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.
Joan Micklin Silver, Director of âCrossing Delancey,â Dies at 85
She broke barriers for women, directing seven feature films, including âHester Streetâ and âBetween the Lines,â as well as TV movies.
Joan Micklin Silver in the late 1970s while filming an adaptation of the Ann Beattie novel “Chilly Scenes of Winter.” She had a love-hate relationship with movie studios.Credit.United Artists, via Photofest
Published Jan. 1, 2021Updated Jan. 4, 2021
Joan Micklin Silver, the filmmaker whose first feature, âHester Street,â expanded the marketplace for American independent film and broke barriers for women in directing, died on Thursday at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.