Carvalho's Journey

Congregation Shaara Tfille will present the exceedingly well-reviewed documentary “Carvalho’s Journey” at 7pm on Monday, July 18th as part of the 2016 Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival. Held at Bow Tie Criterion Cinemas, located at 19 Railroad Place in Saratoga Springs, the movie will be followed by Questions & Answers with Steve Rivo, Producer/Director/Writer. A real life 19th-century American western adventure story, “Carvalho’s Journey” tells the extraordinary story of Solomon Nunes Carvalho (1815-1897), an observant Sephardic Jew born in Charleston, SC, and his life as a groundbreaking explorer and artist. “Carvalho’s Journey” has been featured at the San Francisco, Portland, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Tucson, New York City, Palm Beach, Atlanta, San Diego, Denver, Washington DC, Boulder, Cherry Hill, Charleston, Princeton, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore Jewish Film Festivals. “Carvalho’s Journey” was created by The National Center for Jewish Film which was the fiscal sponsor. The evening is part of the 2016 5th Annual Saratoga Jewish Cultural Festival which include family-oriented, fun-filled events intended to foster community, enhance Jewish identity and raise awareness of Jewish cultural arts. Open to the public, their event is sponsored by a generous grant from the Jewish Federation of Northeastern NY. Tickets are $10. To make reservations, contact the Synagogue at 584-2370. The story: In 1853, traveling with famed explorer John C. Fremont’s Fifth Westward Expedition, Carvalho became one of the first photographers to document the sweeping vistas and treacherous terrain of the far American West. Carvalho, a portrait painter who had never saddled his own horse, survived grueling conditions and lack of food along the 2,400 mile journey from New York City through Kansas, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, and California. Carvalho’s experience as a Jew on the western trail was unprecedented, and his experience–and his writing about it–grant a clear window into the inter-ethnic cultural exchanges that were commonplace in this period in American history. Traveling alongside mountain men, pioneers, Native Americans, and Mormons, Carvalho produced beautiful art: daguerreotypes that became the lens through which the world experienced the American West. Carvalho’s Journey draws extensively on Carvalho’s bestselling 1857 memoir, Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West. Voiceover recordings by acclaimed actors bring Carvalho’s dramatic, funny and humanist writings to life, along with first-person accounts by John Fremont, their Native-American guides, and 19th century luminaries such as Brigham Young of Utah, with whom Carvalho had a unique audience in Salt Lake City. The film interweaves stunning HD digital and 16mm film landscape cinematography, rare 19th century photographs and artwork, Carvalho’s own surviving paintings and daguerreotypes, and interviews with scholars and artists, including modern day daguerreotypist Robert Shlaer who recreates Carvalho’s original daguerreotypes on location. Narrated by Award winning actor Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire, Hugo, A Serious Man), the original music was created by Jamie Saft (composer of Murderball).