RAISE THE ROOF IN THE NEWS

4.6.16  Rick and Laura Brown have led many efforts to recreate historical buildings and artifacts since 2002, when they founded the Handshouse Studio in Norwell, Mass., but nothing compares to the 10 years they spent coordinating hundreds of vo…
3.9.16  More than 70 years after the last congregants prayed in it, the beautiful Gwozdziec Synagogue in Poland is once again inspiring awe — in the hundreds of visitors coming to see the recreated bima, roof, and painting ceiling of the histor…
11.11.15  Dozens of (Oberlin) alumni over the course of six years participated in a history-making effort to replicate an 18th-century Polish synagogue that was burned to the ground by Nazis. They worked shoulder to shoulder with an internation…
11.1.15  Now, a new documentary, “Raise the Roof,” takes viewers behind the scenes with the unlikely and inspiring story of how Rick and Laura Brown, a husband-wife team of artists and visionary educators from Boston, led an international team …
10.29.15  Almost 10 years ago, the Vilna Shul hosted an exhibit, “Continuity:  Traditions of Jewish Art and Architecture,” that featured handmade models of one of Poland’s historic 17th-century wooden synagogues. It was accompanied by a se…
10.1.15  The “Raise the Roof” project began in 2003 when a traditional carpenter who also teaches at New York University showed the Browns a photograph of one of these vanished wooden synagogues, asking whether they’d be interested in reproduci…
9.30.15   Every year Tucson hosts eight very different film festivals, from the vast Arizona International Film Festival bringing pictures here from every part of the globe, to the very specific genre-munching Tucson Terrorfest.Read More from B…
9.30.15  It’s been almost one year since Israeli president Reuven Rivlin delivered a stirring speech at the opening ceremonies of Warsaw’s glistening new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. “It is not a museum of the Holocaust, it is a …
 9.29.15  The festival will also include the Arizona premiere of “Raise the Roof,” an 84-minute documentary that follows and honors the work of Rick and Laura Brown, a husband-and-wife architectural team from Boston whose mission was to restore…
9.27.15  Out of the ashes…a synagogue is reborn in Poland.  Documentary "Raise the Roof" premiers October 8 in Tucson.Read More from Arizona Jewish Life
9.27.15   Eight of Tucson’s long-running film festivals have come together to create the Tucson Festival of Films, a three day event showcasing features, documentaries and shorts from Oct. 8-10.  Among those is the Arizona premie…
7.23.15  The creative and artistic contributions of the Jewish people, their history and cultural traditions are at the heart of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, now in its 35th year and opening July 23. Those themes are also at the…
7.6.15  It takes courage and vision to set students to work creating a life-size version of the Sphinx’ missing nose or building a huge medieval trebuchet siege weapon to scale. Rick and Laura Brown, art teachers at Mass. College of Art, r…
7.1.15  “How often do you get a chance to reach deep into history and bring something back?” That’s the question Rick Brown poses in the opening frames of Raise the Roof, a new documentary that screens on Monday, July 13.Read More&nbs…
5.8.15  How long does it take for the high hopes of an unlikely dream to come true? In the case of Boston-based artists and visionary educators Rick and Laura Brown, it's been about a decade…Read More from the Jewish Advocate
5.7.15  The historic film footage of a burning wooden synagogue in Poland is disturbing to watch but it conveys the loss that spurred a monumental effort to recover history.Read More from the Patriot Ledger
4.29.15  More than a decade ago, art professors Rick and Laura Brown posted a flyer advertising a new studio art class at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, where they are longtime faculty members. The poster featured a…
4.15.15  The piece de resistance of  Warsaw’s Museum of the History of Polish Jews is a painstakingly-built replica of the ceiling of an 18th century wooden synagogue the Nazis destroyed in the town of Gwozdziec, now in southern Ukraine…It…
March/April 2015  “This film is about a remarkable dream and a journey of re-discovery. It is a story of larger-than-life characters—one that starts with tragedy and ends in triumph,” said director Yari Wolinsky, of Trillium Studios. “It h…
3.25.15  Raise the Roof, is a documentary about the efforts of a Massachusetts couple to reconstruct the roof of an 18th-century wooden synagogue in Poland that was the inspiration for one of the most iconic synagogue designs in the United…
2.13.15  In an award-winning career as a National Geographic photographer, Cary Wolinsky traveled the world. His wife Barbara, a designer, and their son Yari, even from a young age, often tagged along and were pressed into service.But half…
Reconstructing the walls of the Gwozdziec in Sanok, Poland.

1.31.15  The best vengeance against evildoers is to restore some of the beauty that they thought they had destroyed forever…The Norwell-based father-son filmmakers Cary and Yari Wolinsky of Trillium Studios recorded this process in their documentary Raise the Roof…

Read More from the Boston Globe

 

1.30.15  The Browns' unlikely odyssey to bring back to life on of the most significant synagogues is told in "Raise the Roof," a documentary by the award-winning father-son filmmaking team of Cary and Yari Wolinsky…

Read More from the Atlanta Jewish Times

 

1.27.15  Raise the Roof documents the multiyear process of re-creating by hand — from very old, black-and-white photographs — the vibrantly painted and complexly built roof and ceiling of an 18th-century wooden Polish synagogue.… The uplifting documentary is an artistic, nondenominational embrace across the centuries. 

Read More from the ArtsAtl

The photo that inspired Rick and Laura to rebuild a lost synagogue.

Couple with Georgia ties raises a roof in Poland

1.22.15  Rick and Laura Brown are neither Polish nor Jewish. Their religion is making things…

Read More from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

 

 

 

Professor Bernstein's Must-See Films

12.17.14  In its 15th year, the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival again offers a copious array of extraordinary films that provide fresh perspectives on the place of Jews and Jewish history within our complex world. These cinematic jewels… arrive here from numerous cultures and countries, having been selected by our diligent evaluation committee.

Professor Bernstein chose Raise the Roof.   

Gwozdziec ceiling and Bimah in The Jewish Town gallery of the museum. Photo by Magda Starowieyska

10.22.14  When the new POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews opens in late October, the ties between Warsaw and Boston will deepen even further…

Raise the Roof will have its world premiere during the museum’s opening ceremonies—October 29th, 2014
 
Read More from the Jewish Journal, Massachusetts