Tkies khaf (1924)

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Tkies-kaf is a partially lost 1924 Polish silent film. Set mainly in Vilna, it revolves around a vow made between two friends—Khaim and Borekh–that their future children shall marry each other. Many years later, the prophet Elijah, disguised as various characters, works to ensure this oath comes to fruition. These efforts are impaired by Borekh's friend Shmuel, who seeks to marry Khaim's daughter and keep Khaim's hidden fortune. The film's production was troubled by an initial lack of director; Leo Forbert's possible first pick, Sidney M. Goldin, was occupied by another project, leading head actor Zygmunt Turkow to volunteer to direct the project.

Production

Following the First World War and the newfound independence of Poland, Jewish cinema in the nation had been curtailed by sporadic pogroms and antisemitic policies by the new government. Henryk Bojm, a photographer-turned-smuggler during the First World War, began writing screenplays in the years following the war, but was unsuccessful in finding an interested producer.

Forbert had produced two previous films for Meteor — the German-influenced crime films Ludzie mroku and Syn Szatana — both with director Bruno Bredschneider. Neither film made a profit. Bredschneider, a non-Jew unfamiliar with Yiddish and Jewish customs, was considered inappropriate for Tkies-kaf; Forbert may have approached the American Yiddish-language director Sidney M. Goldin, but Goldin was occupied with work on another film, Yizkor.

The exterior scenes of the film were shot in Vilna and Warsaw, while the interior scenes were shot in Forbert's studio. This studio was small enough to make filming cumbersome, and amplified the effect of the bright film lighting, leading one minor actor to complain that he almost went blind during the production. Turkow recruited beggars in Wilna as extras for the wedding scenes.

Bojm wrote the film's intertitles; these were written in Polish for the initial domestic release, but were rewritten in Yiddish for its release in the rest of Europe and the United States. In 1933, an American team made an adaptation of the film titled Dem Rebns Koyekh ('The Rabbi's Power', also titled A Vilna Legend), adding Yiddish audio narration by Joseph Buloff and several new scenes.

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