Garde Arts Center Presents Connecticut Premiere of "We Met at Grossinger’s"

The Garde Arts Center presents the Connecticut premiere of We Met at Grossinger’s on Thursday, August 13, 2026, at 7:00 p.m. at the historic Garde Theater, 325 State Street, New London.

The evening will include an audience conversation and Q&A with award-winning director Paula Eiselt, producer Robert Friedman, and Mitchell Grossinger Etess - a former president and CEO of Mohegan Sun, a featured subject in the film, and the grandson of Jennie Grossinger, the legendary founder of Grossinger’s Resort and Hotel.

Sponsored by the Mohegan Tribe, the event will also feature a special Garde exhibit presented in partnership with the Catskills Borscht Belt Museum.

We Met at Grossinger’s is an immersive journey through the Jewish Catskills - once known as the Borscht Belt - and the iconic resort that inspired Dirty Dancing and helped define an era of Jewish American life and entertainment.

During decades when prejudice and exclusion limited opportunities for Jewish immigrants in America, the Borscht Belt provided an oasis of welcome, recreation, and belonging. Grossinger’s Resort and Hotel was its crown jewel - a place where Jewish families and members of other marginalized communities could escape the pressures of New York City, relax, celebrate, and feel at home.

As its reputation grew, Grossinger’s attracted an extraordinary array of entertainers, athletes, and political figures, including Mel Brooks, Jerry Seinfeld, Jackie Robinson, and Eleanor Roosevelt. Its story reflects not only a beloved vacation destination, but also an important chapter in American cultural history.

Director Paula Eiselt is known for her acclaimed documentaries Aftershock and 93Queen. In We Met at Grossinger’s, Eiselt combines history, memory, and personal stories to bring the legendary resort - and the vibrant world surrounding it - back to life. Audiences are encouraged to invite a friend and share this special opportunity to revisit the people, places, laughter, music, and memories that made Grossinger’s unforgettable.

About the Garde Arts Center:

The Garde Arts Center is a nonprofit performing arts organization dedicated to presenting outstanding entertainment, film, education, and community programs in the heart of downtown New London. Its centerpiece is the historic 1,400-seat Garde Theater, a beautifully restored 1926 movie palace celebrating its Centennial Anniversary Season.

About the Borscht Belt Museum:

The Borscht Belt Museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Catskills resort era, and celebrating its history as a refuge from bigotry, the cradle of stand-up comedy and a cultural catalyst that changed America. https://www.borschtbeltmuseum.org/.

LOGLINE

We Met at Grossinger’s is an immersive journey through the Jewish Catskills—once known asthe Borscht Belt—reviving the iconic resort that inspired Dirty Dancing and defined an era ofJewish American life.

SYNOPSIS

We Met at Grossinger’s is a nostalgic, immersive portrait of the iconic Catskills resort thatinspired Dirty Dancing and redefined Jewish American life. Built by three generations ofvisionary Jewish women—led by the legendary Jennie Grossinger, the “Queen ofHospitality”—the resort became a glittering sanctuary for those excluded from America’s eliteleisure culture, where comedians, athletes, and movie stars gathered under one roof.

More than just a resort, Grossinger’s set the stage—quite literally—for the transformation ofJewish American identity and American entertainment at large. With an unabashed female lens, We Met at Grossinger’s brings back to life a mid-century cross-communal phenomenon thatunited immigrants, sports figures, politicians, and movie stars—among them Jackie Robinson,Eddie Fisher, and Eleanor Roosevelt—around a lasting notion that leisure, inclusivity, andcreativity lie at the heart of what it means to be American.

Through newly unearthed archival footage, intimate audio reels, animation, and first-handaccounts, the film traces Grossinger’s dazzling rise and bittersweet fall—revealing how oneremarkable hotel helped shape Jewish American identity, impact American culture, and leave anindelible mark on the nation’s cultural imagination. With a blend of joy, resilience, andcommunity, We Met at Grossinger’s reminds us that our shared stories, marked by laughter andstruggle, are vital to understanding who we are and where we come from.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

Before the stages of Broadway and Las Vegas, comedy clubs and streaming stand-upspecials—and before the Civil Rights Act and women’s liberation—there was the Borscht Belt. When Jews faced systemic barriers in American hotels, country clubs, and universities, theybuilt their own spaces of leisure and belonging. The result was a world-famous culturalphenomenon in the Catskills—thousands of hotels and bungalow colonies alive with comedy,sports, music, and endless buffet lines.

At the center stood Grossinger’s Resort Hotel, the largest and most glamorous of them all. Ledby Jennie Grossinger—the “Queen of Hospitality” and one of the first female hoteliers—itbecame a sanctuary of joy and creativity, where entertainers, athletes, and political figuresgathered under one roof.

By the time I was born in the mid-1980s, Grossinger’s had closed, and the region’s legacy wasfading. My paternal grandparents’ Holocaust survival story defined my sense of Jewish identity,while the Catskills—where my other grandparents once vacationed—felt like a distant, vanishedworld. It still strikes me that while half the world’s Jewish population faced annihilation, anotherwas building a vibrant cultural legacy in upstate New York. Yet the antisemitism that made thesehotels necessary was whitewashed, and their influence on American life nearly erased.

