Darkness Before the Dawn: The "Pride of Judea" Story

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Darkness Before the Dawn: The "Pride of Judea" Story is a short film from ca. 1955 released on 16mm. It is held in the Prelinger Archives collection.

Guidance film targeted at Jewish teenage boys who are not "normal." Numerous psychiatrists are seen. Shot in New York City.

Darkness Before the Dawn: The "Pride of Judea" Story
Produced byPankan (Arnold)
Production
company
Pankan (Arnold)
Distributed byPankan (Arnold)
Release date
ca. 1955
Running time
21:14
LanguageEnglish
Thumbnail
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More Details

Socialization & Crime Prevention

How the "Pride of Judea" organization, located in New York City, assists at-risk Jewish teenage boys.

To be alone is to live in a gray world, a place where everyday activities seem narrow and meaningless, at times even intolerable. To be alone and to be a young boy is to live in a frightening world, a place where fears and insecurities can eat away like acid at the confused mind, the vulnerable emotions. What tools do we have in this fight? The Pride of Judea summer camp thinks it has the answer, in this film titled, "Darkness Before the Dawn." Aimed at getting kids into their boy scout-esk summer camp, it plays heavily on the idea that without the camp the kids would sink into criminal activity, like smoking and violence. Or worse, sitting at home and eating a turkey sandwich alone. Taking shots at "selfish working parents" this film has great rhetoric as to why The Pride of Judea is the only choice for your child, for it is fighting the greatest evil in our world. The evil of a purposeless child.

Vintage educational film about "the nationwide harvest of violence and human waste" from juvenile delinquency. It was being "fought with old and inadequate ideas" and this new and improved idea was a Jewish summer camp for boys. Case study "Bobby's" emotional problems are identified by a psychiatrist in a loud suit, then solved simply by providing his family with a temp homemaker from the Pride Of Judea charity. The recent lecture on brain science and delinquency revealed that camps and group interventions make the problem worse, as boys gang up and teach each other more criminal behaviors.

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