With a trove of lost-and-found archival footage and a cast of characters endowed with the gift of gab, The Catskills journeys into the storied mountain getaway north of New York City that served as refuge for Jewish immigrants fleeing poverty as well as a lavish playground for affluent Jewish families. As bungalow colony proprietors, guests, waiters, comedians, hoteliers, and beauticians share colorful tales of Catskill farms, boarding houses, and luxury resorts, they paint a picture of vibrant American Jewish life and culture in the twentieth century.

Directed by Lex Gillespie (2024, 86 min., Not Rated)

Following the screening, Skirball Book Group Facilitator Stacey Bieber will moderate a conversation with Marisa J. Futernick, whose current exhibition Away in the Catskills: Summers, Sour Cream, and Dirty Dancing sifts through the artist’s inherited and imagined memories of midcentury family vacations at Jewish resorts in New York’s Catskill Mountains, and Cate Thurston, the Skirball’s Chief Curator. 

Lex Gillespie is a three-time Peabody Award winner and the shared winner of a silver baton from the duPont-Columbia Journalism Awards at New York’s Columbia School of Journalism. For the past twenty-five years, he’s produced documentaries on music, history, culture, and the arts. His credits include Let the Good Times Roll, a twenty-six-hour history of African American music from the blues to Motown; Songs in the Wind, the story of the Indigenous music of the Andes Mountains; and Seoul House, about a hip hop opera set in a Korean mom-and-pop corner store in Washington, DC. 

"I got the idea for my film when I was screening The Mamboniks in 2019. At nearly each of the film festivals, someone would raise their hand during the Q&A session and ask a question about the Catskills. I realized there was a demand for a movie about this storied vacation land that so many people recall fondly." —Lex Gillespie