Ladino - 500 Years Young

A Film by Rina Papish
(Israel, 2005, 52 Minutes, Color, Hebrew, English subtitles)

The film follows the rise of Ladino singer, Yasmin Levy, from the moment she discovers she can sing and all the way to international success. As she gets to know herself as singer, Yasmin rediscovers her father, Yitzhak Levy, a revered Ladino singer who, in the face of the decline of the language in Israel, chose to dedicate his life to recording and documenting the old Ladino songs before they became extinct.

Yasmin was one year old when her father died and she knew him only through his songs which were played in her home. She planned on being a veterinarian but destiny had it that she would become a singer, and she has taken it upon herself to immortalize and disseminate the Ladino songs that her father collected and preserved.

Ladino is the ancient Spanish of the Middle Ages in which the culture of the Jews of Spain developed and thrived. After their expulsion from Spain in 1492, the exiles continued to preserve the language in every place where they established a community, from Greece, Italy and Turkey, through Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and North Africa.

On a singing tour in Spain, Yasmin connects with her identity as a Jew whose ancestors were expelled 500 years earlier, and she finds her destiny.



AWARDS & FESTIVALS

Toronto JFF
San Jose JFF
Sepharadic Jewish Film Festival 2008, New York
Jewish Motifs Film Festival 2007, Poland - Bronze Warsaw Phoenix Award
San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, U.S.A
Ukrainian International Documentary Film Festival 2007, Ukraine
Desert Jewish Film Festival, U.S.A
MUSIC ON FILM - FILM ON MUSIC (MOFFOM) -Prague
Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival, Israel
International Film and Music Festival, Ashdod, Israel

• Category

  Education

[Bellydancingnana101]

Mother and daughter singing ... the voices of angels. Thank you.

[Mamipunky]

Es muy emocionante ver como han guardado con tanto amor la lengua de una tierra que les expulsó... Me siento muy hermanada con ellos, nuestros hermanos sefardies.

[Kyle Elbaz]

Jews are from the Levant in JUDEA not Yemen not Arabia

[Manny Gonzalez-Reyna]

Asi es mi hermano, somos muchos en America! Shalom!

[Manny Gonzalez-Reyna]

These people that you bad-name fake Jews dies by the hundreds of thousands in the Nazi Concentration camps, you need to read a lot more about my Sephardi people, seems like you know-nothing about Hebrew People and its different groups... blessings and If you need a book I can send it to you right away!

[Manny Gonzalez-Reyna]

... don't go wrong, people is reading your ignorance: this is not about religion, is about ethnicity; nothing to do one with the other... Shalom!

[Manny Gonzalez-Reyna]

... desde 1492 Sefarad nunca fue la misma; vinieron siglos de jauja y el dia de hoy es un caos!

[Dravidian93gangster]

Fake jews spanish jews are fake réal jews are yemeni arab origin

[Sofia Echegaray]

I believe the song at 3:58 is called Et Sha'arei Ratzon.

[Kyriacos Antoniades]

Lovely shalom brothers and sisters from Hellas !

[rivkayael1]

ANI JEHUDI, sefardi from Spain.