Four generations of a Jewish immigrant family create Russ and Daughters, a Lower East Side lox and herring emporium that survives and thrives. Produced to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the store, this documentary features an extensive interview with two of the original daughters for whom the store was named, now 100 and 92 years old, and interviews with prominent enthusiasts of the store including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, actress Maggie Gyllenhaal, chef Mario Batali, New Yorker writer Calvin Trillin, and 60 Minutes correspondent Morley Safer. Rather than a conventional narrator, the filmmakers bring together six colorful longtime fans of the store, in their 80s and 90s, who sit around a table of fish reading the script in the style of a passover Seder.—Julie Cohen
A documentary that tells the history of one food store on the Lower East Side of New York City, Russ and Daughters. It tells of the founder, Joel Russ, a penniless immigrant from Eastern Europe, and his wife Bella, Joel sold herring from a pushcart on the Lower East Side, and then opened a smoked fish store 100 years ago at 179 Houston Street, where the store still does business. The movie tells of the Russes' three three daughters, who become partners in the store (one of the only business at that time, and perhaps in our time, to add "and Daughters" to the founder's name. The daughters ran the store, found husbands in the store, and the husbands became partners. The second generation passed the store to the third generation, who brought non-Jews into the business, including Herman Vargas, The Artistic Slicer." Members of the fourth generation, Niki Russ Federman and Josh Russ Tupper, have modernized the business and, in 2014, opened a Russ and Daughters cafe on Orchard Street. Interspersed throughout the story is a tale of Jews in America and the rise, fall, and rise again of the Lower East Side. Jewish music punctuates the story, and anecdotes are evoked from famous customers, such as Calvin Trillin, Morley Safer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
