A Daughter’s Take on Her Red Father

Filmmaker Tova Beck-Friedman (left) and Janet Naava Ades. Photo by Amy Stone.

“Red Father” documents the life of Bernard Ades, American Communist, with the major voice that of his daughter Janet Ades.

The son of a Russian immigrant who was the first Jew to own a bank in Baltimore, Bernard Ades was galvanized by the Depression to become a Communist. With a law degree from the University of Maryland, he joined the Communist Party’s International Labor Defense anti-lynching campaign, defending African Americans in the South. He fought in the Spanish Civil War as a member of an elite Communist cadre. Right up to his death in 1986, he remained an unflinching party loyalist, never faulting Stalin.

The 55-minute documentary by Tova Beck-Friedman is the Israeli-born sculptor’s first major film, and it’s been getting a good run at special event screenings. [See link below for future screenings.] 

The many interviews with Janet Ades are buttressed with redacted FBI documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Beck-Friedman brings together music and archival footage—the haunting “Strange Fruit” hanging from the poplar trees over images of lynched black men; Spanish songs, the din of warfare over Spanish Civil War footage. Just one quibble, and correct me if I’m wrong: the footage of black men laboring in the fields looks more like the deep South than the 1930s truck farms of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.