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SCREENING OF THE 1998 FILM, A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS
POSTHUMOUS SCREENINGS OF ELLA ARNHOLD LEWENZ'S LIFE WORK
A 1998 SUNDANCE AND BERLIN FESTIVAL COMPETITION FILM
ELIGIBLE FOR ACADEMY OF Motion Picture Arts NOMINATION
Winner: BEST DOCUMENTARY/Audience Award Denver Intn'l Film Festival
Winner: SPECIAL JURY PRIZE, Festival dei Popoli, Italy
When first-time director Lisa Lewenz discovered a trove of her grandmother's old home movies in 1981, she recovered a time-capsule depicting life in Germany before Hitler's regime. Ella Arnhold Lewenz's films exposed a moving chronicle of several generations in her prominent German-Jewish family. Using some of the earliest known 16mm color footage and defying Goebbles' censorship laws to depict a homeland that become increasingly unfamiliar under the shadow of Nazi oppression, Ella also filmed notables Albert Einstein and Brigitte Helm before their exile. Later, Lisa Lewenz traced and matched identical sites from Ella's work, melding past and present realities on film, thus permitting the two women to collaborate and "speak" to each other beyond the grave in this film that took seventeen years to complete. Ella's youngest daughter Dorothea and several other crew members will attend the screenings. (62 minutes)
Variety, TODD McCARTHY
"...Remarkable...opens a window on an entire world, "A Letter Without Words" provides a glimpse of Germany between the wars that is privileged in more than one sense of the word...mesmerizing...inevitably, the most haunting images are those of Nazi Germany....Subsequent Gotham footage again shows Einstein, this time at the 1939 World's Fair, and postwar material includes glimpses of a devastated Germany Ella took on a late-'40s visit...technically fine, and transpositional moments...are especially effective."
The Village Voice, RYAN DEUSSING
"One of the best-received films of the [Berlin Film] festival, Lewenz's stunning film...serves as a powerful reminder of how the past is close behind us."
Newsday, JOHN ANDERSON
"...a really wonderful Sundance documentary ... simply remarkable - Einstein in Berlin in 1929, the bliss of pre-Hitler Jewish life in Germany, the gradual disintegration of a society that finally forced the family to flee to America. Plus, a lot of great stuff shot in New York in the '30s (a Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, for instance, and a virtually open skyline). Some of it shot, too, on the earliest color film....If there was something to remember about this year's festival - beside the work of Ella Lewenz - it is that the medium will always be capable of bringing people together, in some cases relatives who have never even met."
The NY Jewish Week, GOLDIE CHARLES
"A remarkable film, wholly devoid of sentimentality...with the richness and resonance of a fine novel."
The Philadelphia Enquirer, CARRIE RICKEY
"...a love letter without equal...one of those fascinating, eerie duets - not unlike Natalie Cole's recorded "duet" with her long-dead father, Nat King Cole- that show how technology permits family members to collaborate from beyond the grave."
An
Independent Television
Service Presentation
Additional funding provided by the
National
Foundation for Jewish Culture
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