Schnitzer Cinema offers live musical based on Bernie Madoff

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art continues this year’s Schnitzer Cinema “In The Street” series with “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff,” a live musical theater and media performance by Portland artist Alicia Jo Rabins.

This performance will be held at 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 8, in the Erb Memorial Union’s Redwood Auditorium. Also, a related panel discussion, “Betrayal and Unity: Law, Religion and the Bernie Madoff Scandal,” will be held at noon Thursday, March 9, in Room 142, Knight Law Center. Both programs are free.

“Rabins’ blending of live music and narration with projected animations, and the fact that she is reflecting so provocatively on the power of Wall Street, made this a perfect selection for our year-long Schnitzer Cinema series on images of the street,” said Richard Herskowitz, the museum’s curator of media arts.

An indie rocker, poet and Torah scholar, Alicia Jo Rabins created “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff” as a one-woman, chamber-rock opera about the intersection of mysticism and finance. Her show features her violin skills and incorporates her research into the Madoff scandal with her knowledge of Judaism.

The March 9 panel discussion will offer legal, Judaic and other perspectives on the Madoff scandal and will be led by Andrea Coles-Bjerre, associate professor of law and faculty director of the Business Law Program; Deborah Green, associate professor of religious studies; Katherine Moyer, instructor and director of the Business Law Clinic; and Rabins.

The events are co-sponsored by the UO School of Law, Department of Judaic Studies and Oregon Humanities Center.

Schnitzer Cinema continues April 12 with “Same Streets, Different Worlds,” featuring cinematographer Jem Cohen’s “Gravity Hill Newsreels” on the Occupy Wall Street protests and a Skype question-and-answer with Cohen.

The season will conclude May 10 with guest artist James Nares screening some of his short-film motion studies and a discussion of his media installation “Street and Pendulum,” opening at the at the museum that day.  The exhibition is made possible with a Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art academic support grant.

Schnitzer Cinema is sponsored by UO’s Office of Academic Affairs.