Actress Sara Sommerfeld's grandmother survived the holocaust and now Sara visits the places her grandmother were during World War 2.
Social & External
The people behind it
Sara Sommerfeld
Self
“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim
In 1944, two prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. They told the world of the horror of the Holocaust and raised one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.
Researcher Hannelore Witkovsky searches for the notorious Nazi war criminal Dr. Joseph Mengele's lost film about his experiments on a family of little people in Auschwitz including Holocaust survivor Perla Ubitsch, whom she befriends.
Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.
A film about friendship in difficult times, Auschwitz.
As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.
A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.
Stories of 12 gay and lesbian survivors of Nazism and the Holocaust.
Between 1942 and 1944 some 24,916 Jews were deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. The roundups and deportations were organized and carried out by the Nazis with the - not always conscious - cooperation of Belgian authorities. The attitude of the authorities here varied from outright resistance to voluntary or unwitting collaboration.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
The documentary portrays Erich Finsches, a true Viennese original and Holocaust survivor. Based on over six years of collected material by director Matthias Jaklitsch, who supported Erich on his travels, the film shows him as a positive, humorous, but also argumentative and unique personality in all his humanity. At 97, Erich continues to tirelessly advocate for remembrance of the past, attending memorial ceremonies and schools to spread his message of "Never Again." Instead of a traditional "eyewitness narrative," the film not only documents Erich's life, his youth during Nazi persecution, and his rebuilding of a new life after the war, but also the relationship between the director and the protagonist.
A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".
For four years (1977-1981) Esaias Baitel documented a violent Parisian neo-Nazi gang. Having gained their trust, he was able to get close to them. Living among the gang members, he witnessed horrific events, and while hiding his real identity, he photographed a one-of-a-kind collection of gripping stills. Over thirty years have passed. Esaias Baitel has laid his camera down. He returns to the dark nights he spent in the City of Lights, the city where he lived a double life, going back and forth from the gang to the young family he had just started.
In a forest in eastern Poland, an archaeologist digs to bring to light the traces of the Sobibor extermination center. Thousands of objects that belonged to the victims are emerging from the ground as fragile witnesses. This research must be completed, because the construction of a new museum-memorial is beginning. How can the Shoah be commemorated on its own site, today and tomorrow, when an era without witnesses is emerging? How does the Shoah continue to work on the history and memory of Poland, of its citizens, within Europe, in a conflicting political context? The film looks at these questions by showing and hearing the voices of archaeologists, historians, architects, journalists, curators, and visitors linked to Sobibor.
As the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many of these displaced persons, and Americans' antisemitism only seems to get worse.
Let's keep it is a cinema documentary (99') about the still problematic attitude of the Republic of Austria towards the restitution of "aryanized" real estate which - for whatever reason - became the property of Austria after 1945. The film is also the director's bow to the victims of the darkest chapter of Austria's recent history. A chapter that seems to have been extended to a certain extent when it comes to restitution of looted property to the descendants of Holocaust victims.
This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.
A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?
A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
In an intimate and joyful story of love in the face of loss, celebrated poets Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley find strength—and unexpected hilarity—in what might be their final year together.
An inside look at one of the most anticipated movie sequels ever with James Cameron and cast.
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
This revealing documentary honors the legendary Sidney Poitier—iconic actor, filmmaker, and civil rights activist. Featuring interviews with Denzel Washington, Spike Lee, Halle Berry, and more.
The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.
A woman’s Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher-turned-detective reveals her story as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
The life and career of one of comedy's most inimitable modern voices, Mr. Gilbert Gottfried.
A documentary about the making of season five of the acclaimed AMC series Breaking Bad.
Follow the evolution of the 'Halloween' movies over the past twenty-five years. It examines why the films are so popular and revisits many of the original locations used in the films - seeing the effects on the local community. For the first time, cast, crew, critics and fans join together in the ultimate 'Halloween' retrospective.
A string of threatening emails escalates into a revenge plot involving a newly married US marshal and his ex-girlfriend.
Diaries, audiotapes, videotapes and testimonials from friends and colleagues offer insight into the life and career of Gilda Radner -- the beloved comic and actress who became an icon on Saturday Night Live.
Brilliant, long in-the-works story of the life and art of the world's greatest comedian and the cinema's first genius, Charlie Chaplin. Produced, written and directed by renowned film critic Richard Schickel.
Take a virtual vacation to some of the Star Wars films' most iconic and beloved locations like Hoth, Tatooine, and Sorgan, as this charming series whisks you off for fly-through tours of the Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Documentarian Ross McElwee originally set out to make a travelogue of sorts tracing General William T. Sherman's infamous scorched-earth march through the Confederacy in the latter stages of the Civil War. Instead, haunted by a recent breakup with a girlfriend, McElwee ends up documenting his progress -- or lack thereof -- in starting a new relationship. His journey then becomes one of self-reflection and self-discovery rather than a historical/sociological exploration.
A documentary on the expletive's origin, why it offends some people so deeply, and what can be gained from its use.
Performance artist Marina Abramovic prepares for a major retrospective of her work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
The Captains is a feature-length documentary film written and directed by William Shatner. The film follows Shatner as he interviews the other actors who have portrayed starship captains in the Star Trek franchise.
Musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson reflects on the deaths of her husband Lou Reed, her mother and her beloved dog.