Eatala: A Life in Klezmer Filming Locations

Eatela: A Life in Klezmer is a loving portrait of Elaine Hoffman Watts (her Yiddish name is "Eatela"), the documentary profiles a feisty and determined musician who has broken barriers-as a musician, a working mother, and in her persistent devotion to her family's klezmer music. Drawing on performance footage, family movies and photographs, and interviews, Eatela shows how the klezmer tradition has been sustained over four generations in a single family, with a good dose of humor and joy. Family stories place the music: how a klezmer tradition came to Philadelphia with "grandpop" Joseph Hoffman, who arrived here (by accident) at the turn of the century. Stories introduce his children (all musicians) and in particular Jacob Hoffman (Jake), an exceptional classical musician who toured with Leopold Stokowski and actively performed the family's klezmer music for community events. At the time, "professional" musicians looked down on "klezmers," devaluing both ethnic traditions and the skill it took to play this repertoire. But Jake was a well-known klezmer, and he taught his talented daughter Elaine, who also mastered both klezmer and classical repertoires. ("An excellent musician," she was the first woman to graduate from the Curtis Institute of Music in percussion.) She, too, made her living as a musician, but rarely played klezmer publicly: Philadelphia's Jewish bandleaders just wouldn't hire a woman. That didn't stop Elaine: she continued playing and taught her children and grandchildren the family's unique klezmer repertoire.