"Geto" is a beautifully crafted history of the Jews of Venice and the Ghetto in which they were compelled to live from 1516 to 1797. Narrated by the late Regina Resnik (who wrote and produced the documentary with her son, Michael Philip Davis), 'Geto' balances contemporary shots of the city with artwork and maps of Renaissance Venice to depict the complicated relationship of the Jews with a Christian city that was ambivalent about allowing Jews into its midst. One of the more striking segments is that of the Ghetto's three synagogues, not only because of the architectural beauty, but also because of the background of sacred music by Salamone Rossi, the most celebrated Jewish Italian composer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque. The program begins and ends with footage of a very special art installation in the Ghetto: the series of monumental sculptures commemorating the Holocaust's victims, by the Lithuanian artist Arbit Blatas (1908-1999). This allows the narrative to segue into details of Mussolini's rise to power, the formation of the Axis, and the decimation of Venetian Jewry. Thanks to the interest and support shown by artists like Regina Resnik and Arbit Blatas (Resnik's husband), the Jewish Ghetto of Venice is not disappearing, but is having a twenty-first-century renaissance.
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