuperate from it and dies. Left with no aim in life, Rafail wanders the streets and finally goes to visit the grave of his beloved. The thought that she is no longer alive, shatters the young man. He falls unconscious onto the grave and the next morning the rising sun reveals his frozen body.

Yuri Tsivian