films

FILMS

Assisted and Developed by the Jewish Heritage Project

Lodz Ghetto

A 35 mm documentary, 103 minutes plus Sources and Survivors, 15 minute supplement for PBS Holocaust Remembrance Day; special, winner of the International Film Critics Prize, Best Film, Leipzig Film Festival, Sundance International Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, "Best of the Year," San Francisco Examiner, Library Journal. Translated and broadcast in 8 languages.

DESCRIPTION

With stunning intimacy and openness, LODZ GHETTO brings us the voices of ordinary people trapped in an unbelievable time. They confide precisely what they felt during the darkest days of Nazi persecution. Scripted entirely from the secret diaries they left behind–hidden so the people of the future would know what they endured–this internationally acclaimed film reveals how 200,0000 people in the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe struggled against what seemed an unstoppable war to crush them out. It brings us the voices of people who love life but can only hope for a miracle to save them.

LODZ GHETTO is a film which crosses through time, bringing us into the past by mixing modern and archival footage seamlessly. It is filled with thousands of authentic, poignant images of dailylife in the ghetto among people who can not give up their love of family and their drives to think and to create. The heroic writers and photographers who created the materials of this film risked their lives, that we could know what this desperate struggle was really like.

credits

Produced by Alan Adelson

Directed by Kathryn Taverna and Alan Adelson

Edited by Kathryn Taverna

Executive Producer: Steven Samuels

Original score by Wendy Blackstone

With Jerzy Kosinski as the voice of Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski

WINNER: International Film Critic Prize

Year’s best film: San Francisco Examiner, Library Journal

Selected for screening as a PBS Holocaust Remembrance Day special broadcast, and for screening at the Sundance Film Festival, Berlin International Film Festival, London International Film Festival, San Francisco International Film Festival, Yamagata International Film Festival.

Julie Salomon, Wall Street Journal

Nothing can be more evocative. A poetic montage, relevant and universal. Extraordinary imagery. Gallows humor that seems nothing less than courageous in the heart of darkness.

Terrence Rafferty, The New Yorker

Unusually intelligent and powerful. A lucid, intense collage of the everyday life of fear and horror.

Michael Sragow, The San Francisco Examiner

Memorable and Devastating.

TV Guide

A stunningly eloquent, powerful film. (****)

NY Daily News

Heart-wrencing...harrowing...authentic......to be unmoved by this film is to be made of stone.

Social Education, The Journal of the National Council for Social Studies

Magnificent...provides a wealth of insight in a highly engaging manner.