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WINNER: BEST DOCUMENTARY/AUDIENCE AWARD, DENVER INTN'L FILM FESTIVAL
WINNER: SPECIAL JURY PRIZE, FESTIVAL DEI POPOLI, ITALY
ELIGIBLE FOR ACADEMY OF Motion Picture Arts and Sciences NOMINATION
Defiant amateur filmmaker Ella Arnhold Lewenz used some of the earliest known color movie film to document life in Germany during the 1920s and '30s. Albert Einstein, Brigitte Helm, and Gerhart Hauptmann are but a few of the notables who appear in these never-seen films. In A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS, Ella's granddaughter, filmmaker Lisa Lewenz collaborates with the late Ella to present a first-hand account of one family's story of German Jewish identity and memory. This film was directed, produced, written and edited by Lisa Lewenz, with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Independent Television Service, with additional funds from the Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Fund for Jewish Filmmaking, the Donnet Fund, and the Fulbright Commission of Germany, and other sources.
In 1933, Adolf Hitler became Germany's Chancellor, while Ella Lewenz, a recently widowed forty-nine-year-old Jewish mother of six defied Joseph Goebbels' censorship laws by documenting a community on the verge of destruction. Born in 1883 to one of Germany's most affluent Jewish families, she eventually lost her home, citizenship, means and culture. Yet this daring woman continued to make films, as if challenging humanity to never forget the life that existed before Nazi rule. She and her youngest daughter remained in Germany until her escape in the late autumn of 1938, when they fled for America following Kristallnacht. Bringing a camera and films in her luggage, Ella continued filming until her death. Among the material in her archive is some of the earliest-known 16mm color footage; scenes from throughout Europe, Palestine during the 1930s; a travelogue of American cities and rural scenes between 1939 and 1954; and post-war footage shot in Europe during the late 1940s until the mid-1950s.
Stored in an attic following her death in 1954, Ella's films were forgotten as her family built new lives in America. Her granddaughter, Lisa, born nine months after Ella's death, was thirteen before learning of her family's Jewish identity. After discovering dozens of Ella's films in 1981, Lisa Lewenz traced her grandmother's life, using themovies as a guide. A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS combines both women's films documenting this intimate journey, which the Philadelphia Enquirer called "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." As an "inter-generational" collaborative team, grandmother and granddaughter's films weave a complex juxtaposition of their perspectives from two different periods in history. While tracing Ella's life history, A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS reconstructs the emergence of Nazi rule and family recollections from the first half of this century. First-hand reflections on Albert Einstein and Joseph Goebbels are set against compelling footage shot by Ella. The juxtaposition of Ella's archival films and diary entries provide a dynamic eyewitness account of the days following Kristallnacht, with the narrative tracing the gripping drama of this turning point in Nazi oppression. When considered today, from a vantage point almost sixty years later, Ella's films and writing offer a compelling glimpse into the tenor of those days.
In 1987, Lisa Lewenz returned to Germany, first as a tourist, and then in 1993 to live in her family's former home city of Berlin. Guided by family members and personal documents, she retraced Ella's journeys, often shooting footage from the exact vantage point where her grandmother had once filmed. Having grown up as an Episcopalian and knowing nothing of her Jewish heritage until learning of her family's secret, Lisa's search to learn about her grandmother becomes a search to reclaim a lost identity. Her father, Ella's son, had made the choice to build a new life in America, hoping to spare his children the suffering that he and his family had experienced as Jews in Germany. In retrospect, he realized that this decision was careless since it denied his children access to their heritage.
A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS retraces the steps of Ella Arnhold Lewenz, whose filmmaking began as a hobby and evolved into a skillful chronicle documenting the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. The film focuses on important periods of the twentieth century, starting with Ella's diaries written during WWI, leading to WWII, and picking up again following Ella's death, beyond the Cold War to current transitions in a newly reunited Germany. Ella used some of the first color film available, and was one of the few women known to film daily events of the history that she experienced. It is unlikely that another first-hand personal archive chronicling Germany's history in the twentieth century (such as this one) will ever be found. Thus, Ella's films provide a rare opportunity to glimpse directly into the past and to learn from her experience.
Ella was born into a family of wealth, privilege and culture, and was deeply devoted to pacifism and a united Europe prior to Hitler's rule. Her social position enabled her use of a movie camera to document her startled realization that no matter what contributions her family had made, that like all Jews, they had become the scapegoat for their nation's insecurity after World War I. Her rare footage from the 1920s and 30s recorded a carefree family life; elaborate Nazi spectacles; and notable figures who would soon become exiles, such as Albert Einstein, Rabbi Leo Baeck, and Brigitte Helm. Ella filmed Palestine in 1935 while exploring potential homelands if emigration became necessary.
The personal narrative can serve as a powerful and accessible means for comprehending the enormity of the Holocaust. A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS reveals a granddaughter's quest for truth, via home movies, diaries, photos and interviews with Ella's surviving children. Like The Diary of Anne Frank, the meditations of Elie Wiesel, and the reflections of Primo Levi, the work of Ella Lewenz (1883-1954) provides a first-person historical view into the past from the perspective of a Jewish grandmother who defied censorship laws by documenting the life that she witnessed. Yet it also extends beyond the history of the Holocaust, to a story of a family spread across the globe and reunited by a relationship that was rekindled after the discovery of a box of Ella's films. The production of a film started in Berlin during the 1920s, with recent screenings to sold-out audiences at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals, with many additional festival screenings at: the Vancouver, Edinburgh, Denver, Hamptons and d'Amiens International Film Festivals; at Lincoln Center in New York City as part of the Human Rights Watch Festival; the Florida Film Festival; Norway Shorts Film Festival; Cleveland International Film Festival, and many others.
Read more about this incredible collaboration...
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