The book is an appreciation of the artist as a painter of both Jewish and general subjects, as well as the story of an iconic figure in an environment undergoing rapid shifts in the Jewish world.
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If a picture is worth a thousand words, it’s also worth a documentary inspired by one. That would be director Slawomir Grünberg’s moving and evocative “Still Life in Lodz,” which centers around a painting that hung in the same tenement apartment in Lodz, Poland, for 75 years. It also became a kind of touchstone for young Lilka Elbaum, who beheld the staid portrait of fruit, flowers, wine and more, every day for her first 19 years, from 1949 to 1968. That was when she and her family lived in said apartment, a roomy, then-desirable place that overlooked a busy thoroughfare in front and a quieter courtyard in back.