Joan Micklin Silver, boundary-breaking director of Crossing Delancey, dies at 85 Tyler Aquilina
Crossing Delancey and the boundary-breaking independent film
Hester Street, died Thursday of vascular dementia at her Manhattan home, according to her daughter. She was 85.
Silver helped break barriers for female filmmakers and for Jewish representation on screen, with
Hester Street, her 1975 debut, telling the story of a young Russian Jewish immigrant couple on New York s Lower East Side in the 1890s. Silver’s husband Raphael D. Silver, a commercial real estate developer, raised the $320,000 budget himself to help support his wife s burgeoning career in an industry rife with sexism.