In Life Forgotten, Zoe Beloff combines vivid period reenactments with archival footage to bring to life Frank Siden’s Variety Theater, a storefront cinema on the Lower East Side in New York City in the early 20th century. The cinema, frequented by local Jewish emigres and factory workers, was a welcoming space for female laborers during the ongoing suffrage and labor movements. Like many of Beloff’s best works, Life Forgotten demonstrates cinema’s historical role as an instigator of political and social change. Writes Zoe Beloff, “Here silent movies were anything but. Frank and his sons improvised dialog for the films and sang Yiddish ballads to an audience that didn’t hesitate to join in or argue back. It was a welcoming space for women, and the film follows a group of radical young garment workers who gather here to figure out how to fight for women’s rights and change their world.”