Sholem Aleichem: Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness plus Skype Interview with Director Joseph Dorman

Sholem Aleichem was the pen name of Solomon Rabinovich, who was born in 1859 in what is now Ukraine.

The film is a riveting portrait of the great writer whose stories became the basis of the Broadway musical Fiddler on the Roof. The film tells the tale of the rebellious genius who created an entirely new literature. Plumbing the depths of a Jewish world locked in crisis and on the cusp of profound change, he captured that world with brilliant humor. Sholem Aleichem was not just a witness to the creation of a new modern Jewish identity, but one of the very men who shaped it.

Award-winning filmmaker Joseph Dorman's work has appeared on PBS, CBS, Discovery Channel and CNN. In addition to his current film Sholem Aleichem: Laughing in the Darkness, Mr. Dorman made the award-winning theatrical feature Arguing the World, about the controversial sixty-year political journey of the eminent political writers and thinkers, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, Irving Kristol and Nathan Glazer. The New York Times described it as “enthralling… one of the deepest portraits of…ideas ever filmed.”

Mr. Dorman also wrote the feature documentaries Going Upriver: The Long War of John Kerry and The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Journey, which was named the best documentary of 2001 by the National Board of Review. He was senior producer for the prime time PBS newsmagazine series on the news media, Media Matters. His book, Arguing the World, The New York Intellectuals in Their Own Words, based on his film was named one of the distinguished Jewish books of 2000.

Mr. Dorman is a winner of television’s prestigious George Foster Peabody Award. He has also twice been nominated for Emmy Awards for outstanding cultural and public affairs programming.