[Cz-L] Film "Dieses Jahr in Czernowitz"

Dear friends, dear Steve,
Since myself and my husband, mother and daughter had a small role in the
above film, I feel I have to answer Steve Lasky's comments. Volker
Koepp had a great success with the previous documentary "Herr Zwilling
und Frau Zuckermann" and received several international prizes for it.
He was lucky - told us how he went
to Czernowitz to find out about Celan - and by chance he met the two
protagonists who completely changed his ideas, and thus made a
completely different film.
It became a "cult" film in Germany.
As it happens, one often wants to repeat a success - he slowly started
thinking of a follow-up. He met my family in Berlin, then Harvey Keitel
in Frankfurt/Oder reciting Paul Celan poems, and the other persons in
the film, in Vienna and New York. The old man in Czernowitz, Herr
Schlamp, a "character", a German, non-Jew, who did not go along with the
Nazis, and was a good friend of Edy Wagner and the greatest fan of
Joseph Schmidt (that's why he sings songs
of Schmidt in the film). Edy Wagner had a popular balalaika orchestra
in the 30's in Czernowitz, he was then suspected to be a zionist,
left-wing anarchist, and the Romanian siguranta tortured and killed him
in 1936. During the Russian after-war period, he was hailed as somewhat
of an anti-Nazi resistance hero. A sequence in the film shows my husband
and myself at Edy Wagner's grave in the cemetery.
 Norman Manea, a Bukowinean-born Romanian writer, who lives in New York,
two sisters from Vienna also of Bukowinean origin, and Tania, a young
Ukrainean
Czernowitzer, who studied German in Czernowitz, translated and
interpreted and accompanied Koepp throughout the film, these are the
other persons who
Koepp found of interest and of direct relation to the history of the area.
Whatever one may say of Harvey Keitel, he reads a Celan poem at the end,
and does it really well, with the sensitivity for language of a real actor.
The film had the premiere at the Berlinale, the international film
festival here and was very well received. It was shown in the Goethe
Institutes all over the world,
and is shown fairly regularly on German TV.
Gabriele




--

Eduard & Gabriele Weissmann
Kaiserdamm 18
D- 14057 Berlin

Tel./Fax: +49.30.321 15 38
E-Mail: EGWeissmann_at_gmx.net
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Received on 2008-06-03 09:42:40