Think Out Loud

Movie by Portland filmmaker focuses on Madoff scheme

By Allison Frost (OPB)
March 1, 2021 5:58 p.m.

Broadcast: Monday, March 1

Portland artist Alicia Jo Rabins

Portland artist Alicia Jo Rabins

Alicia J. Rose

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Bernie Madoff’s spectacular Ponzi scheme fraud was exposed in 2008, the year Alicia Jo Rabins was working in a studio on the ninth floor of an abandoned office building on Wall Street. Her new film “A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff” came from what she calls her obsession with the man, his Ponzi scheme, and the system that allowed them to thrive for decades. The Kaddish, a Judaic prayer for the dead, can also be said as a kind of excommunication for a person who has committed a heinous crime. The film was directed by Alicia J. Rose and is showing Friday, March 5 - 14 at the Portland International Film Festival. We talk with Rabins about her genre-bending, first-person documentary, blending elements of memoir, documentary and musical theatre to create a compelling historical narrative.

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