In recent years, amid rising antisemitism and post-pandemic reflection, the Borscht Belt hasreturned to the public imagination. Museums and festivals now honor the humor, food, andcommunity that once defined it. The Borscht Belt wasn’t just a place—it was a spirit of resilienceand joy that helped shape American entertainment and social life.

Collaborating with the Grossinger family and uncovering this forgotten history—my own history—has been an act of joyful reclamation. These hotels were more than vacation spots;they were spaces of inclusion and cultural affirmation, built in defiance of exclusion.

Today, that story feels more urgent than ever. We Met at Grossinger’s celebrates how community and creativity transformed marginalization into legacy—and how joy itself can be a form of resistance.

CREW BIOS

Paula Eiselt | Director and Producer

Paula Eiselt is a Primetime Emmy-nominated, Peabody Award and Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award-winning director and producer whose films have been distributed globally on Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, PBS’s POV, and ARTE. Her work has screened at over 100 festivalsworldwide, including Sundance, SXSW, and Hot Docs.

Her feature Aftershock premiered at Sundance 2022, winning the Special Jury Award: Impactfor Change before its release on Hulu and Disney+ by Onyx Collective and ABC News Studios.

It went on to win a Peabody Award, the duPont-Columbia Award, and earn a Primetime Emmy nomination, along with Critics Choice Documentary Award nominations including Best Documentary Feature.

Her debut feature 93Queen premiered at Hot Docs, played at over 75 festivals, and ran theatrically across the U.S. and Canada with a six-week hold at NYC’s IFC Center. Her short Under G-d premiered at Sundance 2023, was acquired by POV Shorts, and won both the PBS Short Film Festival Juried Prize and the Palm Springs International ShortFest Local Jury Award. Eiselt has been named one of Indiewire’s 22 Rising Filmmakers to Watch and a DOC NYC 40 Under 40 honoree. A graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts, she is a member of the Television Academy, New York Women in Film & Television, and the International Association of Press Photographers.

Robert Friedman | Producer

Robert Friedman, the CEO and Producer of Bungalow Media + Entertainment, is a 30-yearentertainment veteran, who has held an array of senior executive positions at MTV, AOL, New Line Cinema and Radical Media.

At Bungalow, Friedman has produced series and documentary films including; Emmy Award winning Little Richard: I Am Everything for Max, Serving the Hamptons on Discovery+, The Panama Papers for EPIX and the multi-part documentary series Vegas: The Story of Sin City for CNN and HBO Max. Other credits include the four-part mini-series Surviving Jeffrey Epstein form Lifetime, Roswell: The First Witness for History, the five-part mini-series The Preppy Murder for AMC/Sundance, and the Emmy Award winning GIVE for NBC, among others. Friedman was recently inducted into the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, receiving the prestigious Chairman's Award and was named one of Variety's New York Power Players. Friedman is a director of a variety of industry boards including IRTS and the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and has been nominated for a Peabody, Grammy and GLAAD Award.

Bennett Elliott | Producer

Bennett Elliott is an Emmy award-winning, Peabody award-nominated producer based in NewYork. She is the producer and co-director of COUPLES THERAPY (Showtime, Seasons 4 & 5),the associate producer of HBO’s PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF (2025), and the producer of RobertKolodny’s THE FEATHERWEIGHT (Venice Film Festival 2023), Robert Greene’s PROCESSION (Netflix, 94th Academy Awards Short List), Kim Snyder’s US KIDS (Sundance 2020), Abel Ferrara’s SPORTIN’ LIFE (Venice Film Festival 2020) and Robert Greene’s Gotham Awards-nominated BISBEE ’17 (Sundance 2018). Bennett was the co-producer of Greene’s multiple award-winning Sundance documentary KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE (2016). She wasselected as a Berlinale Talent (2025), a 2017-2018 Sundance Institute Creative Producing Fellow, a DOC NYC “40 Under 40” fellow, and has produced documentary films for David Byrne, Rob Epstein, Jeffrey Friedman and Nan Goldin.

Bennett has coordinated television series for Bravo, the Food Network and Sundance Channel.

In 2015 she was named Head of Production at Mustache, a Brooklyn-based creative agency and produced hundreds of video campaigns for clients including American Express, Chevy,Ford, Conde Nast and the Netherlands Board of Tourism. Her award winning documentary, fiction film and music video work as producer and co-founder at the production collective House of Nod has taken her all over the world.

CREDITS

Directed by

Paula Eiselt

Produced by

Robert Friedman

Paula Eiselt

Bennett Elliott

Executive Producer

Mike Powers

Jack Liechtung

Gabriel Merkin

David Moore

Fred Rosen

Nadine Schiff-Rosen

Harris Salomon

Editor

Nancy Novack

Sunita Prasad

Composer

Gil Talmi

Cinematographer

Jenni Morello